By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
Over at NK News, Peter Ward recently published a highly interesting piece on Kim Jong-un’s official endorsement of agricultural policy changes. As Ward notes, one has to read beyond the carpet of propaganda-esque language to really see the subtle but significant changes in how official sources, at the highest level, talk about agricultural management:
Under the system that Kim Jong Un introduced in 2014, the sub-work team leader remains the line manager in charge of day-to-day operations. However, their team now usually consists of 15-20 people, though can sometimes be smaller where the land is better and farm more mechanized.
Kim emphasizes the sub-work team leader’s core role as a conduit for Party agricultural policy and the so-called “Juche Agricultural method.” The sub-work team leader must extol such methods and ensure that production tasks given to them by the party are carried out.
In Kim’s vision, the sub-work team leader is akin to an entrepreneur in charge of their staff: tasked with overcoming issues and implementing party directives in a creative and dynamic fashion in line with circumstances. The sub-work team manager is supposed to lead from the front – “up first in the morning and to bed latest at night.”
Much of this could arguably have been said about production leaders under old institutional arrangements in North Korea as well. Ward, however, points out a significant change:
One point that Kim makes that is revolutionary however, is that the state will take “a certain portion of grain [produced],” leaving “the rest to farmers whose distribution will be decided by the number of days they have worked – the amount they have earned.” This is the essence of the new system: farmers keep anything they harvest beyond their mandatory state quota (planning indicator), the state no longer just takes everything before providing a fixed ration.
Full article here:
Masters of the farm: North Korea’s new agricultural entrepreneurs
Peter Ward
NK News
2018-10-09
One crucial question that seems to remain, however, is around how the state sets its quotas. As Ward points out, farmers get to know ahead of time how much of their output they will get to keep, based on estimated harvests. In a recent dispatch, Daily NK said that no matter the actual production, the state takes its pre-set share in absolute terms even when actual production ends up being lower than anticipated. In other words, there’s still much room for predatory economic governance by the state, especially since the new system may still lack clear and transparent central guidelines by the state. In any case, the new system, judging by all available information, is a step towards greater efficiency.
