Kang Chol-hwan

Few North Korean women have lately been seen washing clothes in the Apnok (or Yalu) and Duman (or Tumen) rivers on the border with China. Korean Chinese who have been to North Korea say they see few people about in city streets. The security police round up anyone they find walking around and send them to farms, they say. As grain production is essential for national survival now that overseas food aid is on hold, able-bodied adults are driven to farms in the name of a 150-day struggle. Even housewives are mobilized, according to the Choson Sinbo, a mouthpiece for Pyongyang published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan or Chongryon.

The struggle is part of a frantic effort to control the masses. Leading North Korean refugees in South Korea regard it as a desperate attempt to maintain the regime’s power.

There have been several such "struggles" in the past. One prominent example is the 70-day struggle that took place when the six-year plan (1971-76) president Kim Il-sung presented at the fifth convention of the Workers' Party fell short of the target. Kim Jong-il, upon being named heir in 1974, led the struggle, and the North claimed that it made it possible to achieve the six-year plan earlier than expected. It was a time when the North was promoting a socialist planned economy setting up production targets for steel, electricity, machinery, cement, fisheries and grains.

By having specific targets in a struggle and promoting the socialist economy, the regime actually saw some achievements including record production in heavy industry and agriculture. But the planned economy crumbled after the death of Kim Il-sung, and that caused the loss of the basis of economic growth on which such struggles were carried out. The current 150-day struggle, suddenly launched long after the disappearance of the basis, is evidence that the regime is on the verge of failure. While previous struggles had the objective of developing the planned economy, the current struggle aims at exterminating the nascent market economy.

For the North to withstand the international pressure applied over its nuclear tests and missile launches, all domestic resources have to be mobilized to maintain the power structure. But a majority of the people who have been cut loose and must support themselves are desperate to prevent their work and belongings from being taken by the ruling elite. That is the standoff the 150-day struggle is designed to break.

The biggest change in the North in the past decade is that the ordinary people, without the ration system, have to rely on the market economy for survival. Rice production by collective farms has declined because farmers are preoccupied with tilling their individual plots. As a result, even the military finds it difficult to secure the grains it needs. Strange scenes were witnessed in Hwanghae Province earlier this year when soldiers poked the soil with steel lances to search for rice farmers buried underground to hide it from the regime. That shows the lengths farmers will go to for their own survival.

Pyongyang has given food rations to the military and ruling elite from foreign aid provided by South Korea and the international community in the past decade. Now even that has stopped, and ferment is brewing. Ordinary people, by contrast, have endured the plight caused by the global economic crisis and international sanctions with their experience in the market, without relying on the state. 

The 150-day struggle, in short, has turned into a mortal standoff between the regime and the masses. Due to its compulsive attacks on its own people, the Kim Jong-il regime is exhausted and in an early stage of self-destruction.

By Kang Chol-hwan from the Chosun Ilbo's News Desk