Isolated North Korea cracks down on connections to outside world

North Korea has punished about 30 of its citizens for contacting the outside world, according to a report on Tuesday, as the isolated regime continued to crack down on illegal cross-border activities.

The people punished were using Chinese mobile phones. They were apprehended by the state security authority in the province of Jagang, bordering China to the north, in April and May, according to Daily NK, a South Korea-based news outlet covering North Korea, citing a source in the country situated in the northern half of the Korean Peninsula.

Newsweek reached out to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, China, via email for comment.

The North, ruled by Kim Jong Un, has restricted contact between its people and the outside world. It was not until last month that the Northeast Asian country announced the “reopening” of its door to international tourism for the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Pyongyang harshly punishes those it catches trying to escape the country. Penalties can range from labor and political prison camps, where they are subject to torture, to public execution.

The report said the state security authority in Jagang intensified checking Chinese mobile phone usage in the area bordering China, one of Kim Jong Un’s two military allies. This followed the country’s state security ministry declaring April to be “the month of eradicating illegal behavior.”

The policing campaign led to a large number of people being under arrest and interrogated. One of the arrested people was accused of being a spy who had kept six Chinese mobile phones and lots of Chinese currency at home. The individual was sentenced to a political prison camp with family.

The source quoted in the report claimed that during a public trial in August, an official warned the people present that contacting information abroad would face severe consequences, and those who did so “would be eliminated from our society, root and branch, for generations to come.”

According to the report, the state security ministry considered those punished as criminals and as “internal agitators with the potential to oppose the party and the state,” according to the report. Meanwhile, people using Chinese mobile phones were treated as both unlawful and “anti-state” behavior.

The United States Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, Julie Turner, said in April that Kim Jong Un attempted to get control of the “internal information environment” desperately as he abandoned reunification goals and the shift and rhetoric toward South Korea.

North Korea values the regime’s security and survivability, whereas the three generations of the Kim family, who held the position of supreme leader, have ruled with absolute authority, using heavy repression. The country is a one-party state governed by the Workers’ Party of Korea.

By sending a warning to the public, the authority hoped the sentences would prevent “ideological wavering” and anti-regime activities from taking place after exposure to external information.