The sericulture management agency of South Hwanghae province’s people’s committee singled out a sericulture station in Chaeryong county for criticism during its general review for the first half of the year, citing several problems.
A source in South Hwanghae province told Daily NK on Monday that the sericulture management agency of the provincial people’s committee conducted a review of sericulture production for the first half of 2025 at the beginning of the month. “The meeting, attended by managing officials at city and county sericulture sites, handed down harsh reviews of cocoon production and cocoon processing rates in the first half of the year,” he said.
According to the source, the review focused its criticism on Chaeryong’s sericulture station, which it identified as problematic.
Chaeryong’s sericulture station reported on paper that it had completed 80% of its production target for the first half of the year, but when authorities investigated, they found several structural problems, including outdated production equipment, delayed supplies, poor disease prevention and a mismatch between reported and actual production.
The provincial sericulture agency, which led the review, said that sericulture “is an important supply base for the nation’s light industry and directly tied to improving the people’s lives, and it could not turn a blind eye to such an outdated state of production modernization and disease prevention systems.”
Officials produce diseased silkworm as evidence
The mood in the meeting room turned especially tense when the provincial sericulture agency criticized the Chaeryong operation after producing a diseased silkworm specimen.
The provincial sericulture agency also noted the tendency of some city and county sericulture sites to submit old materials or fill out routine reports, focusing only on key indicators. “The sericulture sector must speak in terms of actual products, not numbers,” it said.
Later, sericulture officials from around the province held an ideological discussion on how they must “consider how our labor becomes the people’s clothing, not inflate our numbers.”
The provincial sericulture agency used the review to designate Chaeryong sericulture station as a target for a “technical and management inspection, a full-scale technical diagnosis, an inspection of its supply management and a look at its books for records of its purchase and use of disease prevention medications.”
“Technical guidance officials at the site in question are undergoing retraining to strengthen technical guidance, and the authorities are considering introducing a digital system to determine production results accurately,” the source said.
Meanwhile, sericulture sites around the province reportedly received a party order to “conduct a full-scale ideological, technological and organizational offensive so that the sericulture sector takes its proper place as a true basic industry for the people’s lives.”
“After the review meeting, a temporary atmosphere of tension and self-criticism descended on provincial sericulture sites,” the source said. “Amid this, some managers at sericulture sites submitted improvement plans on their own, displaying the will to try harder.”
