Numerous reports have claimed that the five year plan announced at the seventh party congress was the first since the 1980s. I did not think this was accurate, but was too busy to actually look the facts up. Fortunately someone else did it for me.
Here is a blurb from the recently released report “North Korea’s Troubled Economy: The Real Challenges” by Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi and Yeongseob Lee:
North Korea’s recent track record of economic plans have been far from effective nor consistent. Pyongyang’s Third Seven-Year Plan from 1987 failed to remedy the ailing economy, and the plan itself virtually disappeared during the so called “arduous march” of the mid-1990s. Moreover, in 2011, Pyongyang announced the “Ten-Year State Strategy Plan for Economic Development”, but there was very little follow-up from the regime on the progress.
The new Five-Year Economic Development Strategy announced at the recent Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Congress is therefore an attempt by the Kim Jong-un regime to politically reinvigorate the government’s uri-sik (our style) economic development strategy focusing on the energy and food crisis. While little details were disclosed, given the myriad constraints in capacity and resources, the prospects of genuine revival and development are questionable.
So the last plan was announced in 2011, not 1987.
