According to an internal source in North Korea, the Ministry of Public Safety issued an order to provincial, city, and county security departments nationwide on the 10th to strengthen the crackdown on those traveling.
In this order, the Ministry of Public Safety strictly prohibited ordinary citizens from accessing and moving to border areas, and especially emphasized the need to thoroughly crack down on executives traveling to border areas while carrying confidential documents.
Accordingly, it has been reported that city and county security departments nationwide are conducting large-scale surprise inspections targeting local road inspection checkpoints, inns, and hotel parking lots.
In fact, the security departments of Hyesan City, Pungseo County, and Samsu County have been dispatching inspection and secret supervision agents to checkpoints on major roads leading to the border area since the 13th, focusing on inspecting the belongings of people coming from other regions, especially cadres.
During this inspection process, on the 17th, Mr. Han (40s), a Hamheung City Party Committee leader who was traveling to Hyesan City for identity verification, was inspected at Checkpoint No. 10 between Samsu and Hyesan.
During this process, confidential documents that were prohibited from being possessed were discovered, and Mr. Han was arrested on the spot. He is currently being transferred to the City Security Department and is undergoing intensive investigation. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, North Korea has been prohibiting cadres from carrying documents containing confidential information, computers, memory cards, and other electronic devices when going on business trips to border areas. It is said that he appears to have been arrested for violating this rule.
The source said, “Since Mr. Han brought confidential documents despite knowing that he was not allowed to enter the border area, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security and the Ministry of State Security believe that he attempted to send the documents to the enemy,” and “It seems that Mr. Han will not only be removed from his position due to this incident, but will also not be able to easily escape the suspicion of espionage.”
He added, “Recently, the authorities have been taking extremely strong measures to strengthen discipline among executives and control internal information,” and “The level of censorship of confidential documents and electronic devices has become incomparably more thorough than before, to the point where even party executives are arrested on the spot.”
***This article is a translation by Google, so the content may differ from the Korean article.
