The Justice Department of North Korea’s ruling party has recently instructed relevant agencies nationwide on how to deal with minors who violate the country’s law to eradicate “reactionary thought and culture.”
According to Daily NK sources in Pyongyang and South Hwanghae Province, the Justice Department sent a written proposal outlining its opinions on punishing youth offenders of the law on reactionary thought and culture to the Central Committee on Apr. 4. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ratified the proposal, and it was sent to legal and policing bodies nationwide in the form of an order from Apr. 8.
The sources say the Justice Department began preparing separate regulations after concluding that with crackdowns increasing since the December 2020 enactment of the anti-reactionary thought and culture law, which includes legal punishments for “anti-socialist behavior” such as distributing illegal videos, it could not make “ideological criminals” even out of minors who have experienced “foreign culture.”
One of the sources told Daily NK that the department made an internal conclusion that new, “realitist” legal directives regarding teens were needed with nationwide police surveys revealing that 90% of young people have come into contact with foreign culture.
The new regulations — called the “April 8 Ratification Tasks” — are fivefold, broadly speaking.
- Expunging the legal record of minors under the age of 14 who violated the law on reactionary thought and culture over the last two years, and freeing them from investigation or detention.
- Regarding minors ages 14 to 17, those being investigated while under confinement should be freed from Apr. 8, 2022 and subject to “social education.” However, this does not include those who have already been tried and legally processed.
- Violators under 14 will be subject to social education, with their parents and schools responsible for the classes. However, if the parents are being punished, too, the head of the administrative district where they live should take responsibility for the classes.
- Both offenders under the age of 14 and those between 14 and 17, as people subject to social education, will be regarded as people who have committed no crimes.
- Offenders under the age of 14 who were subject to education will face tougher punishments if they reoffend after the age of 17.
North Korea is making political use of the more lenient regulations, too, promoting them as “consideration” by the party to mark late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung’s birthday on Apr. 15.
The source in Pyongyang said this was the first time the authorities have issued orders to the police, prosecutors, and courts regarding the punishment of youth offenders since the enactment of the anti-reactionary thought and culture law.
Taken as a whole, the sources’ statements suggest that North Korea initially crafted no separate regulations on punishing young offenders when it enacted the law. Accordingly, courts were arbitrarily handing down sentences, sometimes sentencing minors to education, and sometimes sentencing them to the same heavy punishments as adults.
In particular, persons under the age of 14 had generally been exempt from investigations in accordance with laws excluding people under that age from criminal responsibility. But with cases of children distributing illegal videos rising, the authorities had reportedly been carrying out haphazard arrests and investigations of minors for violations of the law.
One of the sources said that some officials concluded that with several entities enforcing the law to eradicate reactionary thought and culture, enforcement agencies were competing for results, leading to excessive legal punishments of minors.
With the new regulations, minors who violated the law have been freed and sent home and to school, subject instead to “social education.”
The source in Pyongyang said about ten 13-year-old middle school students who were busted in Songyo and Rangrang districts for passing around South Korean music videos were freed from pre-trial detention.
North Korea reportedly distributed educational materials to the families and schools of the released offenders, and has been conducting classes to the effect that “ideological training during youth is an important factor determining not only their own lives, but also whether they will become good workers for the state and party, or ungrateful villains.”
The source in South Hwanghae Province added that in response to the new regulations, police, prosecutors and courts are telling schools, government organizations and inminban (people’s units) to carry out regular inspections of how students are using mobile phones and computers at home and in schools so that they avoid “being covered in strange cultures.”
This is to say, the authorities are stressing the importance of ideological education at home and in school to eliminate the phenomenon of curious young people using electronic devices to access foreign culture.
The source added that the courts and police are employing fear as well, telling adolescent offenders that if they reoffend during their teens — “ungrateful for the party’s benevolence” for subjecting them merely to education — they would face criminal punishment for both the latest crime and the one they committed when they were young.
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