The North Korean government recently ordered provincial party and administrative organizations in the China-North Korea border region to make sure military units guarding the border have enough food, Daily NK has learned.
According to a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province on Tuesday, immediately after a recent meeting to review the nation’s emergency quarantine efforts, North Korea’s government issued an order to provincial party committees and people’s committees to “resolve the food problem of the sentries standing guard at the front line of the emergency quarantine.”
The order said that soldiers “silently carrying out their duties” along the “front line of emergency disease control efforts” must not go hungry.
In particular, the order implored provincial party committees and people’s committees to “take direct charge and resolve the food issues of the border guard and Storm Corps soldiers” guarding the frontier.
The order also called on party committees to take charge of freeing up food to ensure food makes it to soldiers’ families. This directive appears aimed at making sure soldiers can dedicate themselves to their duties without worrying about their loved ones.
The party committee of North Hamgyong Province responded to the order by gathering leading party, state and legal officials as well as leading officials at other agencies and enterprises for an emergency meeting on Aug. 12. The meeting discussed taking charge of freeing up food for the border guard’s 27th Brigade and Storm Corps, which are currently enforcing security along the border.
The provincial party committee conveyed the party’s orders and ideas to the meeting’s participants, and concluded the meeting by calling on cities and counties to find as much reserve grain as possible to send to the soldiers guarding the border, “even if they have to tighten their belts again.”
In fact, the COVID-19 crisis — which has dragged on for over two years — has had a profound impact on the food situation of soldiers deployed to enforce the border closure. In the case of the border guard’s 27th Brigade in North Hamgyong Province, the unit has not received rations in months, and is barely surviving on corn-on-the-cob and gruel. Soldiers from the unit sometimes even raid civilian homes for food.
The lack of food is impacted how well the soldiers are guarding the border, with lax patrols among the border guard a frequent occurence. Locals have taken advantage of this to engage in smuggling and to defect into China.
North Korean authorities have responded to this situation by ordering local party committees and people’s committees to “unquestioningly resolve” food problems suffered by soldiers manning the frontier, the source told Daily NK.
However, some North Koreans are reportedly expressing discontent with how the authorities are passing the buck, complaining that “feeding the army is a problem for the nation to resolve, not local party committees or people’s committees.”
Indeed, the source said the government has once again “dumped the issue of feeding soldiers onto local party committees.”
“In fact, there’s nothing much [local authorities] can do because all financial resources and food have been exhausted due to the fallout from COVID-19,” the source said. “But because the government ordered [efforts to ensure military units along the border are fed], [local authorities] are holding meetings as a formality, just pretending to discuss the matter.”
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