Since the beginning of Kim Jong Il’s trip to China, attempts to restrict communication with the outside world have been enhanced along the border, an inside source relayed to The Daily NK on the 26th. The message delivered in people’s unit meetings is cut from the same cloth: be extremely careful about communicating with China.

According to a Yangkang Province source, “There are so many security agents on the streets just now that people are noticing it. Agents targeting anti-regime actions are conducting round-the-clock surveillance in groups of two or three using radio wave detection equipment, so people are tense.”

“In a people’s unit meeting on the 23rd, they said, ‘Take a little care on the phone now, while the clamp down is serious’. Obviously, it was to give a warning that they know everything about people using the phone without telling coercing us not to use it,” the source added.

“Every time there was a meeting about border controls, drugs or telephone controls before, they informed us that it was ‘Comrade Kim Jong Eun’s decree’, but this time there was no such statement, which people said was odd,” the source added.

According to sources, on the 21st two people from different households in the Hyemyung-dong of Hyesan were discovered speaking with friends in China, and are now under arrest.

On this strengthening of surveillance, the source said, “People are whispering that it must be down to concerns about there being another accident like the Yongcheon explosion.”

The North Korean authorities concluded in 2004 that an explosion at Yongcheon which occurred just 20 minutes after Kim Jong Il’s armored train had passed through the station on the way to Pyongyang from the Chinese border was down to communication with the outside allowing people to guess at Kim’s position.

Accordingly, this time the security forces have put in place a range of additional measures to strengthen security, including closing customs houses up and down the border for a number of days during the visit, presumably so as to seed confusion about Kim’s return route.