Inside North Korea: People still suffer legacy of pandemic-era controls
The path to freedom is harder than ever. But the North Korean people haven’t given up. Join us this World Refugee Day in offering a way forward.
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During the pandemic, the regime took every opportunity to tighten its control under the guise of stopping the spread of COVID-19. Borders were sealed and reinforced, isolating the country and its people to an unprecedented extent. Trade was cut off, and the jandmadang—the markets that we’ve long highlighted as hotspots of change—were decimated.
Although the pandemic feels like history, the situation remains difficult as North Koreans recover from their most challenging period for a generation.
Information from inside the country has become increasingly difficult to obtain these last few years. But a landmark 2024 report from Human Rights Watch has offered some visibility into North Korea’s intensifying repression and the increased challenges North Korean people have faced.
Decimated Market Activity
“The prolonged border closures and restrictions on movement in-country have decimated the market activity that has become essential for the general population to access basic necessities.”
– Tomas Ojea-Quintana, then special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK in March 2022 (via Human Rights Watch)
When North Korea’s socialist economy collapsed in the mid-1990s, triggering widespread famine, ordinary North Koreans negotiated their own survival through illicit trade and smuggling. Grassroots marketization was leading to opening and change in North Korea, centered around the markets—the jangmadang.
But when the regime closed its borders in 2020, almost all trade was cut off.
Human Rights Watch shares that according to official records, by 2021 North Korea was importing only 6% of what it had been importing in 2011—a staggering decrease. But these numbers still fail to fully capture the lives and needs of ordinary North Koreans, a sentiment echoed by the former North Korean traders that spoke with Human Rights Watch:
“There was a large but unmeasurable gap between what official trade numbers show and the quantities of products ordinary North Koreans need in their daily lives. This gap, previously narrowed by informal trade, became huge when informal trade and economic activity was almost completely choked off starting in 2020.”
Intensified Border Security
“We found a 20-fold increase in the number of new guard buildings or facilities since 2019, with a total of 6,820 facilities placed near new or improved fences… [and] almost 500 kilometers (over 300 miles) of new fences…”
– Human Rights Watch
Through satellite imagery analysis, Human Rights Watch reviewed 321 kilometers, or roughly one-quarter of North Korea’s northern border, to compare security measures from before and after the pandemic.
Prior to 2020, approximately 230 kilometers (71%) of the 321 kilometers analyzed were fenced. But in the years since, multiple layers of fencing have been newly constructed, along with new and upgraded guard posts. Based on 2023 satellite imagery, there is now a staggering 743 kilometers (over 460 miles) of fencing within the 321 kilometers analyzed.
Along with infrastructure, in August 2020, the North Korean government created 1-2 kilometer “buffer zones” along its border with China, and instructed guards to “unconditionally shoot” on sight any person or wild animal entering the zones without permission, as “the [COVID-19] pandemic is being spread through air and items.” There were reports of at least 14 people being shot and killed between September 2020 and July 2022.
Human Rights Watch spoke with Young Mi, a former herbal medicine trader in contact with a relative in North Korea, to hear how the extreme restrictions had affected life in border areas:
“It is more the emotional environment and fear more [than the actual physical barriers] … [My relative] is scared to leave because of… a general sense of terror much stronger than a bullet or a wire fence.”
Starvation and Food Insecurity
“North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world and the government has persistently struggled to ensure food security, adequate childhood nutrition, and access to medicine.”– Human Rights Watch
Chronic oppression in North Korea has created one of the most impoverished countries in the world. A 2023 UN report estimated that 46% of the population face food insecurity. Those 12 million North Koreans aren’t just numbers, but people like Eunju.
Eunju escaped from North Korea in 1999, fleeing starvation during the “Arduous March,” a propagandized name for a period of widespread famine.
“When the Arduous March began, rations from workplaces were nearly cut off. At first, we managed by selling household belongings or trading them for food, but eventually, there was nothing left to exchange. People would sigh, saying, ‘We can’t even trade our empty house for a single block of tofu.’
When spring arrived, we ate every kind of wild plant we could find, even peeling bark off pine trees, boiling and pounding it for days to make it edible. Although I managed to survive, death was everywhere. Some consumed nothing but wild plants and died from poisoning. Some were shot by soldiers while trying to steal corn from farms. Some were publicly executed for slaughtering and eating a cow. Some were orphaned street children, beaten to death for trying to steal food from others.
People lost their lives in different ways, but in the end, they all died trying to survive. The root cause was the same—severe food shortages.”
In 2021, Kim Jong Un urged the people to “wage another more difficult ‘Arduous March.’” Yet the regime continued to restrict cross-border trade and prioritize weapons development, all while neglecting domestic food production.
In the report from Human Rights Watch, Jiro Ishimaru, the director at Asiapress, shared that “In 2021, there were reports of people with disabilities and older people dying of starvation... after over three years of extreme difficulties, in April and May, there was a spike in reports of whole families and ordinary people dying of starvation in urban areas near [North Korea’s] northern border.”
