The loneliest person in North Korea

The loneliest person in North Korea may be a surveillance agent. While surveillance agents are commonly regarded as villains who harass innocent citizens, many of them also live in alienation.

Shin Jungyeon was a police officer in North Korea’s Ministry of People’s Security (MPS) before defecting in 2009. He says, “After I became a part of the surveillance force, all of my friends started to keep their distance. They probably didn’t want their smallest flaws to be nitpicked by someone who must remain more intimate with the state than the people.”

Read more about the North Korean police and the policing structure of the Ministry of People’s Security 

Shin expresses the betrayal he felt by the estrangement from his friends. “While I understood their behavior, I was also incredibly disappointed,” he says. “This is a society of humans after all. How could I just report my childhood friends? I don’t deny the brutality of North Korea’s many security agents, which understandably make ordinary people all the more distrustful. But I cannot describe that feeling of my own best friends distancing themselves from me.”

In some cases, however, it was an increased popularity that heightened the sense of isolation. For Kim Byunghoon, a former MPS surveillance officer who escaped North Korea in 2010, being a surveillance agent meant that he was surrounded by more people than ever before. “People flocked to me. Some even approached me expressing the desire to become a spy themselves,” he says. “But I became even lonelier. I could see that people were approaching me out of a calculated, not genuine, interest.”

“In the beginning of my career, I admit I felt big-headed, because of the preferential treatment I got from everybody. But my skepticism grew as time went by. Many times, I thought of how difficult it was to have a genuine human relationship because of my position as a surveillance agent.”

Seo Jiwoon, a former MPS officer who left North Korea in 2009, expounds on the alienation experienced within North Korean society. “Surveillance police talk even less than ordinary North Koreans, because they can be punished severely for a minute mistake. It isn’t easy for them to socialize because they are frightened about slipping up. Being a police agent was not always a great experience, because one had to be cautious at all times.”

“Constant self-isolation is part of the life of a surveillance agent in North Korea. Of course, there are many who commit immoral deeds, which I don’t intend on defending. All I want to say is that the officers are human beings, who live with feelings of loneliness and isolation. When I was in North Korea, I used to console myself through South Korean dramas, not engaging with people. During the day, I feigned loyalty to the regime. At night, I watched South Korean dramas at home. This was my reality.”

Seo remains cautious about defending surveillance agents. “It is wrong for them to take their stress out on ordinary North Koreans. But the regime demands that the agents keep their watch over the people, who then feel uncomfortable under their eyes — each agent effectively stands in between the state and the people, and lives in a state of isolation.”

The testimonies of former North Korean surveillance agents, while revealing the hidden emotions behind the brutal facade of a police state, do not justify the role they played in perpetuating the totalitarian regime through ruthless monitoring and controls. The defectors unanimously agree that the deeds of state police cannot be excused through appeals to sentiment and emotion. Nevertheless, they also speak to the alienated and alienating existence of surveillance officers not being a simple consequence of choice, but part of the very fabric and nature of North Korea’s totalitarian power.

Reporting by Shin Jun-shik.
Read in Korean.
Translated by Sinae Hong. Edited by Haeryun Kang.
Featured image: Uriminzokkiri (MPS officers in tears after the death of Kim Jong-il in 2011)