There has been a sharp increase in the number of North Koreans dying of disease amid extreme hardship or ending their lives because of depression, Daily NK has learned.
A source in North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Sept. 19 that a struggling couple in their 50s killed themselves at the beginning of September.
The couple had been living with their twenty-something daughter, who started experiencing symptoms akin to COVID-19. But when she visited a doctor, she was only told she did not have COVID-19 and was not prescribed medicine or given any treatment.
The family, which could barely put food on their table, let alone buy medication, had relied in the past on food and money borrowed from their neighbors. But this time around, the neighbors were too hard up themselves to provide any help.
The couple’s daughter died last month, and the couple ended their own lives at the beginning of the month, the source explained.
In another incident, the members of six families living in a harmonica house (a common type of residence in North Korea) in Pihyon County, North Pyongan Province, died of disease or were driven to suicide by lives of hardship.
All six of the families, who were working in a bearing factory in the Yangchaek Workers’ District, were in extreme hardship because of their poor wages.
According to the source, two families lost their children to a fever, while another husband lost his wife to disease. Two of the remaining three families died from a lack of food, and the husband of the sixth family ended his life from a bout of depression.
With access to enough nutrients and timely medical care, these individuals could have survived. But their immunity had been weakened by longstanding malnutrition, ultimately leading to their deaths, the source said.
In the past, it was common for the families of North Korean farmers and factory workers (who receive few if any rations) to run out of food. But more recently, no small number of entrepreneurs who had considerable savings from smuggling or trading seem to be ending up in similar straits.
According to a source in Pyongyang, the family members of a shipowner and merchant (Mr. A) quietly ended their lives, unable to endure their hardship any longer.
Mr. A had earned enough money from trade with China to buy two apartments. But after being sent to reeducation for violating trade law at the beginning of this year, his assets were confiscated. The family was ultimately forced to sell off its furniture to make ends meet, the source said.
The head of the people’s unit visited Mr. A’s house several times last month to hand out a circular, but no one answered the door. When the unit head finally went inside, he found the entire family, already dead.
In Gangwon Province, a man in his forties (Mr. B) and his wife had been suffering hardship after the pandemic disrupted their work and ultimately decided to end their lives, to the shock of their local community.
Mr. B had been a long-distance trader who traveled from Wonsan to several areas to do business. He was well-known in trading circles in Wonsan because he would often lend money to other merchants, but after traveling was restricted during the pandemic, he had to close his business.
His income was cut off, and he could not collect the loans he had made, which left him in debt. In the end, Mr. B ended his life along with his family members, leading behind a suicide note that read, “There’s nothing more I can do.”
While starvation was reportedly a frequent cause of death during the “Arduous March” period of privation in the 1990s, nowadays it appears that more people are dying of infectious disease, as malnutrition weakens their immunity, or are driven by hardship to end their own lives.
“Just a few years ago, I would never have imagined that entrepreneurs doing a lot of business or smuggling would be driven by suffering to end their lives,” the source in North Pyonggan Province told Daily NK. “But so many people are facing unbearable hardship even among the formerly prosperous. There is also more criticism of the government behind closed doors for political mistakes that are resulting in lost lives.”
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
