Hoeryong authorities have once again intensified crackdowns on street vendors, seriously threatening their livelihoods, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province said on Monday that due to the crackdowns, “the lives of street vendors, who already struggle every day to make ends meet, are becoming increasingly difficult.”
According to the source, crackdowns on street vendors were waning up until early June, which had allowed them to earn enough to pay for one simple meal of gruel a day. With crackdowns again intensifying, however, vendors have not been able to even earn this amount of money.
Hoeryong’s crackdown on street vendors is not a recent phenomenon by any means. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, North Korean authorities nationwide set out to completely eliminate street vendors under the pretext of disease control. Many vendors had all their goods confiscated or were punished with forced labor.
Most vendors, however, have to earn a day’s wage or their families will starve. That is why many still go out onto the streets despite intensified crackdowns by the authorities on their business activities, the source said.
Many sellers struggle to earn enough for even a single meal a day
In general, street sellers are struggling to feed their families even a single meal a day following intensified crackdowns, with many only able to earn a meager KPW 1,000 a day.
“Rice prices are higher than ever these days, and we can’t find enough corn rice to eat either, but now we’re not even allowed to make a living,” a seller of ricecakes in Hoeryong complained to Daily NK. “This feels like [the government] is just kicking us when we’re already down.
“Before COVID-19, I’d made five kilograms of ricecakes but couldn’t sell them because there were no customers. But now there’s many days I can’t even manage to sell one kilogram. Because of the crackdowns, I can’t sell anything, so I have no other choice but to starve.”
As the seller’s testimony suggests, many street vendors are at wits end because of the crackdowns.
“Businesspeople who don’t make enough money to buy a spot in the markets have to make ends meet by taking to the streets,” the source told Daily NK. “Their lives are so difficult that some of them say they would shoot all those officials disrupting their activities to death if they only had a gun that went off without a sound.”
The source added: “I often encounter street vendors being chased from here to there, holding a bowl in their hands and their children strapped to their backs, and every time, my heart breaks with sympathy. The government’s single-minded focus on the crackdowns, and its refusal to come up with a plan for the food shortages, infuriates not only the street vendors, but also all North Koreans.”
Translated by Annie Eun Jung Kim. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of sources who live inside North Korea, China and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
