“North Korean Border Guards”, Copyright: Associated Press, 2011

Author: Doctoral Student Charles A. von Denkowski, B.A. (Police Adm.), M.A. (Criminology+Police Sc.)

Lecturer of International Criminology, University of Vechta/Germany, Faculty of Social Sc. + Philosophy

Memberships: International State Crime Research Consortium (ISCRC.org) + Asian Criminological Society

Lecture at the 6th Annual Conference of the Asian Criminological Society, presented in absence of the author by Prof. Dr. A. Minnaar, University of South Africa, Sunday, 29th June 2014 Osaka University of Commerce, Osaka/Japan

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Doctoral Supervisor

Prof. Dr. iur. Thomas Feltes M.A., Ruhr-University, Bochum/Germany

General Objective

Analysis of characteristics, patterns, motives and related law

of the North Korean Guk-Ka Anjeon Bowie Bu’s p o l i c i n g (=State Security Department, hereinafter named SSD)

and of its formal external and internal social control

Figure 1: The SSD´s Headquarter, Pjöngyang/NK, Source: Google 2

Development of a theoretical model of the SSD´s p o l i c i n g

as a key factor or at least as a factor beside others that facilitates

--legitimate security for the North Korean government.

--illegal detentions and surveillance that violate the NK

constitution and international human rights laws.

--torture, killings and state-led violence against NK

defectors, Khotjebbi children (beggars), political oppon.,

Christians, which in sum leads to Crimes Against

Humanity + possibly Genocide (against Korean refugee

womens´ Koryo-Chinese nasciturae by forced abortions).

--state-organized illicit trade (methamphetamine and

nuclear and ballistic missile materials + technology).

--insecurity of Chinese border provinces + disharmony

in the Northeast Asian region, including Russian parts.

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Main question How does the SSD´s policing facilitate state criminality and how could these state crimes be externally controlled? Sub-questions -Which policing functions does the SSD perform? How does it produce security and formal social control? How do its organizational chart and its chain of command work? -Which factors facilitate violations of national and international laws by the SSD´s policing? -Does the SSD own a special internal culture like an esprit de corps or a kind of cop or police culture, based on informal norms and values? -Which external measures could control the SSD´s state criminality? Literature review No specific study has been published in English language, but Korean academic literature exists. It will be translated by text interpreting software, but there remain concerns regarding the software’s accuracy 娃 loss of information?!

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-Integrated Model of the Control of State Crime (Jeffrey I. ROSS, 2000)

-Integrated Theory of Internat. Law Viol. (Dawn L. ROTHE/Christopher W. MULLINS, 2006/2009)

-Torture-101-Model (Martha K. HUGGINS, 2003/2012)

-3-i-Model of Intelligence-Led Policing (Jerry RATCLIFFE, 2008)

-Re-Defined Theory of Embedded Autonomy (Sonny Shiu-Hing LO, 2009)

-Several criminological theories (Institutional Anomy Theory, Rational Choice Theory,

Routine Activity Approach, General Strain Theory + others)

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⇒ Research Design: mixed ⇢ 40% juridical + 60% empirical research

阿

Semi-structured in-depth interviews

-former SSD/police personnel

-victims of SSD/police

-experts

-focus group

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General Problem of Applied Methods of Police Science in the case of the North Korean SSD

RESEARCH on a secret police, on its mankind crimes and human rights violations

depends highly on field access. In general, intelligence agencies’ and secret polices’ strategies of secrecy (even in Western democracies!)

c o l l i d e

with a free police science’s demand for data and field access.

How shall police science research the police culture and the policing and its consequen-

ces, for example, regional insecurity and disharmony by use of qualitative methods

-without field access to local sites?

-without access to original case files?

-without the possibility of participation in the policing itself by observing arrests, interrogations,

by attending border patrols?

