At the 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee in December, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un emphasized rural housing construction, rural development projects, and improving agricultural production. Similar to last year, people’s daily lives and food security will depend on agricultural and rural development.
If rural development is such a critical issue, what is life like in North Korea’s farming communities?
North Korea has pushed forward with rural housing projects, but shortages of necessary building materials have prevented the projects from doing much to materially improve rural housing. In the agricultural sector, efforts to automate farming have struggled, and farmers continue to suffer from shortages of fertilizer and pesticides. On top of these difficulties, farm workers and others in rural communities are groaning under the combined weight of food shortages, various mobilizations, and non-tax burdens.
Daily NK recently spoke with a farmer in South Pyongan Province about the current state of farming communities in North Korea and what rural residents are hoping for in the New Year.
Daily NK: North Korean authorities have been focusing on rural housing construction projects, but have you personally seen any improvement in the rural housing situation? What about the state of plumbing and road construction, which one would expect to see alongside large-scale housing projects?
“They are constantly building houses in rural villages. They’re even digging up fields to build houses. They tell us to reclaim all the land we can to meet grain production targets, and then they level those same fields to build houses. I’m not sure that’s the best policy.
“People have to pack up everything they own and move into the new houses. [But] the houses don’t even have ondol [traditional underfloor heating]. They make people move into these bare concrete houses with just a door and plastic film windows. If you don’t have money, all you can do is cover the concrete floor with newspapers or blankets. Wouldn’t it be better to build one house where you can light a fire and eat decently instead of building 100 of these [skeleton] houses? They’re throwing houses together practically overnight as part of the ‘speed battle,’ but I wish they would build houses where people can live decently, even if it means they can only build one house.
“People with money pay for someone to come and install the plumbing in their new house, but people without money have to work during the day and then get together at night to install the plumbing themselves. The roads in the neighborhoods and in front of the houses are dirt and gravel paths that have been beaten and packed with laundry paddles. Only the places that connect to the main roads are paved with cement, and the mud and gravel roads are filled with holes every time it rains.”
Daily NK: [The Workers’ Party] announced that the country met its grain production quotas last year. What’s the food situation like for the rural population?
“They say we’ve met our grain production targets, but the harvest hasn’t been properly distributed [to us] as we were promised last spring. The cadres, in cooperation with the food management centers and the heads of the agricultural production units, are supposed to secure a year’s or six months’ worth of food in advance and store the grain they have distributed at home, in the food management centers’ storehouses, and in other places. But the food situation has only become more difficult for farmers.”
Daily NK: What are your predictions for this year’s agricultural production?
“I think things will go well as long as there aren’t any natural disasters or unusual weather, and [the government] procures enough fertilizer. As long as they do full mobilizations to support agriculture like they did last spring and get enough people in mass mobilizations for summer weeding and fall harvesting, I think this year will be good.”
Daily NK: What difficulties are the farms facing right now? Besides the lack of manpower, are there any other problems with getting enough support or equipment?
“There are not nearly enough farm workers or soldiers deployed to help the farms, so we are dependent on aid and people mobilized to help the farms. Cold frame seedbeds, oil, farm machinery, and fertilizer are in short supply, so things remain difficult.”
Daily NK: What do you think is the most important thing to improve agricultural production now?
“Repairing and building links between rural communities.”
Daily NK: Do you think that farmers receive enough training in agricultural technologies?
“Production units and sub-work teams are trained in [agricultural] technology for one hour in the evening once a week, and they conduct training for the [farm] management committees once a month. But it’s just a formality, and they teach the same things they’ve taught before. [The Workers’ Party] says it has made radical changes to its agricultural platform, but that hasn’t been my experience. The farmers are practically shouting, ‘We’re tired!’”
Daily NK: What is the most difficult part of rural life?
“That the running water doesn’t work well. In the winter, the communal taps and pumps all freeze up, so the women have to boil water to carry over and pour over the pumps. That, or they have to collect river water and boil it to drink. The drinking water problem is the hardest to deal with. And I can’t even dream of having regular electricity.”
Daily NK: Things are difficult now, but do you expect things to improve soon?
“[Government] demands just keep piling up into a mountain with no sign of decreasing, so I don’t expect or even hope that things will improve.”
Daily NK: What is your biggest wish for this year?
“That government is asking people to donate money, building materials, or other materials for rural housing construction. There are too many non-tax burdens, so I wish they could be reduced It would also be good if the farmers could receive their annual rations properly based on their contributions, without [cadres] pocketing the farmers’ shares.”
Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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January 18, 2024 at 01:30PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)