Many ordinary people in North Korea are reaching exhaustion point as nationwide military and civilian training exercises reach the month marker.
One source from Hoiryeong in North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK on the 19th, “People are not only complaining about the everyday difficulty of market closure for daily air raid drills; they are also extremely tired. The mobilization period has gone on for nearly a month already.”
“The accommodation is dirty and the weather is cold,” the source went on. “As a result, many people are getting colds and others are even suffering from joint problems. And, because people had started going AWOL and some were simply not attending at all, Party cadres have also stepped up controls to stop them doing it.”
“They are carefully checking people in and out by people’s unit,” she said, explaining the measures employed to stop absenteeism. “The training is ending in people’s units too, to try and stop people leaving in the middle.”
According to the source, during past exercises people were required to go to evacuation shelters in the morning, and then they had lunch there. They were eventually permitted to leave under cover of darkness. However, the ‘combat readiness’ period this time has people spending multiple nights underground, sometimes as long as a week. Young people are drinking to keep warm, and this is causing fights to break out, she said.
“The authorities are not even guaranteeing the most basic provisions (food and firewood) for people during the training, and so they are openly complaining,” she pointed out. “Where is the person who would actually like being told to train for a foreign military attack, but then the enemy did not come and yet they were still ordered to spend almost a month hungry and cold?”
As is often the case, the source added, people have been commenting wryly that a war would be preferable to the current state of affairs.
However, in spite of the growing negative public sentiment, the authorities are continuing with the program of military and civilian exercises.
A Hyesan-based source told Daily NK, “Orders have come from our people’s unit saying that a two-day evacuation exercise will be held starting on the 19th. The main area will be the border zone, which has not maintained its combat mobilization status properly. A few people will guard residential areas, but everyone else will have to attend the evacuation.”
“They said that each household should lock away its portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and prepare emergency supplies and two days of food,” the source revealed. “The market will be closed throughout.”