North Korean farmers managing agricultural lands high up in the mountains of Ryanggang Province have become the latest victims of crackdowns by the authorities due to their cultivation of watermelons.
Ryanggang Province is a mountainous region home to the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula, Mt. Paektu (2,744 m), together with Kaema Gowon and Paekmu Gowon. In the towns located in the region, the authorities have given small plots of land to farmers in exchange for specified quantities of corn. Essentially, the state has been operating a tenant farming system in the region.
The farmers in the region have long planted watermelons to earn money on the side while harvesting their agreed quota of corn for the state. Watermelons often generate more revenue than corn because the fruits are limited to a single harvest season. Farmers have been taken aback this year, however, as the authorities launched a campaign, without warning, to sever watermelon vines and destroy the watermelons.
According to a Ryanggang-based source on August 20, the North Korean government organized a task force of local town prosecutors in early to mid-August to investigate the small plots of farmland and destroy the vines in all the watermelon patches they found.
The task force also declared to the farmers that the act of planting watermelons on corn fields was an “anti-socialist and greedy act” that violated the Party’s orders and that they were liable to be legally punished.
“The task force cut the watermelon vines while telling the farmers that the state lent out the land to help feed the military, not for them to grow watermelons to earn extra money,” the source told Daily NK.
“They struck fear in the hearts of the farmers by telling them they should prepare to be punished for having committed acts that go against Party policy.”
The farmers in turn claimed that 70% of the 500-pyong (1653 square meters) plots of land used were for planting corn while only 30% was used for watermelons, and that they had met the agreed harvest quotas for the corn while only trying to make some extra personal income.
Some farmers have argued that the North Korean authorities are contradicting their own agricultural reform efforts, which were aimed at moving farming activities away from farm units to family units and giving farming units the right to distribute excess produce. Sources say that the sudden crackdown fits with the general atmosphere in recent months of the authorities’ tightening control over people’s lives.
“The farmers tried desperately to prevent the authorities from touching the crops they had planted this year,” a separate source in Ryanggang Province reported.
“Members of the task force just responded to the pleas with more anger and destruction of the watermelon patches.”
She added that watermelon plants growing in the mountainous regions have not suffered in the hotter weather this year and there were expectations among farmers that the harvest would be a profitable one. The watermelons harvested in the area last year ended up generating 1,600 to 2,000 KPW per kilogram for the farmers.
As the crackdown occurred shortly before the watermelons were due to ripen and be sold at the markets, farmers have called the actions of the task force “ridiculous” and “some have gone out to the fields in tears in an attempt to save even a couple of watermelons to sell,” she concluded.
