Mick Hartley

From the Daily NK:

Three students at Pyongsong’s University of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry who were accused of selling drugs were recently subjected to a public struggle session, Daily NK has learned.

Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a source in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Friday that “two male students and one female student at the school were arrested for selling drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and were strongly condemned during a public struggle session held last month.”

According to the source, the trio of third-year students — close friends from their freshmen year — began selling drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic when they heard dealing methamphetamine could make them rich quickly.

The two male students transported the drugs, while the female student packaged them into specific amounts and sold them. Their activities went undetected for close to two years until mid-June of this year, when an inspection for “anti-socialist and non-socialist” items at a “No. 10 checkpoint” found a kilo of drugs being moved from Hamhung to Pyongsong hidden in dried fish….

Thanks to the pair’s confessions, the authorities made busts of dealers in Hamhung and their associates, along with many buyers. 

Confusing terminology there: for a moment I pictured sculpted heads being crafted as the dealers posed…

“The faces and bodies of the students who stood before the struggle session were beyond description. They must have been beaten a lot in detention,” the source said. “Officials at the struggle session declared that they would be expelled from school and undergo a preliminary examination. 

Preliminary examinations include the entire interrogation process prior to suspects being indicted.

Officials at the struggle sessions also pressured all students with experience in dealing or using drugs to themselves in, declaring that “promoting meth as if it were a wonder drug and spreading rumors to that effect is an enemy scheme to weaken us from within and an act by enemy forces to undermine the revolutionary consciousness of our young people,” the source said.

“The students caught in this incident will likely receive life sentences,” he added. 

Reports of widespread crystal meth use in North Korea are nothing new - here, here, and here, for instance – as well as its manufacture and trafficking abroad to earn currency for the regime.