Many wonder why no popular uprising or organized resistance takes place in North Korea despite the worst possible situation there, caused by economic woes and massive deaths from starvation. The causes could be researched from many angles. But one thing is evident, citizens, placed under tight surveillance and control by the authorities, are basically deprived of opportunities to mount an organized fight.
The North Korean organization tasked with constantly monitoring the moves of its citizens and preventing and eliminating dissident elements is the State Security Agency, the flagship of which is the Counterintelligence Division that conducts both investigation and intelligence functions. The SSA also has a separate Investigations Division, which, however, deals only with the so-called "incidental cases" such as graffiti and leaflets denouncing Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and damage to their portraits.
The CID's basic duty is to thwart and clamp down on what is called anti-revolutionary offenses, according to Song In-song, who served with the SSA until he defected to the South late in the 1990s. To fulfill this task, the division monitors residents day and night by recruiting informants from among the public.
"For this surveillance, an SSA officer (normally a security guidance officer of the CID) directs 50 informants, each of whom is responsible for watching 20 people," said Song. This means that each SSA officer watches the moves of 1,000 residents. It may be said that 20,000 SSA officers and 1 million informants under their direction conduct surveillance over an estimated 20 million North Koreans. The number of such informants could be even larger because some of them may overlap with one another, while some of them keep on doing the job life long. "About half of the entire North Korean population may have experienced working as an informant at one time or another," speculates Song.
Informants, both male and female, are recruited from among those who are strongly loyal to the state, quick in judging a situation and skillful in gathering information. Burdensome as it is to work as informants, ordinary citizens can hardly reject the insistence that the job is "a noble revolutionary task for the sake of the party and the supreme leader." In recruitment, they are offered monetary rewards, favoritism in solving their personal problems and help if caught in wrongdoing.
CID officers receive regular information reports from their informants, who undergo necessary training periodically. The SSA checks citizens' moves through these information reports, carries out intensive surveillance when something unusual is detected, and detains suspects for interrogation when deemed necessary. Informants and security officers are fully aware of all the details about citizens under their charge - ranging from their family affairs and relations to public and private lives. They know even how many spoons and pairs of chopsticks are kept in the kitchen of each household.
However hard it may be to sustain oneself, few can dare act rashly under such circumstances. Even slightly defiant remarks and acts are reported to the security authorities immediately and without fail, and no one can tell what will follow next. This renders it impossible for citizens to organize themselves and mount group resistance. All in all, North Korean authorities keep surveillance over and control the population by means of mobilizing some of them as informants. It's not an exaggeration to contend that informants safeguard the Stalinist system of the North.
(Kim Kwang-in, kki@chosun.com)
