Urban poultry farmers in North Korea’s capital permanently silence chickens to avoid detection

Residents of the North Korean capital Pyongyang, who have resorted to raising chickens in their apartments in order to have meat in the food-scarce country, are disabling the larynx of the birds to silence them and avoid detection by authorities, sources in the country told RFA’s Korean Service.

More than just a means of being courteous to one’s neighbors, silencing the birds helps the urban chicken-raisers get around a ban on raising livestock in apartments imposed by authorities worried the practice would lower Pyongyang’s upper-class reputation.

“A new technique that prevents chickens from clucking is being developed in Pyongyang and it is drawing a lot of attention,” said a resident of Pyongyang who came to Dandong, China in an interview with RFA’s Korean Service Sunday.

“If you inject boiling water into a chicken’s throat with a syringe, it paralyzes its larynx. The chicken will sound hoarse or won’t be able to make any noise,” said the source.

“Raising livestock such as chickens and ducks is prevalent in apartments in Pyongyang, but the Municipal People’s Committee prohibits raising livestock [this way], saying that it undermines the authority of the capital and pollutes the environment of Pyongyang. [This is why] residents came up with the technique,” the source said.

The source said that the new technique is enabling those who were previously discovered and stopped by authorities to return to raising livestock at home. Chickens are a popular choice for apartment-dwellers because they grow quickly and can be raised on apartment balconies, the source said.

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Very crazy, and sad. Pyongyang residents are the elite of North Korea, and this bodes unwell for the rest of the country. The "non-elite" that are forbidden from living in the capital, or in many cases from even visiting the capital, are living in hell.