With North Korea once again “recommending” people wear masks, some North Koreans are expressing concern that the move is just the start of state efforts to once again intensify control over the public.
According to a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province on Oct. 5, police and enforcement teams in the border city of Hoeryong have been enforcing mask wearing since Sept. 26.
The authorities are reportedly tightening quarantine efforts in response to an order from the State Emergency Anti-epidemic Command. The order called on police, security and prosecutorial agencies nationwide to continue intensive efforts to combat COVID-19 “until the end of the global public healthcare crisis” via measures to strengthen law enforcement efforts in line with the government’s autumn disease control efforts.
However, police and enforcement officials are reportedly going light on people caught up in the crackdown, neither fining them nor bringing them down to the station as they did in the past.
Instead, they give offenders mere “guidance,” telling them to “wear your mask from next time because you could catch the autumn flu,” perhaps taking into consideration that some locals may have simply forgotten their masks when they left home.
Some people are responding positively, but others look on with concern.
“Isn’t enforcing masks a signal that the authorities will again intensify restrictions on the public?” they ask, adding, “It seems they are enforcing masks again in the name of emergency quarantine efforts to justify restrictions on the public.”
In fact, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea has used emergency quarantine efforts to thoroughly shut down smuggling, defections and other behavior counter to the regime, completely closing the border and even deploying the 11th Corps — the so-called “Storm Corps” special forces unit — to the border region.
Many residents of border regions like Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province and Hyesan, Yanggang Province have received criminal punishments as the state mobilized the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security to weed out “impure elements.”
Because of this, people in border regions have reportedly long lived in fear of crackdowns, so much so that when they wake up every morning, they hear of neighbors being arrested or exiled by the Ministry of State Security or Ministry of Social Security on charges of espionage.
“People had to suffer a lot from crackdowns and restrictions launched in the name of stopping the infectious disease [COVID-19], and many people think this is abnormal,” said the source.
“Butit seems the authorities are continuing intensive restrictions because the only way they can suppress public discontent in difficult economic times such as these is restrictions under the guise of emergency quarantine efforts,” he added.
The source said given how public unrest and discontent with the regime could arise as crackdowns grow in intensity, North Korea would likely intensify restrictions on residents of the border region little by little.
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