The smaller farm unit management system introduced by North Korea in early in 1996, as a desperate effort to overcome the chronic food shortages, has turned out to be a failure. The new formula called for reducing the size of the lowest farming unit from the previous 18-25 members to 15-18 members, comprising two or three families. In a bid to reform the North's agriculture, the smaller farming unit was given the incentive of disposing of surplus produce exceeding their target on its own, and farm cooperative members were permitted in 1997 and 1998 to directly elect their leaders - the small farm unit head, work team head and farm management director.

Those reform measures had the initial effect of increasing farm production, but have eventually become nothing except in name in the face of a phenomenon of the leaders becoming richer and richer while the other members got poorer, giving rise to mounting criticism of the new system, according to North Korean farmers who have defected to the South.

"Upon the enforcement of the new system, the most important task for the smaller farm unit leader was to have the state-designated production norm reduced as much as possible," recalls Kim Jin-ho, a defector in the South who had been a farm cooperative member. "Because a reduction of production norm was the easiest way easier to make surplus production than endeavoring to achieve a high norm." The determination of farm production norm was preceded by a precision soil-fertility survey, participated in by guidance officers from the county farm cooperative management committee, farm cooperative manager and smaller farm unit head. In many instances, however, fairness could not be ensured because the survey was done in a hurried manner and because interests conflicted among the surveyors, according to Kim.

Soil was graded into three classes. Some smaller farm units, given low production norm, achieved the target by 120% and 150%, while others managed to produce only 70% of the norm. In the first settling farm produce and dividing the dividend among units, quite a few wrangles developed between the smaller farm unit heads and senior officials. Unit leaders resigned one after another.

Smaller farming units that more than achieved the production norm received the share of surplus dividend in addition to the set dividend of 300kg of husked rice per grownup, but less fortunate ones received even less than the set dividend and the gap between the two groups tended to expand.

In addition, the incentive itself lost its effect when even those farm cooperative members who exceeded their production norm were later forced to donate to the state their surplus dividend under various names. Farmers were unable to resist under the prevailing atmosphere in which the donation of food to the party or state, as a means of resolving the serious food shortage, was taken as a yardstick for measuring one's loyalty.

Furthermore, the State Security Agency, Ministry of People's Security (the police) and party committee intervened with surplus dividends under the name of one thing or another. Many smaller farm unit leaders, who declined their requests, were relieved of their posts. Mostly being party members, smaller farm unit chiefs were more bound by party loyalty than to promoting the interests of their farm cooperative members. These plain members too were ill-disposed to the new farming system, according to the sources, as they gained little even when they over-achieved their production norms, while suffering from losses when otherwise.

(Kand Chol-hwan, nkch@chosun.com )