N. Korea cracks down on mobile phone use near China border: Revised criminal code condemns violators to gulags

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N. Korea cracks down on mobile phone use near China border: Revised criminal code condemns violators to gulags

INSIDE NORTH KOREA    By Lee Jong-Heon 

East-Asia-Intel.com, May 14, 2014

SEOUL — North Koreans who speak by phone with South Koreans could get life sentences at remote political prison camps under the recently criminal code, sources said. Pyongyang is using jamming devices imported from Germany to isolate the country from information dangerous to its totalitarian controls. The regime is also demolishing houses near the border with China and has forcibly relocated residents away from the border, the sources said.  Read MORE

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“Residents at (the border town of) Hyesan were ordered early May to evacuate their houses,” a separate source here said. “The authorities plan to demolish some 10,000 houses in Hyesan and other border villages,” he said.

North Korean border guards on the bank of the Yalu River at the border with China near the North Korean city of Hyesan.  Reuters/Reinhard Krause
North Korean border guards on the bank of the Yalu River at the border with China near the North Korean city of Hyesan. Reuters/Reinhard Krause

Under the measure, all residents who live within 200 meters from the northwestern border with China will be relocated.”After demolishing the villages, the North plans to widen the border by building roads.”
“Article 60 of the Criminal Code has recently been rewritten such that any citizens who talk by phone with South Koreans could be sentenced for life in concentration camps,” a source said.
The Criminal Code’s Article 60 served as the legal basis for North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, to be executed on charges of treason and corruption in December last year.
“The special military tribunal of the Ministry of State Security of the DPRK confirmed that the state subversion attempted by the accused Jang with an aim to overthrow the people’s power of the DPRK (North Korea) by ideologically aligning himself with enemies is a crime punishable by Article 60 of the DPRK Criminal Code,” Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said at the time.
“The stern punishment against mobile phone users shows that the Kim Jong-Un regime increasingly fears the spreading of outside information,” the source said.
The measure came as a growing number of North Koreans near the border with China have been readily connecting with South Koreans via Chinese-made phones and upgraded Chinese telecommunication systems with an expanded number of relay stations installed along the border.
Some of the 26,000 North Korean defectors living in the South have maintained contact with their relatives in the North through the cross-border mobile phone conversations.
Chinese-made handsets with pre-paid cards are for the most part smuggled into the North. Cell phones have become essential to North Korean merchants conducting business along the border after the regime tightened border controls.
“The cross-border mobile conversation has become the main source of information [to and about North Korea].” the source said.
In an effort to block cross-border mobile phone conversations, the North has deployed jamming devices imported from Germany in 2012, according to Lee Sok-Young, a leader of Free North Korea Radio run by North Korean defectors in Seoul. The North has also asked China to jam the Chinese cell phone signals near the border area, he said.
Some 5,000 North Koreans own Chinese-made cell phones, but the number has been reduced by the crackdown, according to Open Radio for North Korea, another defectors’ group here with sources inside the North.
The North also has a legal mobile phone service provided by Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, that is not a target of the crackdown.
The North introduced a 3G mobile phone network in a joint venture, named Koryolink, with Egyptian mobile provider Orascom in 2008. The number of subscribers to the sole cell phone system provider exceeded 2 million in May last year, according to Egypt’s Orascom Telecom.
Last year, the North unveiled what it says was a domestically-produced smart phone, named “Arirang,” which is believed to be manufactured in China. But its video camera and memory card functions have been disabled, according to U.S.-based broadcaster Radio Free Asia.
The communist regime has also prohibited subscribers from using mobile phones for chatting with somebody outside the city in which they are registered, RFA reported.

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