The Marmot’s Hole

As promised, a translation of that Chosun exclusive I linked to yesterday has been produced. It’s got some pretty interesting stuff in it, but first, a couple of caveats. The piece starts off with a phone conversation between a Chosun Ilbo journalist and an official with the North Korean State Safety & Security Agency. In case you were wondering what the boys and girls at SSSA do for a living, here’s the FAS job description:

The State Safety & Security Agency carries out a wide range of counterintelligence and internal security functions normally associated with “secret police.” The Agency carries out duties to ensure the safety and maintenance of the system such as search for and management of anti-system criminals, immigration control, activities for searching out spies and impure and anti-social elements, collection of overseas information, and supervision over ideological tendencies of residents. It is charged with searching out antistate criminals–a general category that includes those accused of antigovernment and dissident activities, economic crimes, and slander of the political leadership. Camps for political prisoners are under its jurisdiction. It has counterintelligence responsibilities at home and abroad, and runs overseas intelligence collection operations. It monitors political attitudes and maintains surveillance of returnees. Agency personnel escort high-ranking officials. The Agency also guards national borders and monitors international entry points. The degree of control it exercises over the Political Security Bureaus of the KPA–which has representatives at all levels of command–is unclear.

Now, I ask you this — how far would you trust a North Korean spook and/or secret police operative? Moreover, the fact that the spook in question was talking to the Chosun Ilbo about an internal document that, for all intents and purposes, says that Pyongyang can’t even feed its secret police is enough to make you wonder whether something fishy is going on. The Chosun Ilbo ranks alongside the GNP and Hwang Jang-yop on Pyongyang’s list of least favorite South Koreans; North Korean security personnel do not usually make it a habit to give the paper exclusives, especially exclusives citing internal memos detailing how crappy the situation is within the DPRK. Anyway, I’m not saying it’s bullshit, but it certainly is bizarre.

Oh, and as far as defector testimony is concerned, the usual rules apply.

North Korean authorities, fearing the food situation will worsen this spring, have ordered the family members of the State Safety and Security Agency — North Korea’s internal security force — to start trading in order to overcome “temporary” difficulties.

In a telephone conversation with this reporter, a mid-level managing official of the North’s State Safety and Security Agency currently on visit to China said, “In an official document handed down by central authorities to officials in the State Safety and Security Agency and Ministry of Public Security, the families of State Safety and Security Agency in each district were ordered to trade in order to defeat difficulties in obtaining food.” The official said North Korean authorities ordered this in accordance with expectations that aid from the international community will decrease as a result of the failure of the second round of six-party talks in Beijing.

He said, “The internal document included reports that our ally Russia suspended grant aid in February, and there’s a possibility that China will also suspend grant aid from March… Because of this, North Korean authorities have instructed all local administrative organs and groups to make thorough advanced preparations to overcome temporary difficulties.”

A Chinese trader who lives in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China, and does business with North Korea said, “Exports of corn to North Korea have been completely prohibited from February to April… One of the reasons is that last year’s corn harvest in China wasn’t very good, but I wonder if, in reality, this is part of sanctions against the North.” He added that as soon as corn exports were stopped, the demand for flour in the North skyrocketed. China has named food along with crude petroleum to its list of “strategic goods” and tightly controls their export to North Korea.

Kim, a defector who crossed into China some time ago, said, “The difficulties in obtaining food nowadays reminds me of the late 1990s, when the situation was at its worst… In some regions, a single kilo of rice has reached W500 — the North Korean currency’s largest denomination. The value of the dollar has skyrocketed, with US$1 being exchanged for W1,400.” Since economic controls were reformed in July 2002, the situation has become such that the common laborer — who earns an average of W2,000 a month — cannot afford even four kilos of rice on his salary. North Korean authorities have set the official price of rice at W46 a kilo, and the official dollar-won exchange rate is W160 to US$1.

In the case of North Hamgyeong Province’s Musan Mine — the North’s largest supplier of iron ore — workers are taking all the iron ore they dig out of the ground, selling it in China and buying food in order to avoid difficulties in obtaining provisions. One defector from the area said, “Because of the difficulties in finding food, all the iron ore that was supposed to go to Kim Chaek Steel Mill is being sold in China. Because of this, the cost of food around the Musan Mine is fairly low — one kilo of polished rice costs W380.”

The defector also said that because agents from the State Safety and Security Agency and the police are not getting their rations, official corruption is now a problem. North Korean authorities may be completely opening their marketplaces and permitting trade, he said, but starving police officers are seizing on every little infraction to confiscate property and residents’ grievances grow as time passes.

With civilians and even whole battalions of soldiers facing difficulties in obtaining food, one cannot rule out the possibility of a recurrence of mass famine this spring if aid from the international community is late.

(Kang Cheol-hwan, nkch@chosun.com )