North Korea recently issued a nationwide order calling on people to demonstrate the “good practice of providing support to the military,” Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, a reporting partner in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Thursday that the order was issued on Mar. 27 and called for both “organized efforts” to support the military and for individuals to demonstrate the “good practice of supporting the military,” or in Korean, wongun mipung.
The order emphasized that “to support the military equals patriotism,” explaining that soldiers are the sons and daughters of the people, and only by protecting and helping them can citizens enjoy better livelihoods.
In the order, toothbrushes, toothpaste, notebooks, pens and party membership card cases were listed as basic military support supplies. It further instructed people to undertake organized efforts to raise chickens and rabbits, with the leather to used to make military uniforms and the meat turned into meat soup, or gomtang.
The order also instructed Workers’ Party and labor organizations to send supplies such as gloves, socks, handkerchiefs and foot wraps to soldiers deployed to housing construction sites in Pyongyang, and to exhaustively review military support efforts during monthly criticism sessions.
ALL ADULTS MUST CREATE NOTEBOOKS
The order further emphasized that officials must encourage individuals to actively take part in efforts to support the military and that people must create notebooks that detail how well they have met their goals to support the military.
In response to the order, South Pyongan Province authorities convened a meeting to discuss measures to encourage people to demonstrate wongun mipung. The meeting instructed the province’s cities and counties to order everyone 19 years of age and older to create notebooks detailing their activities to support the military.
“Sunchon’s party committee ordered all local residents to create identical notebooks of the standardized size of 16 jeolji, and that they regularly write down every month the dates they carried out activities to support the military and what they did,” said the reporting partner. Sixteen jeolji is about 1/16 the size of an A4-sized piece of paper.
“The committee also called on Sunchon residents to continue filling out the notebooks even if they move to a different region so that the wongun mipung of the city’s people becomes a nationwide model and a source of pride,” the reporting partner said.
“Promoting the model examples of people who contributed to military support activities over the last 10 years, the committee called for even more wongun mipung pioneers and declared it would move forward with a tight hold on the reins, so to speak.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
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