A man in his 60s living in Samsu County was recently jailed for causing a disturbance at a police station while trying to deal with a domestic dispute, Daily NK has learned.
“Last month, the man spent almost a week going to the county police station due to an issue he had with his son. He repeatedly demanded to meet with the head of the resident registry department and head of the political department, and was arrested for making a disturbance,” a reporting partner in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Apr. 7, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
According to the reporting partner, the man began living with his son and his son’s wife after his own wife died last year. Afterwards, tensions emerged in the family.
The son and his wife, who had been living on their own since getting married, sold their home and moved in with the father, promising to take good care of him. However, the couple allegedly scorned and abused the elderly man.
According to the reporting partner, the son and his wife occupied the warm lower room and kitchen of the man’s house. They only cooked for themselves, telling the elderly man to cook for himself without giving him even a single side dish. The couple also made him stay in the cold upper room the entire winter, giving the man just a single wood stove for warmth.
The man receives monthly pension payments from the government, but he went hungry many days because it was not enough to live on. He begged his son and his wife for financial help repeatedly, but they refused to help him.
Believing he could no longer live with the son and the son’s wife, the man told them to leave if they could not support him, saying he would rent out the upper room and live on the money he would collect every month. Instead, the son and his wife rudely cursed the elderly man, telling him to “die quickly.”
Ultimately, the man went to the county police station and told them, “A son who abuses his father is not a son.” He then asked them to “please remove my son from my family registry so I can live alone.”
However, police officials told the man they could not remove the son from his family registry just because he did not like him. In despair at his inability to resolve the situation, the elderly man spent a week going to the police station, screaming at them to let him see the head of the resident registry department and head of the political department. That led police officials to throw him into jail.
“The old man screamed like a madman inside the police station, saying: ‘I can’t go to an old folk’s home because I have a son, and I can’t do as I like in my own home. I guess that means I’ll have to just die!’ The police proceeded to place him into a detention room as if he was a mental patient,” the reporting partner said.
“People who witnessed the spectacle lamented that in the old days, children who scorned their parents would be criticized such that they couldn’t even show their faces in public. Now, however, that’s no longer the case, and [the authorities] have simply jailed an innocent old man.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea and China. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
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