Eight employees in Pyongyang Kwangbok High-tech Product Development and Exchange Company According to information obtained by Daily NK, he was arrested by the Ministry of State Security’s Domestic Counterintelligence Service in late July.
A source in Pyongyang, speaking anonymously, recently told Daily NK that the researchers were arrested on July 28 and that their family members, including their parents and siblings, were taken away in early August.
Local officials from the Ministry of State Security said employees were gathering in the office late at night to watch banned videos and read forbidden books from abroad, the sources said.
Another national security official told the source that the researchers were caught making derogatory insinuations about the bloodline of North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, after viewing a foreign video.
Rumor has it that the researchers were arrested because other employees were overheard whispering that Kim Jong Un was the son of a Korean woman living in Japan and that one of Kim Jong Il’s concubines may have given birth to him – rumors that are being strictly controlled by company management, sources said.
“The company’s fundamental role is to interact with the outside world, a mission that has become increasingly important in recent years as technological cooperation with the international community has expanded. Yet the Ministry of State Security did not hesitate to arrest them for alleged ideological reasons.”
Because the researchers’ work often involved contact with the outside world, they were suspected of leaking state secrets and engaging in anti-state activities, and the authorities arrested them on the spot.
Many fear repercussions of arrest
Other employees are also concerned about being affected by the fallout from the arrests, and some are voluntarily resigning, the people said.
“Since the arrests, all employees have been carefully reviewing their statements and actions. No one has spoken publicly about what happened, but everyone knows what happened.”
Neighbors who know the arrested researchers and their families are in custody also worry about what may happen.
“I’ve never seen an entire family disappear in the middle of the night without any explanation,” one local resident said, according to the source. “This may be Pyongyang, but no one is safe.”
“This incident is a frightening reminder to the people of Pyongyang of how tightly the state monitors and controls them,” the source said. “People say the researchers are being framed by the ministries, who make people confess to crimes they didn’t commit and even the dead tell their stories.”
Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China and other countries, whose identities remain anonymous for security reasons.
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