A New Face of North Korean Drug Use: Upsurge in Methamphetamine Abuse Across the Northern Areas of North Korea

Abstract

IntroductionIt is widely accepted that ups and downs in the abuse of narcotics often follow cycles which are similar to those observed with infectious diseases: a sudden upsurge in the popularity of some addictive substance is followed by the decline. These periods of sudden upsurges in use are frequently described as epidemics.Admittedly, some scholars express their doubts as to whether the term is applicable to the rising levels of abuse,1 but the term is used widely and a majority of experts do not see it as problematic.2 Michael Agar, one of the world's most prominent anthropologists, says quite unequivocally: Illicit epidemics happen all time. They are 'epidemics' because a fairly constant and low baseline rate of dependence increases dramatically over a short period of time.3 As typical and oft-cited examples of such epidemics one might mention the methamphetamine epidemics in Japan in the period 1945-55 or the crack epidemics in the United States in the period 1984-93.While conducting research on the everyday life of North Koreans in North Korea of the early 2000s, we came across multiple instances of persuasive evidence which indicates that from around 2005 or 2006, the northern areas of the country (or perhaps the country at large) were hit by a dramatic upsurge in methamphetamine abuse which can be described as a drug epidemic. Recently, this epidemic has reached proportions which are unprecedented for North Korea.The numerous interviews with defectors paint a worrying picture of escalating abuse in what once was one of the world's most strictly supervised and controlled societies. This evidence comes from multiple unconnected sources, and in most cases the testimony of refugees is remarkably consistent.The goal of this article is to outline the ongoing methamphetamine epidemic and to trace its origins and the ways in which it has spread throughout North Korean society. This phenomenon is quite recent, and it has remained underreported and understudied (indeed, almost unknown outside a narrow circle of specialists). This article is based on a number of unstructured in-depth interviews with North Korean refugees currently residing in South Korea (most of the informants come from the borderland North Hamgyong province and leftNorth Korea in recent years). We conducted interviews with 21 recently arrived refugees, most of whom leftNorth Korea after 2007. To protect interviewees, we used numbers (B-01 to B-24). The basic biographical data of the refugees can be found in Table 1.The phenomenon of private production has been mentioned in an interesting article by Yun Minwoo and Eunyoung Kim.4 This article agrees with their conclusions, but elaborates it further while choosing an anthropological, rather than sociological, approach to the problem, with special attention being paid to the emerging culture of the abuse.The present study has some limitations which should be stated clearly. First, our interviewees overwhelmingly come from the northern part of the country. In most cases they are natives of North Hamgyong province. It is not clear to what extent our findings can be applied to other areas of North Korea. Another issue is the nearcomplete absence of statistical data. Due to political and ideological reasons, the very existence of the problem cannot be admitted by the North Korean authorities, so no official data-even in the unlikely case that such data is properly collected-has ever been released. Therefore, the research has to be of a qualitative and ethnographic nature. Nonetheless, in spite of all limitations, our findings indicate that new, potentially socially disruptive developments are taking place in North Korean society. We believe that this new phenomenon should be studied, especially because it has some important political and practical implications.The Old Drug ProblemNorth Korea is often associated with drugs-one might even say that this association is the impoverished country's second claim to international fame/notoriety (the first being its nuclear program, of course). …