Two female workers on a “shock troop” construction crew were arrested by Pyongyang police after an informant said they had talked about a South Korean television show they had watched. The police held a closed-door ideological struggle meeting over the incident.
“The municipal police held an ideological struggle meeting on ‘an ideological problem arising in the Ryugyong Construction Management Bureau Regiment’ earlier this month,” a source in Pyongyang told Daily NK on Tuesday on condition of anonymity. “The main aim of the session was to expose [the crimes] of two members of the Ryugyong Construction Management Bureau Regiment shock troops and punish them.”
According to the source, the meeting began with a description of the non-socialist behavior of the two women construction workers. The two women were arrested after they were caught gossiping at the construction site about the South Korean show “Queen of Tears,” which they had both watched.
The two women, graduates of the same middle school, were inseparable while working on the construction team. They often whispered to each other on the job about South Korean dramas and movies they had watched together, until they were overheard by another worker who reported them to the regimental chapter of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League.
The youth league chapter took the allegation very seriously, and the two women were arrested by the municipal police in mid-June.
Incident used by authorities as a wake-up call to others
The municipal police interrogated the two women separately for about two weeks and used the interrogation records as the basis for the ideological struggle meeting held in early July, the source said.
“The two women accused of ideological deficiencies at the struggle session were immediately handcuffed and handed over to police investigators,” the source said.
“The city police are taking a hard line on ideological lapses among the youth, and they used this incident to send a wake-up call that such behavior won’t be tolerated any longer.”
The police also released a self-criticism statement written by the secretary of the regimental chapter of the youth league.
“The secretary of the youth league chapter also came under fire for aggravating the problem by openly mentioning the title of the show the women had watched in front of the construction team. This was a failure to understand the instructions from law enforcement,” the source said.
The city police took the chapter secretary to task for going into unnecessary details about the drama, including its title, instead of simply criticizing the women for watching illegal videos.
“The police called the chapter secretary a pathetic buffoon for naming the drama and detailing its contents to construction workers – which probably aroused their curiosity about the drama – while ostensibly criticizing the two women,” the source said.
Daily NK reported last month that provincial police bureaus and state security bureaus across the country had received orders to take a different approach to new forms of anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior by analyzing and ranking such behavior. A source explained that the orders reflected concern that going into detail about such crimes could actually undermine public loyalty to state ideology.
Daily NK works with a network of sources living in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous for security reasons.
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