North Korea Targets Potential Illegal Cell Phone Users With Links to Defectors

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered authorities in the isolated, communist state to expand a crackdown on illegal cell phone use to cover citizens who have links to defectors in South Korea, sources familiar with the situation said.

In the past, authorities targeted only actual cell phone users and sent them to a political prison camp if they were found to have connections in South Korea, they said.

North Korea’s Ministry of State Security has now extended the crackdown to include cell phone users who might potentially use Chinese-made mobile phones to call defectors, they said.

Jiro Ishimaru, a North Korea expert representing the Osaka, Japan-based AsiaPress International, told RFA that the news agency’s source in the northern part of North Korean said authorities began enforcing a more extensive crackdown in May after Kim Jong Un decided to “root out Chinese-manufactured cell phone users” who have links to the country’s mortal enemy South Korea.

When the original crackdown on illegal cell phone use was rolled out in late 2000 after a dramatic increase in the number of mobile calls in the border areas, those who used the devices illegally were subject to investigation.

But now potential cell phone users are being investigated, and authorities are meting out harsher punishments for offenders, said Ishimaru, who edits Rimjingang, a publication that coves North Korean news.

The Ministry of State Security is specifically targeting North Koreans whose families include defectors, and who have had used Chinese cell phones in the past, he said.

Authorities are trying to force these individuals along with people who spend more than they earn to turn themselves in and blow the whistle on others for making illegal calls, he said.

Though the Ministry of State Security already has information on those who use Chinese cell phones illegally, state security agents and officers are now visiting every household to pressure people to inform on neighbors they suspect of using mobile phones, Ishimaru said.

He said the current crackdown on cell phone users is harsher than clampdowns in the past.

“According to a source, it is on a totally different level now,” Ishimaru said. “Though people have not made any phone calls, they are being visited by investigators to find out if they have family members who have defected to South Korea.”

“There are plenty of security agents who are conducting investigations,” he said. “It seems like they are intensifying the crackdown to include not only actual phone users, but also potential cell phone users. This means there are stricter regulations.”

Full story: rfa.org

Reported by Jung Min Noh for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.