Mick Hartley

Desperate times in North Korea:

A group of street sellers in Hyesan, a city in North Korea’s Yanggang Province, recently threw stones at a police officer on lock-down duty.

According to a Daily NK source in the province on Tuesday, the authorities in Hyesan banned locals from the streets last Friday and Saturday because of seasonal yellow dust.

The authorities claimed the measure was because the dust could carry the COVID-19 virus, although this claim has not been verified scientifically….

When the yellow dust lightened up on Saturday, streetside merchants gathered as if on cue in the alleyways of the city’s Hyesin-dong.

That is when a local beat cop appeared and a scuffle ensued.

At first, the police officer tried to handle the situation quietly. He told the merchants that the Workers’ Party had enacted the travel ban to protect the lives of the people, and that if they got infected with COVID-19, the virus would spread to the entire nation.

The locals were not so easily persuaded, however.

The street merchants, including a rice cake seller in her 30s identified by her family name of Chon, asked the officer to imagine himself a parent with children. They pleaded with the officer not to hinder their businesses, explaining that it was not yellow dust that was killing them, but hunger.

The police officer then switched to threats, warning the merchants to scatter before they all ended up in forced labor brigades.

According to the source, the merchants responded by grabbing the officer’s clothes and pelting him with stones that were lying nearby.

Neighbors who heard the noise gathered around, and the head of the local inminban (people’s unit) reported the matter to the city branch of the Ministry of Social Security. Six of the merchants scattered, recognizing the severity of the situation. The police dragged off the remaining five. 

The source said the merchants must have been so desperate due to economic difficulties to assault a police officer as a group. He said the streetside merchants who were busted got six months of forced labor, and the others were dragged off to labor brigades as well.

Someday, perhaps, such small insurrections might even start spreading…