Bed bugs are the last guests one wishes to bring home from vacation. Following a surge in bed bug infestations in South Korea, the government set in motion a four-week campaign to rid the nation of the pest. With reported cases traced to tourist hotels and public saunas in Incheon, the Seoul metropolitan government launched a new “bed bug Reporting and Management System” and a “Zero bed bug City, Seoul'' initiative to conduct widespread inspections of more than 3,000 public baths, saunas and hotels. In light of the upcoming holiday travel season, ongoing efforts to eradicate bed bugs in popular travel destinations like Seoul are fueling fresh anxieties among the public.

In stark contrast, and though unwelcomed, bed bugs are common problems in ordinary homes and detention facilities in North Korea. Local residents suggest that they are used to co-existing with bed bugs, as “Even if you apply bed bug pesticide in every corner of the house, it’s only a temporary fix, and they’ll reappear after a few days. It’s hard to wipe them out completely,” a source told DailyNK. This simple call to action by the South Korean government highlights the contrast in living conditions between the North and the South.

NORTH KOREANS CO-EXIST WITH BED BUGS

Since bed bugs are known to infest larch trees, which North Korean households often use to make blanket closets and cupboards, they can be found in nearly every home in rural communities. According to DailyNK’s source, bed bugs can easily be spotted climbing walls in rural homes. The source added that in many parts of North Korea, including Hoeryong and other areas in North Hamgyong province, “bed bugs have become chronic,” though “Still, some people can’t sleep at night because of the bed bugs, and they suffer from redness and itchiness where they’ve been bitten.”

Apart from residential homes, detention centers in Hoeryong are also reportedly infested with bed bugs. “In forced labor camps, inmates must work from when they open their eyes in the morning to night, and even when they can shut their eyes at night, they suffer from bed bugs. The inmates have no choice but to put up with it until the end of their sentences because if they ask for measures to be taken, the only thing they’ll get in return is a beating.” Considering how the North Korean authorities would not implement any quarantine or extermination measures to address the bed bug problem affecting ordinary people, “nobody is going to listen to people who’ve been sent to forced labor camps for crimes. Even if the camps are swarming with bed bugs, the authorities don’t care or do anything to help.”

INHUMANE TREATMENT OF NORTH KOREAN PRISONERS

As torturous as routinely living with bed bugs may seem, prisoners in North Korea face far harsher challenges. According to former detainees, North Korean detention centers are commonplace for human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, rape, forced abortions, jail without trial, torture and starvation rations that leave prisoners so hungry some turn to eating insects.

Korea Future, a non-profit organization documenting human rights violations in the DPRK penal system, found that “even 10 years after the UN established a Commission of Inquiry there still is systematic and widespread human rights violations.” According to a report published by the human rights group, the purpose of North Korea’s penal system is neither to detain and rehabilitate criminals, nor to decrease recidivism and increase public safety, but to “isolate persons from society whose behavior conflicts with upholding the singular authority of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un.” The report also described witness testimonies concerning abuses that were personally carried out by North Korean officials, including abortions performed on seven or eight month-pregnant detainees, starvation diets imposed on malnourished detainees that consist of as little as 80 grams of corn a day and forcing detainees to hold stress positions for up to 17 hours a day for 30 days.

Moreover, Korea Future investigators and the United Nations claim that many inmates in North Korea become so dehumanized by the constant abuse that they begin to feel they deserve the cruel treatments. One former inmate told CNN that “When we raise rabbits, we keep them in dens with fences and give them food. (In jail), it was like we were the rabbits, kept in a cell and given food from behind bars … we were not treated as humans, but as some kind of animal … We should not move in the cell and we had to sit with our hands on our sides and as we were not supposed to look up we had to look down. We were not supposed to talk, so all you hear is people’s breathing sound.” Korea Future’s report further commented that detainees were reshaped and re-educated through “forced labour, ideological instruction and punitive brutality with the purpose of compelling unquestioning obedience and loyalty to the Supreme Leader,” and as a result, many did not realize they were being subjected to torture as they did not even have the concept of torture.

Many North Korean refugees we’ve helped can personally attest to this inhumanity. Yet, there have been very few mentions of the irritation of bed bugs, which appear to be commonplace in North Korea and speaks to the severity of suffering most refugees have seen in their lives.