North Korea recently held lectures for provincial cadres as part of efforts to implement the regime’s new “20×10 rural development policy.” The lectures appear to be a way to inspire loyalty among party members as the regime prepares to push forward the new policy in earnest.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Wednesday that North Korea recently gathered all provincial party members for a week-long series of lectures. The lectures were conducted by representatives of the Pyongyang Organization and Guidance Department rather than local propaganda departments.
The lectures were organized immediately after the 19th Expanded Meeting of the Politburo of the Eighth Central Committee (Jan. 23-24) and held in late January and early February.
The lectures emphasized the need for officials to arm themselves with the party’s revolutionary ideology and “move as one” to follow the party’s newly proposed rural development policy.
Party officials must “adopt a revolutionary attitude”
Daily NK obtained some of the materials used during the lecture series. The preamble to these materials calls on all party members to arm themselves with the revolutionary tradition of the Juche idea and become pioneers in following the monolithic ideological system and asserts that the mission of party officials should be to blindly and faithfully accept and follow the policies and directives issued by the Central Committee.
Later in the materials, the document makes direct reference to rural development policies: “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un convened an expanded meeting of the politburo to outline his direction and plans for developing rural industry and promoting the welfare of the people in the countryside, and all members of the party must fully adopt a revolutionary attitude of faithfully accepting his strategy and plans [for rural development].”
In other words, the lecture materials ordered that officials carry out the 20×10 policy outlined in Kim Jong Un’s speech at the 10th session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly (Jan. 15).