According to the Daily NK:
The North Korean authorities are reportedly installing new and additional surveillance cameras on main defection and smuggling routes along the border with China.
Although surveillance cameras have been visible along the North Korean border since 2010, that was limited to a small number of areas. However, sources suggest that there has been a substantial increase already in the first month of 2012.
A source from Musan in North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK yesterday, “Starting this month more surveillance cameras have started being installed to improve security along the border. The surveillance cameras have been brought in large numbers into areas where escapes and smuggling often used to happen.”
The source explained, “The cameras are secured on poles erected 20m back from the riverside in areas controlled by the Border Guards, and the camera wires are connected underground to National Security Agency hideouts. It is so that areas can be monitored from the barracks.”
The work is being primarily undertaken by the National Security Agency, which is responsible for overseeing the stopping of defections. However, the source said, “This work is mostly being done by the NSA, but maybe they and the Border Guards are planning to keep watch over defection and smuggling altogether.”
Moreover, the source went on, “The surveillance cameras have been imported from China; I heard they will expand installation once they get more in.”
Faced with personnel limitations but also orders from Pyongyang demanding that the Sino-North Korean border be even more tightly controlled than it was under Kim Jong Il, it would not be surprising if the front two lines of North Korea’s three-line border security regime (Border Guards and the National Security Agency; the third is Local Reserve Forces) had decided that increasing the use of surveillance cameras might be a cost-effective way to try and increase their effectiveness.
Read the full story here:
NSA Ramping Up Use of Surveillance Cameras
Daily NK
Choi Song Min
2012-02-10
