North Korean authorities in Hamhung, South Hamgyong province, pressured local police officers late last month to adopt orphans under a pro-natalist law that grants benefits to families with three or more children, drawing sharp resistance from officers who say they cannot afford to take in additional children on their meager wages.
Although the Law on Preferential Treatment for Multi-Child Families, adopted in August of last year, aims to promote childbirth by legally enshrining benefits for multi-child households, people quietly complain that the state really intends to dump responsibility for orphans onto private individuals.
The police department of one district of Hamhung gathered its officers late last month and openly discussed orphaned children, according to a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province who requested anonymity for security reasons. The head of the department’s political department said at the meeting that police “should take the lead in resolving the orphan issue, a matter of concern for the party,” and that “people who take in orphans also receive benefits under the Law on Preferential Treatment for Multi-Child Families.”
The law designates families with three or more children, whether biological or adopted, as multi-child families and provides them with preferential benefits.
In December, authorities in Hamhung conducted indoctrination sessions to encourage childbirth and promote the law, focusing mostly on Socialist Women’s Union of Korea (SWAK) organizations in the city. SWAK members complained that authorities “were invoking the law on multi-child families because they couldn’t outright tell us to take in orphans and raise them.”
Officers and their families push back
The police officers gave the latest effort an equally chilly reception. About the political department chief’s open discussion of adoption, officers said it was “nonsense for them to tell us to adopt children when we are barely getting by on our wages,” adding that adoption “is something a couple decides carefully, and tensions will inevitably arise if the state pressures them to adopt.”
Some officers voiced their frustration openly. “One cop asked why frontline officers had to assume responsibility for orphans, protesting that it was absolute nonsense for the state to ask officers to rescue orphans when it couldn’t even pay our wages,” the source said.
The officers’ wives were also vigorously opposed. After hearing about the pressure, one officer’s wife told her husband to “tell the political department chief to adopt and raise an orphan first.”
“Discontent erupted when the state, unable to take care of orphans itself, tried to compel private individuals to raise them,” the source said. “People continue to criticize the state for simply relying on laws and slogans while dumping real responsibility onto the people at the very bottom.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime. We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication.
Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea — discovery means imprisonment or execution. This network-based approach allows Daily NK to report on developments other outlets cannot access: market trends, policy implementation, public sentiment, and daily realities that never appear in official narratives.
Maintaining these secure communication channels and protecting source identities requires specialized protocols and constant vigilance. Daily NK serves as a bridge between North Koreans and the outside world, documenting what’s happening inside one of the world’s most closed societies.
