If she is lucky - if her husband or children can slip away unnoticed to the riverside, nearer the Chinese phone masts - Chae Un-ee can talk to her family each day. “Talk” is perhaps an exaggeration; her loved ones end the call, made on a smuggled handset and SIM card, almost as soon as it begins.
“They have to be very quick because otherwise the phone can be tracked down,” she said. “It’s mainly just to hear their voice and know that they’re okay. If they don’t call me I worry, because the situation is very tense there.”
“There” is North Korea. Chae is not a dissident, not even a defector; only a mother working abroad in China to feed her family. Yet the North’s control of its citizens is such that even this work, in the country’s only significant ally, could result in harsh punishment.
Six decades after its creation, North Korea remains a totalitarian state, controlling not just the expression and movements of its citizens, but their livelihoods, viewing habits and even haircuts.
A United Nations report released last month warned that the “gravity, scale and nature of [human rights] violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”. Full story...
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“They have to be very quick because otherwise the phone can be tracked down,” she said. “It’s mainly just to hear their voice and know that they’re okay. If they don’t call me I worry, because the situation is very tense there.”
“There” is North Korea. Chae is not a dissident, not even a defector; only a mother working abroad in China to feed her family. Yet the North’s control of its citizens is such that even this work, in the country’s only significant ally, could result in harsh punishment.
Six decades after its creation, North Korea remains a totalitarian state, controlling not just the expression and movements of its citizens, but their livelihoods, viewing habits and even haircuts.
A United Nations report released last month warned that the “gravity, scale and nature of [human rights] violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”. Full story...
Related posts:
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