to DailyNK According to the information received, some people in North Korea have recently tried a specific and very painful way to overcome painful starvation and livelihood problems: they are deliberately injuring themselves because they can get money to compensate.
In South Hamjung, due to increasingly severe economic hardship, an increasing number of people are deliberately causing more violent “accidents” or throwing themselves in front of vehicles, literally endangering their lives.
One case illustrates well the growing pattern of behavior: a North Korean man visited an acquaintance to recover a large amount of his debt. However, the debtor deliberately provoked the man’s anger and physical provocation. After the man, who had originally visited to find out about his debts, beat up someone from his property, he turned to the police. So not only was the attacker unable to get his money back, but he also had to pay the huge medical bill to escape his prison sentence.
In mid-April, at an unnamed place, a truck named Tso was hit. He did not suffer any life-threatening injuries, but his leg was damaged and he suffered a concussion. The woman almost recalculated. The truck driver demanded 1 million HUF under the title of compensation. The driver refused to pay the amount claiming that he had done nothing wrong. However, local police said someone had been hit by his car, so he had to choose between paying medical expenses or going to jail.
Street photo of Wonsan, Kangwon Province:
According to a source who anonymously told Daily NK, the majority of those who put themselves in life-threatening situations are women who want to do anything in the midst of food shortages to avoid starving their loved ones. That is, the amounts confiscated as compensation appear to be used to buy food for themselves and their families.
The reclusive country has long faced serious food problems, in part due to restrictions imposed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which makes it difficult to trade with its former main partner, China. But in the past two years, extreme weather has also caused severe damage to agriculture. Meanwhile, there were already reports in the past year that some units of the army were suffering from a shortage of food, which indicates that the mainstay of the Finnish system is the armed forces, and the country’s leaders are paying close attention to their supply.
