A married couple in their 30s facing financial difficulties recently ended their lives by jumping off a building in Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province, Daily NK has learned.
A source in the province told Daily NK on Monday that the couple had jumped to their deaths from their apartment building in mid-September.
“Pressure from debt collectors drove them to end their lives,” the source said.
The couple, who had been married for four years, reportedly had a two-year-old child.
According to the source, the woman had made a living by selling products at the marketplace. But after she gave birth to a child in December 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic drove the family into severe economic hardship.
That led the woman to get involved in drug dealing, selling small portions of methamphetamine. She would pick up the drug on credit and then repay her supplier from her proceeds.
Last September, the family’s house was raided by agents from the unified command on non-socialist and anti-socialist behavior, who found and confiscated 10 grams of meth and KPW 1 million won in cash.
After a month’s investigation, the woman was sentenced to six months of hard labor. The raid also left her in KPW 7 million of debt.
As soon as the woman finished her labor sentence in March, she started getting visits from debt collectors sent by the financier who had fronted her the drugs.
Male debt collectors would yell at her in the daytime, demanding she pay back her debt and making her child bawl with terror. There was no peace in the evenings, either, since her husband would quarrel with her after he got home from work.
At the same time, the family was slandered by neighbors who said the child must be the source of all the misfortune they had suffered since its birth.
Hounded by debt collectors and slandered by gossipy neighbors, the couple planned to sell their apartment so they could clear the debt and move to a new neighborhood. But time passed without the apartment selling, and after missing several deadlines for repaying the debt, the couple finally agreed to hand the property deed over to the creditor if they could not repay the money by the end of August.
“Considering how tough things are right now, there are plenty of houses for sale, but precious few willing to buy. Since the apartment still hadn’t sold by the end of August, the couple ultimately jumped to their deaths,” the source said.
“Financial difficulties caused a young couple to take their own lives, orphaning their own child. With nobody to take care of their two-year-old, he was sent to an orphanage in Hamhung,” the source added.
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