In autumn 2020, when North Korea implemented broad-ranging nationwide lockdowns in response to COVID-19, North Koreans faced limits in everything they did. Doing business in the markets, visiting the next village, and even leaving one’s home became difficult. Nobody could say a thing because even the slightest grumbling about state policy would lead to accusations of being a “dangerous element.”
North Koreans remember how an incident involving a disabled veteran in Kimhyongjik County, Yanggang Province, vividly demonstrated what happens to people who complain about state policy.
After years of service in Kangwon Province, the disabled veteran returned to his hometown of Kimhyongjik County and was placed in a collective quarantine facility in a village outside of town. However, the facility was utterly unfit for living. It lacked food and firewood and had many sanitation problems.
With the vigor of a recently discharged soldier, he decided to speak for the other people placed in such dire surroundings. He protested to the quarantine officer in charge, demanding improvements to the quarantine facility. However, the authorities regarded his action as a threat to social order.
Even though the former soldier was honorably discharged after being injured in loyal service to the state, openly complaining about or criticizing quarantine measures per state policy was an unforgivable act. The authorities considered people sharing their opinions about state measures rather than conforming to them to be a challenge to the government and regime.
As a result, he was transferred to a different facility and never returned home.
Disappeared without a trace
Four years have passed, yet the disabled veteran’s whereabouts remain entirely unknown. However, in Yanggang Province, everyone who failed to return from a quarantine facility “died of illness,” at least on paper.
One Kimhyongjik County resident suggested that the disabled veteran “paid a dear price for openly criticizing the poor conditions of the quarantine facility.”
This individual said that people accused of being “dangerous elements” like the disabled veteran “simply asked for food, firewood and medicine.” He claimed that people who spoke for the collective “were heroes to ordinary people like us, but to the state, they were nothing more than anti-regime agitators.”
People remained silent, fearing that if the state treated even disabled veterans that way, worse would befall ordinary, powerless people if they expressed a policy opinion. Yanggang Province also clamped down hard to ensure that word of such incidents did not reach foreign ears, so telling the outside world what happened proved difficult.
The disabled veteran’s grandfather, his only remaining relative, gradually went blind, deaf and mentally infirm after his son’s sudden disappearance. In the spring of last year, he was sent to a “No. 49 hospital,” as psychiatric facilities are called in North Korea. When the grandfather was sent away, he proudly said his son was “serving his military duty in Kangwon Province.” His neighbors in the know could not hide their sadness.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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