Around 30 North Koreans in Jagang province received harsh sentences for smuggling and using Chinese phones to contact the outside world, reflecting the regime’s crackdown on illegal border activities.
“Over 30 users of Chinese mobile phones apprehended by Jagang province’s state security bureau in April and May were all given severe sentences in two hearings this month,” a source in the country recently informed The Daily NK. “The Ministry of State Security’s opinion that these individuals were not merely criminals but also internal agitators with the potential to oppose the party and the state had a big impact on their sentences.”
After North Korea’s Ministry of State Security declared April to be “the month of eradicating illegal behavior,” Jagang province’s state security bureau stepped up policing of Chinese mobile phone usage in the border area. That led to a large number of people being arrested and interrogated, and their sentences were announced in two hearings on Aug. 16 and 21.
Jagang province’s state security bureau accused one of the arrested individuals — a repeat offender who had six Chinese phones and a sack full of Chinese currency at his house — of being a spy. That individual and three other repeat offenders were transferred to a political prison camp along with their family members on Aug. 16.
The other arrested individuals were handed over to the provincial police. One person, a first-time offender, was given a one-year corrective labor sentence, while the others were sentenced to hard labor in prison for ten years to life. In addition, the family members of those given prison sentences were banished to rural counties in Jagang province, including Chosan, Tongsin and Usi.
“An open-air public trial was held in the Toksan neighborhood of Kanggye. At the trial, an official from the provincial police strongly warned that the families of anyone who came into contact with information from overseas would be eliminated from our society, root and branch, for generations to come,” the source said.
The authorities were sending a public warning with the hope of preventing the kind of ideological wavering that can come from exposure to external information and to nip in the bud any chance of anti-regime activities.
The North Korean authorities are essentially treating Chinese mobile phone use on the border with China, where smuggling and illicit communication are frequent occurrences, not merely as unlawful but as anti-state behavior.