Mrs. Song never figured out which neighbor blabbed. Her husband’s remark was quickly reported to the head of the inminban, the neighborhood watchdogs, who in turn passed on the information to the Ministry for the Protection of State Security. This ominously named agency is effectively North Korea’s political police. It runs an extensive network of informers. By the accounts of defectors, there is at least one informer for every fifty people—more even than East Germany’s notorious Stasi, whose files were pried open after German reunification.
