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.