Socialist Patriotic Youth League (SPYL)’s Hyesan branch demands young people engaged in aekbeori work report to assigned workplaces, threatening collective work brigade assignments, but faces fierce resistance from market-dependent generation.
A source in Hyesan, Ryanggang province, told Daily NK recently that the SPYL “has made boosting youth workplace attendance a key year-end activity” and that the league’s Hyesan branch is “putting intense pressure on its branches at local factories, telling them to make all young people who have paid their workplaces to skip work to report to their work sites.”
According to the source, the Hyesan branch of the SPYL issued an order early this month to its branches at local factories demanding that young people engaged in aekbeori work “show up at their workplaces without question,” telling subordinate organizations to submit lists of young people pursuing side hustles rather than their assigned work.
Aekbeori is similar to so-called 8.3 work — people pay a fixed amount of money to their official workplaces so that they can engage in private economic activity, attending their official workplaces only on paper. Many people engage in this sort of work in North Korea, where official workplaces often fail to pay salaries or provide rations.
Responding to the city branch’s order, the SPYL branch of Hyesan Textile Factory has been busy making young people report to work again. In the factory’s case, workplace absenteeism was so high that, in some work teams, one-third of the assigned workforce never showed up. With young people accounting for some of the absentee workers, the factory league branch was under considerable pressure.
Young people say assigned workplaces “a reality only on paper”
However, young people engaged in aekbeori work are fiercely resisting the order. They are quite hostile toward the blanket order to show up to work, the source said. “They don’t pay us our wages, so showing up for work will make no difference,” they say. “We have to carry goods for our own businesses to make money.”
“Many of the young people engaged in aekbeori work make their living by hauling goods between regions or using motorcycles to run errands for rich people,” the source said. “Young people have become more dependent on the market as the practice of making money on your own has taken root, while assigned workplaces are a reality only on paper.”
Young women even say that “it would be better simply to get married and do business because the SPYL has become too restrictive nowadays.” They see this as a better option because if they quit their assigned workplaces after marriage, they can officially do business in the market without pressure to attend work.
Aware of this atmosphere, the city branch of the SPYL is strongly warning young people that they will be collectively sent to work brigades if they disobey the order to report to their assigned workplaces.
“The city branch of the SPYL is strongly pushing this matter because they sense a crisis as their manpower weakens, and because their superiors will evaluate them at the end of the year,” the source said.
“Even after the order, some workplaces are making it appear as if people are showing up on paper,” he continued. “Things won’t change overnight just because the SPYL is tightening control.”
December 12, 2025 at 08:07PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)