I am supposed to watch North Korean society and whenever possible, make sense of the trends and changes that I and other observers see. I do my best, but on occasion, I stumble across something that I positively cannot explain.

One of the mysteries of present-day North Korean life is the remarkably low level of violent crime and the near absence of a connection between crime and business activities in the country.

…it is very surprising how rarely robbery, rape and murder are mentioned by my interlocutors

Many North Koreans would probably disagree with this statement. They believe that crime