By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter


North Korea has strengthened legal measures to protect private property in a recent revision of its criminal law, while stiffening penalties for anti-state crimes, according to a copy obtained by a local broadcaster.




North Korea experts in Seoul said the revision, the fifth since 1950, can be understood as Pyongyang’s efforts to achieve two goals at the same time _ safeguarding its communist regime and boosting its impoverished economy.

The April revision, the first in five years, nearly doubled the total number of clauses from 161 to 303, with emphasis being placed on social and economic areas.

On the economic front, Pyongyang increased the imprisonment for those taking others’ assets by force from a maximum 10 years to more than 10 years. The revision also stiffened penalties for criminals convicted of evading taxes and infringing copyright, a move widely seen as an effort to fix an economy that has been ruined by a central planning system.

``Since the market reform policies began on July 1, 2002, the Pyongyang regime has tried to increase agricultural and industrial output,’’ Paik Hak-soon, director of North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, said in a telephone interview. ``Those policies, however, brought about negative results as well. The high inflation rate sometimes goes up to more than 1,000 percent and the income gap between different occupations is widening further. Kim Jong-il is now trying to prevent social problems caused by economic difficulties from drastically undermining his regime.’’

Unconfirmed reports of rioting in protest of food shortages have been made recently.

In the revised code, the North has adopted harsher penalties for anti-state crimes by abolishing the ceiling of sentences for those participating in armed riots. Insurgents formerly received imprisonment terms falling somewhere between five and 10 years, but the new code replaces it with more than five years. Those instigating people to engage in an armed riot will now face life imprisonment or the death penalty, a change from imprisonment of more than 10 years or the death penalty.

If convicted as a defector of betraying the Stalinist regime by fleeing to other countries, he or she will face a prison term of more than five years, a change from five to 10 years in prison.

The code, however, cut the jail term from three to two years for those leaving the country for non-political reasons, such as earning money in China. The North is openly calling on those ``economic migrants’’ to come back, promising to pardon them.

Keeping anti-state broadcast materials or sharing them with others has become a new subject for punishment under the revised law. Experts believe the clause was created to prohibit North Koreans from tuning to foreign channels, including the U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia that plans to bolster its broadcast next year with the endorsement in October of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Newly created items in the law also include punishment for what it calls culturally ``obscene’’ activities, such as distributing CDs, videotapes and music, a sign that it is worried about capitalistic influence on its isolated society.

Professor Ryoo Kihl-jae of the Graduate School of North Korean Studies at Kyungnam University, however, questioned Pyongyang’s intentions for the revisions of the criminal law, saying they could be considered only a formality.

``I don’t think the criminal law is important in North Korea,’’ Ryoo said in another telephone interview. ``They can punish whoever they want by using other means. Pyongyang is using the revision as a showcase to make the world aware of the reforms of its legal system.’’

im@koreatimes.co.kr