With seafood wholesalers growing increasingly busy this year, North Pyongan Province’s police agency has begun sweeping crackdowns and inspections, Daily NK has learned.
“As the infectious disease situation [the COVID-19 pandemic] improves, there are gradually more and more vehicles carrying goods on the roads. Starting from April, there have been more cars of seafood wholesalers on the road in North Pyongan Province, so the provincial police agency launched an inspection,” a reporting partner in North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
Based on the reporting partner’s account, as the COVID-19 has receded, wholesalers have begun coming back to life after a period of inactivity. Vehicles laden with goods flooding roads and market streets nationwide, leading police agencies across the country to conduct inspections and crackdowns on the illegal activities of wholesalers.
“Recently, the North Pyongan Province police agency launched an inspection to crackdown on seafood products leaking to other provinces given that cargo vehicles are going around the markets of Chongju and Cholsan to engage in wholesale seafood sales, carrying frozen seafood, dried seafood, salted seafood and other items,” the reporting partner said.
The markets of the West Sea towns of Chongju and Cholsan are famous for their relatively low seafood prices, so they receive many delivery orders from major cities such as Pyongyang and Pyongsong.
The North Pyongan Province police agency has launched raids of fishery enterprises to keep seagoing fishing boats in line both day and night. It has also conducted inspections to prevent individuals from pilfering fish the fishery eaterprises catch.
Moreover, the police agency has cut off power to the homes of wholesalers to prevent them from freezing fish.
“When all the frozen fish went bad after the power was turned off, the wholesalers began to sell it to locals at low prices, and that got them added to the police agency’s investigation list,” the reporting partner said. “The wholesalers on the investigation list had their inventory confiscated and were called in for questioning by the police.”
The province’s police agency is also investigating seafood enterprises that made money under-the-table through sales of fish to wholesalers, and is even taking power transmission departments that provided electricity to the homes of wholesalers to task, the reporting partner said.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea and China. 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.
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