Tightened border controls introduced to curb the coronavirus outbreak continue to disrupt North Korea's economic activity and informal trade, more than 18 months after leader Kim Jong Un declared victory over the pandemic. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was strangling the network.
North Korea was one of the first countries to respond to reports of the coronavirus spreading in early 2020, cutting itself off from the outside world and China's economic lifeline.
As North Korea suspends cargo shipments from China for two years, authorities have also strengthened the border wall to prevent movement between the two countries and even ordered people and animals to be shot to death to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. I put it out.
HRW said in a report released Thursday that satellite images from six locations on the China-North Korea border show the fence has expanded from 230 kilometers before the pandemic to 321 kilometers in 2023. Ta.
Existing fencing has also been updated, adding more guard towers, guard posts and secondary and tertiary fencing layers, the rights group said.
Since then, tightened border security has made it nearly impossible for North Koreans to leave the country, and the number of defectors has plummeted from 1,047 in 2019 to a low of 63 in 2021, and further to 196 last year. decreased, the report said.
“Governments’ relentless efforts at population control, the wide-ranging and long-term response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the expansion of their nuclear weapons capabilities, combined with intensifying external pressure in the form of UN Security Council sanctions, have already effectively rendered the country a nation-state. “We are trying to change North Korea, which is affecting us as a whole. The prisons have become even more oppressive and isolated,” the report said.
As authorities ramp up border security during the pandemic, authorities have begun restricting government daily life to the extent that North Koreans have enjoyed some degree of freedom of movement and been able to buy goods in formal and informal markets since the late 1990s. We also cracked down on bribery, which has made it possible for people to get away with it. , according to HRW.
The report said that since the pandemic began, cross-border movement of people and formal and informal commercial trade has stopped “nearly all”, with family members, informal brokers and smugglers still unable to enter the country. He cited interviews with 16 North Korean defectors staying in the country.
“Informal traders can only obtain small packages that can be easily carried in their hands or concealed on their bodies,” said Unification, a Seoul-based NGO that broadcasts news to North Korea. Lee Kwang-baek, director of the media group, said in the report. .
A former North Korean trader quoted in the report said new security measures have made civilians afraid to even approach border areas for fear of being shot.
“my [relative] He said he couldn't find the words to explain how difficult his life was.There was no [informal] We trade with China not just to get bags of rice or wheat.if [authorities] Once you hear that a soldier has authorized it, that person just disappears,” industry officials said in the report. “The soldiers are very scared… of my [relative] the people inside said [her area] He said there aren't even ants that cross the border. ”
According to the report, North Korean authorities also used janmadang, which had been tolerated to meet the people's daily needs in the wake of the devastating famine of the 1990s, the collapse of the government's rationing system, and continuing international sanctions. The government has reportedly started cracking down on the informal market.
According to HRW, authorities imposed harsher penalties, ranging from forced labor to the death penalty, for “distributing imported products without official trade documents or carrying out economic activities on streets or places without permission.” That's what it means.
The human rights watchdog said it had received reports that authorities were cracking down on “imitation of foreign culture, Korean slang, hairstyles and clothing.”
According to North Korean defectors cited in the report, young people found to have watched or streamed the Netflix series “Squid Game” or Korean movies have been sentenced to hard labor or even executed.
Before the pandemic, an investigation by the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) identified 436 official sites spread across rural and urban North Korea that provided access to food, medicine, and contraband movies and music. A licensed market was recorded.
The market, often run by married women looking to supplement low wages earned by other family members, earned the government an estimated $56.8 million a year in taxes and fees, according to CSIS estimates.
Peter Ward, a researcher at the South Korean-based Sejong Research Institute, who was not involved in the report, said North Korea has not yet recovered from the coronavirus like other countries.
“When we talk about post-COVID-19 in the West, South Korea, and Japan, we are talking about 2022, when things will start to normalize. Normalization in North Korea has been significantly delayed, and North Korea is probably We haven’t really finished normalizing yet,” Ward told Al Jazeera.
“The black market…is partially fed by transnational smugglers and smuggling networks, which have been significantly harmed by coronavirus-era lockdowns and border security,” Ward said. added.