North Koreans continue to consume illegal drugs and South Korean pop culture despite crackdowns by the authorities, a reporting partner in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK last Thursday.
“The state has made laws to stop drug crimes and impure videos, and Workers’ Party and labor organizations are bolstering their attacks and indoctrination toward [drugs and foreign visual content], but there hasn’t been a decrease in narcotics distribution and the consumption of impure videos,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to the reporting partner, North Koreans can easily get their hands on narcotics, regardless of region, class, sex, age or income level.
Viewing drug consumption and distribution as a serious social problem, North Korean authorities are conducting a sweeping crackdown to eradicate illegal drug behavior, including the enactment of a drug crime prevention law.
The reporting partner said 12 people have received criminal punishments for drug distribution in December and January in South Pyongan Province.
“Given that this many people were busted and punished, it’s possible that many more people are engaging in drug distribution if you include all the people who bribed their way out or simply weren’t detected,” he claimed.
Daily NK reported earlier this month that the rise in narcotics abuse amid worsening medicine shortages due to COVID-19 led the authorities to launch a special crackdown late last year on opium and methamphetamine. However, North Koreans continue to seek out narcotics as a replacement for medicines.
In fact, North Korean authorities are warning that people who hide knowledge of drug crimes will be treated as scofflaws who directly challenge Workers’ Party policy and receive the same punishments as the drug criminals themselves. This warning does not appear to have led to a reduction in the number of related crimes, however.
NORTH KOREANS CONTINUE TO CONSUME FOREIGN VISUAL CONTENT
North Korea is also making all sorts of efforts to stop illegal visual content from being smuggled into the country, but these measures also seem to be having little effect.
The reporting partner said 11 people had been punished in December and January for watching South Korean TV shows, while noting that more people watched them but were not caught.
North Korea has been cracking down hard on the distribution or consumption of illegal videos brought into the country from the outside after enacting the law to eradicate “reactionary thought and culture” in late 2020.
Ultimately, North Korean authorities are tightening the reins on the public by enacting all sorts of laws, but these efforts appear woefully insufficient to completely eradicate drugs and visual content smuggled in from abroad, the reporting partner claimed.
“There are rumors circulating among party cadres that controls and crackdowns are not the way to resolve [the issue] of illicit drugs and South Korean dramas,” the reporting partner said. “That being said, the authorities have no choice to continue crackdowns because they have no [other] suitable ways [to deal with the problem].”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
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