{"id":323699,"date":"2026-04-02T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T01:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=323699"},"modified":"2026-04-07T13:37:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T04:37:04","slug":"north-koreans-fear-tighter-crackdowns-as-kim-announces-police-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/north-koreans-fear-tighter-crackdowns-as-kim-announces-police-system\/","title":{"rendered":"North Koreans fear tighter crackdowns as Kim announces police system"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">North Korean people expressed confusion and alarm this week following Kim Jong Un&#8217;s announcement of plans to establish a police system, with many questioning how such a move squares with decades of state education portraying police as class enemies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">A Daily NK source in North Hamgyong province reported Wednesday that the announcement has sparked quiet but widespread bewilderment. &#8220;People were taught in revolutionary history education that police are class enemies,&#8221; the source said. &#8220;Now they&#8217;re being told that &#8216;police&#8217; isn&#8217;t a bad word, and people are whispering: who exactly were the class enemies we&#8217;ve been learning about all this time?&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">North Korea&#8217;s revolutionary history curriculum, a mandatory component of the country&#8217;s 12-year compulsory education system, has long depicted police as instruments of oppression and legitimate targets of struggle. The curriculum&#8217;s framing reflects the founding mythology of the Kim dynasty, in which Kim Il Sung and his anti-Japanese guerrilla forces are cast as liberators who fought against colonial-era police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The Battle of Pochonbo, one of the most celebrated events in North Korean state history, is taught as a story of Kim Il Sung&#8217;s guerrilla forces storming a Japanese police substation in what is now Ryanggang province, routing the officers stationed there and rescuing the local population. Similarly, the revolutionary biography of Kim Jong Suk, Kim Il Sung&#8217;s wife and Kim Jong Un&#8217;s paternal grandmother, centers on a well-known episode in Pochon-ri in which she is said to have outwitted Japanese police. That episode appears on virtually every revolutionary history exam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">&#8220;These are core events that come up repeatedly throughout the 12-year curriculum,&#8221; the source said. &#8220;The Pochon-ri civilian certification incident comes up on every revolutionary history exam without fail. And now they&#8217;re saying police isn&#8217;t a bad word. People are saying they can&#8217;t tell whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun around the earth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<h2 class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"><strong>&#8216;Obbasi&#8217; and fear of tighter control<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">Beyond the ideological contradiction, North Korean people expressed concern that the institutional change could mean tightened control in daily life. The source said many people already harbor deep resentment toward <em>anjeonwon<\/em>, the security officers who currently carry out public order enforcement, referring to them dismissively with the Japanese-derived slang term <em>obbasi.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">&#8220;People already dislike the <i>anjeonwon <\/i>and call them &#8216;<em>obbasi<\/em>,'&#8221; the source said. &#8220;They&#8217;re saying: if they get renamed police, won&#8217;t they just become even more vicious?&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The source added that many North Korean people fear a police-branded enforcement apparatus would bring more systematic and aggressive crackdowns on everyday activity, making life more difficult. &#8220;Because of the negative image of police drilled in through revolutionary history education, people are worried that routine enforcement will intensify and life will get even harder.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">Kim announced plans to introduce a police system during his policy address to the first session of the 15th Supreme People&#8217;s Assembly, the country&#8217;s nominal legislature, on March 23. In his remarks, Kim argued that establishing a police system is &#8220;an essential requirement of state management&#8221; and insisted that &#8220;the word &#8216;police&#8217; itself is not a bad thing.&#8221; He called for specialized, professionalized public order work, saying police structures should be subdivided and made more expert. He also instructed officials to conduct public outreach to ensure &#8220;all people have a correct understanding&#8221; of the new system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The Supreme People&#8217;s Assembly session came weeks after the Ninth Workers&#8217; Party of Korea (WPK) Congress in February 2026, which introduced sweeping institutional changes including the renaming of the Ministry of State Security to the State Information Bureau. Kim&#8217;s police announcement appears to extend that institutional reorganization into the sphere of public order enforcement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [&amp;_&gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\">\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">North Korean people, however, appear to be reading the changes through a lens of lived experience rather than official framing. For many, the introduction of a police system signals not modernization but the formalization of mechanisms already used to surveil and control daily life.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/20260401-5\/\">Read in Korean<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<!-- Daily NK \u2014 A Note to Readers \u2014 End of Article Pattern -->\n<div style=\"background:#1a1a1a;border-top:3px solid #cc0000;padding:0;margin-top:32px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;\">\n  <div style=\"padding:20px 24px 24px;\">\n\n    <!-- Header row -->\n    <div style=\"display:flex;align-items:center;gap:12px;margin-bottom:14px;\">\n      <span style=\"background:#cc0000;color:#fff;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:9px;font-weight:700;letter-spacing:.15em;text-transform:uppercase;padding:3px 8px;flex-shrink:0;\">A Note to Readers<\/span>\n      <div style=\"flex:1;height:1px;background:#333;\"><\/div>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <!-- Intro line -->\n    <p style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:15px;color:#fff;font-weight:normal;line-height:1.4;margin:0 0 12px;\">Reporting from inside North Korea<\/p>\n\n    <!-- Body -->\n    <p style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:13px;color:#bbb;line-height:1.75;margin:0 0 16px;\">\n      Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. 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A Daily NK source in North Hamgyong province reported Wednesday that the announcement has sparked quiet [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":323700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,1360],"tags":[2517,673,724,750,773],"class_list":["post-323699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-society","tag-supreme-peoples-assembly","tag-workers-party-of-korea","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-kim-il-sung","tag-north-hamgyong-province"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v28.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>North Koreans fear tighter crackdowns as Kim announces police system - North Korea News \u2014 Daily NK | Latest DPRK Updates 2026<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/north-koreans-fear-tighter-crackdowns-as-kim-announces-police-system\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"North Koreans fear tighter crackdowns as Kim announces police system\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"North Korean people expressed confusion and alarm this week following Kim Jong Un&#8217;s announcement of plans to establish a police system, with many questioning how such a move squares with decades of state education portraying police as class enemies. 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