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The Backgrounds of Theses on the Socialist Rural Question in North Korea

  • The Review of Korean History
  • 2016, (123), pp.211-251
  • Publisher : The Historical Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

JinA Chung 1

1건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

North Korean government merges and integrates agricultural cooperative associations with 'Ri' as a unit right after farm land arrangement. As a result, the average size of agricultural cooperative associations increases to 300 households or 500 Jeongbos in acreage under cultivation. Agricultural cooperative associations refurbished through New ‘Agricultural Cooperative Association Standard Rules’(tentative) are new associations with different characteristics from previous associations. Land and production tools owned by members belong to the new cooperative association, and members live and consume in the community. To remodel lagged productivity and old ideology of farmers, a cultural revolution was propelled together. However, from 1958 when the land arrangement was completed and cooperative associations were set in place, productivity decreased or stagnated and farmers were deviated. North Korean government faced a fundamental woe why they could not encourage farmers' spirit when construction of socialist society is propelled in full scale while revolutionary heat of farmers was heightened when land reformation or composition of agricultural cooperative associations was performed. North Korean government found the answer from the fact that they did not continue revolution in rural areas. It is continuous revolution theory that farmers and farming villages that drop behind comparing to city and city laborers that give an impetus to rapidly developing productivity continuously propel revolution without stoppage. North Korean government propelled ideology, technology and cultural revolutions based on continuous revolution theory to go toward socialism and communism not staying in agricultural cooperative associations. The goal of socialist Rural theses is to make the whole society working class, to give an impetus to productivity development and to march toward ideal of socialism and communism by removing difference between laborers achieving rapid productivity development and agricultural workers experiencing productivity stagnation. For this, North Korean government transformed cooperative associations into cooperative farms. North Korean government tried to achieve brainwashing and agricultural productivity development by homogenizing farming, farmers and cooperative associations based on engineering, workers and national system rather than accommodating them through accepting characteristics of agriculture and independency of cooperative associations, considering agriculture, farmers and cooperative association distracted, transitional and unstable. Although cooperative farms were owned by cooperative associations, they were nothing more than national farms from the perspective of operational method. During this process, farmers were not the ones who realize voluntary solidarity in agricultural cooperative associations but members of the cooperative farm and passive existences following the plans by the state. Finally, dynamics of agricultural cooperative association has disappeared although road map of North Korean socialists' agricultural system construction was completed.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.