North Hamgyong province has launched a consumer goods design competition for light industry factories across the region, but the mandate is drawing complaints from factories that produce clothing exclusively on order for Chinese buyers, who say the requirement makes little practical sense.
The North Hamgyong Provincial People’s Committee ordered light industry production units on Sept. 4, through city and county people’s committees, to submit new designs for a “mass design creation collection competition” by Sept. 17, a source in the province told Daily NK on Monday.
Engineers and general workers alike must submit designs
The competition is being run as part of the third-quarter business review, and factories are requiring not only engineers and skilled technicians but also general laborers to submit consumer goods designs.
At light industry factories in Chongjin, work teams typically have only one or two engineers assigned to them. But under the new directive, general workers must submit designs as well, leaving them scrambling to produce something before the deadline.
“Like a goby jumping because it saw a mullet jump, a clothing factory in Chongjin’s Songpyong district is also pressuring its workers to take part in the competition,” the source said. “If the goal is technical innovation through new designs, engineers should really be leading the effort, but they’re telling even general workers to submit a design each, and everyone is exhausted.”
Workers are required to design the shape, structure and materials of a consumer good the factory could produce, and submit it with a written explanation. The finished designs must be converted into electronic files and registered on the province’s internal computer network. Hand-drawn designs are scanned before submission, while computer-generated designs are uploaded as graphic files for remote evaluation by a technical review committee.
The people’s committee has reportedly told factories that designs will be judged on whether they use locally available raw materials, whether they can be produced with existing equipment, and whether they improve a product’s convenience and durability. Participation and evaluation results will also be factored into each factory’s year-end business review.
Winning designs are set to be given priority for introduction into the province’s fourth-quarter consumer goods production, and winners and their production units will reportedly receive technical innovation commendations.
Workers say the mandate ignores how factories actually operate
On the ground, however, workers say applying a uniform design requirement without regard to each factory’s actual production methods and conditions makes the competition effectively meaningless.
Clothing factories in Chongjin are focused on foreign currency earning operations, producing garments ordered by Chinese trading partners. Because the Chinese buyers supply the fabric and specify the clothing’s design and measurements themselves, it is structurally difficult for these factories to apply their own designs to actual production.
“They’re telling factories that just sew clothes exactly the way the Chinese buyer wants to submit new designs too, and people are asking what that has to do with actual production,” the source said.
Some factories are also struggling to carry out their existing production plans due to shortages of raw materials and parts, the source added, meaning that even a strong design would have no realistic path to becoming an actual product.
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September 15, 2026 at 10:32PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)