right to privacy can be understood passively as a legal guarantee to protect one’s privacy from being arbitrarily forced to disclose information and to be left in peace and confidence, while it can be understood actively as the legal ability to manage and control one’s own personal information.
This chapter will examine the major issues related to the right to privacy in North Korea.
A. Infringement on Privacy through the General
shall be guaranteed. Without being based on law, one cannot imprison or arrest citizens, nor search residential houses.”
However, contrary to such provisions, there has been extensive surveillance and control by the State over the daily lives of people in an organized and systematic manner. In effect, there is no protection or guarantee of secrecy over one’s private life.
A case in point is the “five household surveillance system.” In this system, five households are grouped into one unit. Among them, the head of a household most loyal to the Party is designated as the propagandist in charge of the five households. The head has the authority to intervene and control the overall family lives of the rest of the households, including couples’ affection issues and problems between parents and their children. This system originated from a statement by Kim Il Sung in July 1958, during his visit to the Democratic Propaganda Office in Yaksu-li, Changseong County, North Pyeongan Province. He said, “Things will go well if one paid official takes charge of five households and gives all the instructions on educational programs, economic tasks, etc. A local Party committee can assign the designated officials the tasks and manage their performance.” In the 1960s, this system was implemented throughout North Korea, under the name “Red Family Creation Campaign.” Since early 1974, it has been implemented as the “people’s unit (inminban) sub-work group system,” which expanded the number of households under a unit of joint responsibility from five to ten. The five household
surveillance system serves as a path for the State not only exploit labor but also to interfere with the people’s private lives.
The second example is the people’s unit system, which first started as a nationwide social cooperation unit of People’s Committees in the early stages of land reform in 1946. In North Korea, everyone with a residential registration is automatically registered to the people’s unit. The people’s unit groups 20 to 40 households into one unit and places that unit under the control of a regional People’s Committee, which provide guidance for their daily lives, monitor ideologies, and monitor visitors to the community, etc. Each people’s unit has a chief, a chief of heads of households, a chief of sanitation, instigation agents, a confidential informant (security agent), etc.162 The people’s unit handles diverse issues in the residential area under his/her purview, including child care, labor mobilization, cleaning, maintenance of public order, spreading news on events and accidents, and delivers instructions through a Life Review Session (saenghwalchonghwa).163
162_The people’s unit chief is nominated by city/county (district) People’s Committees upon recommendation of the residents. In most cases, housewives who are loyal to the Party and do not work serve this position. The people’s unit chief is responsible for the surveillance of movement of all the residents of the people’s unit. Chiefs of heads of households are appointed directly by the Party and they monitor husbands separately. They sometimes hold meetings and lectures for husbands and mobilize them for events, as well as control the people’s unit during election events and monitor the husbands’ movements after work. The sanitation chief is in charge of the people’s unit environment, while instigation agents are responsible for ideology education and take the responsibility of managing the Party sub-work group, composed of Party members of inminban. The separately- assigned secret informants (safety agents) are surveillance agents dispatched by the MSS or the MPS.
163_NKHR2014000014 2015-01-27.
Article 30 of the Law on City Administration, adopted in 2010, stipulates that “People should voluntarily participate in the people’s unit to make family life sound and persons humble, and suitable for the socialist lifestyle.” Although this law uses the expression
“voluntarily,” it de facto legitimizes interference in people’s family lives through the people’s unit system. The people’s unit chief usually visits each household without warning to carry out sanitary inspections, portrait inspections, and inspection of books related to Kim Il Sung’s family. This technically constitutes an unlawful house search. Moreover, the people’s unit system forces people to publicly criticize misdeeds of each household during numerous meetings, and monitors and controls the ideology and intimate privacy of families. In addition, this system imposes tasks on the people, such as road cleaning, mobilization of labor in farming villages, and military support. The people’s unit is a representative system of surveillance and control of people’s privacy.
The third example is the Life Review Session system. The Life Review Session is held weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually within organizations one is involved with, such as the Party or labor organization. During the meeting, people reflect on their works and their public and private lives, and criticize each other.164
164_Institute for Unification Education, Dictionary of Knowledge on North Korea (Seoul:
The system of “new Party Life Review Session” re-established by Kim Jong Il in 1967, was devised as a means of strictly dominating and controlling people’s privacy. In the “Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Unitary Ideology System,” declared in 1974, North Korea strengthened its control over the people by stipulating that they should participate actively in these sessions. These sessions were compulsory for students in the second grade or higher, regardless of age and gender.165 Life Review Sessions are carried out by criticizing and reflecting on one’s own mistakes through self-criticism and the criticism of others. It is a system in which people are encouraged to self-inspect and self-criticize how they have pursued their lives during the past week as part of an organization or the people’s unit, as well as to point out others’
mistakes. It is a system that forces people to open up and criticize their own lives. Right after these Life Review Sessions, people are instructed to write what was criticized on that day based on the
“message of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il” in a “Life Review Session notebook.”166 If someone is absent, sometimes he/she has to have a one-on-one “individual session (gaebyulchonghwa)”
with the Party cell secretary.167 Although Life Review Sessions have become somewhat of a formality after the 1990s food crisis, they still work as a strong mechanism to control people’s lives.
165_Ibid., p. 387.
166_NKHR2015000102 2015-05-19.
167_NKHR2015000053 2015-03-10.
The right to privacy of the North Korean people is seriously infringed upon as each Life Review Session forces them to self-inspect, open up, and receive criticism on their private lives, for the rest of their lives.
Lastly, infringement of privacy occurs through the mobilization of “safety agents.” These clandestine “safety agents” operate in all organizations, and monitor colleagues and people of the organization to which they belong. People mostly call them
“spies” or “informers.”168A North Korean defector called these safety agents “MSS agents,” and testified that after Kim Jong Un came to power in 2014, the level of social control greatly increased.169 Safety agents are secretly selected from state institutions, factories and enterprises, farms and the people’s unit, etc. In every organization, one out of every 20 to 30 people is a safety agent.
People who are secretly selected as safety agents make written or verbal oaths that they will report each and every irregularity in the organization to which they belong. Approximately every fifteen days, they submit policy and trend reports of around half a page of A4 paper to their superiors through a secret contact. For example, they secretly report the trends found in the speech and behaviors of people, such as who said what during the labor mobilization period in farming villages, who gained excessive profits through
168_Safety agents are said to be divided into informers who make written oaths and those who make verbal oaths. NKHR2015000040 2015-02-24.
business, whether the head of section or committee chairman embezzled a subsidy, etc. Through these safety agents, every move, and the overall private lives of the people, are controlled and placed under scrutiny.