juchenecromancer

Sources like RFA and NK Daily are pretty transparent in being funded by the CIA/NED. However, NK News claims to not have any government funding, despite the fact that most of the articles they put out are almost as bogus as those from NK Daily. Does anyone have good information on who's behind NK News and why they make Pro-USA propaganda?

Excerpt from "Report on 9th Enlarged Plenum of 8th WPK Central Committee", http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/5a9ffe6e4d6704ac1838b14785365295.kcmsf.

This entire article was amazing to read, but the economic report really stood out to me:

"The report reviewed the remarkable successes made in the overall national economy.

The 12 goals for the national economic development were all attained with 103 percent of grain production, 100 percent of electric power, coal and nitrogenous fertilizer, 102 percent of rolled steel, 131 percent of nonferrous metal, 109 percent of logs, 101 percent of cement and ordinary cloth, 105 percent of marine products, 106 percent of railway freight transport and 109 percent of houses under construction. And the overall economy witnessed clear production growth, including 220 percent of motor production, 208 percent of transformers, 121 percent of bearings, 140 percent of electric zinc, 121 percent of lead, 113 percent of paper, 110 percent of salt, 109 percent of cosmetics, 100 percent of flat glass and 104 percent of magnesia clinker, and plan discipline was established.

Compared with the total growth of the economic sector in 2020, the previous year of the 8th Party Congress, the production of important indices largely went up in 2023 by raising the production of iron trioxide 3.5 times, pig iron 2.7 times, rolled steel 1.9 times, machine tools 5.1 times, cement 1.4 times and nitrogen fertilizer 1.3 times and the GDP grew up 1.4 times.

The report estimated the over-fulfillment of the goal of grain production, the dominant height of decisive significance in the overall economic development and the guarantee of people's living, as the most precious and valuable success achieved in the economic work for 2023."

40% growth in three years is insane; that's something like 12% annual GDP growth which I don't think has any parallels in the industrial world. Piecing together KCNA reports on "industrial management software" it seems that the DPRK is currently in the middle of implementing some kind of computerized planning software akin to the one in "Towards A New Socialism", which would explain this insane growth. Cross-checking the figures with past growth rates and national priorities makes these numbers make sense. I think around the beginning of Kim Jong Un's tenure the GDP reports by Hyundai suggested a 9% GDP growth rate. Kim Jong Un has recently been stressing about the need to fix the DPRK's energy and most primarily oil problem, which has since the Arduous March probably been the biggest bottleneck to economic growth. Although tourism to the DPRK has been closed for a while now, the occasional KCNA report as well as DPRK tour videos recorded just before lockdown show just how insane the growth rate has been in the DPRK, with new modern buildings popping up everywhere, farmers making use of drone technology, the formerly desolate streets of Pyongyang now having regular traffic jams from all the new supply trucks, and the new factories popping up all over the country producing consumer goods and compensating for sanctions by producing things like major medical machinery. While the imperial core and the capitalist world as a whole has been deteriorating, the DPRK has never been better.

Kim Jong Un's Mallima is real!

This graph probably brings up a lot of questions, so I'll clarify some of the details here.

Yes, this bar graph shows wages in figures of present-day won. It's not specified by the graph itself, but looking at the figures you can see that these numbers do not match up with Korean wage and currency reforms. Most notably, in 2014 with the election of Kim Jong-Un there was a widespread wage reform, where wages were multiplied by a factor of 10 (and prices following suit, of course) in order to crack down on markets. We know from Minju Choson articles and the book A Capitalist In North Korea that wages during the Kim Jong-Il period were generally less than 10,000KPW a month, so the 50,000 KPW figure doesn't match up for the years 2006-2010. Korean "inflation" (Not really inflation, because socialist countries don't really have inflation, but whatever) doesn't match up with these graphs, so assuming these as "inflation"-adjusted wages is a safe bet.

You can see from the bottom right that this data is based on a collection of defector testimonies. Keep in mind that defectors are generally coming from the poorest, more mountainous provinces of the DPRK such as Ryanggang and North Hamgyong. As a result, we have a bit of noise in the data we need to look at critically.

Industrial wages for Ryanggang and North Hamgyong actually aren't significantly lower than other provinces; in fact, due to the prevalence of heavy industry and coal mining, the highest paid professions in the DPRK (excluding members of the intelligentsia), industrial wages in Chongjin might actually be higher. However, since defectors usually come from the poorest backgrounds of even these poor provinces, these wages do not accurately reflect the average wages of even these provinces, as it does not account for the high number of steelworkers and even intelligentsia in industrial hubs like Chongjin and Hamhung.

Be wary of the official/unofficial wage split as well, because as I mentioned before defectors are often from the poorest provinces of the DPRK. These provinces were the ones that were hit the hardest by the Arduous March due to their unfavorable terrain, and as a result state grain distribution systems are weakest in these areas. As a result, the poverty of these provinces along with their proximity to the Sino-Korean border leads to the black markets here being the most prevalent. Remember that Korea has a strong industry and in comparison to Cuba, where the black markets are often full of consumer goods, Korean markets are mostly food. Add this to the fact that defectors are unlikely to be working in higher-paying professions and you get an unrealistic inflation in the prevalence of unofficial earnings. Keep in mind that this data is also quite old and Kim jong-Un has been cracking down quite hard on markets.

All that being said, with the proper context this graph shows that the DPRK is in fact increasing real wages for state workers.