A man was recently arrested after he continued complaining about “volunteering” under duress to relocate from the capital Pyongyang to Kwail County, South Hwanghae Province, Daily NK has learned.
A source in South Hwanghae Province told Daily NK on Wednesday that a resident of Kwail County who moved there from Pyongyang after being “caught up in petition to live in provincial areas” was arrested by the local branch of the Ministry of State Security on Jan. 7.
The man, who is in his 40s, worked as a painter at Mansudae Art Studio but came to Kwail County with his family in October after he was netted into petitioning to relocate to the provinces, according to the source.
He had been working at the restoration office of the propaganda department of Kwail County’s party committee. The office employs experts who restore local mosaic murals, statues, paintings and works of party propaganda.
The source said the man — a native of a provincial region — had been attached to Pyongyang’s Mansudae Art Studio after graduating university because he was talented.
“However, when the authorities decided on a policy to promote petitions [volunteering] to live in the provinces, he ended up applying because he was being pressured by a party organization and had no choice,” he said. “He was caught up because the policy was to make people who lived in provincial areas petition first.”
Above all else, he was forced to make a petition because he had to write a self-criticism letter and was given probational punishment for “misspeaking” while he was abroad selling paintings for foreign currency.
However, he began complaining about his relocation soon after coming to Kwail County. “How am I going to live in a provincial area?” he would ask. “I resent how I was forced to petition to live in the provinces and sent to a rural community, even though I did nothing wrong.”
He continued to grumble, asking why he had to come to the provinces and complaining about how “people with no power or anyone to watch their backs get driven to the provinces.”
People around him took displeasure with this, and ultimately, so did the authorities.
“A party organization he was affiliated with had been paying attention to what he was saying,” said the source. “And when he kept complaining, the organization learned of his problematic statements through the entire staff of the restoration office. It wrote a report about it, got each of the staff members to sign it, and then sent it to the county party committee.
“The county party committee concluded that somebody who habitually harbors complaints and dismisses provincial areas as unlivable places of exile isn’t fit to work in a holy place restoring the Workers’ Party’s works of propaganda, and that he could bring ideological changes to ideological pure-hearted provincial people,” the source continued, adding, “So it told the Ministry of State Security to arrest him.”
The man’s entire family disappeared not long after the man was arrested.
The source said local people believe this was the Ministry of State Security’s doing and say the family was likely exiled deep into the mountains.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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