With imports rising following the recent expansion of trade between North Korea and China, North Korean authorities have launched a crackdown on the illegal distribution of goods in marketplaces.
A source in South Pyongan province told Daily NK recently that a strike force composed of provincial police and security officers has launched a joint crackdown on all city and county markets, including in Pyongsong, Sunchon, Kaechon and Anju, after designating November as a “distribution purification month.”
This suggests authorities have launched the crackdown to stop the illegal distribution and sale of imports at a time when market stalls are bursting with goods imported from China.
According to the source, the South Pyongan provincial authorities have called the crackdown a “struggle to eradicate illegal distribution.” In response, they are inspecting the cargo and even the personal mobile phones of everyone at the market, including wholesale and retail merchants, truck and motorcycle drivers, and porters.
As soon as a vehicle enters the market, they are followed by an enforcement vehicle, the source said. Nowadays, more people are cracking down on markets than market merchants themselves, so people openly mock them, saying there are “more flyswatters than flies.”
The strike force confiscates all merchandise when they find items at stalls with unclear sources or distribution channels. Merchants can get their merchandise back if they go to the police and pay a fine, but the police keep the expensive, high-quality items, which merchants complain is unfair.
Merchants struggle amid slowdown
Merchants are frustrated — business was already bad, and with crackdowns intensifying, they are losing their merchandise and cannot make money.
With imports recently increasing, more wholesalers supply their wares to retailers on credit, but nobody’s making money because the items aren’t actually selling at the market, the source said. Retailers can’t return unsold items, while wholesalers can’t recoup their credit payments, so everybody’s worried.
Merchants are now deeply resentful of authorities’ merciless, persistent crackdowns.
With so many mobilizations ahead of the Ninth Party Congress that they can’t feed their families, and now with authorities intensifying their distribution crackdowns, merchants wonder when they’ll make money and complain that they’re being fleeced day and night, the source said.
