The North Korean authorities are reportedly offering an incentive to city dwellers, cadres of the party apparatus and the People’s Security Agency in an attempt to encourage them to move to rural areas.

North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS) recently interviewed a source in North Korea, who said, “There have been lectures for the Party apparatus and in workplaces, with documents for cadres handed down by the Central Committee of the Party on February 23 entitled, ‘Regarding consolidating the rural strongholds.’”

In the lectures, the authorities explained that a severe shortage of manpower in agricultural areas needed to be made up, and asked cadres to step forward and help.

Accordingly, NKIS said, “The authorities are offering those households which agree to move to farms 10,000 won in cash and 120 kilograms of rice.”

Needless to say, this is not the first time the authorities have tried to fill holes in the rural workforce, though it hasn’t usually been voluntary.

In 1998, around 3,000 discharged soldiers’ families were dispatched to a potato farm at Daehongdan, Yangkang Province, while in June, 1999, some 200 discharged soldiers were also dispatched to farms on the Miru Plain in South Hwanghae Province.

Additionally, in February or March during the 2000s, propaganda urging city residents to move to agricultural areas cropped up annually.

Despite the authorities’ efforts, the manpower problems on farms have still not been solved, though.

The problem in North Korea, as it is everywhere, is that the gap between city and agricultural areas, workers and farmers, is too large. The North’s rural circumstances are massively inadequate, and nobody, least of all the young, wants to live there.

During the March of Tribulation in the late-1990s, the conditions of farming areas turned particularly bad, and they have not recovered. Tractors, rice-planting machines and other tools turned to scrap in the face of fuel shortages, with the only thing farmers had left being cows. This is still the case, although even the cows are falling now.

There are many tales of people going to cities to escape from the chronic poverty of farming areas. Alas, many of those wound up in the same situation as the kotjebi; wandering the cities, jobless and homeless.

This phenomenon caused the declining manpower situation of the rural areas to get even worse.

Of course, in this dire situation, single women, who are tied by their residency to the farms, dream of moving to the cities. In principle, the children of farmers should settle on the farms so, immediately after graduation from middle school, that is where they go.

One defector who used to teach students in a middle school in Jeongju, North Pyongan Province, recalled, “In a middle school in an agricultural area, 70 percent of the students were the children of farmers. They didn’t have any hopes or dreams for the future because their future was already determined. Therefore, they tended not to study hard, saying, ‘I have to farm after my father, so why should I?’”

The only dream of North Korea’s teenage girls is to escape from the farm by marrying a city boy, so when soldiers, workers and office workers are mobilized for farming in spring and fall, girls in agriculture areas do their best to meet young city men.

Besides girls, young farmers also dream of leaving for the cities. The most significant chance to go off to a city for men is when they join the army. If they get a recommendation to enter Officer Training School or are recruited as an officer, they will be able to avoid becoming a farmer. Some others volunteer as drivers or engineers in the army, working as Sergeant Majors for their whole lives. Otherwise, after being discharged, they apply for work in mining, with its better pay, or fisheries, all in order to avoid living in an agricultural area.

Another way is to be recommended for university. Discharged soldiers from agricultural areas are supposed to go to agricultural or animal husbandry universities, but with the judicious application of a bribe for cadres of the unit’s political department, they can get letters of reference for universities of education.