Chongjin authorities recently held a lecture on adopting digitalization and information technology to develop the civilian economy.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province said Wednesday that “a lecture for local factory, enterprise and group managers was held in Chongjin on July 6.” The lecture was held by the head secretary of the city’s party committee.
The lecture followed the issuing of central committee guidance material on “enlisting and increasing scientific and technological abilities,” a task mentioned by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during an enlarged meeting of the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee from June 28 to July 1.
According to the source, the central committee guidance material — titled “Adopting Digitalization and IT to Develop Defense Industries and the Civilian Economy and Establishing and Reporting Plans for the Second Half of the Year” — calls for boosting the efficiency of production command by expanding the application of digitalization and IT adopted in the defense industries to the entirety of the civilian economy to promote the modernization of production factories and the construction of a unified production system in which defense factories and regional factories cooperate.
The guidance material calls on civilian factories to promote quantitative and qualitative improvements in production by accepting the transfer of technology from the defense industry sector and independently and actively adopting it.
During the lecture, the head secretary for Chongjin’s party committee urged all workplaces to prepare to adopt new digitalization techniques and information technologies and build a unified production system.
He also said that factories, enterprises and groups must become agents of technological development and foster an atmosphere of competition in popular technological innovation.
Some question how practical these plans are
However, some officials at the lecture complained that this was a fool’s errand.
They said the biggest stumbling block is that local factories are running at low capacity. Factory operations will prove difficult if shortages of raw materials and electricity remain unresolved, no matter how good the technology they adopt is.
The source said local factories face dire conditions, noting that “even if military factories transfer science and technology to ordinary factories per the central committee’s order, ordinary factories are unprepared to accept it in terms of their conditions.”
He added, “The new student uniform factory in Chongjin, completed last October, received an order from the party in April to add student name badges to its uniforms, but it still hasn’t done so because of production problems.”
A report on a recent plenary meeting of the central committee in the Rodong Sinmun provided information about the direction of government policy. The newspaper said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gave “priority to enlisting and increasing scientific and technological abilities as a primary task for successfully attaining the goals planned for this year, including the 12 major targets for developing the national economy and leading the ongoing key projects of national importance to a successful conclusion.”
According to the newspaper report, Kim said that “the sci-tech field should make efforts to resolve the issues arising in the economic work as immediate bottlenecks, issues calling for urgent solution in current production and practicable issues directly related to the stabilization and improvement of the people’s living standards.” He added that “the principle to be adhered to in resolving these issues is to intensify and perfect researches in the direction of minimizing cost and improving quality by optimizing all processes in production and construction.”
Kim said that “ministries, national agencies, industrial establishments and organizations should play the role of a motive force in sci-tech development, actively develop and effectively mobilize their own technical forces, talented personnel, and create an atmosphere of competition for mass technological innovation with them as the core and axis.” He further said that this will help “resolve the sci-tech problems arising in this year’s production and construction and in implementing the year’s plan for readjustment and reinforcement and modernization projects.”
Daily NK works with a network of sources living in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous for security reasons.
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