By Hyo-Jin Paik
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea– A firing squad publically executed a North Korean factory worker for making a phone call to a friend in South Korea using an illegal mobile phone.

Although South Korea’s Unification Ministry stated that they could not immediately confirm the execution, the execution is said to have taken place back in late January in the North’s eastern coastal city of Hamhung.

The executed factory worker was accused of recounting rice price and other information concerning the current living conditions in North Korea to a friend who defected to South Korea several years ago.

Despite the introduction of an advanced network partnered with Cairo-based Orascom Telecom back in 2008, North Korea maintains tight restrictions on mobile phone uses.

Most North Koreans who do manage to make international phone calls do so by using networks in neighboring China.

There is an estimated 10,000 North Koreans living by the North Korea-China border who possess Chinese mobile phones, which is illegal.

North Korea has launched a crackdown in February on potential defectors and those who use Chinese mobile phones, a measure which made it harder for North Koreans to make calls abroad asking for help in terms of sneaking out of the country.

North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security announced over a government-run television network that “[North Korea] possess[es] a world-class striking force and means to protect our security that have not yet been…made public” and that Pyongyang has the means to crush “reactionary forces.”

The joint statement by the Ministries also said that the main focus of the crackdown on defectors is so that “people [are] educated about the traitors to the nation,” adding that the defectors will be “mercilessly dealt with.”

North Korea is reportedly to have purchased expensive cell phone tracking and jamming devices and have installed the equipment in various cities like Shinuiju, Heysan and Hweryong, which all lie near the North Korea-China or North-South Korea borders.

The defector who received the North Korean factory worker’s phone call in South Korea may have been working for the South Korean government.

For more information, please see:

Eurasia Review – North Korea Cracks Down on Mobile Phones – 20 February 2010

The Press Associated – Korean executed for ‘illegal’ phone – 4 March 2010

Toronto Star – N. Korean man executed for cell phone call – 4 March 2010