But there is a possible crack in the facade. China had it's Great Leap Forward not in the 1958 but when it started to embrace free markets and (to a limited degree) liberty in the 80s and 90s.
Now there is the possibility North Korea may take their own Great Leap Forward.
North Korea May Take Action to Jolt Economy, Analysts SayI've posted on a recent book entitled Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West and one of the things the author mentions is how there is now a tolerated free market for certain items in North Korea. You can get food, fuel and other items for cash or barter. The sex trade is expanding over there.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday that it would convene its Parliament this month, an unusual session that South Korean analysts said might officially introduce a program by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to revitalize the nation’s moribund economy.
Since taking over the leadership after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December, the younger Mr. Kim has repeatedly emphasized the need to improve the living standards of his impoverished people. He said in April, during his first speech, that he would ensure that North Koreans would “never have to tighten their belts again.”
Since July, various news reports in South Korea have quoted anonymous sources in the North as saying that Mr. Kim planned to give factories and collective farms incentives aimed at increasing productivity. The state would let farmers keep 30 percent of their yield, the reports said; until now, it is believed that they could sell only a surplus beyond a government-set quota, which was rarely met. Factories would choose what to produce and how to market their wares, splitting any profits with the state and paying their own workers.
The changes, tested as pilot projects in selected farms and factories, will eventually be extended to the rest of North Korea and replace the country’s dysfunctional state ration system, these reports said.
Such changes, if confirmed, would be the North’s latest — and perhaps boldest — effort to overhaul its economy. A similar effort failed a decade ago.
“The coming parliamentary session will be a bellwether on where Kim Jong-un is taking his country’s economy,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul.
The announcement by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency that the Supreme People’s Assembly would meet Sept. 25 gave no details as to its agenda. It is rare for the rubber-stamp Parliament to meet more than once a year. It last assembled in April, when legislators elected Mr. Kim to succeed his father as chairman of the National Defense Commission, the North’s top state agency, the last of the top military, party and state titles he inherited...
...North Korea watchers in the South said that Mr. Kim, who South Korean officials believe to be 28, may retire some of the North’s aging leaders, like Prime Minister Choe Yong-rim and Kim Yong-nam, the president of Parliament, both in their 80s, to put his own stamp on the leadership hierarchy and promote younger technocrats to drive his economic revitalization efforts.
The South Korean news reports on Mr. Kim’s economic changes cited North Korean party officials who attended briefings on Mr. Kim’s economic program. They varied in details while agreeing on a rough outline.
“The gist is to expand incentives for factories, individuals and collective farms to boost productivity,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea specialist at Korea University in Seoul.
Within collective farms, groups of four to six workers will be allowed to work as units to encourage competition, according to the Seoul bureau of Radio Free Asia, based in Washington, as well as Web sites in Seoul, which use sources in the North to collect news. Meanwhile, Jang Song-thaek, Mr. Kim’s uncle and key policy adviser, visited China last month and won Beijing’s commitment to help North Korea build two free economic zones on its border.
On Tuesday, a senior government official in Seoul, speaking on the condition of anonymity to a group of reporters, confirmed one element of the reported plans. He said the North was taking the lucrative trading rights from its powerful military and returning them to the cabinet. In April, Mr. Kim vowed to make the cabinet “the economic command.” Analysts say that the North’s former army chief, Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, who lost all his jobs in July, was fired for resisting an effort by Mr. Kim and Mr. Jang to curtail the military’s economic rights.
Analysts in South Korea remained divided over whether Mr. Kim was trying to achieve genuine economic change, of the kind his country’s main ally, China, has pursued, or seeking more productivity only to make up for his dwindling state coffers. The government has found it increasingly hard to earn hard currency in recent years as United Nations sanctions tightened and outside aid dwindled.
In a commentary published on the Web site of Sejong Institute of South Korea, Oh Gyeong-seop, an analyst, credited Mr. Kim with “reform within the system,” rather than a shift toward a market economy. His program, as reported so far, “still adheres to the state ownership of properties and bans individuals from establishing their own business enterprises,” he said.
Mr. Kim said in April that North Korea should stick to “socialist economic principles” while bolstering production. In July, his government even scoffed at reports of economic changes in North Korea, calling them a “hallucination,” like “expecting the sun to rise from the west.” In August, its main party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said North Korea might change “tactics” but would never abandon its “strategy” of building a “powerful socialist country.”
In 2002, North Korea experimented with similar incentives, but it quickly backtracked when the markets and trading activities boomed and the government saw them as a threat to its near-totalitarian control on the population. In 2009, North Korea again cracked down on markets. Such interference set off runaway inflation and occasional outbursts of protest.
Pak Pong-ju, the former North Korean prime minister who was banished for pushing changes too far in 2002, returned to the center of economic policy in 2010. He is supported by Mr. Kim’s aunt and Mr. Jang’s wife, Kim Kyong-hee, whose influence has increased under the young Mr. Kim, according to analysts and officials here.
Meanwhile, word of a new round of economic change has created uncertainty among North Koreans, already fueling inflation. The price of rice has doubled since early June, Daily NK reported last week.
“Here people think that economic measures mean rising prices,” it quoted a North Korean as saying.
This version of Little Kim thinks he can keep people satisfied with a little freedom and for the time being he is probably right. The North Korea people have been brainwashed for over a half century and they know of no real life other than their drudgery.
Now we have some more news on the North Korean Army.
North Korean soldier kills two of his superiors and defects to South Korea across heavily armed border
South Korean border patrol heard six shots before the soldier announced he was absconding
A North Korean soldier killed two of his commanding officers and absconded to South Korea earlier today.
After shooting his platoon and squad leaders the soldier used a loudspeaker to let South Korean guards know his intention to defect, before crossing the heavily armed border.
South Korean officials have confirmed that the rare crossing led to an immediate increase in border patrol security.
The unnamed soldier shot his command before crossing the western side of the Demilitarized Zone at around noon, near the North Korean town of Kaesong.
A Defense Ministry official confirmed the man was taken into custody by South Korean border guards.
He said South Korean guards heard six gunshots before the North Korean soldier used a loudspeaker to let South Korean guards know his intention to abscond. The official said the motive behind the defection was unclear.
No unusual military movement was detected from the North Korean side of the border after the crossing, but South Korea immediately instructed its border troops to step up their guard, a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. He also declined to be named, citing office rules....
...The last defection across the Demilitarized Zone by a North Korean soldier occurred in 2010, officials said. Another soldier and an officer also defected to the South across the border in two separate crossings in 2008.
The vast majority of North Koreans fleeing their homeland travel through China and Southeast Asia before arriving in the South...
Welcome to freedom pal. Hopefully your family doesn't suffer this much for your acts. And hopefully Baby Kim joins his Daddy and Grandaddy in a certain level of hell.
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