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).
Later, at the 19th enlarged meeting of the Politburo of the Eighth Central Committee on Jan. 23-24, Kim criticized the lack of support for his plan, saying, “The fact that we cannot smoothly provide the people in the countryside with basic food, consumer goods and other necessities of life is a serious political problem to which today’s party and government cannot turn a blind eye. Some political guidance departments and economic institutions have failed to see the realistic, revolutionary opportunities and have been slow to act.”
In the following week, senior Workers’ Party official Jo Yongwon was put in charge of the newly formed “20×10 Rural Development Emergency Central Promotion Committee,” which then led to the lectures for provincial party officials.
The lecture materials obtained by Daily NK also called on all party members to participate in self-criticism and education sessions, saying that party members must serve as role models in their own workplaces and lead the masses to loyally follow the Workers’ Party.
The materials criticized party members who failed to properly attend party lectures and self-criticism sessions, urging them to consider their lives as “inseparable from party activities, just as a fish cannot live apart from water.” The materials also warned that “officials who are found to have forgotten their duty to the party and are acting solely in their own interests will be punished and, in particularly serious cases, expelled from the party and exiled to the countryside.
Challenges lie ahead in policy implementation
All in all, the lectures appear to be the beginning of propaganda activities by provincial, city, and county party committees to support Kim’s 20×10 policy.
On Feb. 26, the Rodong Sinmun reported that “city and county party committees in North Pyongan Province have been briskly carrying out various organizational political activities, including posting convincing slogans, signs, and posters in high-traffic areas to arouse the revolutionary fervor of the masses and [deploying] propaganda broadcasting vans and mobile propaganda art troupes.”
At the same time, however, many officials in the provincial factories that are being considered for participation in the 20×10 rural development efforts are working to have their workplaces removed from the list of candidates because of insufficient budgets.
Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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March 01, 2024 at 05:30AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)