Perceived by the North Korean authorities to be higher flight risks, family members of defectors still residing in North Korea have become subject to strict surveillance and sentenced to hard labor, Daily NK has learned.
“After their parents defected, two twenty-year-old children were forced to do hard labor in the blast furnace of an agricultural machinery plant in Daegok District of Haeju City,” a source in South Hwanghae Province reported to Daily NK on the 30th. “Furthermore, since they are under the watchful scrutiny of the factory managers and agents from the State Security Department, they aren’t afforded a single minute of free time or privacy.”
Because they have been branded as a defector family, factory management has to issue a report to the SSD every 30 minutes detailing the children’s behavior and whereabouts, which is, as the source put it, “obviously dreadful for the children, [but] dealing with the SSD is no doubt a burden for the factory management as well.”
*The contents of this article were broadcast to the North Korean people via Unification Media Group.
[Source: Daily NK]
