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North Korea Resource Development
Resource development in agriculture is a crucial means for
increasing agricultural production, recognizing the unfavorable
natural endowments--topography, climate, and soil. This
development consists of what North Koreans call "nature-remaking"
projects. These projects generally increase the quantity of
arable land, and rural investment projects, which, in turn,
increase the yield of the available land through increased
capital and improved technology. "Nature-remaking" projects
include irrigation, flood control, and land reclamation. Rural
investment projects consist of mechanization, electrification,
and "chemicalization"--that is, the increased use of chemical
fertilizers and pesticides.
Despite priority allocation of state funds for heavy
industry, North Korea has achieved considerable success in
irrigation since the Korean War. Irrigation projects began with
paddy fields and then continued to non-paddy fields. Irrigated
land increased from 227,000 hectares in 1954 to 1.2 million
hectares in 1988. North Korea claimed that paddy field irrigation
was completed by 1970. In 1990 there were more than 1,700
reservoirs throughout the country, watering 1.4 million hectares
of fields with a ramified irrigation network of 40,000
kilometers, which irrigated about 70 percent of the country's
arable land. Water-jetting irrigation of non-paddy fields was
introduced in the 1980s. In 1989 construction began on a 400-
kilometer canal by diverting the flow of the Taedong River along
its west coast.
Rural electrification has progressed rapidly. The proportion
of villages supplied with electricity increased from 47 percent
in 1953 to 92 percent of all villages by the end of 1961. The
process of extending electrical lines to the rural areas
reportedly was completed in 1970. The annual supply of
electricity to the rural areas reached 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours
toward the end of the 1980s.
Mechanization is another agricultural target. By 1984
mechanization had reached the level of seven tractors per 100
hectares in the plains and six tractors per 100 hectares in the
intermediate and mountainous areas. The fact that the same
tractor ratios are quoted in official pronouncements of the early
1990s probably indicates that there is no further improvement in
these ratios, and that the planned target of ten tractors per 100
hectares by the end of the Second Seven-Year Plan in 1984 still
has not been met. Given the disappointing output record of
tractors in recent years, it is doubtful that the target of ten
to twelve tractors per 100 hectares will be fulfilled by the end
of the Third Seven-Year Plan in 1993. Nonetheless, North Korea
claimed that 95 percent of rice planting was mechanized and that
there were 5.5 rice transplanting machines per 100 hectares of
paddy fields in 1990.
Chemical fertilizers receive much government attention and
investment because of their importance for agriculture. Most
fertilizers are produced by the enormous fertilizer plant in
H ngnam, which has an annual capacity of 1 million tons.
According to official claims, the output of 4.7 million tons in
1984 compared with 3 million tons in 1976, had fulfilled the
1978-84 plan target. Judging from a foreign estimate of 3.5
million tons in 1990, however, production of chemical fertilizers
has been deteriorating. The Sariwn Potassium Fertilizer Complex,
which has an annual capacity of 3 million tons of potassium
feldspar, began construction in 1988 and when completed is
expected to raise the country's potassium fertilizer capacity to
500,000 tons, aluminum capacity to 420,000 tons, and cement
capacity to 10 million tons per year. In his 1991 New Year's
address, Kim Il Sung noted that the complex still was under
construction.
By 1977 the "chemicalization" process had increased the
average fertilizer application to 1.3 tons per hectare and 1.2
tons per hectare, respectively, for paddy and non-paddy fields,
and the 1984 target of two tons per hectare was claimed to have
been achieved. The target of the Third Seven-Year Plan is to
increase the rate to 2.5 tons. In a 1991 "advisory note"
addressing the North Korean economy for the years 1992-96, the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the only
international agency resident in P'yongyang, warned that the
practice of intensive chemicalization has led to land
degradation--that is, declining soil fertility, falling organic
matter content, erosion and soil acidification, and water
pollution, with resulting environmental damage.
The objectives of the "nature-remaking program" launched in
1976 are to complete the irrigation of non-paddy lands, to
reclaim 100,000 hectares of new land, to build 150,000 hectares
to 200,000 hectares of terraced fields, to reclaim tidal land,
and to conduct afforestation and water conservation projects. The
reclamation of 6,200 hectares of tideland at Taedong Bay was
underway as part of the 1987-93 plan to reclaim a total of
300,000 hectares of tidal land. The largest land reclamation
scheme, the West Sea Barrage, involves an eight-kilometer-long
sea wall across the Taedong River, and was completed in June
1986. The multipurpose project, five years in construction at a
reported cost of US$4 billion, consists of a main dam, three
locks, and thirty-six sluices, and reportedly was the longest dam
in the world as of 1992.
Data as of June 1993
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