One of the tasks of North Korea's State Security Agency is to search and arrest suspected offenders writing defiant graffiti or scattering critical leaflets, as well as those who have damaged or attempted to damage personality cult articles. Because they are deliberate acts risking one's life, however, it is by no means easy to trace them down. Security agents undergo hardship on account of never-ending incidents of defiance.
The State Security Agency was on full alert in December 1996 when handbills denouncing Kim Jong Il were found scattered at the Mount Kumsu Memorial Palace where Kim Il Sung's corpse lies in state. The regime was "squandering money to preserve the corpse for good when the people were starving to death," the handbills protested. The agency is said to have done its utmost to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators, but to no avail.
Lee Kwang-chol (alias), a native of Shinuiju, a border city with China, who recently defected to the South, recalls witnessing during Kim the senior's mourning period (July 1994 - July 1997) a month-long repairing of a destroyed leg of a Kim Il Sung bronze statue standing in front of the station with curtains hung around it. Someone hammered the leg off. In the summer of 1996, a bulletin board at Rakwon Integrated Machine Corp., on which an oil painting of the Kims senior and minor was hanging, was burned with gasoline. Graffiti denouncing Kim Jong Il was subsequently found in nearby Yongchon County.
"The Korean War was a fratricidal war provoked by Kim Il Sung" was found painted on the wall of Hyesanjin Light Industry College on June 24, 1997, according to another North Korean defector living in the South, and a native of Hyesanjin, Yanggang Province. The State Security Agency branch office in Hyesanjin attempted, in vain, to arrest the offender or offenders, resorting to handwriting analysis by collecting a page each from notes on "total reflections on conduct" written by not only the college's students but also "shock troopers" working at nearby construction sites.
In December of the same year, graffiti and leaflets saying "Overthrow Kim Jong Il" and "Reform is the only way for North Korea to survive" were found and scattered at Songsin Market in Songsin-dong, Sadong District, Pyongyang. Such incidents have frequently taken place in major cities such as Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province; Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province; Sunchon, South Pyongan Province; and mines in South Hamgyong Province.
Graffiti incidents, which often took place even before 1994, have more than doubled since the perennial food crisis hit the land that year, according to North Korean defectors.
"We only wait for an order from President Chun Doo-hwan," was found scribbled on a toilet door in Sunchon in June 1996, whereupon security agents took the entire door away. Early in 1990, slogans like "Overthrow Kim Jong Il" were found painted on a number of large bulletin boards in Kowon Mine, South Hamgyong Province, and its vicinity. Since the act should have involved a number of people, investigations were conducted under a tense atmosphere, recall some North Korean defectors.
Few offenders are apprehended in graffiti incidents. Unless one is caught red-handed, few could afford to admit to the "crime" and to protect themselves against handwriting analysis, many are said to use their left hands when writing the slogans.
Residents are supposed to be shocked to see defiant writing and watching people defying the law this way is also supposed to make the viewer feel guilty. They often criticize them as "crazy guys intending to die," but in their hearts, however, some citizens admire their braveness, say North Korean defectors.
(Kang Chol-hwan, nkch@chosun.com)
