Police in Hyesan recently raided a foreign exchange shop rumored to be selling South Korean clothing, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking anonymously, a Daily NK source in Ryanggang Province said police officers in Hyesan “raided the city’s foreign exchange shop on Aug. 16, locking its doors and inspecting items in the shop for several hours.” He said the inspection occurred after somebody told the police that the shop “was rumored to sell clothing from puppet South Korea.”
The main customers of Hyesan’s foreign exchange shop — which sells higher-quality items than markets at higher prices — are donju, or the country’s wealthy entrepreneurial class.. They place orders at the shop for clothing in their preferred styles, which they buy and wear when they come in.
They usually order South Korean clothing, which used to be smuggled through the border into North Korea and sold on the sly before the pandemic. However, with smuggling coming to a halt and South Korean goods growing harder to buy, donju began placing orders for South Korean goods with the foreign currency shop’s staff.
Demand for S. Korean goods remains high
While crackdowns on South Korean goods in North Korea are nothing new, they have intensified to unprecedented levels. Nevertheless, with demand for South Korean products remaining high, the foreign exchange shop’s staff import and sell such items using ways to avoid crackdowns.
“The foreign exchange shop’s staff, who bring items through customs themselves to sell them, received many orders for South Korean clothes from donju this year,” the source said. “Not only are there so many orders, but South Korean clothing is more profitable than other clothing, so the staff secretly sell it after finding ways to get it through customs.”
The foreign exchange shop’s staff buy all sorts of South Korean clothes, from bras and other innerwear to outerwear, from Chinese traders. After changing the brands and tags to Chinese ones, to make them look Chinese-made, they import them through customs.
“At first, they tried once or twice to get stuff through customs as an experiment,” the source said. “When it passed through safely, they increased the kinds and amounts of clothing and now import it alongside Chinese-made clothing. However, when rumors that the shop was importing South Korean clothing spread among the public, the police heard them, too, which led to the inspection.”