North Korean Soldiers Scrounge for Cigarette Butts

Each soldier is supposed to get 15 packs per month in rations, but the higher ranks skim off the top.

By Moon Sung Whui for RFA Korean

The North Korean army is ordering soldiers to stop scrounging the streets for cigarette butts to smoke even as commanders keep some of the soldiers’ monthly cigarette rations for themselves, members of the country’s military told Radio Free Asia.

The subject was broached during a video conference of the General Political Bureau of the army on March 14, a member of the military in the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The meeting very seriously discussed the issue of lax discipline among commanders and soldiers,” the military member said, adding that desertion and theft were also brought up as examples of lax discipline.

“At this meeting, soldiers were strongly warned against picking up cigarette butts,” he said. “It was officially declared that any soldier caught picking up cigarette butts on the street would be punished with revolutionary labor for at least three months,” a reference to getting the toughest chores.

According to the military member, people sifting through cigarette butts to salvage unsmoked tobacco is a recent problem, but it’s a breach of decorum for a uniformed soldier to do it.

“Each soldier is provided with 15 packs of cigarettes per month, but the commanders take them all up. So, the soldiers are left picking up the butts because they don’t have any cigarettes to smoke,” he said.

“In the past, it was just the lower-ranked soldiers who looked for butts, but now even the higher-ranked soldiers are doing it too.”

Cigarette rations have declined, another member of the military from the same province told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“In the case of the border guards, each soldier used to be supplied with 15 packs of Baekseung-brand cigarettes per month, but since last fall, they have only been supplied with 10 packs,” he said.

“After the commanders skim off the top, the soldiers are left only 7 packs per month,” he explained.

He said that every afternoon the leaders of the border guards send two soldiers to go collect cigarette butts because every unit has a shortage of cigarettes.

“Even the border guard units, which are supposedly well-supplied, is in this state, and situations are much worse with other infantry units,” the second source said. “What is more troubling is that this year, even female soldiers have been spotted out on the streets, picking up cigarette butts.”

Male units of the border guard are after the tobacco, but the female guards are after the filters, which contain cotton that can be used to make clothes or ceremonial blankets for newlyweds, a customary gift at weddings, he said.

So the women — who aren’t allowed to smoke at all — trade the tobacco they collected in exchange for the filters that the men collected. With the money they get for selling the filters, they buy food for their unit.

“The supply chain for soldiers is in such a sad state that soldiers are selling cigarette butts for food,” he said. “I wonder if threats like revolutionary labor can even work against these soldiers.”

Translated by Clare S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.