North Korea’s Ministry of Social Security recently carried out arrests of wholesalers throughout the country accused of selling official state-produced notebooks siphoned from a factory.
A source in South Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Friday that the Ministry of Social Security began tracking the secret sale of state-produced notebooks in markets from the spring.
The ministry launched full-scale investigations in September, arresting the wholesalers.
According to the source, the ministry began its full-scale investigation when private merchants in markets in Pyongyang, Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province and Unsan County in South Pyongan Province were discovered selling official state-produced notebooks from a factory in Pyongyang.
The notebooks in question should have been provided to students at the start of the second semester, but were not.
Treating the matter as a grave offense, the Ministry of Social Security mobilized the inspection departments of its provincial branches to arrest school supply wholesalers in Pyongyang, Chongjin and Unsan County for pilfering state property.
An investigation revealed that a wholesaler in Pyongyang had used his personal connections to acquire from the factory some 20% of its notebook stock at the state price. He then distributed the notebooks to markets in downtown Pyongyang for sale at higher prices.
In fact, the wholesaler bought the notebooks at the state price of KPW 300 and sold them to market booths for KPW 1,000, pocketing KPW 700 per volume. Market merchants then sold the books for KPW 1,200 a volume, earning themselves a profit.
However, with stocks low, merchants reportedly sold their illegally acquired wares mostly to people they knew.
In particular, unlike the notebooks produced in the provinces, notebooks for learning Chinese characters, English and computers produced in Pyongyang’s notebook factory — called “state regulation notebooks” — have elegantly printed covers and white paper. This means provincial merchants reportedly could not sell them in the open, instead dealing them on the sly.
“The Ministry of Social Security was ordered by the Cabinet to pursue the matter from this spring, launching simultaneous nationwide investigations with the opening of schools in early September to catch wholesale merchants not only in Pyongyang, but in the provinces as well,” said the source. “All the accomplices in the case were arrested.”
Provincial branches of the Ministry of State Security searched the homes of provincial wholesalers and confiscated not only the notebooks, but all state-produced school supplies, with a view to root out this vicious circle.
The factory officials implicated in the case are reportedly being called in to the ruling party’s Justice Department and regional people’s committees to write self-criticism letters every day, while the police officers in charge of the markets — including the station chiefs — will reportedly be sacked.
“Given that this is a matter the Ministry of Social Security got directly involved in at the behest of the Cabinet, it seems those directly implicated in the case — including the sales department of the Pyongyang notebook factory — face tough criminal punishments, including forced labor,” the source said.
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