A man who ran a scam targeting wealthy and well-connected Sariwon residents in North Hwanghae province, promising to secure state jobs for their children, has been arrested.
A source in North Hwanghae province told Daily NK on Friday that the man, who took large sums of foreign currency from parents around Sariwon last March by promising to place their children, recent graduates of institutions of higher education, in powerful state agencies, was arrested in mid-August.
The man was reportedly a former official in the personnel department of the North Hwanghae Provincial Party Committee, giving him detailed knowledge of the system’s weak points. He used that knowledge to dangle some of the most coveted postings among young people, including jobs with the Workers’ Party of Korea, the state security department (now called the intelligence bureau) and the public security department, as well as trading companies affiliated with those agencies and the elite Guard Post No. 10, extracting money from wealthy parents in the process.
Around graduation season, he approached wealthy parents in the provinces, telling them, “Through my cousin, who holds a key position in the party Central Committee’s cadre affairs department, I can get even a graduate of a provincial university placed straight into a privileged institution in Pyongyang.”
To fully convince suspicious parents, he reportedly went to great lengths, drawing on old connections to produce forged official documents from Workers’ Party Central Committee headquarters in Pyongyang. He also summoned parents and their children to a safe house, where an accomplice posed as a party official and conducted mock interviews.
Parents desperate to keep their children from being sent to hardship postings fell for the elaborate scheme, handing over anywhere from $5,000 to more than $10,000 per child.
But when the man was arrested in mid-August, it emerged that the assignment papers he had handed out were nothing more than worthless scraps of paper.
After learning that some victims had actually shown up at government agencies with the forged assignment papers, the Workers’ Party Central Committee’s Organization and Guidance Department immediately dispatched an inspection team. The team raided the North Hwanghae Provincial Party Committee and the Sariwon public security department, among other offices, and confiscated all related documents.
Victims now fear punishment, not just their losses
Parents who fell for the scam have realized they were deceived, but are too afraid of punishment to report it, and are instead nursing their losses in silence, the source said.
Even though they are the victims, they now face the risk of being taken into custody on bribery charges for allegedly trying to buy their children’s way into powerful state agencies.
The source said, “The victims’ families are terrified that the very act of trying to buy positions with bribes will be treated as a serious crime that mocks and disrupts the party’s cadre system, one that could bring ruin on their entire family.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime. We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication.
Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea — discovery means imprisonment or execution. This network-based approach allows Daily NK to report on developments other outlets cannot access: market trends, policy implementation, public sentiment, and daily realities that never appear in official narratives.
Maintaining these secure communication channels and protecting source identities requires specialized protocols and constant vigilance. Daily NK serves as a bridge between North Koreans and the outside world, documenting what’s happening inside one of the world’s most closed societies.
August 31, 2026 at 07:53PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)