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Researching the SSD´s policing meets big hurdles

-academic literature, written in English language is rare

-literature written in Korean and Chinese exists, but language skills are required for reading it

-access to reliable sources for data collection by semi-structured interviews: a very sensitive issue

-measuring the reliability of the interviewees (truth of background, former function in NK, anger against NK)

Sources for semi-structured interviews with former SSD/police personnel

Approx. 22.000 former North Koreans –so called defectors - live in the Republic of Korea

+ some thousands in the US, Europe and other parts of the world, but their personal exploration

faces several limits, for example:

-access to defectors (even in ROK difficult)

-verification of their former duties

inside the NK security apparatus

-fears of speaking out will cause a threat

of being killed by SSD´s foreign agents

-fear of re-victimization/re-traumatization

e v e n among former state-offenders (!) 8

⇒Semi-structured interviews with:

1 former SSD-Colonel (guerilla-warfare unit + body guard)

2 former NK police officers

6 experts (ROK authorities, science, NGO) 1 focus group with other 8 experts (35 minutes, written notes only)

--- SSD: culture of total surveillance (chain of command: leader ⇢ villages) even

within the agency directed towards each comrade by each comrade,

no law legitimates the SSD´s policing, direct orders by leader possible,

SSD secures rule of Marshall + workers party, more power than police

--- Police: close cooperation with SSD (desk in a lot of police stations, transfer of cases,

guarding of prisoners ⇢ aiding+ abetting SSD´s formal social control !), but

much less powerful role inside the NK security architecture than SSD

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⇒ State criminality caused by the SSD´s border policing:

unlawful executions, torture, rape, forced consumption of feces and urine in

detention cell of police station, unlawful violence below the quality of torture

+

murder of unborn children by forced abortions after repatriation of defectors

from PR China (j u r i d i c a l l y: suspicion of Genocide vs. Koryo-Chinese/Joseoncuk ?)

(modus operandi: beating + kicking a pregnant’s womb + forced abortion in hospital, then returned to cell)

⇒ Consequences of state crimes for S O M E SSD/police-offenders: traumatization

(example: crying former NK police member, police interviewee No. 3)

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⇒Semi-structured interviews with: 1 former SSD-border guards’ company commander

1 former SSD-counterspy + 1 former SSD lieutenant

1 former member of the political bureau, who also had served in a high-ranking police supervision function

-Illicit activities across North Korea’s borders: -transfer of poppy + crystal methamphetamine to China

-defections to South Korea via China (criminalized by NK law)

-transfer of food, fuel, SIM-cards, Chinese cellphones,

DVDs, Bibles and other items to NK from China

-transfer of data to South Korea via China from

NK by defectors and spies (foreign espionage against NK)

-trade with conventional arms via NK seaports

-human trafficking of women to China

-cross-border transfer of counterfeited goods to China

-SSD´s espionage in China + hunt for defectors

-supplies for NK ballistic missile progr. from Khan-Netw.

-repatriations of caught defectors back to NK

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-The SSD´s policing of North Korea´s sea and land borders:

-policing > not intelligence-led, but mix of public and secret policing tactics

-SSD performs customs function and oversees border guards by civilian + military personnel, who perform customs duties with the main target of detecting

spies, 5 SSD bureaus in charge of customs

-border crossings: visual inspections only, no scanning technology, incoming

vehicle control by visual + physical inspections, no dogs

-3-lines-of-border control at Sino-Korean and Russian-Korean border:

1st frontline - border guards foot patrols, fences, bunkers, sometimes with dogs

2nd line – police foot patrols behind borderland 3rd line – borderland villages: unarmed politically trustful civilians (patrols+reports)

-corruption: not a big problem in NK customs section, but among border guards. sometimes customs officers take a higher amount of the customs rate, than ordered to by official regulations

-if a bible or items of espionage are found, person that carried them is to be handed over to civilian SSD or to police (in less serious cases), who perform sanctioning (“it’s a clean job”)

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-NK´s state-organized drug trade: normally performed by boat without customs´ check, China does not accept NK´s Opium trade, rivers used

-SSD: also in sea harbors, where NK illicit trade with conventional arms and narcotics is applied by the state´s offices, SSD even escorts the delivery of these arms loads

-SSD customs section´s staff education: special education, guidelines from SSD´s HQ, central education institution

-SSD´s border guard culture: special food rations, popular among young men, higher level of corruption than inside customs section (coincidence: popularity + possibilities of accepting bribes while on border patrol?

