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North Korea The Ch'ongsan-ni Method
The Ch'ongsan-ni Method, or
Chngsan-ri Method (see Glossary),
of management was born out of Kim Il Sung's February
1960 visit to the Ch'ongsan-ni Cooperative Farm in South P'yngan
Province. Kim and other members of the KWP Central Committee
offered "on-the-spot guidance" and spent fifteen days instructing
and interacting with the workers. The avowed objective of this
new method is to combat "bureaucratism" and "formalism" in the
farm management system.
The leadership claimed that farm workers were unhappy and
produced low output because low-ranking party functionaries, who
expounded abstract Marxist theories and slogans, were using
incorrect tactics that failed to motivate. To correct this, the
leadership recommended that the workers receive specific guidance
in solving production problems and be promised readily available
material incentives. The Ch'ongsan-ni Method called for highranking party officials, party
cadres (see Glossary), and
administrative officials to emulate Kim Il Sung by making field
inspections. The system also provided opportunities for farmers
to present their grievances and ideas to leading cadres and
managers.
Perhaps more important than involving administrative
personnel in on-site inspections was the increased use of
material incentives, such as paid vacations, special bonuses,
honorific titles, and monetary rewards. In fact, the Ch'ongsan-ni
Method appeared to accommodate almost any expedient to spur
production. The method, however, subsequently was undercut by
heavy-handed efforts to increase farm production and amalgamate
farms into ever-larger units. Actual improvement in the
agricultural sector began with the adoption of the subteam
contract system as a means of increasing peasant productivity by
adjusting individual incentives to those of the immediate, small
working group. Thus the increasing scale of collective farms was
somewhat offset by the reduction in the size of the working unit.
"On-the-spot guidance" by high government functionaries, however,
continues in the early 1990s, as exemplified by Kim Il Sung's
visits to such places as the Wangjaesan Cooperative Farm in
Ssng County and the Kyngsn Branch Experimental Farm of the
Academy of Agricultural Sciences between August 20 and 30, 1991.
Data as of June 1993
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