Total Surveillance: Living Under Watchful Eyes in North Korea

To be born in North Korea is to be watched. The country, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, emerged after the Second World War when the Korean Peninsula was divided between Soviet influence in the north and American influence in the south following the peninsula’s liberation from the occupying Japanese Imperial army, similar to how Nazi Germany was divided after the war.

North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, promised liberation from foreign domination and a society built on equality, unity, and collective purpose. Under the language of revolution, a new system formed where the individualism was ruthlessly crushed.

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From its earliest days, the North Korean leadership believed that ideological purity required constant vigilance. This belief shaped the creation of the inminban, the neighbourhood watch units that still structure daily life. Every household belongs to one of these committees. Officially they exist for community support and local organisation. In reality, they act as a surveillance network. Small details become evidence. A stranger visiting at an unusual hour. A family eating more rice than appears rationed. A child who does not smile brightly enough at the mandatory portrait of Kim Il Sung displayed in every home. Weekly reports travel upward, noting patterns and attitudes.

Schools and workplaces mirror this structure. In North Korea, most people live in government-assigned housing and work in government-assigned jobs. Here, self-criticism meetings form part of the weekly rhythm, similar to China’s “struggle sessions”.

Citizens are expected to stand before their peers and confess mistakes, doubts, or lack of ideological enthusiasm. Children, from their earliest school years, memorise revolutionary doctrine and are encouraged to report family members who question official slogans. Teachers and supervisors monitor not only academic or workplace performance but political spirit. A system built around such rituals inevitably produces performers rather than thinkers because honesty becomes too costly to practise.

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Families learn the rules quickly. A remark made too freely at the dinner table might be repeated by a child during a school activity. A neighbour might overhear a joke. A relative might slip under pressure during questioning.

Defectors, the rare North Koreans who manage to flee the country illegally, usually by crossing the northern border into China and spending months moving through underground networks before eventually reaching South Korea or another safe country, often explain that in North Korea you learn not to think out loud, not even within your own home. Their stories are some of the only reliable windows into daily life, because foreign media is banned and ordinary citizens cannot speak freely.

For the average North Korean, the boundary between the public and the private erodes until both feel equally unsafe, revealing how fear becomes one of the cheapest and most effective tools of governance.

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Formal state security expands this environment. The Ministry of State Security, North Korea’s primary intelligence agency, recruits informers across all professions. Even a minor official can alter the fate of another person.

One of the most feared practices is collective punishment. If a citizen is accused of disloyalty, their parents, siblings, and children may also face punishment. In some cases, consequences extend across three generations (for instance, your grandchild could be punished for a crime that you supposedly committed). When guilt becomes hereditary, individual responsibility disappears entirely and what remains is a quest for survival.

Crucially, the state does not need to monitor every conversation or every home. It only needs people to believe such monitoring is possible. Cameras and technology matter less than uncertainty. Citizens begin to censor themselves. They adjust their posture, tone, and eye contact. They rehearse what they plan to say carefully before speaking. They avoid speaking at all. A society organised around suspicion requires no perfect enforcement. It requires only the expectation of consequence.

Despite this, North Korea does not present surveillance as repression. The state frames it as patriotism. Children who report their parents are honoured for their loyalty. Workers who expose insufficient ideological zeal are praised as defenders of the revolution. The ideal citizen becomes the one willing to protect the “purity” of the system even at the expense of personal relationships. When loyalty is measured through betrayal, moral judgment no longer belongs to the individual. It has been stolen by the state.

The emotional toll is profound. North Koreans learn to perform belief. They attend mass rallies, repeat slogans, demonstrate enthusiasm, and display the portraits of their leaders with visible devotion. Real emotions retreat into the smallest internal spaces. Even within families, silence becomes the safest language. Some citizens internalise the demands of the system so completely that they begin to watch their own thoughts for signs of disloyalty. Others withdraw entirely, speaking only when necessary. A society forced to act out conviction eventually loses the capacity to feel it.

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Every so often, cracks appear. Smuggled radios catch Chinese or South Korean broadcasts. USB drives brought across the border carry foreign dramas, films, or news reports. North Koreans who encounter these hidden glimpses of the outside world describe a profound shock. They see people choosing their own clothes, speaking freely, buying food in open markets, and travelling without permission.

For some, these glimpses ignite a private rebellion. For most, the lifelong habits of caution remain.

To foreign visitors, North Korea presents an image of order and unity. Streets appear neat. Public spaces feel choreographed. Crowds move in synchronised displays of loyalty. The presentation is carefully controlled like a Potemkin village writ large.

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What visitors do not see is the price of this harmony. It is a society in which every gesture is calculated, every sentence weighed, and trust becomes a dangerous luxury. When trust disappears, genuine community disappears with it, leaving behind only performance layered over silence.

In its most extreme form, North Korea shows what happens when an ideology promising equality, unity, and liberation is allowed to consume the individual completely.

Surveillance does not begin with violence. It begins with beautiful language about safety, solidarity, and moral purpose.

It ends with a population afraid to think freely in their own homes. This is the natural endpoint of any system where the individual yields fully to the collective. It stands as a stark reminder from history that when a state asks for total ideological devotion, it eventually demands the human spirit itself.