A source says an elderly woman in Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province has become the talk of town after she recently began publicly lambasting the chief secretary of the provincial party and other party cadres.
According to a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong Province, the 70-year-old woman — identified by her family name of Kim — has been heaping unspeakable abuse on the chief secretary and other cadres in the provincial and city parties since Monday.
Despite her advanced age, Kim has been raising two grandchildren aged 12 and 15 on her own. Unable to properly feed them because of the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, she sought out officials from the district and city party committees and asked them to resolve her food issue.
However, this yielded little in terms of results, so she resolved to seek out the chief secretary of the provincial party. This would amount to meeting somebody equivalent to a provincial governor in South Korea. In fact, the chief secretary had been showing up as usual at the provincial party committee building from Nov. 11.
She pleaded to the provincial party committee to let her meet with the secretary, and even asked the provincial party committee’s security detail, but nobody listened to her. For an ordinary person to meet with the chief secretary of the provincial party committee turned out to be a difficult task, as is usually the case in North Korea.
Kim did not give up, however, and finally in early December, she reportedly met the chief secretary. Twenty or so days of effort had paid off.
She pleaded with the chief secretary with tears in her eyes, telling him that she had no food despite having lived her life according to the policies and orders of the party, that her grandchildren were so hungry they could not get up, and that if the party did not help her in her time of need, nobody would.
The chief secretary sent her home, telling her to rest assured that the party would take care of the problem.
What she got, however, was not a solution, but a scolding by the head of her inminban (people’s unit) and the chief of the district office. They blamed her for making the problem bigger by going to the provincial party committee.
The source said Kim responded by going around downtown shouting that the party cadres are “con artists” who “don’t give a hoot even though people are starving to death.”
“What kind of servants of the people are these [expletives],” she cried.
The source said Kim must have been irate as she was rebuked by lower-level cadres after the chief secretary made her a promise. He added that she could receive a stern punishment for harming the image of the province’s top leader, party rhetoric about “putting the people first” notwithstanding.
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