A police officer in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, was arrested in late April for the murder of his wife, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province said that an officer at a forced labor camp operating under the Ministry of Social Security – identified by his surname Kim (pseudonym) – beat his wife to death after returning home late at night from a business trip and finding her in bed with another man.
After he was arrested on murder charges, Kim said during questioning that he momentarily lost control when he saw his wife with another man and felt wronged because he had allowed her to do housework instead of working. “I had no intention of killing her,” he said.
“In such cases, you can get five years of reeducation through labor for the crime of killing in a fit of rage,” the source said. “But he has been waiting in a cell for over a month to be sentenced.”
Article 307 of the North Korean penal code states, “A person who has killed a person in a fit of rage caused by the victim’s assault or grave insult shall be sentenced to reform through labor for up to three years. In cases where a person has killed more than one person in the acts of the previous paragraph, he or she shall be sentenced to a term of reform through labor of more than three years and up to eight years.”
“He’s a police officer, not an ordinary person, so he must receive his final verdict from the Special Security Bureau of the Ministry of Social Security after being interrogated by the police inspection and preliminary examination departments,” the source said. “Whether he’ll receive a light or heavy sentence will be decided soon based on a decision from Pyongyang.”
The man’s case is the talk of the town in Chongjin, the source added.
Some are taking a hard line, calling for the policeman to be executed “because someone who’s supposed to uphold the law has murdered another.” Others focus on the unethical behavior of his wife, wondering what she was thinking “when she was living high on the hog thanks to her husband.”
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