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North Korea Organization and Management
Efforts to increase agricultural production include a variety
of experiments with land tenure, farm organization, and
managerial techniques. Following a typical communist pattern,
land initially was redistributed to tillers in a sweeping land
reform in 1946 soon after the communists took over the country.
By 1958 private farming, which ironically was given a boost by
land reform, was completely collectivized.
The Land Reform Act of March 1946 had, in the remarkably
short period of one month, abolished tenancy and confiscated and
redistributed more than 1 million hectares of land. The
government reallocated most of the land formerly owned by the
Japanese colonists and all properties exceeding five hectares to
individual farming households. The number of peasant holdings
increased dramatically, but the average size of individual
holdings dropped from 2.4 hectares to 1.4 hectares. It was
difficult to determine the effect of such massive land
distribution on production because the Korean War interrupted
farming in the early 1950s. The reform, however, was quickly
replaced by a drive for collectivization.
During the 1954-58 transition period, farm holdings went
through three progressively collective phases: "permanent mutualaid teams," "semisocialist cooperatives," and "complete socialist
cooperatives." In the final stage, all land and farm implements
are owned collectively by the members of each cooperative. The
pace of collectivization quickened during 1956, and by the end of
that year about 80 percent of all farmland was cooperatively
owned. By the time this process was completed in August 1958,
more than 13,300 cooperatives with an average of eighty
households and 130 hectares of land dotted the countryside. Only
two months later, however, the government increased the size of
the average cooperative to 300 households managing 500 hectares
of land through consolidation of all farms in each
ri, or ni (village, the lowest
administrative unit) into one. As a result, the number of
cooperatives decreased but their average size increased. Judging
from the timing of the consolidation of farms, this sudden
decision to increase the size of the cooperatives appears to have
been influenced by the introduction of communes in China. Newly
consolidated farms established and operated such nonagricultural
institutions as clinics, rest homes, day nurseries, schools, and
community dining halls.
Each cooperative farm elects a management committee to
oversee all aspects of farm activity, including retail services
and marketing, and the local party committee closely supervises
its management. The party committee chairman usually is the vice
chairman of the management committee. Within the management
committee, an auditing unit wields the most power and controls
the management of farm accounts, work points, cooperative shops,
and credit facilities. Auditors report to the plenary session of
the management committee as well as to county authorities.
The basic unit of production and accounting on the
cooperative farm is the work team, which is further divided into
subteams. Most cooperatives have several agricultural work teams
and at least one animal husbandry work team. In some
cooperatives, work teams or subteams specialize in vegetable
farming, sericulture, fruit cultivation, aquaculture, or other
activities. Work is allocated to teams and subteams according to
physical ability. Most able-bodied men and women are assigned to
rice growing units, which require the most effort. Wages are
distributed in both cash and kind.
State farms are considered the more ideologically "advanced"
agricultural organizations. Both the means of production and
output are state owned, and farmers receive standardized wages on
the basis of an eight-hour workday rather than shares of
production. Managers of state farms, appointed by the state farm
bureau of the national-level Agricultural Committee, run the
farms as if they were industrial enterprises. State farms often
are coterminous with a county and are model farms that experiment
with new cropping methods or specialize in livestock or fruit
production. Their larger scale allows for greater mechanization,
and their output per worker is undoubtedly higher because their
operations are more efficient than those of the rural cooperative
farms. State farms attempt to integrate all county agricultural
and industrial activities into one complementary and integrated
management system. Utilizing about 10 percent of the country's
total cropland, they contribute about 20 percent of total
agricultural output. Kim Il Sung often stresses the need for
transforming agriculture from cooperative ownership to "allpeople 's" or state ownership, but as of 1993 no action had been
taken to change cooperative farms to state farms.
Dissatisfied with low levels of agricultural production, the
government developed a new administrative structure to perform
for the rural cooperatives what the management of state farms is
supposed to have accomplished. The county Cooperative Farm
Management Committee, established in 1962, took over all the
economic functions of the county people's committees. The new
committee was to bring agricultural management closer to the
ideal "industrial method," by "the strengthening of technical
guidance of production and the planification and systematization
of all management activities of the enterprise."
The composition of the management committee varies from
county to county, but the staff usually consists of agronomists,
technicians, directors of county agricultural agencies, and,
where appropriate, forestry and fishery agents. The function of
the committee is to set production targets for the cooperatives
within its jurisdiction, allocate resources and materials
necessary to achieve these goals, and monitor the payment of wage
shares and the collection of receipts. County managers report to
their counterparts at the provincial-level Rural Management
Committee, who in turn direct all their reports to the General
Bureau for Cooperative Farm Guidance at the national-level
Agricultural Committee.
In spite of lagging agricultural output, there have been no
significant changes in the agricultural organization and
management system in place since the early 1960s. Furthermore, as
exemplified by Kim Il Sung's exhortation to strengthen the
application of the Ch'ongsan-ni Method of farming, no fundamental
changes in the agricultural incentive system have been
introduced. The strategy for achieving greater agricultural
production continues to emphasize "industrialization" of
agriculture through increased irrigation, fertilizer use, and
mechanization while maintaining the existing administrative,
management, and incentive systems.
Data as of June 1993
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