Daily NK
Shin Joo Hyun
12/6/2006
An unidentified official document of the North Korean government, which was released recently, showed that senior local agriculture officials were reprimanded for low productivity rates and fake production reports in early November.
After thorough inspection by the Korean Workers’ Party central committee, the officials were accused of reporting false figures of agricultural production and embezzlement of products. Those who got caught would be expelled from the party and prosecuted, according to the document.
Authenticity of the document will be verified by the prosecution of the local agriculture officials and appointment of succeeding heads of local agriculture policy. If the document turns out to be genuine, it means that this year’s food production in North Korea will be gravely low and there must be someone to take responsibility.
In 1997, at the peak of the March of Tribulation, the Central Party Secretary for Agriculture Seo Kwan Hee was publicly executed for ‘spy activities.’ The incident is supposed to be Kim Jong Il’s pretext for famine and failed agricultural policy, with Seo being a scapegoat.
At the public execution site, the Pyongyang Regional Court’s justice sentenced Seo to death for ‘working as an American spy for more than 30 years and deliberately failing the Party’s agricultural policy, such as implementing inappropriate seeds and so on.’
It was also pointed out that the recent prosecution of senior agriculture officials reflected North Korean bureaucrats’ widespread corruption.
In North Korea, fraud and bribery are common from the central party to local party committees. Thus, it is possible that the central party inspection squad might have methodically already investigated personal corruption cases of the officials.
Defining embezzlement of agricultural products as felony represents the North Korean authority’s fear of possible famine. However, it is suspected that while most of the officials are corrupted, only agriculture bureaucrats are punished in order to throw the blame of the forthcoming food shortage on them; the expulsion of provincial agriculture officials of Hwanghae, Pyongan, and Hamkyong provinces from the KWP and their prosecution is intended to create scapegoats for Kim Jong Il in case of another horrible famine.
