North Korean forestry officials are now confiscating firewood at access checkpoints and reselling it through local markets, leaving families across the country’s northern provinces without fuel to heat their homes. That is according to on-the-ground intelligence gathered by ASIAPRESS network Rimjin-gang, whose partners — reporting via Chinese mobile phones smuggled across the border — filed accounts from the Hyesan area in mid-February.
The Kim Jong-un regime has banned unauthorised tree-cutting under a “forest restoration” policy, with forestry management offices — falling under the Ministry of Land and Environment Protection — deploying checkpoint controls across mountainous access routes. In practice, those checkpoints have become paid passage points, with partners telling ASIAPRESS that officials are demanding 100,000 North Korean won per cubic metre of wood for clearance — roughly two months of average wages at the national rate.
And whilst the stated policy requires confiscated timber to be redistributed to households in need, partners say that provision is being ignored at every level and the wood is being sold through markets instead. “Unless the wood is already dead and dry, the checkpoints confiscate it — and then the forestry management office turns around and sells it at the market,” one reporting partner told Rimjin-gang journalists JEON Sung-jun and KANG Ji-won. “They’re ignoring that rule and using it to make money.”
Firewood vendors operating in open markets have not been spared, with predawn inspection teams descending on sellers and demanding proof of origin — those without a forestry management office permit losing their stock on the spot. Supply from Baekam County — a timber-rich district that had long served as a primary fuel source for Hyesan residents — has fallen sharply as controls spread, and even construction offcuts, branches and bark now require a permit to move. “Everyone — young and old — is heading into the mountains for wood, and the number of people enforcing the rules is growing too,” the partner said.
With enforcement tightening across supply routes, the added costs are flowing through to market prices — a bundle of roughly fifteen pieces of firewood now fetching around 5,000 won, whilst a tonne of coal, considered the minimum to heat a North Korean household through winter, runs approximately 800,000 won against an average monthly wage of around 50,000 won. A single tonne costs more than a full year’s earnings for the average worker.
For families who cannot bridge that gap, a practice known locally as “hearth cohabitation” has taken hold — multiple households moving in together to pool heating costs when neither can afford fuel alone. In the Hyesan region, where snow can fall as late as April, temperatures remained below freezing as of early March.
North Korea lost an estimated 30 per cent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010, driven largely by households stripping hillsides for fuel during successive famines — the same underlying pressure now pushing residents into the mountains despite checkpoint enforcement and the threat of confiscation.
Please note: The ASIAPRESS Rimjin-gang network operates through partners inside North Korea who communicate via Chinese mobile phones smuggled across the border. The Hyesan reporting was filed by JEON Sung-jun and KANG Ji-won.
