North Korea’s policing problem: corruption, crime, and Kim Jong Un’s reform gambit

In his policy address to the Supreme People’s Assembly on March 23, 2026, Kim Jong Un declared that he would establish “a police system suited to our country.” North Korea already has a functioning internal security apparatus: the Ministry of Social Security, formerly known as the Ministry of People’s Security, which handles law enforcement duties. In the same address, Kim pledged to “guarantee the internal security of the state and social stability.” Read against the grain, this amounted to an implicit admission by the North Korean authorities themselves that public order and social stability are facing serious problems.

The Ministry of Social Security fields two categories of officers: security officers, who handle general policing, and traffic control officers. Local police substations, the equivalent of neighborhood police posts, are set up across the country. North Korean state media portrays the country as something close to an earthly paradise and almost never reports on crime. Yet as economic hardship has dragged on, the internal security situation appears to have deteriorated. Kaoru Hasuike, a Japanese citizen abducted by North Korea, said in a February interview with the Asahi Shimbun that “theft and robbery are frequent in North Korea.” According to people who have left North Korea, the state wired broadcast system, known informally as the “Third Broadcast,” sometimes publicly announces the names of those caught committing theft or traffic violations. When serious crimes such as robbery or murder occur, word spreads rapidly among the population.

In a surveillance state like North Korea, perpetrators of murder and theft are often caught relatively quickly, because reports go directly to the Ministry of Social Security. But a separate and more serious problem underlies the system. A former Workers’ Party of Korea official, speaking with me by phone, identified it bluntly: “The biggest problem is the pervasiveness of bribery.” Officials tasked with maintaining public order and social stability are neglecting those duties in favor of extracting bribes.

A system undermined from within

Security officers in North Korea are civil servants assigned to law enforcement, which means they cannot easily engage directly in market activity or side businesses the way ordinary North Korean people do. To compensate for inadequate salaries, many find other means of supplementing their income through bribery.

In North Korea, license plates alone reveal a driver’s approximate status: whether they belong to a state agency official, a diplomat, a military officer, and so on. Traffic control officers who judge a driver unlikely to cause serious trouble will pull them over and invent a pretext, citing worn tires or a passing violation, to demand a fine that functions in practice as a bribe. North Korean drivers routinely carry cigarettes to offer as a preemptive payment to smooth over encounters with traffic officers. The former party official noted that things can escalate quickly: “If the situation turns sour, you can have your identity card or driver’s license confiscated.”

Another person who left North Korea described a more serious pattern on highway entry checkpoints, where some traffic control officers reportedly collude with freight distributors, taking a portion of cargo as a kind of informal toll. Around a decade ago, a driver on the highway connecting Wonsan in Kangwon province and Pyongyang was allegedly killed after refusing to comply with a bribe demand. In some cases, when trucks stop at checkpoints, officers simply help themselves to a portion of the cargo as a matter of course.

Ordinary North Korean people who are victims of theft sometimes choose not to report it, particularly when the losses are modest. They fear that an investigation could expose South Korean products or banned video content inside their homes.

There is also a countervailing cultural dynamic. North Korea has a tradition of viewing Robin Hood-type figures who steal from the wealthy favorably. The classical Korean story of Hong Gildong, a fictional outlaw who redistributed wealth, is well known among the North Korean population and has even been adapted as a children’s animated series. People tend to feel anger toward criminals who prey on many ordinary people simultaneously, but hold a comparatively lenient view of someone who steals from a single wealthy target.

Kim Jong Un has, over the past year and into 2026, dismissed party and government officials at major construction sites including Pyongyang General Hospital and the Ryongsong Machine Complex in South Hamgyong province, denouncing those who showed “defeatism, irresponsibility, and passivity.” The former party official interpreted the push for a new police system in this context: “It appears to be an attempt to correct social corruption and contradictions, and to restore public trust in the party and government.”

Rebranding North Korea’s police apparatus

Some observers suggest the intent may also be to rebrand the Ministry of Social Security, which has historically emphasized surveillance, to project an image closer to that of a police force in a Western country. But the former party official was skeptical that this would weaken the underlying surveillance infrastructure. “Monitoring and reporting are obligations of North Korean citizens,” he said. “The likelihood that the internal surveillance system as a whole, not just the Ministry of Social Security, will be weakened is almost nil.”

One additional development from the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly’s first session is worth noting. Kim Cholwon, the prosecutor general of the Supreme Procuratorate, North Korea’s top prosecutorial body, was elected to the State Affairs Commission, the country’s highest decision-making organ, which has 14 members. Placing a senior judicial official in the state’s highest leadership body appears designed to reassure the population that the regime takes social order seriously.

In North Korea, however, the supreme leader’s word takes effective precedence over the constitution. The “two hostile states” doctrine that now frames North Korea’s posture toward South Korea originated with remarks Kim Jong Un made at a Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee plenary session in late 2023, after which it became state policy. North Korean state media did not report a constitutional revision reflecting these changes until October 2024.

The former party official offered a final assessment: “In a country where the rule of law does not exist, no matter how many judicial officials are elevated to high positions, it will be difficult for that to have any real effect on building social order.”

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Daily NK.

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