North Korea has expelled a Chongjin railway official from the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea in an October 2026 party school bribery case. The wife of the official he pushed aside exposed the scheme in a formal complaint.
The official at the Chongjin Railway Bureau had paid large bribes to win a seat at the Ministry of Railways’ party school. A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK on Monday that authorities punished him on Oct. 8. He lost his place at the school, his party membership and his post in a single ruling.
Two bureau officials who took his bribes and backed his recommendation also lost their jobs. Authorities demoted both men to a rail marshaling yard in Chongjin’s Chongam district.
The Chongjin Railway Bureau runs rail lines and freight across North Korea’s northeast. It answers to the Ministry of Railways in Pyongyang, which also operates its own party school for railway cadres.
The scheme unraveled after the ministry’s party committee received a written complaint from the wife of another bureau official. The committee sent inspectors to the Chongjin Railway Bureau in early September to investigate the party school admission.
North Korea’s Complaints and Petitions Law formally lets citizens file grievances against officials. Many North Korean people doubt local authorities will act, but complaints that reach a higher body can trigger inspections.
The bureau had picked her husband for the party school a year earlier, and he had already passed a background check. Everything changed when a rival official handed large bribes to the bureau’s primary party secretary and a cadre instructor. With their backing, the rival jumped ahead of the original candidate and entered the school in April.
A primary party secretary leads the party committee at a workplace such as a factory or railway bureau. Cadre instructors manage personnel files and help decide who gets recommended for training and promotion.
“The wife figured a complaint to the bureau’s own party committee would get her nowhere,” the source said. “So she went over its head to the Ministry of Railways’ party committee instead.”
Her letter reportedly said her husband had originally been chosen, but the official who paid bribes took his place.
Party schools are training institutes where the ruling party educates and retrains its officials. Finishing one weighs heavily in later decisions on promotion within the party and state.
For that reason, cheating on party school admission counts as more than ordinary graft, the source explained. It undermines the party’s whole system for vetting and appointing cadres.
Party school bribery case puts a “dollar trader” wife under scrutiny
The ministry’s party school later held an ideological struggle session against the disgraced official before its entire faculty and staff. Struggle sessions are public meetings where officials or workers face harsh criticism from colleagues for political or moral failings.
Speakers stressed that an official meant to lead the fight against corruption had bought his own seat at a party school. The case comes amid Kim Jong Un’s broader anti-corruption drive, which in July saw a senior military official publicly sentenced.
The school also took aim at the official’s wife, who works on the side as a so-called “dollar trader.” Participants asked whether her illegal currency business had funded the bribes and challenged his fitness to serve the party.
Private currency exchange is illegal in North Korea, where the state allows foreign exchange only at banks and designated outlets. Money changers still anchor the country’s informal market economy, and police periodically crack down on them.
“People asked how the husband of an illegal moneymaker could call himself a party worker steering the revolution,” the source said. “They said she disrupts the state’s single-price system and that he had no right to sit in a place as sacred as a party school.”
The state single-price system refers to the government’s policy of setting uniform prices for goods. Authorities often invoke it to justify crackdowns on private traders and to pull foreign currency back under state control.
Investigators now plan to dig into the wife’s trading network as well, according to the source. “Chongjin residents are whispering that this won’t stop at expulsion and dismissal but will end in criminal prosecution,” the source said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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