Mick Hartley

Keeping an eye on returnees who've tasted life outside North Korea:

The Ministry of Social Security recently issued an order to strengthen surveillance and control over people who have returned from long stints abroad, Daily NK has learned.

“The agency said that North Koreans returning from abroad may exhibit anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior that might affect the ideological sentiment and lifestyle of local residents, and ordered each province’s security bureau to strengthen surveillance and control over returnees to restrain such behavior in a timely manner,” a source in North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Sept. 20, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

The ministry issued the instructions in early September, followed by further instructions to monitor and promptly report on the activities of the returnees.

In its orders, the ministry emphasized strict monitoring and control of the speech and behavior of returnees, which may attract the attention of people who have significant interest in international news or who have become economically impoverished and “mentally idle.” 

“The ministry urged the security bureaus of each province to never neglect the work of reporting the returnees’ every move to their higher-ups. The bureaus were also ordered to find out everything returnees may have said to their families and acquaintances about various things that happened while they were staying abroad and promptly send the materials to their superiors.” …

“The orders state that if returnees are reported by other people to be harming healthy socialist lifestyles and manners by aggravating the non-socialist phenomenon or imprudently using foreign currency, these cases are to be thoroughly investigated. If returnees are revealed to be engaging in hostile behavior, they are to be subject to harsh punishment, and the organizations they are affiliated with will be notified with a view to have them undergo ideological indoctrination.”

The ministry also instructed provincial security bureaus to work with inminban (neighborhood watch units) and organizations to strictly monitor the distribution of impure video and audio content and the indiscriminate circulation of foreign currency among returnees.

The purity of North Korea, ideologically and genetically, must be preserved at all costs.

Of course most of these returnees will have led miserable lives working under slave-labour conditions in China or Russia – but you can never be too sure.