North Korea’s media outlets continue to boast that patriotic young people are lining up to volunteer for difficult jobs. But the reality is that a large number of young volunteers are running away from horrific working conditions.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Monday that there has been a wave of incidents in which young volunteers for dolgyeokdae (shock troops) at construction sites have run away from their jobs and returned home or become vagabonds. The provincial party committee has been trying to track down the fugitives and persuade them to return to the construction sites.
The North Korean government has stirred up competition among the provinces by drawing up a chart that clearly shows the progress of each province’s dolgyeokdae at major construction sites. Since South Pyongan Province’s dolgyeokdae have fallen behind on the chart, the provincial party committee is now working to solve the problem of runaway workers.
Dolgyeokdae volunteers endure grueling work at construction sites with constant hunger and little opportunity to sleep. Those who cannot endure these conditions slip away from their construction sites, the source said.
Some young people use the slightest illness as an excuse to beg off work and return to their hometowns, while others take the extreme measure of deliberately harming themselves to escape their construction sites.
Runaways are being tracked down by the authorities
But instead of returning to construction sites after recovering, these young people engage in entrepreneurship and other money-making activities. This type of behavior is particularly common in the cities of Pyongsong, Sunchon, Kaechon and Tokchon and the counties of Pukchang and Yangdok.
“Officials of the provincial party committee are disappointed that so many young people are dropping out after volunteering with the aim of realizing the beautiful ideals of the youth in the difficult outposts of the revolution. The committee has decided to take some kind of action against the dropouts by the end of June,” the source said.
In this connection, the committee has instructed the Socialist Patriotic Youth League and the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea to cooperate with the police to find the runaways by comparing their work records with the lists of volunteers and return them to work after ideological education.
The youth league and the labor federation were also instructed that if young people refuse to return to the dolgyeokdae, they should use all means to persuade them to return, even if it means threatening them with appropriate legal, political or administrative punishment.
But young people who have experienced the terrible working and living conditions of the dolgyeokdae are desperate to avoid returning to their places of work. The runaways are even being sheltered by their parents, complicating the work of police officers and agents of the youth league and the trade union federation who are tasked with convincing the young people to return to work.
“After being threatened with a labor camp sentence if they refuse to return to work, some young people have gone into hiding and are staying away from home. It’s a problem that will probably not be easy to solve,” the source said.
Daily NK works with a network of sources living in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous for security reasons. For more information about Daily NK’s network of reporting partners and information-gathering activities, please visit our FAQ page here.
Please send any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
