The authorities in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province, recently held a “struggle meeting” to bolster compliance with the so-called “Law on Self-guard,” Daily NK has learned.
A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Friday that the authorities recently gathered all of Hoeryong’s neighborhood office chiefs, party secretaries, heads of neighborhood branches of the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea, heads of neighborhood watch units and members of the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea at Kim Jong Suk University of Education for public criticism and a struggle meeting to improve compliance with the law.
“Two vice directors from the provincial justice department guided the meeting from a podium set up in the courtyard in front of the university, while the head of the city branch of the Ministry of State Security conducted the meeting,” he said.
According to the source, the meeting criticized problems in the execution of the “law on self-guard” adopted by the 21st Plenary Meeting of the 14th Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly in August, publicly criticizing people accused of creating problems due to complacent, lackadaisical responses.
One person who faced the fire was a woman who was turned over to the investigative unit of the local branch of the Ministry of State Security after she was busted by the border patrol for approaching the Tumen River at night.
During the public criticism session, officials explained how the woman was caught by the border patrol after she approached the Tumen River by taking advantage of the failure on the part of neighborhood watch units in border regions to bolster night time patrols.
They added that at the time of her arrest, border patrol troops searched the surroundings and found buried in the ground a Chinese-made mobile phone. When they found South Korean and Chinese phone numbers and conversations on the phone, they dragged her off to the local branch of the Ministry of State Security as an attempted defector.
The source said the chief of the city branch of the Ministry of State Security, who conducted the meeting, said the woman tried to pull a fast one, claiming that she was “only trying to draw water because she had no water at night to do laundry.”
She could not fool the highly alert border guard, however, and now she is being charged with espionage because she spoke on the phone with people in South Korea.
In particular, the head of the city branch of the Ministry of State Security hammered home how the woman’s attempted defection was connected to the failure of the local neighborhood watch units to engage in patrols, in violation of the “law on self-guard.”
“Now do you know why the nation legislated the law on self-guard and why we need to strengthen [compliance]?” he reportedly asked, warning that “giving internal spies trying to overthrow the state space to operate is just the same as an enemy act.”
The head of the city branch of the Ministry of State Security also reportedly warned that given that the law on self-guard is a “people’s law that stipulates articles that contribute to the security of the system and the protection of the people’s lives and property, only when the people take ownership of the law and take the lead in adhering to it can we prevent reactionaries from gaining a foothold.”
The source said the official ended the meeting by noting that although Hoeryong is full of deeply meaningful historic sites as the hometown of the “indefatigable revolutionary warrior Kim Jong Suk,” it has also been branded a “dishonorable city with the most forced laborers, illegal border hoppers, fugitives to South Korea and missing persons.”
He appealed for local residents to help the city move past its stigmatization and recover its honor as a historic place.
Rodong Sinmun and other North Korean media previously reported that the law of self-guard “stipulates the articles for positively contributing to defending the social system and protecting the people’s life and property by establishing the all-people self-guard system and providing the conditions for self-guard and strengthening guidance and control over it.”
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
