Month-long ‘farming battle’ stresses residents

North Korea has launched a 40-day rice
planting project, mobilizing all residents in middle school or older nationwide under the slogan, “Let us mobilize at full capacity and pour all our efforts
into farming.” 

“The ‘period of full-scale mobilization to
support agriculture’ was proclaimed on May 20th and will run through the end of
June,” a source in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK the following day. “The
‘farming battle’ is slated to last roughly 40 days and includes everyone starting
from middle school 3rd graders to Party officials, state office workers,
state-run factory laborers and housewives across the country.”
 

She added, “All the students above the
required age will have to bring food and daily tools and go to collective farms
within their provinces. They will stay there for about 40 days while they help
with planting, sowing, and weeding activities.” Housewives and factory workers are mobilized to collective farms surrounding
cities, to which they make a–potentially perilous–daily commute.
 

The referenced danger alludes to the
temporary tracks laid down by the state upon which rickety train cars operate, shuttling stand-in farmers back and forth for the duration of the mobilization. These makeshift tracks and cars are decidedly emblematic of most 
North Korean construction efforts, which emphasize speed over quality– in many cases bringing deadly results.

Even so, in the absence of other options,
the set hours of a very limited overall operating schedule see droves of residents
scrambling to jump aboard, in a scene of “lines that know no end,” according to
the source, who added that parents of students caught in the wake of
mobilizations worry about how to scrape together the requisite food and provisions for their children to work; market vendors, on the other hand,enthusiastically double their efforts to meet demands for sundry products,
thrilled for the bump in business.
 

“Full mobilizations periods” are hardly a
new occurrence in North Korea–supporting farms across the country have long
expected the mandate each spring and fall. However, this year brings with it an
event the state has wasted no time propagating to the masses: the 70th
anniversary of the Workers’ Party foundation, observed in October. 

This,
according to the source, is why the state has been incessantly drumming up ideological rhetoric about “decorating the anniversary with shining results
in grain production” and emphasizing full devotion to the agricultural sector.

Even elementary school students cannot
escape mobilization in some regions. “The authorities never mobilized such
young students in the past, but this year they mandated that these children be
dispatched to nearby farms to water the fields and plant nourished seedlings. 
“The district office head down to the workers have been bullying
housewives on this [unprecedented decision], suggesting that nobody should presume exemption from the directive so long as “he or she qualifies as a human who eats.”
 

“A ‘commanding office for full
mobilization of agricultural support’ has even been put together, consisting of
employees plucked from each province’s Party and administrative agencies,
prosecutor’s office, and Ministry of People’s Security,” the source said,
explaining that this command extends its total control by utilizing a web of
district offices and inminban [people’s unit]
heads to monitor every detail of the farming mobilization operation.
 

While the state provides a scant amount of equipment and facilities to state-run enterprises for the initiative, they, unsurprisingly, fall
far short of sufficient to carry out the myriad tasks for which the factories are under constant progress monitoring. Again, speed trumps all.

To make up for the shortfall in supplies, enterprises predictably shift the burden on residents, who must find a way to provide collective farms with the tools of the trade: shovels, pickaxes, hoes, and A-frame carriers. 

Against this backdrop, it comes of little
surprise that residents have coined the sardonic phrase, “the arrival of the
time of death” to describe the mobilization period.

*The content of this article was broadcast to the North Korean people via Unification Media Group.