Rural housing permit example
FILE PHOTO: An example of a North Korean rural housing permit. (Daily NK)

Local authorities have launched an effort to check the housing permits of everyone in downtown Chongju, North Pyongan Province, Daily NK has learned.

A Daily NK source in North Korea said on Friday that Chongju’s party committee convened an executive committee meeting on Nov. 19 based on a general annual crime report filed by local police earlier this month.

“The executive committee launched an effort to check housing permits, concluding that crimes related to the permits were a grave anti-socialist, non-socialist matter that created chaos in the social order,” he said.

According to the source, two kinds of crimes pertaining to housing permits constituted grave offenses in the view of the executive committee, broadly speaking.

Firstly, the city police submitted statistics in its report showing a skyrocketing number of cases this year of people going homeless after losing their houses to creditors. These people lost their houses after borrowing money, using their housing permits as collateral.

In fact, the report said that “nearly most” Chongju residents who made their livings from commercial activity in the markets have fallen on tough times due to the complete closure of the border due to COVID-19. This led many to borrow money from money changers or members of the country’s wealthy entrepreneurial class, or donju, putting up their housing permits as collateral.

The city police said there were more cases over the last two years of people forced to live with relatives or going homeless after losing their houses to creditors when they failed to pay back money borrowed using their housing permits as collateral, or fights ensuing after the borrower refused to vacate their homes.

The police said this was due to locals losing the sources of their income from private smuggling and market activity for an extended period of time.

Moreover, the police also reported that there were many cases of people earning illegal money and facilitating illegal real estate deals by altering the residency papers of people who want to sell their homes to illegal real estate brokers, forging their housing permits and signatures from people’s committees and relevant government departments.

In North Korea, the government provides houses to individuals for free, but people do not own them; instead, people have only the right to use the homes. Accordingly, individuals have no right to dispose of their homes as they please. 

The source said there has been a steep increase in “socially corrosive activity” involving housing permits, with the number of criminally processed cases between November of 2021 and November of this year climbing three-fold over the immediately preceding 12 month period.

The executive committee of the Chongju branch of the Workers’ Party of Korea found this to be a serious problem, and began taking measures accordingly.

The source said the city of Chongju is investigating all households through the end of the year to see if people are living where their housing permits say they are.

“The party executive committee specially entrusted the people’s committee with the effort, presenting it with specific plans to reissue housing use permits if they are over 10 years old or have been lost,” he said.

Meanwhile, the executive committee implored the neighborhood watch committees to get to the bottom of matters, warning that the people who engaged in illegal deals for housing use permits could get together and get their stories straight ahead of time.

NO CREDITORS OR MONEY CHANGERS ARRESTED

Meanwhile, the executive committee also decided to reveal the results of the city prosecutor’s screening of whether local police punished those arrested for crimes related to housing permits using precise investigations and procedures.

According to the prosecutor, most of the people who borrowed money after putting up their housing permits as collateral, or who forged certificates to engage in illegal housing deals, received three to five years of forced labor. However, not a single creditor, donju or money changer was punished.

“In regards to this, people are saying that only people without money or power go to jail in this country, and that Chongju has already gone capitalist since just a handful of donju are taking care of the cadres with power,” the source explained. 

Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.

Read in Korean