Premier Choe Yong Rim of North Korea said 8 September that hastening economic growth as a way to improve living standards is of critical importance for North Korea. Speaking at a national assembly marking the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Choe said the public and the army should work to develop agriculture and light industry, as well as metalwork, electricity, coal and railway infrastructure.
Comments from KGS NightWatch: The premier's public statement is significant for several reasons. First it suggests the 3rd Party Conference has not begun. More importantly, it is the latest manifestation that Kim Jong-il's government has made a major change in strategic priorities in favor of non-military development. Choe's comments are the most explicit to date in directing that the army should support the civilian sectors in promoting general prosperity.
Old hands will recall that Kim Il-sung, President forever, reached the same conclusion in 1993. Kim Jong-il's Father suspended the seven-year national planning system in December 1993 because it failed. He reprioritized national activity as agriculture-- food production, consumer goods for daily living, goods for export and goods to support the armed forces. This order of effort had no precedent in Korean communism. North Koreans were malnourished in danger of starving.
Kim Jong-il, under threat of a military revolt and for his survival, rejected the legacy of his Father and made military production first, from mid-1994. Sixteen years later and facing death, Kim apparently has had an epiphany about the wisdom of his Father. Once again , under Kim's leadership, North Koreans are malnourished in danger of starving.
The elder Kim recognized that the state and the army could not survive unless the people from whom they are drawn and on whom they depend are healthy. Kim Jong-il is late in reaching that insight.
The message for outsiders is the infrastructure that supports the North's military capabilities is hollow. Kim Jong-il's rule has been a waste of time and resources, repeating mistakes his father made. Nevertheless, the North Korean people will never be permitted to draw those conclusions.
The North's media and sympathetic commentaries in Japan ascribe the new priorities to the third son, Kim Jong-eun. That callow youth has not dealt with the entrenched vice marshals and corps commanders of the Korean Peoples Army. Nor has his mentor and regent Chang Song-taek, who is a party aficionado, not a military man.
Thus Readers might expect the 3rd Party Conference to endorse a new set of strategic priorities in which food production is the highest national priority. That does not mean the Army will follow the Party Conference's lead. More later.
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