North Korea’s state security agency has recently been devoting more resources to wiretapping citizens’ landlines and mobiles phones, Daily NK has learned.
“Recently, wiretapping by the Ministry of State Security in Hoeryong has grown worse than ever before, and numerous people are being caught in the dragnet and brought in for questioning,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Aug. 2, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The source mentioned one broker who is cooling his heels in jail after being nabbed through wiretapping by state security agents in mid-July.
According to the source, the broker had spoken on the phone with the family of a North Korean defector who wanted money delivered to their home in the interior of the country. Two days after that phone call, security agents raided his home and demanded he hand over his Chinese-made mobile phone.
Since the broker had not been caught red-handed, he insisted that they had the wrong man. But then the security agents played him a recording of his phone conversation with the defector’s family, making it impossible for him to keep feigning innocence.
“You should just hand over the phone while we’re asking you so nicely, because you know what will happen if you make us ransack your house to find it,” an agent told him.
In the end, the broker turned over his Chinese-made phone and was taken into custody by the security agents.
“Many people have to confess their crimes when the security agents play them recordings of their own telephone conversations, and the mobile phones they hand over are then used as evidence for hunting down even more offenders,” the source said.
“The broker’s mobile phone included evidence that he had delivered money to a defector’s family four months ago, and one member of the family is now being questioned by security agents.”
The source explained that the Ministry of State Security is further restricting people’s activities with its frequent use of wiretapping.
“But since the people engaged in illegal occupations have no choice but to use Chinese-made mobile phones, I bet they’ll soon come up with a way to dodge security agents’ snooping and stay out of their clutches,” the source claimed.
North Korea’s state security agency has generally focused its wiretapping on people regarded as likely offenders, including remittance brokers and defectors’ family members. But more recently, the agency has also been wiretapping random people who are not under suspicion of anything.
“As circumstances grow more difficult, discontent and doubt about the Workers’ Party and state are growing. So [the authorities] are wiretapping people to monitor ideological trends and track down impure elements,” the source said.
Translated by David Carruth. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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