The local government of North Hamgyong Province is surveying people living near the China-North Korea border to identify “lonely people with no one to rely on,” or muui mutakja.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a source in the province told Daily NK on Wednesday that the province ordered the provincial people’s committee on Jan. 11 to “cooperate with the provincial branch of the Ministry of Social Security to complete a survey of muui mutakja households in the border areas of Onsong, Saebyol, and Kyongwon counties by Jan. 20.” The Ministry of Social Security is the national police agency of North Korea.
Muui mutakja generally refers to elderly, unmarried, and divorced people living alone, and provincial authorities are surveying single-person households in counties along the China-North Korea border to increase surveillance of them. The authorities seem to believe that such people are most likely to slip quietly across the border, the source explained.
“In the past, muui mutakja often crossed the border at will because they had no family ties, and they were often the focus of notable incidents because they easily go bad [ideologically],” the source said. “The province also believes that it can’t ignore them due to the danger of defector, particularly given that the lives of people living along the border have been gradually deteriorating lately.”
Accordingly, the provincial people’s committee and the provincial branch of the Ministry of Social Security have been monitoring muui mutakja through officials at local neighborhood offices and neighborhood watch units. At the same time, they have set up a surveillance system using “responsible and trustworthy” people in the orbit of identified muui mutakja to receive secret reports on their movements.
The provincial branch of the Ministry of Social Security is also pushing an internal plan to issue two warnings to muui mutakja who show signs that they might defect. If these people still appear likely to defect, they would be exiled elsewhere or placed on a list of “volunteers” for lifetime service in coal mines, mineral, or agricultural villages.
“The latest survey of muui mutakja focuses on young women who live alone,” the source said. In other words, since the authorities believe that young women are more likely to defect, they are keeping an even closer eye on them.
However, the source said that single women living alone who know what the authorities are doing are horrified. The women wonder why they have to put up with surveillance just because they live alone. After all, some argue, they live alone because “it is better than marrying a useless man.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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January 19, 2024 at 06:51AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)