North Korea has issued general rural mobilization orders with the full-scale start of the planting season, but farms face manpower shortages as people shirk the mobilizations. The authorities are responding to this situation by setting up checkpoints throughout rural communities and sending passersby caught in random inspections to the farms to work.
Speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, a reporting partner in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Tuesday that new inspection checkpoints were set up at street corners leading into farms and major roads near farms earlier this month. Local security agents manage the inspection checkpoints set up to inspect passing vehicles and personnel.
The inspectors at the checkpoint stop passing individuals and check their place of residence and workplace. Afterwards, they accuse the individuals of engaging in private travel during work hours, and send them to farms to perform labor assignments as punishment. The reporting partner said the travelers are let go only after they get a certificate proving that they have completed planting work in the fields.
The Ministry of State Security sets up temporary inspection checkpoints near farms every planting season, removing them once the general rural mobilization period ends. However, with the growing number of people shirking mobilizations this year, more people than usual are getting caught at the checkpoints and sent to the farms to do forced labor.
The reporting partner said the number of people shirking rural mobilizations due to food shortages is skyrocketing this year.
Neither neighborhood watch units nor farms provide food even if one heads to the fields, meaning that mobilized workers must provide their own meals. So, people are avoiding the mobilizations, complaining that they “cannot work because they haven’t even a day’s worth of food.”
In fact, many North Koreans believe that shirking rural mobilizations is better, even if that means accepting punishments or disadvantages.
“There are always many people who try to avoid rural mobilizations, but this year, the mobilizations are failing even worse to allocate the labor needed on the farms,” said the reporting partner. “Not only labor, but everything is in short supply, including fertilizer and machinery.”
Spike in fever cases leads to intensifying quarantine measures
Meanwhile, with fever cases spiking in North Korea, the authorities have bolstered quarantine measures on personnel mobilized to rural communities, sparking serious discontent.
“They are calling on farmers and mobilized workers to strictly adhere to quarantine regulations, claiming the spring flu is going around,” the reporting partner said. “They are ordering not only temperature checks, but double and triple masking, and regularly watching so that nobody works with their mask down.”
People mobilized to work on the farms are complaining of heat rash and other skin diseases as they work with double and triple masks under the scorching sun, he added.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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