North Korean authorities are intensifying their surveillance and controls on North Korean trade officials based overseas.
The intensified controls are aimed at stopping potential defections as more and more trade cadres overseas break under the pressure to provide North Korea’s ruling party with funds.
According to a source in China on Monday, North Korean authorities are bolstering their ideological education aimed at trade officials through the country’s embassy and consulates in China.
North Korean trade officials normally gather at legations once a week to undergo ideological training based on materials sent from Pyongyang. However, recently, they have been gathering once every two days.
In short, once every two days, they report what they have been doing and swear loyalty to the regime.
At the same time, North Korean authorities also ordered Ministry of State Security agents based in China to keep a close eye on the movements of trade cadres and regularly report what they see.
In particular, North Korean authorities have asked China’s Ministry of State Security — Beijing’s intelligence agency — to arrest and repatriate North Koreans who try to defect.
In a recent telephone conversation with Daily NK, another source in China said North Korean authorities recently asked China’s Ministry of State Security to immediately transfer North Korean passport holders caught in China’s southwest — which borders Laos and other countries — to the custody of North Korean security agents based in the country.
“It’s hard to defect now because of travel restrictions in China due to COVID-19 and cooperation between North Korea and Chinese intelligence authorities,” he said.
In the past, would-be defectors could bribe their way out if caught in China’s border region with Southeast Asia. However, the source said the recent atmosphere precludes this possibility due to intensified patrols.
Meanwhile, with the COVID-19 situation in China easing, North Korean trade cadres who have been in China for over three years may face repatriation to Pyongyang, leading to considerable consternation among them.
This is because with trade between North Korea and China all but suspended, and conditions inside China preventing business as usual, the cadres face a mountain of debt in the form of mandatory party contributions.
In fact, a number of North Korean trade officials have committed suicide this year, unable to bear the pressure to pay.
Some North Korean trade officials overseas even appear to be making plans to request help from the South Korean embassy if they feel threatened by their own authorities.
“It seems with repatriation time approaching and the authorities regularly pressuring them, they want to ask the South Korean embassy for help if there’s a problem,” said one of the sources in China. “Some people are even memorizing the phone numbers of the South Korean consulate or embassy.”
