Many people in South Hamgyong Province who “petitioned” and were then selected to work in rural areas and other hard-to-survive places are not heading to their designated areas, Daily NK has learned.
“People who petitioned and were selected by provincial enterprises and organizations to work in coal mines and rural areas with insufficient workers are not moving to areas they are supposed to,” a source from South Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Friday.
Although people are supposed to be voluntarily submitting “petitions” to be sent to hard-to-live areas of the country, North Korean authorities are actually selecting candidates to be sent to those areas, according to the source.
The province’s Gowon County had expected to receive a large number of petitioners, but most have yet to arrive. In response, the county’s party committee and rural management committee met in early March to deliberate about the issue until finally deciding to notify the provincial party committee.
South Hamgyong Province had made a list of 200 petitioners to be deployed to Gowon County, which is an area surrounded by coal mines and farming areas, and had posted “deployment notices” to remind people of their duty. As of early March, however, only around 50 petitioners had arrived in the area.
The provincial party committee is taking several measures to tackle the problem, including ordering the labor department of the provincial people’s committee to figure out the reason why so many petitioners have not yet arrived, even by contacting their homes if necessary.
“Most of the petitioners are either young people who just graduated from universities, vocational colleges, or high schools, or those who were forced by their workplaces to put their names on the list,” the source said. “Currently, these people are refusing to be deployed to rural areas in such a way that you’d think they are being led to a slaughterhouse.”
The provincial party committee is emphasizing the idea that young people – in order to become patriotic youth loyal to the party and useful to the nation – must take the lead in solving the country’s food shortages this year by “petitioning” to work in rural areas. At the same time, the party committee is threatening to deal with the refusal to comply with deployment orders as a political issue, claiming that the behavior is equivalent to refusing to adhere to party policy.
The provincial party committee has, in fact, claimed that the party’s policies are the law of the land, and that the party will take systematic measures to forcibly drag petition candidates and their families to rural areas if they continue to refuse to go.
“People ensnared by their organizations to become petitioners under the pretext of adhering to party policy are sighing at the bewildering prospect of moving from cities to rural areas,” the source said. “Meanwhile, the organizations that are involved in implementing the deployment efforts are powerless to go against the stern commands of the provincial party committee. Both sides are feeling mutual discomfort in this situation.”
“In recent years, the country has been recruiting workers for rural areas or coal mines more frequently than it did in the past, leading to unhappiness among young people,” the source said, adding, “The general public is also expressing strong discontent about the government’s forced movement of people [to rural areas].”
Translated by Youngheon Kim
