Mixed Reviews for North Korea’s “150-Day Battle”
The word from inside North Korea is that it fell far short of its stated goals, and that the people are still starving in the dark. The sum total appears to be that people did a lot of work that ultimately accomplished only short-term gains in “core” areas of the country:
At the end of this September, a high level source stated that according to North Korea it hit a new record of agricultural production from the 150-day battle, which ended on September 20. In fact, it failed to achieve 70% of the average production. It is estimated that crop harvested this year would not reach 60% of that last year.
Ji Young-Il, a head of department of social science at Chosun University, published an article in ‘Professor Ji Young Il’s Monthly Economic Review’ called ‘The 150-day Battle and Prospects for Building an Economically Powerful Nation.’ He claimed that during the battle North Korea accomplished 130% of its goal in machinery industry and produced hundreds of millions Kilowatt more energy than last year. He also said that coal production grew by 150%, light industry by 157.1% and the amount of goods transported by railway increased by 1 million ton.
However, a source reported that North Korea has achieved less than 70% of its goals in all industries above. The fundamental reason was shortage of electric power, the source said. North Korea has excessively exported coal, the key ingredient for thermal power plants. It has led to massive disruption in domestic electric production as well as in machinery and railway industries which consume a lot of energy. Kim Jong-Il ordered prohibition on coal exports on August 12. After the order the state of electric power in North Korea has been improved, the source informed. [Open Radio]
In areas along North Korea’s western corridor to China, sources inside North Korea report improvements in the regularity of train schedules and the supply of electricity.
Otherwise, the Daily NK’s sources report that the effect of the “battle” was to further demoralize the population and raise a lot of grumbling. Those last two links are an interview with just one North Korean, but they sound like the honest observations of an ordinary person. The “150-day battle” has been mostly a blip to Korea-watchers, but I suspect that it’s been a very big deal to most North Koreans.
Related: The forced labor will continue until morale improves — here’s more on the appearance of those anti-government leaflets in Kwaksan I’d blogged about here. Interestingly, Kwaksan lies along the western corridor between Sinuiju and Pyongyang.
The “150-day battle†has been mostly a blip to Korea-watchers, but I suspect that it’s been a very big deal to most North Koreans.
Good point indeed — the “battle” didn’t attract much attention at all in the U.S., but it had important connections to successor talk (even if none was coronated at its conclusion) and proved the regime’s ability to mobilize even the grumbling population.
The North Koreans I saw this summer over the border didn’t appear to happy to be out with their various work brigades, but there they were anyway, usually under the eye of the KPA. The big question for me is — do the Good Friends reports reflect mainly worst-case scenarios and complaints about the forced labor, or are there areas outside of Sinuiju/Pyongyang where things are going more smoothly for the regime? It’s just a question about the source, since the Daily NK seems pretty intent recently on showing more of its ideological colors with much less data than it normally presents.
One of the more interesting sidenotes on the Daily NK and the 150-day battle, however, was its report that for the urban elites, at least the campaign somehow showed success (maybe its only success!) in putting more goods in the stores in Chongjin.
And thanks for the Open Radio NK story and then linking back to your Kwaksan piece — for some reason I had failed to read the original post. Kim Jong Il is a student of history (and not just according to his sycophantic biographers) and will be keeping a particularly close eye on North Pyong’an — a hot area for the Tonghak Rebellion (1894) and the Sinuiju Incident (1945), just in case you missed my Oxford University Press encyclopedia entry on the Tonghaks or the Journal of Korean Studies article on the Sinuiju Incident!
Even Kim Jong Suk’s biographers deployed her to Sinuiju after liberation to calm down disgruntled students. If North Korea ever does start to crack around the edges, my money (at least in this comment, which is not brought to you by any sponsor) is on North Pyong’an.
From what I understand, Good Friends reports very comprehensively about everything related to what most have come to understand as the largest forced labor network in the world, with KJI being the largest slaveholder in the world – it may seem that there are only worst case scenarios but really, how can one expect good news to come out this kind of 150-day battle? I understand the Daily NK was founded by some prominent NK defectors – among them, Lee Jun Ha, the writer of Prison Tales, whom we may eventually recognize as a gifted writer, certainly one who is able to give a unique insight to what otherwise would be just a sordid fact.
Good morning.
Sorry if it’s an unrelated topic, but I’d like to know your and your readers’ opinion about the following subject.
Today, Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” publishes a piece from Pyongyang. Describing Pyongyang National Library, journalist Marco Ansaldo writes that many Western literature books are freely available and avidly read. Among them “1984” by George Orwell. You can see in the piece the other titles.
http://www.repubblica.it/2009/10/sezioni/esteri/corea-nord/corea-nord/corea-nord.html
I find this news really surprising. Does anyone of you have some information about that? Is it possible to check it? How would you explain such thing?
Thank you for your time.
Regards.
Enzo