Authorities in North Korea’s Kilju county are investigating evidence that local orchards have been diverting seasonal fruit to black market sales.
“Since mid-July, the Kilju people’s committee has been looking into reports that county orchards worked with vendors to illegally redirect large quantities of seasonal fruit — including watermelons, chamoe melons, peaches, plums and apricots — to local markets,” a source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK recently.
The source explained that orchard managers initially told the people’s committee they expected to harvest only about 70% of their planned yield. They blamed delayed pesticide shipments in spring and pest damage from soil acidification for the shortfall.
The people’s committee accepted this explanation until mid-July, when market vendors began boasting about the fruit supplies they were getting from the orchards. These boastful comments proved to be the smoking gun. Other vendors passed the information to the market manager, who eventually alerted the people’s committee about the suspected collusion between orchard managers and vendors.
Investigation uncovers elaborate scheme
Armed with this tip, the people’s committee launched an investigation that exposed the entire operation. Officials discovered that high-quality Grade A fruit was being falsely labeled as worm-damaged and stored in a separate warehouse. Under cover of darkness, orchard trucks transported this fruit to a private warehouse on Kilju’s outskirts, where it eventually reached select market vendors — all completely illegal under North Korea’s state-controlled economy.
The people’s committee has decided to handle the matter discreetly while investigating the orchard managers and tracing how the fruit was transported.
The Kilju state security department and market management office plan to monitor fruit sales closely through the end of August.
“County officials find it completely unacceptable for produce grown on state land to be illegally sold at markets for private profit. But since fruit has been sold this way for decades, locals don’t really care whether the government addresses the problem,” the source said.
Kilju residents know that seasonal fruit from county orchards appears in markets before it’s available in county stores at state-approved prices, but this doesn’t seem to particularly concern them.
According to the source, Kilju residents do criticize the orchard managers who line their pockets during watermelon and peach season.
