Rodong Shinmun has been focusing its reporting on the success of the recently completed “Daekye Island tideland” construction project.
According to the August 11th edition of the Chosun Workers’ Party mouthpiece, the North Korean authorities have awarded the “Medal of Kim Il Sung” to the North Pyongan Province Tideland Construction Complex, which led the construction, while also awarding the Hero of Labor and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades of the Order of the National Flag to assorted officials.
Watches with Kim Il Sung’s name engraved upon them, Kim Jong Il award certificates, Kim Il Sung Youth Honor Awards, honorary titles and service medals were among the rewards for approximately 3,000 workers on the project. The scale of the given awards is among the largest publicized by the North Korean media during the 2000s.
Rodong Shinmun emphasized, “The fact that another monumental creation in the Military-first period has been completed on Daekye Island and the beautiful scenery of socialism is spreading is the honorable fruits of the wise leadership of the General (Kim Jong Il), realizing the desire of the Su-ryeong (Kim Il Sung).”
As part of moves to step up the propaganda surrounding the succession in advance of the Chosun Workers’ Party Delegates Conference in September, completion of the Daekye Island tidelands is being used to build on Kim Jong Eun’s achievements. In terms of scale, the degree of propaganda and timing, it is reminiscent of Kim Jong Il propaganda following the construction of the West Sea Barrage at Nampo.
Similar propaganda was also employed to characterize the success of the Juche Tower and the Grand People’s Study House, two Pyongyang landmarks widely advertised as being the direct responsibilities of Kim Jong Il as he was being groomed to take over from his ailing father.
Even Kim Il Sung praised Kim Jong Il’s work on the West Sea Barrage. Touring the area with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1994, Kim apparently explained, “This would have been impossible without Comrade Kim Jong Il.”
The Daekye Island tideland project was actually initiated in 1980 when Kim Il Sung decreed, “Let’s cultivate 300,000-jeongbo (Korean unit of measurement equivalent to 2,975km²) of tideland!” However, much of the infrastructure built since then was swept away by the floods of 1997.
However, now the project is supposedly complete, with the North Korean propagandist media asserting, “With the construction of the Daekye Island tideland across 8,800 jeongbo (87km²), the biggest in the history of land reclamation, Daedasa, Gacha, Soyeondong and Daekye Islands in the West Sea, have all been connected together and the shoreline meandering through Yeomju and Cheolsan, North Pyongan Province has been greatly reduced.”
