North Korean Officer Defects Across the DMZ; Separate Report Suggests Rations for Field-Grade Officers, Security Forces Cut

The North Korean officer approached a South Korean guard post Sunday on the western part of the frontier, an official at the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The 28-year-old second lieutenant, identified only by his surname Ri, told South Korean guards he was seeking asylum in the South, Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified South Korean military official.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff official declined to confirm the news report, and spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was still being investigated.  [AP]

It’s the first such  cross-border defection in a decade.   One defection  doesn’t have the  statistical depth to suggest a trend, but you have to wonder if  this has anything to do with the food situation.  If lower-ranking officers are  at the bottom of this new kind of of “food chain,” one recent report suggests that officers of higher rank have lost their rations, too:

An inside source in Yangkang Province said in a phone conversation with Daily NK on the 21st, “As a whole, compared to last year, the quality of our diet has fallen significantly. In particular, life for public servants has become more difficult. The source said, “It does not make a difference to civilians like us because we are used to working in the jangmadang to make a living and getting by without national provisions.

Nowadays, the cadres of Party organizations and their family members, those who did not traditionally work in the jangmadang because of the plentiful provisions they received from the State, have set out on this path of trade. The source continued, “Since April, the government has only been giving out provisions to the head of each department of the People’s Safety Agency in Hyesan, Yangkang Province.

As for the remaining staff, only 15-days worth of one-serving provisions have been supplied. The discontent among the agents of the People’s Safety Agency over the discrimination is quite significant. [….]

An inside source in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province also relayed, ” We have not been able to provide rice to laborers since April. Even for the office workers, provisions have been limited to 15 days worth of rice per individual or have stopped altogether, so the price of food has been skyrocketing and people have been fighting to acquire rice.

The source said, “Nowadays, office workers are worse off than laborers. Middle-rank officers who have been receiving provisions up until now have been rushing to obtain rice with the sudden cease in provisions. [Daily NK]

[Update:   It occurs to me that with the imprecision in the Daily NK’s translation, I should not have assumed that “officer” necessarily means military officer.]

The Daily NK reports that as the food situation worsens, North Koreans are turning to “alternative” foods, and to crime. Some of the crime stories sound  like the kinds of crimes that happen everywhere.  Those stories may reflect that we have more sources of information, rather than a real crime wave.  One development that seems significant is the use of firearms in the commission of crimes.  If true, it suggests that discipline in the security forces continues to erode,  or that more weapons are in the hands of criminals. Banditry isn’t many degrees away from mutiny, and that’s especially worrisome to a regime that can no longer feed its secret police and its field-grade officers.

So far, the Daily NK reports, there is no widespread starvation, due to hoarding that’s probably helped drive up food prices. The obvious cautions apply: this is hearsay, of course.  Hearsay is the only source of unofficial information we’re going to have from North Korea for the foreseeable future, so all we can do is evaluate it in light of other known facts.

See also:   GI Korea.