Crackdowns on Foreign Media
“Simply watching [foreign] media content can result in a sentence of forced labor of over 10 years in a forced labor prison camp… Public executions of offenders are permitted, evidently to increase a sense of fear and alarm among the population”
– Human Rights Watch
The near-absolute control of information and media is one of the key ways that the regime disempowers and represses North Korean people. During the pandemic, it imposed several new laws that increase the severity of punishments for being caught with foreign media, and go as far as to restrict how individuals can express themselves.
Human Right Watch outlines the main additions:
- Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law (December 2020) “bans people from smuggling, viewing, and distributing ‘reactionary’ and ‘anti-socialist ideology and culture’”
- Youth Education Guarantee Law (September 2021) “bans young people from copying foreign culture and reorients them to a ‘socialist lifestyle’”
- Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act (January 2023) “permits the authorities to punish people for using South Korean intonations or slang”
Offenders could be sentenced to 6+ years of hard labor, or “if the severity of the crime is deemed high,” the death penalty.
The timing of these new laws is no coincidence. As North Koreans face a reality that is increasingly distant from the propaganda they’ve been told to believe, foreign media has the potential to further erode the regime’s legitimacy and control.
Our North Korean friend, Yulseong, shared how foreign media impacted his perception of the the regime and his ultimate decision to leave in 2018:
“I was introduced to music and movies from other countries through my friends. For movies, I loved James Bond and other Hollywood films. While watching them, I realized that North Korea was truly a poor country, and it made me want to leave as soon as possible.
For songs, I listened to ‘Bingo’ by Turtles, ‘Pure Love’ by Koyote, and music by Jatanpung. Seeking out songs about life and love is a basic human desire. Even if people fear punishment, that desire cannot be suppressed. That’s why, even today, I believe many North Koreans continue to watch foreign content.”
Lack of Access to Healthcare
“The DPRK Socialist Constitution and the country’s Public Health Law provide for free medical care to all citizens. In reality, medical supplies and medication are unavailable to most North Koreans and only those who can afford to purchase them on the private market.”
– Human Rights Watch
North Korea’s defunct healthcare system is another example of how the regime’s constraints create unnecessary hardship for North Korean people. The majority of the country’s public health system collapsed along with North Korea’s socialist economy in the 1990s. In the aftermath, the regime only prioritized hospitals in areas like Pyongyang, leaving ordinary North Koreans to fend for themselves.
According to a 2017 UN report, an estimated 33% of the population (8.4 million people) had limited access to health services, including 50% of people in rural areas.
Human Rights Watch spoke with a former North Korean doctor and nurses who escaped after 2014, who shared that, “most local clinics were only capable of diagnosing basic diseases and setting broken bones, and had barely any working tools, supplies, medicine, or electricity… medical workers relied on market activity and what their patients gave them to eat to survive.”
For our North Korean friend Lily, the most frustrating part was that all this suffering was preventable.
“When my older sister, Hye-Joo, developed acute appendicitis, there was no emergency line to call, or cars or taxis to transport her to the hospital. We loaded her onto a cart that was meant to carry produce, moving at a terribly slow pace.
Desperate to ease my sister’s pain, we exhausted every resource we had. Any surgical or medical equipment a patient needs has to be provided by the family. Gauze, painkillers, blankets–even food and bribes–may be necessary for an operation. Even then, severe shortages made it impossible to fully prepare. The surgery was performed with minimal anesthesia and makeshift sterilization. Later, my sister told me she had felt the knife cutting into her skin, and heard the doctor’s orders during the surgery.
What should have been a simple and safe procedure was a traumatic, life-threatening experience.”
Impact on this Issue
In the face of enormous challenges, we cannot be discouraged, because this work is more important than ever.
There are still things we can and must do to strengthen forces of change. LiNK is one of the few groups still running rescue operations in the underground railroad. We’re cultivating and partnering with North Korean activists and storytellers who are leading efforts to raise global awareness for this issue. And we’re ambitiously expanding our Information Access Programs, devising new strategies and pathways to get information and technology inside North Korea to empower the people.
Join us in reaffirming our commitment to a free North Korea.
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Change has never been a linear process. But one thing we can always be certain of is the resilience and strength of the North Korean people.
A North Korean Defector’s Nine Year Journey to Freedom | Eunju’s Story
I didn’t know I was hungry until I was eight years old. Growing up, I had no concept of whether my hometown was wealthy or poor. Then when the great famine struck in the mid-90s, more people died in our city than anywhere else in the country.
That’s when I realized “Oh, this is the most difficult place to live in North Korea.”
I was born in the city of Eundok, North Hamgyong Province. Before that it was called Aoji, a destitute place infamous for its coal mines, where South Korean prisoners of war were sent to work.
