[KS] "Advantage Pyongyang" by Richard Lloyd Parry

Yoo Kwang-On almakoreana at gmail.com
Thu May 2 07:04:39 EDT 2013


I would like to add following observation by Victor Cha.
   Yoo Kwang-On
 p112-113, The Impossible State North Korea, Past and Future, VICTOR CHA,
2012 North Korea's Bad Decision, Kim Il-sung focused exclusively on Heavy
Industrial development after the War;
"--- the decision came in the aftermath of the Korean War, when *Kim
Il-sung focused exclusively onheavy industrial development*."

"And from the onset of the Korean War to the end of the decade, China is
estimated to have granted the North over $500 million in aid and loan
credit. All in all, during the 1950s, the North received in excess of $1.65
billion in aid from its Soviet and Chinese benefactors, Kim Il-sung took
advantage of this support and rebuilt the economy with particular emphasis
on heavy industry. *The lack of attention to agriculture and light
industry would
not have been a problem if the regime engaged in more trade. What other
countries, however, might have seen as trade-based interdependence, North
Korea saw as trade-based vulnerability.* In compliance with the *juche
*ideology,
the regime emphasized self-sufficiency in food agriculture, and light
manufacturing. What emerged therefore from the Korean War was a
quintessential mercantilist strategy aimed at promoting the growth of state
power through heavy industrialization. On August 5, 1953, only two weeks
after the armistice signing, Kim Il-sung gave a speech titled "Everything
for the Postwar Rehabilitation and Development for the People," the focus
of which was on reconstruction and expansion of heavy industries. Iron and
steel plants, heavy machinery, mining, chemical fertilizers, and oil
refineries were *all projects that were seen to constitute the basis of
national power that would eventually overthrow the South.* In the
Three-Year Economic Plan of 1954-1956, 81 percent of resources went into
heavy industry; by contrast, only 19 percent went into light industry. This
produced a terribly distorted economy that focused entirely on producers
and almost totally ignored consumers. Despite all of the help from the
Soviets and from the Chinese, Moscow was uncomfortable with the lopsided
nature of development. They saw clearly that the DPRK plan defied rational
economics. For a centrally planed economy withheavy industrialization, the
rural work forces needed to be mobilized into an industrial workforce. Yet
this would then deplete the labor force necessary to sustain agricultural
self-sufficiency. Even without strain of heavy industry, the North Korean
economy was not suited to be self-sufficient in agriculture under the best
of circumstances. With only 20 percent arable land, North Korea was a
rugged mountainous terrain with a cold northern climate that allowed for
only short crop seasons. *A normal country would have traded aggressively
in order to meet its food needs, but the regime undertook other far-fetched
idea to maintain the semblance of self-sufficiency.* In the 1980s, for
example, as food stocks were depleting, the government tried land
reclamation projects on the west coast of the peninsular in order to create
more arable land, but this failed. From that point forward, the regime
relied increasingly on patron aid prom China to meet its food shortfalls."




On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 2:02 AM, J.Scott Burgeson <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Once again the *London Review of Books* offers up top-notch commentary on
> North Korea:
>
>    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/richard-lloydparry/advantage-pyongyang
>
> Anyone disagree with this statement?:
>
>    *And the Six-Party Talks, and every other form of diplomacy which
> imposes a central role on China, are a waste of time.*
>
> Further along, in a discussion of North Korea's recent propaganda blasts
> against the US and the ROK, Perry writes:
>
>  *  The noises from the North are widely misunderstood. They are not
> unilateral threats of war, but promises of retaliation in the event of US
> and South Korean attack. (This gets lost in much of the reporting because
> of the famous verbosity of North Korea’s official communiqués: the threat
> is quoted, while the balls-aching conditional preamble is cut.)*
>
> This was observation was underscored during a recent conversation with
> several restaurant waitresses from Pyongyang here in Dandong, who asked me
> in all earnestness: "Do you think Obama really wants to start a war with
> us?"
>
> More encouragingly, the same official state restaurant was playing The
> Carpenters on its sound system, and at a DPRK restaurant in Beijing last
> week, the floor show broke out into "Rock Around the Clock" at one point.
>
> Skip the politics for now: I call for a Six-Nation Rock Festival on the
> Yalu River this summer!
>
> *– Scott Bug*
>
>
>
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