Bribery and corruption surrounding the deployment of new spring recruits to specialized units of the North Korean army is worse than in previous years.
In particular, officials from the Ministry of Defense’s Military Mobilization Replacement Bureau — similar to South Korea’s Military Manpower Administration — have turned the assignment of new personnel to newly expanded independent intelligence units attached to certain mechanized divisions into a lucrative business opportunity this year.
“Some officials from the Military Mobilization Replacement Bureau have been using the 15-day spring recruitment period for individual duties that began on April 1 to demand hefty bribes from wealthy parents, offering to send their children to the new independent intelligence units,” a Daily NK source in the North Korean military said recently.
Parents in Pyongyang with draft-eligible children have shown considerable interest in these independent units since personnel can serve their military service in relative comfort, learning computers and telecommunication skills without living communally with other soldiers.
Assignments to the independent intelligence units should prioritize recruits with specific skills. In reality, however, money trumps skills, undermining the original intention of these deployments to “cultivate personnel familiar with new technologies to digitize the army.”
With officials taking bribes for these desirable positions, assignments to the new units increasingly depend on the power and economic influence of recruits’ parents.
In fact, bribery and corruption have become so entrenched that officials from the Military Mobilization Replacement Bureau call the spring draft a “golden period where you can make a year’s income.”
“Officials accepted North Korean currency, liquor or cigarettes as bribes through last year, but this year, they are demanding dollars, notebook computers, smartphones and other high-priced electronics,” the source said. “Military Mobilization Replacement Bureau officials first approach certain parents, telling them that only a few spots in the new units are available.”
“New recruits with actual skills or technical prowess are often pushed into ordinary assignments because they lack connections,” the source said. “With the spring draft proceeding this way, the plan to cultivate skilled personnel to digitize the army is unlikely to succeed.”
The North Korean authorities have repeatedly emphasized efforts to eradicate corruption during the draft, but even officials from the Military Mobilization Replacement Bureau — which oversees recruitment efforts — widely cover for each other, tacitly approving and enabling corruption.
“The core purpose of the latest draft is to cultivate technical personnel in preparation for modern warfare, but now it’s become a bribery channel where money and power intersect,” the source said. “Bribery is getting worse, not better.”
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