Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IEFS)
North Korean media continues to promote the country’s domestic products and encourage North Koreans to buy them.
On November 29, 2015, much of North Korean media coverage was devoted to reporting on North Korea’s modern factories and encouraging North Koreans to purchase the products they produced.
Likewise, Korean Central Television (KCTV) aired a program on November 20, 2015 about the Mangyongdae Kyonghung Foodstuff Factory, describing it as “a place that produces an assortment of food products made by us and with our brand names.” The program went on to explain the factory’s products and latest facilities in detail for thirteen minutes.
North Korean media is not just promoting domestic food and daily commodities, but is actively promoting a variety of products, including heavy equipment like tractors.
On November 26, 2015, KCNA reported that the Kim Jong Tae Electric Locomotive Works has “achieved praiseworthy results producing and developing an ‘our-style’ subway train that meets the demands of the development era.”
The Rodong Sinmun is also participating in the promotion of domestic goods. It recently published an article entitled ‘Let’s Love Our Things and Honor Them’ in which it reported on North Korean-made goods such as tractors, cars, and bulldozers, and further warned that “If a country’s citizens rely on foreign powers and do not trust their own strength, eventually that country will fail.”
The article also praised a researcher who helped develop a type of ‘medicinal toothpaste’: “Through our strength and technology and with our raw materials, he developed an ‘our-style’ product.”
Furthermore, North Korea has claimed that all of the satellites the country has launched, including Kwangmyongsong-3 Unit 2 (carried by the long-range rocket ‘Unha-3’ and successfully launched into orbit in December 2012), were 100% composed of North Korean parts.
The Rodong Sinmun echoed this claim in an article on December 2, 2015: “There are many countries in the world that have their own satellites in space, but how many of those countries can honestly say that their satellites are 100% domestically-made?”
It added, “Mankind probably could not find an example of a successful satellite launch amidst such infernal sanctions, such harsh circumstances, such brutal and unfair challenges.”
In some sense, these reports can be interpreted as an attempt by the regime to stimulate the development of factory technology by increasing consumption of domestic products and to promote economic development by infusing energy into the industrial sector.