In the middle of a long famine, people lose all sense of humanity. You couldn’t survive without dirtying your hands. My father was a kindhearted person, the type that was unable to hurt anyone. But towards the end, hunger drove him to steal from our own house.
On my first day of middle school, I couldn’t find my new backpack anywhere. It turns out that my dad had taken it to the Jangmadang, traded it for food, and eaten it by himself. In the end, he still died from starvation, and my mom, my sister, and I were left to fend for ourselves.
We heard that if we went to China, we could eat all the candy we wanted. With that one piece of information, my mom said she’d rather get shot crossing the Tumen river than starve in North Korea.
It was mid-February in 1999, during the bitter cold winter. The water was frozen solid and stretched over 100 meters across. My mom went first, followed by my sister, and I was in the very back. Maybe it was because I was anxious, but my shoes felt so slippery and I kept falling over as they went farther and farther ahead. We heard that soldiers would shoot anyone who tried to cross the river. But this was our only chance at survival.
My mind was racing, “What if I’m left behind and get caught?” My mom and sister probably feared the same thing.
We encountered a tributary that wasn’t frozen all the way, so my mom waited and had me go first because I was the lightest. A few steps in, the ice broke and I fell into the piercing cold water. None of us knew how to swim. At that moment, I really thought it was the end. But then my feet hit the ground. We had made it to the other side.
Not long after we had crossed into China, a Korean-speaking woman came up to us. She invited us to her house and gave us over a dozen boiled eggs, more food than we had seen in years. In North Korea, when my sister and I had a field trip for school, my mom would cut one boiled egg and give each of us half in our lunch box. To have this much at once was a true luxury. For the first time in a long while, we dared to have some hope.
But then my mom was sold off to a Chinese man. The fortunate thing was that even though my sister and I were 16 and 14 years old, we were so short that people asked if we were 7 or 8. They couldn’t sell us separately, so we were sent together with our mom.
We had been sold for 2000 yuan. When we wanted to leave, the man told us to pay him back. We worked in his house and on his farm but of course we never saw a penny. For three years, we lived in confinement, and my little brother was born.
On a quiet night before my brother was even a year old, Chinese police came to the house in the dark, knocked on the door, and arrested us.
When North Koreans get caught, sometimes they’ll roll up their money and eat it or hide it, but we didn’t have anything. We were taken back across the border with just our clothes. It’s well known that there’s a physical exam to look for hidden money. In a way, you shouldn’t even feel a basic sense of shame as a woman and as a human being. If you cry or plead for mercy, you’ll get beaten up. You cannot question them at all.
With so many people in North Korea dying of starvation, names were removed from the family register after three years without any news. We had already been declared dead. There were two minors and an adult, but our identities couldn’t be confirmed. At the time they couldn’t keep minors in prison without a ruling from the court, so we were entrusted to another person from our hometown. No one wanted extra mouths to feed, so he just let us go.
We went straight to the Tumen river and in 2002, we escaped again.
I had enough food when I was in China. Even dogs and pigs ate rice and corn. But we lived looking over our shoulders, in constant fear of the police.
When we heard about life in South Korea, where our safety and identities would be guaranteed, we decided to defect once more. We were introduced to a broker, gave them some cash upfront, and traveled through Mongolia and the Gobi Desert.
On September 1st, 2006, I arrived at Incheon airport with my mom. My sister joined us in South Korea in 2008. Nine years after first crossing the Tumen River, we were finally together in freedom.
When I was in China, my only wish was that my mom, sister, and I could sleep together, eat together, and come home from work together. I dreamed that someday we could go to the supermarket and get a whole cart full of things to share. After coming to South Korea, we achieved not only that, but everything we’ve ever wanted.
I co-authored a book about my journey, A Thousand Miles to Freedom, with a foreign journalist named Sebastien Falletti. He interviewed several North Koreans, and I agreed to share my story with him out of a sense of duty. I never thought he’d choose me.
Compared to North Korean defectors who live special lives, I don’t actually dream of being a human rights activist. There are times when I don’t want to share anymore and I feel like I have to repeat myself.
But then I think about my best friend in North Korea. Her name is Sunhwa and I don’t think she’s here yet. I imagine that she would want to live like me — to attend college, pave her own way, and explore the vast world we live in. But she is still stuck in the darkness. Until Sunhwa can live a life of freedom, I feel a sense of responsibility to continue to share.
When I think of North Korea, the dark image of my hometown floods my memories. But I would still like to go back just once and visit my dad’s grave. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that he was also a victim of the North Korean regime. I have hope that in this lifetime, North Korea will open up. I’ll return with my mom and my sister, and together we’ll visit my dad’s resting place and prepare a huge meal for him.
For North Koreans to share their stories with audiences around the world, retelling and reliving some of the most harrowing experiences, is an act of exceptional courage. They’re working towards the day when others no longer have to go through the same painful experiences.
You can help rescue more North Korean refugees and support them as they begin their new lives in freedom.
