Yanggang Province’s party committee recently ordered local security and police agencies to help resolve food shortages in the province.
A source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Friday that at an emergency meeting held late last month, the provincial party committee discussed entrusting the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security with helping households suffering from food shortages.
“City and country branches of the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security in the province have ordered their district-level security and police officers to report by mid-June how they have helped resolve the food problems of at least five households,” he said.
People in the province are suffering from the worst food shortages ever, the source reported.
According to him, a growing number of people in Samsu County and Kapsan County are so weak from the lack of food that they just lie at home, suggesting that an increasing number of people cannot go to work because they have no food to eat. In fact, a total of 30% of people living in the Sampo and Yonhung villages in Kapsan County are unable to get up and leave their homes, he added.
The provincial party committee held the emergency meeting to discuss ways to resolve this situation. The Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security are considered more powerful than other government agencies and have the economic power to make a difference, which explains why the provincial government tasked them with helping to resolve the food shortages.
Security and police officials in North Korea are tasked with monitoring their assigned districts for “ideological deviants.” The provincial party committee appears to have ordered them to help because they are in the best position to know which families are suffering from the lack of food.
However, North Korean authorities have also cut rations for the families of security and police officials due to economic troubles caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, the order amounts to telling them to “empty their own pockets to resolve the problems of food-short families,” the source said.
“The party committee is essentially passing responsibility for resolving food shortages onto security and police officials,” he added.
Unsurprisingly, the province’s security and police officials are complaining about the order. They think it is absurd that they are being told to resolve the food problems of families short of food when things are economically tough enough due to COVID-19, the source said.
For example, a security officer in Hyesan complained that many households have run out of rice with the city’s lockdown lasting nearly a month, and that “food doesn’t fall from the sky for free.”
The families of security and police officials also find the order bewildering as they, too, are suffering food shortages.
“Some people even ask why the local lockdowns continue when the propaganda says the number of fever cases is declining,” the source added.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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