On Jan. 15, North Korea convened the 10th Plenary Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, where North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced in a speech his plan to promote a policy of balanced regional development. The plan calls for the construction of regional factories in 20 selected cities and counties each year for 10 years and the balanced improvement of public livelihoods through regional development. Kim seems to have been aware that public discontent was growing as regional inequality worsened by the day.
Political attempts to achieve balanced regional development in North Korea are nothing new. Regional development is a task that North Korea has long pursued under previous leaders. At a meeting in 1962, the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung criticized the country’s excessive urbanization and presented a plan to develop regional industries to reduce regional disparities. Under Kim Jong Il, however, more serious regional disparities manifested themselves. For example, during the Arduous March in the mid-1990s, there were more starvation deaths in outlying cities and rural areas than in regions at Pyongyang’s economic level.
Under Kim Jong Un, regional disparities have worsened. The gap between the provinces and the cities has widened, especially as the authorities have been preoccupied with self-reliance in the face of economic sanctions against the North over its nuclear program and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Moreover, markets have long been a lifeline for ordinary people since the state rationing system collapsed during the Arduous March, but even markets are dying under Kim’s controls to throttle market activity.
Pyongyang development is still the government’s main focus
Kim appears to be pushing a regional development policy, announcing a policy to strengthen smaller cities and counties and a strategy to develop agricultural communities with the goal of balanced regional development. However, North Korea continues to focus on large-scale projects centered on Pyongyang. For example, during the Eighth Party Congress, the ruling party said it would build 50,000 new homes in Pyongyang over five years, at a rate of 10,000 per year. In his policy speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly on Jan. 15, Kim urged officials to speed up the construction of the 50,000 homes in Pyongyang.
North Korean policy under Kim Jong Un appears to be focused on certain classes, such as military leaders and scientists or the powerful elite, rather than on regional development or ordinary people. We can make this assumption because large-scale construction – what we might call Kim’s central project – is focused mainly on Pyongyang, with its benefits going to Pyongyang residents.
Pyongyang is a planned city that rose from the ashes after the Korean War. In particular, in adherence to socialist urban planning theory, the city’s planners refused to make it a metropolis and designed it as a pleasant city that combined urban and rural elements. However, under Kim Jong Un, the capital’s population has continued to grow, with the current population about 10% higher than it was in the early 2010s. We can see this as the result of the Kim regime’s efforts to win over the largely Pyongyang-oriented ruling class. This contention is supported by the fact that the government continues to build luxury apartments in Pyongyang – ostensibly because of a housing shortage – even though the country could only control the city’s population.
Nevertheless, Kim Jong Un has not been lazy in terms of pushing for balanced regional development. To modernize regional industries, he has made on-site inspection tours of production facilities closely related to people’s livelihoods, such as cosmetics, shoes, bags, food, and socks, in search of development plans. Despite his busy schedule for the Party’s Foundation Day in 2022, he still found time to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Yonpo Greenhouse Farm, North Korea’s largest vegetable greenhouse. For now, however, the authorities are pushing these regional projects as trials. However, these pilot projects must be expanded and become sustainable. The need for continuity behind these trial projects likely fueled Kim’s criticism of regional obsolescence during his Jan. 15 policy speech and announcement of his plan to push the “20×10 regional development policy.”
The government must be a reliable supplier of basic commodities
However, there is much skepticism. Many people hoped that the ruling party’s adoption of a policy of simultaneous economic and nuclear development at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee in March 2013 would correct the military imbalance between North and South Korea by developing nuclear weapons and allow the country to focus on nuclear development. On the contrary, the policy has only hurt economic development due to UN sanctions against the country over its nuclear development program.
Kim’s “20×10 regional development policy” is unlikely to yield results if the authorities implement it using the self-reliant methods of the past. The factories needed for regional development must be built, and the raw materials and supplies needed for production must be provided. Adequate supplies of technology and energy must also be made available. The role of the central government is crucial. Put another way, the government must be able to play a sufficient role as a basic supplier of electricity, cement, steel, glass, coal, and other supplies – a supplier that can drive the country’s development. North Korea’s government is a much weaker supplier of these things than it was 20 years ago. The main reason is the impact of international sanctions on the country due to its nuclear program.
If North Korea’s regional imbalances continue, the loyalty and ideology of the people that have sustained the country’s socialist system could collapse overnight. Particularly in the eyes of people in provincial towns, housing construction focused on Pyongyang is likely to look like a bonanza to be exclusively enjoyed by the country’s elite. No matter how much the regime needs the strong loyalty of the high-ranking party and military cadres living in Pyongyang, it cannot survive if the tacit support of the remaining 20 million people evaporates.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Views expressed in this guest column do not necessarily reflect those of Daily NK. Please send any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
