Mick Hartley

Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times:

North Korea is cracking down on street traders and food sellers as “enemies” of the people, provoking physical brawls between officials and a population increasingly desperate amid growing food shortages.

Official documents set out the regime’s policies for tackling so-called “grasshopper merchants”, as street traders are called, with the coronavirus pandemic being cited as a pretext. However, the campaign is the latest manifestation of a long-term dilemma faced by the regime: whether to tolerate private enterprise as a means of feeding its hungry population or to quash it as unacceptable capitalism.

These “grasshopper merchants” may have proved their importance in feeding the hungry – which includes pretty much the whole North Korean population outside the regime elites – but they're dangerously independent-minded, as all traders are. That cannot be tolerated.

The new policies are contained in a document called “Let’s Completely Eliminate the Phenomenon of Commerce near Markets and in the Streets” obtained by Daily NK, a website run by defectors to South Korea which has sources in the North.

Here's that Daily NK article:

North Korean authorities recently designated streetside commerce as a “crime against the people” and have begun ideological education efforts to tamper down discontent surrounding government crackdowns on street merchants. 

Daily NK recently obtained “political activity materials” written by the Central Committee’s Propaganda and Agitation Department entitled “Let’s Completely Eliminate the Phenomenon of Commerce near Markets and in the Streets.” The materials were used during lectures at factories, enterprises and inminban (people’s units) throughout the country from early to mid-November.

The materials start by saying, “COVID-19 is causing great anxiety and concern in the international community as it spreads throughout the entire world, while the appearance of variants is causing a major global disaster.”

The materials then say that with the authorities declaring a national quarantine emergency and closing the border to stop infections, some “unawake” people were in a flap over “temporary difficulties” and obstructing quarantine efforts by carrying out “chaotic” commerce near markets and on the streets. Essentially, the authorities are stressing the justification for the controls on streetside commerce.

Daily NK previously reported that North Korean authorities — led by the Ministry of Social Security — have strengthened their controls on streetside commerce since March, forcefully confiscating the wares of so-called “grasshopper merchants,” as streetside merchants are called in North Korea. They have gradually strengthened their crackdown since then, dragging off people involved in the trade to forced labor camps….

The materials accused the merchants of placing “individual interests over those of society and the collective.”

In particular, the documents declared that conducting commerce near markets and in the streets – using those spaces to earn money during the emergency quarantine period – is a “conscious crime against the people” that sparks discontent and causes commotion. They called it an “enemy act” that threatens the North Korean system.

And here's another report from the Daily NK yesterday – from a different reporter:

North Korean authorities have launched a sweeping crackdown on streetside commerce in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, ahead of the 10th anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Il. 

A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Monday that Chongjin’s party committee issued an order calling on the Ministry of Social Security to conduct an aggressive crackdown on locals engaged in private commerce near markets or in alleyways from Dec. 1 to mark the 10th anniversary of Kim’s death. The authorities have responded with a sweeping clampdown on private commerce near markets and in alleyways throughout Chongjin.

Ahead of this, Chongjin’s party branch called on locals to mark the anniversary of Kim’s passing in a solemn, quiet atmosphere, reportedly informing inminban (people’s units), government bodies and organizations that they would strongly curb “capitalistic disorder.”

In response, the Ministry of Social Security and enforcement teams sent by the ministry descended on the neighborhoods surrounding Chongjin’s downtown markets, including the Sunam Market, Pohang Market, and Ranam Market. They overturned and confiscated items belonging to locals who were selling fruit, greenhouse vegetables, tofu, and other food. 

Locals caught in the sudden crackdown bewail how enforcers overturned and took their things and they themselves were dragged off to the Ministry of Social Security’s waiting rooms.

The source said streetside commerce is commonplace not only in alleyways near markets, but in all neighborhoods where people live. He said in the face of extremely difficult living conditions, people are doing business to survive, not make money. Despite this, the government order is preventing them from doing so, he claimed. 

Daily NK understands that the Ministry of Social Security is engaged in a merciless crackdown, calling violators “criminals” for failing to obey government policy telling merchants to restrict their activity to markets and accusing them of “anti-party, reactionary activity” for doing what the party forbids them to do….

In particular, squads are reportedly browbeating locals, telling them that people who think only of themselves during the month of Kim’s death “can go starve to death”; that it is ideologically problematic to express discontent with the crackdown on “grasshopper merchants,” who are a “product of capitalism”; and that ideologically seditious people have no right to live in North Korea, “even if their families starve to death.”

As ever, nothing comes before the ideology of Kim-worship: certainly not the lives of ordinary people.