FILE PHOTO: Slogans on display at the Wonsan-Kalma Shore Tourist Zone construction site in Gangwon Province. (Daily NK)

A staffer at a Workers’ Party school in Gangwon Province was recently arrested for allegedly engaging in “anti-socialist and non-socialist activity,” including hoarding food and watching South Korean films.

According to a Daily NK source in Gangwon Province on Monday, “a woman who worked as the financial director of a Workers’ Party school in Gangwon Province was arrested by the anti-socialist and non-socialist task force [Unified Command 82] for engaging in several kinds of non-socialist behavior. The arrest came after adamant complaints from school staff members.”

According to the source, the person in question had spent the seven years since being named to her post pilfering some of the food supplied to the school every quarter for her own use. This caused anger among the school staff, some of whom informed the provincial party committee.

Students at the Gangwon Province party school, a feeder school for provincial party officials, live in dormitories during the weekdays, so the provincial party committee ensures there are rations for the school’s staff and students, no matter how difficult things are in the province.

After receiving the complaint from school staff, provincial prosecutors searched the woman’s house. They found not only a house overflowing with food, but also 10 mobile storage devices with South Korean movies and music, a South Korean electric rice cooker and a stack of US dollars.

In particular, the rice cooker’s voice navigation featured a female voice speaking in a South Korean tone, saying, “I will now start cooking delicious rice.”

Prosecutors were reportedly flabbergasted when they heard it, wondering how in the world an employee of a party school could shamelessly use such a device.

In fact, prosecutors are taking even bigger issue with how — even in her daily life — the woman allegedly imitated the speaking style of South Korean women, reenacting lines in South Korean films in view of her neighbors.

The source said the authorities are taking an even dimmer view of the incident than usual because the crime emerged as the authorities strengthen discipline at party schools and review the activities and lives of staff members after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “historic” commemorative lecture earlier this year at the Central Cadres Training School. 

The woman was reportedly taken to the provincial branch of the Ministry of State Security, where she is undergoing a preliminary examination. Preliminary examinations refer to the entire interrogation process prior to suspects being indicted.

The Ministry of State Security’s investigation is currently focused on how she imported the South Korean films, rather than on the illicitly amassed rice and money. Investigators are questioning her about where she got the “impure” recordings and from whom, how much she watched them, how much she distributed them, and to whom.

“The woman committed a lot of crimes, so nobody knows when the preliminary examination will end,” said the source. “Among the investigators, the feeling is that she’s unlikely to come out of this alive due to the political nature of her crimes.” 

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