North Korea intensifies Chinese mobile phone crackdown ahead of half-year performance review

Security agents in North Korea’s border regions have intensified efforts to catch people using Chinese mobile phones, enlisting ordinary citizens alongside informants to monitor their neighbors and even deploying sting operations to trap suspects. The crackdown has fueled a climate of mutual suspicion in which people no longer feel they can trust those around them.

A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK recently that the enforcement drive has become markedly more aggressive in recent weeks in the border cities and counties of Hoeryong, Musan, and Onsong county. “Security agents are mobilizing not only informants but also ordinary people living nearby to conduct surveillance, trying by any means possible to catch even one more person,” the source said.

North Korean authorities classify the use of Chinese mobile phones as a crime threatening national security and deploy the National Intelligence Agency (formerly the Ministry of State Security, the country’s main secret police agency) to enforce the ban. In recent weeks, agents have been going door to door convening meetings of neighborhood watch units across border areas to issue sharp warnings about Chinese phone use.

At those meetings, agents have told residents that people “still using Chinese mobile phones are like cancerous tumors in the body of the nation,” warning that users who think they have escaped detection will ultimately face judgment, and instructing residents to report anyone they find suspicious immediately, describing Chinese phone users as “reactionary elements challenging the party and the state.”

Sting operations, but the targets are no longer so easy to fool

North Korean people who own Chinese phones have responded by keeping an extremely low profile. Not only are dedicated informants watching, but neighbors in close proximity have effectively become surveillance agents as well, with even minor details of daily life being reported.

Some security agents have gone further, sending ordinary civilians to knock on the doors of suspected phone owners and attempt to lure them into revealing themselves. In one such operation, the source said, agents coached a civilian to approach a target with the offer: “I have relatives in China and I’ll give you 50% of whatever money I receive if you let me make a call.”

A specific case illustrates how these operations are playing out. On June 11, a person visited the home of a Hoeryong resident who had more than 20 years of experience trading with China and had been caught in crackdowns before. The visitor made exactly that kind of offer. The resident immediately grew suspicious, demanded to know who had sent the visitor, and threw the person out, warning that a report to the authorities would follow if they did not leave at once.

The source said a key driver of the heightened enforcement is the approaching end-of-quarter and half-year performance review, as agents face pressure to produce results. Yet despite the intensified push, many Chinese phone users with connections to powerful institutions continue to evade punishment.

“No matter what crackdown is launched, there are always people who slip away because they have backing from powerful agencies,” the source said. “Security agents themselves are now saying, ‘Only the loaches are left’ ” — a Korean expression meaning that only the slipperiest, most difficult targets remain.

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