-higher ranks in SSD: depending on politically trustful + powerful family background

-not the SSD, but the external business department issues licenses for border trade, the license has to be shown when crossing border to China, looks like an ID-card

-SSD: no permanent contact with Chin. customs officers, only officers authoriz. to cross border to CN for liasion

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⇒ First results and the confirmation of the research design allow project to continue

⇒ Research design until the end of the project will suffer from a lack of

-participation in SSD’s policing as social reality of formal social control -in-depth interviews with serving SSD’s personnel -the researcher’s language skills regarding Korean and Mandarin

⇒ Sample: At present (June 2014), too small. More former SSD personnel has already

been contacted for collecting more semi-structured in-depth interviews.

Quality can be improved with interviewees from different functions of SSD.

⇒ Despite small sample -some information of interviewees match with NGOs´ knowledge about

SSD´s policing -quality of sample is good: former border guard company commander, who defected 2006 + former political bureau member, defected in 2011

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Methodological issues

1. Thesis project i s feasible – despite some special limitations of data collection

and lack of a) field access to local sites, b) field personnel and c) experts in NK

2. Research design: confirmed

3. Ethical boundaries and high morale personal obligations for the researcher

4. The language barrier (Korean + Mandarine) is a problem

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⇒ The SSD´s Border Policing produces ineffective + insufficient formal

social control, because in particular it…

1….consists mostly of man-made policing by foot patrols, only sometimes assisted by dogs 2. …suffers from a lack of state-of-the-art technological equipment 3. …suffers from an unclear rate of cases of corruption that is performed by private + state persons 4. …can cause severe human rights violations + Crimes Against Humanity (Genocide?) 5. …facilitates the modus operandi of privately-organized cross-border criminality 6. …supports state-organized criminality willfully, when ordered to from “Pjöngyang”: -the North Korean government’s state-organized illegal repairing-service for conventional arms -the North Korean government’s illegal trade with methamphetamine + of relevant pre-cursors 7. …endangers the PR China’s border provinces’ public security + harmony 8. …in case of an NK system collapse threatens the world’s well-being, because of the risk of undetected WMD-proliferation (chem/nucl)

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⇒ For the North Korean government

⇒ For the government of the PR China

⇒ For the Northeast Asian Criminology

⇒ For the UN/International Community

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-Gause, Ken (2012): Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment. An Examination of the North Korean Police State, Commitee fro

Human Rights for North Korea (ed.), Washington D.C.

-Huggins, Martha K. (2002): Moral Universes of Tortures and Murderers, Albany Law Review, pp. 525-537.

-Huggins, Martha K. (2012): State Torture: Torture 101 - Interviewing Perpetrators, Discovering Facilitators, Theorizing Cross-nationally,

State Crime - Journal of the International State Crime Initiative, 2012, 1-47.

-Lo, Sunny Shiu-Hing (2009): The Politics of Cross-Border Crime in Greater China, M.E. Sharpe Inc., Armonk, New York, London.

-Ratcliffe, Jerry (2008): Intelligence-Led Policing, Wilan Publishing: Cullopmton, Devon.

-Rothe, Dawn L. (2009): State Criminality. The Crimes of All Crimes, Lexington Books, Lanham, Boulder/CO.

-Rothe, Dawn L./Mullins, Christopher W. (2009): Toward a Criminology forInternational Criminal Law: An Integrated Theory of

International Law Violations, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, pp. 97-118.

-Ross, Jeffrey I. (2000): Introduction, in: Controlling State Crime, 2nd ed., Jeffrey I. Ross (ed.), pp. 3 – 34, Transaction Press, New

Brunswick and London/UK.

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…and very many thanks again to Professor Minnaar, who has been so kind to present my lecture today,

applause please for him!

Contact the author:sibpalki@gmx.de

Source: Asha´s Maritime News, 2012

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