Ahead of North Korea’s 7th Workers’ Party
Congress — the first gathering of its kind in over three decades — state-run
enterprises and factories are busy gearing up to produce ‘loyalty gifts’ for
the leader, all the while working to churn out art pieces and sculptures that
will decorate the venue as mandated by the state. This ‘creative task’ is
adding to the burden of workers and families that have been roped into securing
expensive material for the projects, Daily NK has learned.
“State-run enterprises on the provincial,
city, county, and district levels have all been ordered to submit artwork and
sculptures that will be used at the Congress, triggering a ‘loyalty race’ among
companies,” a source from South Pyongan Province told Daily NK in a telephone
conversation on December 9th. “In order to produce elaborate and extravagant
pieces, as required by the state, firms must embellish their work with gold,
silver, and jewels such as crystal and peridot.”
Two additional sources, one in North
Pyongan Province and one in North Hamgyong Province, confirmed this news.
This ‘creative task’ has prompted state
factories and companies to launch ‘gold production teams’ and ‘foreign currency
teams’ that are dispatched to different regions. The funds to buy in gold are
secured from ‘loyalty funds’ that have forcibly been collected from workers.
“With this money, she said, “the companies send people to mines all across
the country to buy in gold, peridot, and other precious materials at high
prices.”
“State firms that are level three or higher
are required to offer up at least one art piece along with 10kg of gold.
Students have a 10kg requirement per person of ‘colored metals,” the source
explained. “For households that don’t have any ‘colored metals’, they must pay
in cash instead or buy some from a broker at the market at pricey deals.”
Students are busy trying to meet their
quotas for copper, aluminium, and other metals by collecting scrap material,
and this is causing headaches not only for their parents but factory managers
as well. At school, students face daily reviews on how much they have
collected, leading many to take in all copper items they have at home. Some
people are even secretly taking apart equipment at factories to extract metals,
causing problems for factory cadres.
The excessive collection has triggered
angry responses from people, and elderly members have likened the burdensome
tasks to those seen under Japan’s colonial rule, during which residents were
forced to give up household items such as brass tableware and utensils,
according to the source.
