North Korea is strictly imposing three not too long ago enacted legal guidelines on its residents working overseas: the Reactionary Ideology and Tradition Exclusion Act, the Youth Schooling Assure Act, and the Pyongyang Dialect Safety Act. These rules are severely proscribing North Koreans’ freedoms each at residence and overseas.
An investigation into Chinese language seafood factories has revealed that North Korean employees are fully minimize off from exterior info. In line with a supply who spoke to Each day NK on Oct. 31, “(North Korean employees) are strictly prohibited from studying South Korean books or viewing South Korean movies or pictures of their dormitories. American and Japanese media are additionally prohibited, as is Chinese language media that’s thought-about risqué or non-socialist or anti-socialist in content material.”
Employees who violate these guidelines face severe penalties beneath North Korean abroad labor rules. “Employees can’t solely be despatched again to North Korea however might also face a more durable evaluation again residence, and their managers can lose their jobs, too,” the supply defined. This quantities to collective punishment, with managers being held answerable for their subordinates’ violations. The heightened scrutiny for returnees might end in life imprisonment or execution, as stipulated within the Reactionary Ideology and Tradition Rejection Legislation.
Since mid-October, the regime has intensified ideological schooling about these legal guidelines amongst abroad employees. This push coincides with North Korea’s current constitutional modification declaring South Korea a hostile state.
“Lectures held in the midst of this month for North Korean employees at a seafood manufacturing facility in Donggang, Liaoning province, targeted on clearly defining the state’s everlasting territory and correcting social and historic attitudes in regards to the two hostile states,” the supply mentioned. “The lectures are designed to police employees’ ideology whereas stressing the rupture with South Korea.”
Tightening controls over speech, communication with households at residence
The Pyongyang Cultural Language Safety Act has created extra restrictions. In early October, a employee at a Dalian seafood manufacturing facility acquired punishment for buzzing a South Korean tune – a month of prolonged work hours and obligatory self-criticism. The regulation particularly prohibits South Korean phrases of deal with like “oppa” (older brother) and the honorific “-nim.” Employees should as a substitute use official titles or “comrade.”
In July, 4 employees at a Donggang manufacturing facility confronted monetary penalties for utilizing the time period “oppa” whereas discussing a South Korean film. The comparatively gentle punishment suggests these infractions are too frequent to warrant the regulation’s full penalties, which may embody not less than six years of exhausting labor and even loss of life. (Article 58 of the Pyongyang Cultural Language Safety Act states that violations of the ban on the “puppet state” dialect are to be punished by not less than six years of exhausting labor, with the potential of a life sentence or capital punishment.)
The authorities preserve strict management over employees’ communication with their households in North Korea.
“Communication with relations again in North Korea is extraordinarily restricted and at all times censored. Calling household is mainly unattainable since that requires worldwide cellphone calls or entry to embassy telephones,” the supply mentioned.
Lee Sang Yong is Each day NK’s AND Heart director. Hwang Hyun-uk is the AND Heart’s senior researcher.
Each day NK works with a community of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For safety causes, their identities stay nameless.
Please ship any feedback or questions on this text to dailynkenglish@uni-media.web.
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