According to a Daily NK source, the North Korean authorities have initiated a “cleanup operation” targeting people who conduct business on streets and are taking them to forced labor camps.
This can be seen as a follow-up measure to the recent seizure of goods sold by “grasshopper” traders.
A source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Apr. 22 that “Hyesan’s Ministry of Social Security has been conducting a major crackdown on street vendors since Apr. 12” and that “23 street vendors were taken to forced labor camps in the period between Apr. 17 and Apr. 19 alone.”
As enforcement of laws against unofficial trade ramps up, the authorities have seized street vendors and rickshaw drivers who went to the street to start their day’s work and dragged them off to forced labor camps.
After the authorities received orders to eliminate “anti-socialist” behavior at the Sixth Conference of Cell Secretaries earlier this month, the frequency and intensity of crackdowns on street vendors have reportedly increased.
Law enforcement authorities appear to be choosing to arrest street vendors and rickshaw drivers because of their vulnerable social status. The vendors lack the social capital to fight back, and local authorities can point to the vendors’ arrests as evidence of their own efforts to enforce the directive given at the cell secretaries’ conference.
Forced labor camps typically house prisoners serving sentences between six months and one years, along with those sentenced by prosecutor’s offices to perform labor for up to six months. However, the authorities are reportedly not following these legal procedures.
“The street vendors and rickshaw drivers are the ones with the most difficult lives,” the source said. “If you tell people to blindly report to a workplace where they get zero rations or money, what are they supposed to eat? The authorities are just sending people to their death.”
“Ministry of Social Security officers and labor disciplinary unit officers are hell-bent on putting people in forced labor camps,” the source added. “Life in the camps is tough, but the bigger problem is that [even after they are released, the vendors] will have no way to make money in the future.”
*Translated by S & J
