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North Korea is apparently gearing up to make one of its regular changes to the nationwide system of ID cards. According to inside sources, the authorities have been gathering in the current ID cards from citizens, a process that has been completed in some areas including parts of Yangkang Province.
Notably, the new ID cards are set to include information on an individual’s job. For more than ten years, North Korea has kept watch on the activities of the people via their places of work, meaning that the inclusion of a person’s job on his or her ID card implies modifications to the existing system of controls.
A Pyongyang source explained, “People’s unit chairpersons have been taking IDs from the people and presenting them to the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM) since earlier this year. The rumor is that a new card clearly recording a person’s job, family and marital relations will come out, just like the old card.”
Another source from northerly Yangkang Province confirmed the story, saying, “We already gave in all our ID cards,” and adding, “I just heard from the PSM agent in charge of citizen registration that the new ID cards would be exactly the same as the old style ID card, including family, marriage and job.”
Understandably, having to give in existing ID cards has made life difficult for those people needing permission to travel, since every time they want to go anywhere they have to visit the local People’s Safety Ministry office to retrieve their card and explain the situation in order to get a permit.
Similarly, people had to retrieve their cards in order to vote in local elections on the 24th of last month, before returning them to the security authorities.
All the sources The Daily NK spoke to about the changeover regard the addition of job information as the most interesting aspect of the new card. As the Pyongyang source explained, the current ID cards do not include job information, meaning that the authorities “don’t know what work we are doing, and so are unable to control us properly. As a result of this, talk about the release of the new card is doing the rounds.”
One Chinese-Korean who regularly visits China for trade agreed, adding, “The absence of jobs from the current ID makes management of citizens difficult, so word is that they will completely return to the old style cards.”
Until 1999, North Korea included all the information now being mooted on ID cards in the shape of a small passport shaped book; however, the authorities then moved to a single card-based system featuring just name, birth date, address, marital status, an image and an ID number.
In North Korea, everyone over the age of 16 has an ID card, a system that began on September 1st, 1946. They have been regularly changed as part of official record keeping for the purposes of control. Previous known changeovers occurred in 1953, 1958, 1964, 1974, 1984, 1999, and 2004.
