Border smuggling halt forces North Koreans to farm tiny plots
Tightened smuggling enforcement along North Korea’s border with China has wiped out a key source of income for border communities in November 2026. The herb smuggling crackdown has ruined once-wealthy traders and pushed families who lived off medicinal herb sales onto tiny mountain farm plots. A woman in her 50s in Kim Jong Suk County, […]
The closure of North Korea's border with China due to intensified smuggling enforcement has left many families struggling to make ends meet. In November 2026, a woman in her 50s from Kim Jong Suk County, Ryanggang province, attempted suicide after losing her fortune in a smuggling operation. She had once been a prosperous entrepreneur, known as a donju, who profited from the trade of medicinal herbs and pine nuts to China.
However, she was caught trying to smuggle minerals hidden within the herbs and pine nuts, which led to a full investigation by multiple North Korean agencies. Unable to recover her losses, she turned to farming tiny plots of land, but even that proved insufficient to sustain her. The herb smuggling crackdown has disrupted a long-standing system where villagers gathered wild medicinal herbs, sold them to middlemen, and then resold them to well-off traders in China.
With the supply chain broken, many border households have been forced to switch to small-scale farming, which requires minimal investment. These families are now relying on the forest rangers for permission to farm on state lands, as their alternative sources of income have vanished. If the smuggling trade does not resume, the dire economic situation among the poorest families at the border remains a pressing concern.
Written by urgent.news from Daily NK's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
