Year: 2025

North Korean authorities are confiscating winter coats lined with dog fur — considered a luxury item — from civilians and giving them to under-supplied soldiers, residents told Radio Free Asia. The reasons for this campaign that began last month seem to be two-fold: To provide warm gear for army personnel in North Korea’s frigid winters, and to keep civilians from looking like they are wearing winter military uniforms. “Social security agents have been stopping men wearing dog fur coats on the streets and confiscating them on the spot,” a resident in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for personal safety. “This is the first time they’ve done something like this,” he said. “They say it is because civilians cannot wear military uniforms.” In fact, aside from their warmth, the coats’ similarity to military uniforms is one reason why they are popular with civilians, he said. “It symbolizes authority,” the resident said. RELATED STORIES ‘Rooster hairstyle,’ see-thru sleeves now banned in North Korea North Korea bans leather coats to stop citizens from copping leader’s iconic look North Korea punishes women for wearing shorts, declaring them ‘capitalist fashion’ But few North Koreans can afford them. Only the wealthy can buy the specially-made coats. High quality dog fur-lined coats can cost up to 1 million won (US$50), more than the annual salary at most government-assigned jobs, the resident said. “They are the best winter clothing because the entire inner layer is lined with dog skin and fur,” he said. “They are expensive and can only be purchased from a specialty clothing maker.” Supply chain collapse North Korea’s nearly 1-million strong military has been chronically under-supplied for decades. Ever since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which provided aid to the country, North Korea’s economy has suffered, and the military has struggled to equip its own personnel. A North Korean soldier wears a dog fur coat along the Yalu River in 2014.(KBS News) In principle, North Korean soldiers should receive summer uniforms once a year and winter uniforms every two years, but supplies are erratic. Things are so dire that last year the military began requiring soldiers to return their uniforms when they are discharged, so that they could be given to other soldiers. With the military lacking adequate clothes and soldiers shivering in the cold, it’s a bad look for wealthy civilians to be out and about in their toasty dog fur-lined coats, the resident said. “Only one in 50 men wear these dog fur-lined coats in the city of Unsan,” he said. “I’ve seen it worn by merchants who drive from place to place selling goods, and by the husbands of wealthy women.” With men required to work for a pittance at government-assigned jobs, most families are really supported by the women, who run small businesses. Women who become successful and wealthy, or who were already born into wealth, can afford to splurge on an expensive coat for their husbands. Not for the average soldier In the northwestern province of North Pyongan, the dog fur-lined coats are now a rarity, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity. Civilians “used to show off by wearing their dog-fur coats, but the authorities started confiscating them,” he said. “These kinds of coats are not supplied to the average soldier, but to officers and soldiers stationed at guard posts close to the border with South Korea.” He said the authorities ask the civilians how they can wear such a luxury when there are soldiers guarding the front line that shiver in tattered second-hand uniforms. “The soldiers have to participate in winter training,” he said, which means they have to “lie on their bellies on frozen ground, so these dog fur coats are essential to them.” He said the agents confiscating the coats tell their owners that their clothing will go military units on the front. “Some of these men protest against this, but they hold their tongues because they don’t want to be punished for speaking out.” Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

After nearly a decade covering China as an NPR correspondent, Emily Feng returned to Washington, D.C. Her reporting spanned a period of profound social and economic change : Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power; the Xinjiang detention camps; Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and the crackdown against it; China’s strict zero-COVID policy; and the country’s transformation into a surveillance state. Ultimately, Feng was caught in the crossfire of the U.S.-China rivalry — her visa was unexpectedly rejected, forcing her to relocate to Taiwan for the final years of her reporting. Her new book, “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom,” is a reflection on the search for identity and belonging under Xi Jinping’s rule. It will be published March 18. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. RFA: You moved to China in 2015 at the age of 22. What was the biggest question you had, and did you find the answer? Emily Feng: I wanted to see China for myself. I had visited family in the south a few times, but I was curious about how the country was changing, especially under Xi Jinping, who was then in his third year as leader. I wondered if China would continue opening up — economically, politically and culturally. I had just started consuming more Chinese-language culture, and I was interested in how cultural production would evolve. The day I arrived was about a week after the July 9 crackdown on human rights lawyers. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a watershed moment in Chinese politics. It shaped the China I would experience over the next several years. RFA: The July 9 crackdown shocked many. What were its lasting effects? Emily Feng: It had systemic impacts. Many influential lawyers lost their licenses — people who had been shaping ideas about China’s legal and political future. It wasn’t just about individuals; it rippled across corporations, organizations and society as a whole. A security guard watches from a tower at a detention facility in Yarkent county in China’s Xinjiang region on March 21, 2021.(Ng Han Guan/AP) RFA: Were there any key moments during this period when you felt that social control was tightening? Emily Feng: I started thinking about this issue because of what was happening in Xinjiang. In 2017, I began reporting on Xinjiang, and at first, I had only heard about the existence of some camps. But as I continued following the story, I realized that the Xinjiang issue and the situation of the Uyghurs had much broader significance for the entire country. It wasn’t just a problem in the western region — it was connected to policies on ethnicity, identity, language and culture at the time. It also tied into a larger question of what kind of nation China and the Communist Party were trying to create. So, starting from Xinjiang as an entry point, I began to ask: Why does identity play such a central role in contemporary Chinese politics? RFA: How did you build trust with the people you interviewed, and how did you weigh the risks, both for yourself and for them? Emily Feng: It’s a daily conversation — with editors, with yourself, and, most importantly, with your sources. Many of my stories weren’t about government leaks; they were about personal experiences. Earning trust meant showing that I was willing to listen and making the effort to be there. Sometimes, it took years for people to open up. One Uyghur family I interviewed, for example, only felt comfortable sharing their full story after they had processed what had happened to them. In China, I might have to spend a lot of time exploring 10 different stories, but there’s only a 20% or even just a 10% chance of success. RFA: Did you ever face danger yourself? Emily Feng: Yes. I was investigated for my work, and my news organization was audited as part of the U.S.-China media tensions. Many reporting trips were cut short, and interviewees were sometimes detained while I was speaking with them. People I talked to risked losing jobs or public benefits. It’s not a black-and-white situation, but it’s something I had to be aware of when reporting in China. A worker wearing protective gear and standing behind a fence in a residential area under COVID-19 lockdown talks with a man on a scooter in the Xuhui district of Shanghai on June 16, 2022.(Hector Retamal/AFP) RFA: Your reporting often focuses on human stories. Under Xi’s rule, how is the younger generation navigating identity? Emily Feng: For me, identity was the central theme in all the stories I found most interesting in China. It’s also why I decided to collect many of them and write a book about it. I argue that identity is key not only to understanding this vast country, which is so important economically and geopolitically, but also to understanding how China sees itself and, consequently, what its future holds. Every decade or so, there’s this question: What kind of country can China become? The expectations of what Chinese people thought their country would become 10 years ago — before COVID, before the economic downturn — are vastly different from what a 20-year-old in Beijing or Shanghai envisions today. The theme of identity also allowed me to give a personal twist to these big, weighty questions that often dominate newsroom discussions. What gets lost in much of that coverage is the fact that these issues affect real people. Despite being a country so far away from the U.S., I wanted to humanize these stories, to make readers ask, ‘What if this were happening to my friend?’ I wanted to help people feel what it’s like to live in their world, because that’s what I’ve lost since leaving China — and, I think, what we’ve all lost now that there are fewer reporters on the ground in mainland China. RFA: In this era of tighter control, how do people carve out personal or ideological space? Emily Feng: It’s increasingly difficult….