North Koreans received a “Harvest Full Mobilization Order” in September for forty days of collective farm harvest operations followed by “Fall Land Management Full Mobilization” work, Daily NK has learned.

“‘Land Management Full Mobilization’ started early last month immediately after the end of farm support operations,” a source in North Hamkyung Province reported to the Daily NK on November 3rd. “Residents have been mobilized for two-hour long waterways cleanup starting at 5a.m. and laborers are working on construction sites managed by businesses for waterways, roads, and levees.”

“Barefoot residents have to enter the frozen creek in the Sunam area of Chongjin City in the early morning to scoop out sediments with shovels and buckets. It is difficult to even breathe due to the foul smelling sediments flowing out of the city drains, so people are utterly exhausted by having to carry the deposits on their backs,” he added.

According to the source, this creek has nearly no streamflow due to the lack of water and the stench from the sewage piling up from drains is severe. Therefore, residents are being mobilized for an extensive waterways construction project to pull in water from a stream in Soosung, continuing the never ending series of mobilized tasks from last month.

North Korea designates October as the annual season for “Fall Land Management Full Mobilization” and carries out litter removal from waterways, construction of levees and roads, and planting trees and grass. The source explained that during this time, county and district People’s Committees supervise, and once every inminban [people’s unit] and enterprise is given a work assignment, students and women of each class, and factory workers are all put to work.

“Authorities are propagandizing the work as a ‘patriotic commitment,’ but as the work stretches over one to two consecutive months, the number of non-participating families is growing,” the source asserted. “Families that do not fully mobilize are called to the corresponding police stations, and there are even cases of heads of enterprises being locked up in detention houses under the ‘10 days confinement law’ for careless dispatch of personnel.”

The source reported that despite the propaganda of North Korean authorities, as residents enter cold waters to dig riverbeds and haul out trash, they are complaining that regardless of “patriotic this” and “commitment that”, the current labor is worse than the forced labor during the Japanese colonial period, an oft-employed phrase by residents to express their disgruntlement. However, there are also attitudes that “in order to avoid later disadvantages, there is no choice but to participate.”

In April 2012, Kim Jong Eun’s speech in front of Party and management officials, publicly announced that it would require focused laborious work “to bring upon a revolutionary change to land management systems that meet the needs of a strong and prosperous socialist nation.”

The statement included information about the need to brilliantly prepare Pyongyang as a capital of revolution--an international city of impressive grandeur and beautiful scenery. However, the source critically noted that without facilities and equipment, and limited to moving stones and dirt with shovels and buckets driven by manpower, there was no doubt that levee construction would prove to be faulty.