Shenyang, China — A group of vicious robbers on the loose around South Pyongan Province since 2009 has finally been caught, according to a source from the city. The members of the group were allegedly all students in their teens.
Speaking with The Daily NK yesterday, the source explained, “On around April 10th, 15 upper middle school grade 5 and 6 students who had been robbing people for three years, killing seven, were caught. They used to target people on bicycles riding in secluded areas.”
The gang apparently contained both male and female members. First, a female member lured someone riding alone in a quiet area into giving them a ride, and then male members attacked the rider from behind and stole the bicycle. In this way, the group was able to steal more than 40 bicycles.
Although there were dozens of people hurt in the attacks, by attacking people in various rural areas the group was apparently able to evade capture.
However, they were finally apprehended thanks to a lengthy People’s Safety Ministry operation, the source explained, saying, “People’s Safety agents, who had not been able to catch them even though the same thing kept happening here and there for three years, eventually caught them after staking out the area for 40 days. Both the agents and other people got a big shock when they realized that the people guilty of killing others were students; they couldn’t even imagine that.”
When asked about the reason behind the crime spree, the source suggested, “They have to spend money for school and don’t get any from home, so committing crimes is inevitable,” but added, “They may also have done it for fun.”
“In the past few years there has been a dramatic expansion in the number of robberies, and moreover society is pretty chaotic,” another source from South Pyongan Province said, but agreed, “Everyone is shocked when I tell them about this.”
“It wasn’t even homeless kids; it is extraordinary to find that even kids who were attending school would go around robbing people,” the source added.
“It apparently started with simple robbery, but people ended up dying because they were hit with blunt objects after resisting the attack,” the same source went on. “The investigating agents were stunned because the kids didn’t seem to have any particular guilty conscience.”
Now, however, the entire group has apparently been jailed irrespective of age. The source explained, “Those kids caught after leaving school and joining the army or entering society were sent to jail, while those not yet old enough to have received their official I.D. were given one anyway, and then sent to jail.”
By doing so, the authorities were able to punish the younger gang members as adults. Had they been punished as children, i.e. before receiving their I.D. at the age of 16, their punishment would have been comparatively light.
“People hear about the events, and then every one of them is lost in shock,” the Nampo source reiterated. “It is obvious that if they are released they will do it again. There are loud calls for them never to be released.”
However, the source also expressed sadness at the situation, saying, “Kids don’t get free school uniforms and other things which they used to get; they don’t have any will to go to school,” and adding that people believe ‘it is the world that is making criminals of children’.
