After recently ordering weapons factories to expand weapons production, North Korean authorities have now issued a somewhat puzzling order for factories to abandon slower automated processes in favor of labor-intensive “manual” production.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a Daily NK source in North Korea recently said that major weapons factories in Chagang Province received an emergency order on Tuesday from the Central Committee’s Weapons Industry Department instructing them to “shorten weapons production time as much as possible with a mixed automated-manual production structure by boldly and temporarily dismantling [automated] processes that would be faster if they were manually operated.”
The order specifically instructed factories to “remove all unnecessary automated equipment and machinery within 48 hours and temporarily switch to manual processes.”
It specifically instructed factories to “fulfill the Workers’ Party’s concepts and intentions for the production of arms.” The order essentially pressured the factories to carry out the instructions with all due haste.
The order also reiterated that factories should be “prepared for war to break out immediately.” This suggests that the authorities want to raise tensions by producing and testing many weapons while strengthening the “defense economy” by earning cash from weapons sales.
“The authorities stressed that now is not the time for the weapons factories in Chagang Province, which have been mobilized to produce new weapons and large quantities of ammunition for the Korean People’s Army, to simply hum along with stable automated production lines. They stressed that shortening the time of weapons production is an order from Kim Jong Un,” the source said.
Government stresses the urgency posed by the war in Ukraine
Some officials are complaining about the order. During the period of mass starvation in the mid-to-late 1990s, the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il poured significant amounts of money into modernizing and automating the weapons factories in Chagang Province. Knowing this, officials complain that the soon-to-be dismantled equipment was “installed while we were starving,” and that its removal represents “national waste.”
Aware of the discontent, the authorities have told officials to be “realistic rather than idealistic.” Specifically, they have instructed them to “find other ways to shorten production times if they don’t dismantle the automated equipment,” the source said.
“They ordered the cadres to accept that in the time it takes to create something new, Russia’s war [in Ukraine] may end and difficulties may arise in our purposeful replacement of the expired weapons and ammunition of the Korean People’s Army,” he added.
In essence, the order encouraged cadres to switch to labor-intensive processes and stressed the urgency of arms sales and the deployment of new weapons.
However, discontent may grow with the government’s recent measures. Few people are likely to welcome a policy that shortens the production time of weapons rather than reducing the working time of weapons factory workers.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of sources living in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous for security reasons. For more information about Daily NK’s network of reporting partners and information-gathering activities, please visit our FAQ page here.
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