Mick Hartley

Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times:

The North Korean regime is mobilising secret squads of enforcers to stamp out foreign influence, including film and TV, haircuts and even birthday parties.

Those found guilty of the most serious crimes, such as watching pornography, face public execution, according to a report based on defectors’ testimony. The units, known as “gruppa” or “non-socialist groups”, pursue violations of Pyongyang’s official ideology.

“The groups operate as a hidden tool, which is used by the government to achieve their ultimate objectives of ubiquitous surveillance and the ability to thoroughly oversee each and every resident,” said the report by the Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) in Seoul.

Crimes prosecuted range from defection, smuggling, drug dealing and vagrancy to absence from work, religious observance, traffic offences, adultery, hair dyeing and “decadent culture” — which can include drinking parties.

Increasingly, the foreign influence police are preoccupied with the influx of South Korean music, television and film, on discs and memory sticks.

“First they check how you dress,” one defector told the NKDB. “Then what type of music you listen to. You cannot have a birthday party as a group. They keep saying not to have gatherings and drink alcohol because when people are drunk, they will end up singing one or two South Korean songs for sure.”

Despite the censorship that dominates life in North Korea, its people have been increasingly exposed to South Korean culture in the past 15 years. The popularity of South Korean drama has created a vogue for new forms of speech. In the three quarters of a century since national division, the Korean spoken in the North has diverged from South Korean, which is littered with anglicisms. Last week, the North’s tame parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, passed a law “protecting the cultured Pyongyang dialect” — the regime’s latest effort to suppress southern influence.

One of the techniques used by the gruppa is to cut off electricity in houses where people are suspected of watching a banned DVD or videotape, thus preventing them from removing it from the player and concealing it.

Those guilty of crimes against socialism face punishments including demotion or dismissal at work and being sent to a re-education or labour camp. In extreme cases, such as possession of pornography, the firing squad awaits.