Pyongyang authorities have launched a Kumsusan Palace of the Sun fundraising drive that runs through the end of 2026. Officials call the campaign voluntary, yet they are tying each person’s donation to assessments of political loyalty, which has led cadres and ordinary Pyongyang residents alike to quietly complain about the added financial strain.
The Pyongyang city party committee issued the order on Oct. 11, according to a source in the capital. It instructed work units across Pyongyang to raise money for the permanent preservation and upkeep of the mausoleum.
The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun began in 1976 as Kim Il Sung’s official residence in northeastern Pyongyang. The regime turned it into a mausoleum after his death in 1994. The embalmed bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il now lie in state there. North Korea treats the site as the holiest symbol of Kim Jong Un’s dynastic right to rule.
Branded a “patriotic project of loyalty,” the campaign will run for about three months, through December. It reaches state agencies, enterprises, universities and schools, and extends down to neighborhood watch units. These units are grassroots surveillance groups that organize every household in North Korea into small blocks under a local leader.
The city party committee sees the drive as far more than a way to fund maintenance, the source said. It has defined the campaign as an intensive ideological effort to defend the authority of the supreme leader. The committee also wants the campaign to deepen ideological unity among the population.
To lead the drive, the committee has tapped senior party and government officials and the heads of on-site guidance units. It has also enlisted workers who hold the title of “labor innovator.” On-site guidance units are workplaces a North Korean leader has personally inspected, which brings both prestige and heavier political expectations. Labor innovators are workers the state has honored for exceptional productivity and holds up as role models for their colleagues.
The committee ordered ideological study sessions based on a special three-page education document. Party organizations have handed out the document to agencies, enterprises, schools and neighborhoods throughout Pyongyang. It hails Kim Il Sung as the founding father of socialist Korea and the Workers’ Party of Korea. It portrays Kim Jong Il as the leader who saved the country through military-first politics during the Arduous March.
The Arduous March is the regime’s name for the mid-1990s famine that killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans. Military-first politics refers to Kim Jong Il’s doctrine of putting the armed forces ahead of every other national priority. The education document also calls the mausoleum an “eternal sacred site of the sun” that every generation must defend.
Loyalty to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun measured in cash
“Every unit has organized intensive ideological study sessions, and people face constant pressure to show heartfelt loyalty instead of going through the motions,” the source said. “Party organizations plan to hold tough ideological review sessions that weigh each unit’s and each person’s past loyalty record against their role in this drive.”
In practice, the authorities promote the donations as voluntary while counting fundraising results in political evaluations. That approach leaves North Koreans with almost no room to opt out of the campaign. In past drives, security officers pressed people to meet loyalty fund quotas through aggressive collection tactics. The state has also deducted pay from workers’ salaries for Kim Jong Il’s birthday events.
“On the surface, they call it voluntary, but in reality it is a demanding political task designed to verify loyalty,” the source said. “The mood now is that how eagerly you take part has become the yardstick for judging each unit and each individual.”
Frustration and fatigue are spreading among Pyongyang residents as yet another cash demand arrives before year’s end. Households already face heavy expenses at this time of year, and the new campaign adds to that economic hardship. People in the capital have faced similar pressure before, including loyalty donations for the Ryomyong Street construction project.
North Koreans outside the capital know the pattern well, too. In North Pyongan province, officials made Sinuiju merchants pay for housewarming gifts for flood victims as “voluntary participation.”
The pressure falls hardest on the senior officials, on-site guidance unit officials and labor innovators chosen to lead the campaign. Singled out as role models in a nominally voluntary drive, they can neither refuse nor appear half-hearted. Expected to set an example, many of them now feel obliged to hand over large sums ahead of their peers.
“The name sounds fine, but in reality it is an ideological campaign to test personal loyalty,” the source said. “People resent having to donate at year’s end when money is already tight, but nobody dares complain openly, so they just suffer in silence.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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October 27, 2026 at 08:29PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)