{"id":54339,"date":"2023-03-17T10:40:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T01:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=54339"},"modified":"2026-04-06T13:56:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T04:56:02","slug":"north-korean-state-security-officers-use-remittance-brokers-take-money-defector-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/north-korean-state-security-officers-use-remittance-brokers-take-money-defector-families\/","title":{"rendered":"N. Korean state security officers use remittance brokers to take money from defector families"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">North Korean state security officers have recently been using remittance brokers to squeeze money out of the families of defectors, a reporting partner in South Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Security agents in the province\u2019s cities and counties \u201cfrequently use remittance brokers to extort money from the families of defectors,\u201d the reporting partner said, adding that the families \u201ccan\u2019t use one cent of the money they receive and even suffer legal punishments.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to the reporting partner, North Korea has restricted interprovincial travel since the COVID-19 pandemic began, severely restricting travel to border regions in particular. This has made travel from interior parts of the country to the border more difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Given these circumstances, it is complicated to transfer remittances to the families of defectors who live in interior parts of North Korea.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If people have phone numbers, remittance brokers in the border region can call and tell them the address of a broker in the interior region where they can pick up the money. However, if they do not have phone numbers, remittance brokers in the border region tell relatives or acquaintances who live in the interior to bring the families their money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amid these transactions, some remittance brokers in the interior are colluding with local state security agents to extort money from the families of defectors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reporting partner said state security officers in the interior were worse off than their counterparts in border regions to begin with, and with their situation worsening following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been busy finding prey. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Their first targets are the families of defectors,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>In January, <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the state security department in one county in South Hamgyong Province took all the money sent to the family of a defector, the reporting partner said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reporting partner told Daily NK that the remittance broker visited the home of the family and handed over the remitted money, saying it had been sent by family members living in South Korea. The broker received confirmation of the transfer and left, but security agents barged into the family&#8217;s house immediately after.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The security agents seized all the money the family had received, and one member of the family was given six months of forced labor. The reporting partner told Daily NK that the family member is still at the labor camp.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What&#8217;s more, the remittance broker who transferred the money visited the family again and said he could get their kin out of the forced labor camp for RMB 10,000 (around USD 1,450).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWith times growing tougher, people are turning into heinous wolves wearing human skins,&#8221; the reporting partner claimed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That being said, while some brokers harm the families of defectors with bad intent, others cooperate with state security agents under duress, he pointed out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf remittance brokers don\u2019t do what the state security agents ask, they themselves become prey, so they have no choice but to do what they demand.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em>Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/faq\/\">here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><i>Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/20230315-1\/\"><i>Read in Korean<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>North Korean state security officers have recently been using remittance brokers to squeeze money out of the families of defectors, a reporting partner in South Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.\u00a0 Security agents in the province\u2019s cities and counties \u201cfrequently use remittance brokers to extort money from the families [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":43024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[753,844,972,1656,3243],"class_list":["post-54339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-remittances","tag-defections","tag-finance","tag-dprk","tag-crime-corruption"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>N. Korean state security officers use remittance brokers to take money from defector families - 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-korean-state-security-officers-use-remittance-brokers-take-money-defector-families\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"N. 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