Daily NK: Hoeryong Party Official Caught Dealing Dope

As with a lot of the more chaotic stories lately, it comes from Hoeryong:

In an interview on the 24th, the source from Hoiryeong said “On Feb 24, 20 or so officials from the National Security Agency made a search warrant in the home (#42, Sanup-dong, Hoiryeong) of Suh Kyung Hee (49) Chairwoman of Hoiryeong City’s North Korean Democratic Women’s Union. On location, they found 15kg of drugs known as “ice,” US$30,000 and approx. 200,000 North Korean won (approx. US $645).   [Daily NK]

For those of you keeping track, this is  Phase Four  of regime collapse  (I’m a Phase Five man myself).  For those of you who are just plain skeptical, I will agree that this could be the justification offered for purging ineffective party leadership,  a case of the regime’s own dope being diverted for personal profit, or a combination of these things.  Or it may flat-out not be true.  It’s no simple feat to check your sources in North Korea.  Police departments don’t do press releases there.

The great British  counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson  wrote that the political organizations of insurgencies always first seek to set up alternative media, and that they would focus on reporting  corruption by local officials.  Nothing leads me to believe that the Daily NK was established with such greater things in mind, but reporting on local corruption is certainly devastating for a regime’s credibility with its own people.