North Korean House of Cards

d. Ministry of People’s Security
The MPS (In-min Bo-an-bu) 608 functions primarily as the national police in
North Korea. According to the Public Security Regulation Law, adopted by the SPA
in 1992 and modified in 1999, the MPS is tasked with defending the sovereignty
and the socialist system of North Korea, as well as protecting the constitutional
rights, lives, and assets of the people. 609 Within this broad mandate, the Ministry’s
usual police missions range from maintaining law and order, investigating common
criminal cases, and controlling traffic to overseeing the country’s non-political prison
system. It also maintains organizations responsible for protecting the country’s
railroads; key government facilities and officials; as well as resident registration (birth,
death, marriage, change of address); the preservation and management of secret
documents; and the construction and security of sensitive and national infrastructure
projects. Like the SSD, the MPS is also responsible for conducting political
surveillance, though political suspects are remanded to the SSD. In 2009, the KWP
Administration Department expanded the Ministry’s criminal jurisdiction to include
the investigation of offenses committed by the military, SSD, public prosecutors,
and cadres of courts in every area except anti-regime crimes. 610
The MPS maintains a large organization of approximately 210,000 personnel
extending down to the provincial, county, district, city, and village levels. 611 MPS
police officers are the most visible face of the North Korean public security
apparatus, routinely conducting checks on travelers to ensure they possess appropriate
travel documents, maintaining checkpoints to inspect buses, trucks, and trains,
and performing regular police patrols.
608 Some defectors use the short hand An-jeon-bu to refer to the regular police. See David Hawk,
The Hidden Gulag, 2nd ed., op. cit.
609 The Public Security Regulation was adopted as the 22nd Decision of the SPA Standing
Committee on December 28, 1992 and modified as the 540th Decree of the SPA Standing Committee
on March 24, 1999.
610 This includes the ability to search the homes of suspects from these organizations.
611 Seo Jae-jean and Kim Kap-sik, A Study of the North Korean Ministry of People’s Security, op. cit.
An additional 100,000 civilian staff are attached to the Ministry, bringing its total size to 310,000.
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