Disciplinary Erosion Hits N. Korean Border Guards

The Daily NK reports that two border guards were caught taking money to allow refugees to cross the border and will be executed.  Although the state can’t decide whether to hang or shoot the two unfortunates, or how to schedule it around the Dear Leader’s birthday,  past history suggests that  the deed  will be carried out publicly to make an example of the men. 

Consider the  example set.  Of the two reported consequences, only one seems to have been intended:  for the time being, it is not possible to buy your way out of North Korea at any price.  The other consequence is not one Kim Jong Il  is likely to have wanted:

Recently, a platoon of border guards from the district of Hoiryeong escaped to China to avoid the arrest of inspection agency, an inside North Korean source informed the DailyNK on the 4th. North Korean authorities have responded by sending an inspection agency to China in search of these guards.

The mass defection of an entire unit would be a very big deal, but later, this turns out not to be the case.  The guards were nonetheless “affiliated” with the sergeant and vice-commander who are now facing the firing squad, which would suggest a degree of coordination and organization in their  corruption, and in their ultimate defiance of authority.

A resident of Hoiryeong, Lee Jong Sam (pseudonym) who discovered this case informed on the 4th “Recently, about 20 guards from the border city of Hoiryeong escaped to China. So the Security Control Centre under the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces and National Safety Agency the collaborated and dispatched a team to China.

As it turns out, the guards did not bring their weapons with them, either.  Still, if true, this story would mark another step in the decay of discipline in the state’s machinery of control.  To those who watch it carefully, North Korea just isn’t the monolith we believed it to be just a few years ago. Things are changing.