Socialist Patriotic Youth League organizations are conducting large-scale ideological campaigns at factories, but young workers react indifferently to calls for double shifts and overtime amid power outages and broken equipment.
“Socialist Patriotic Youth League organizations at local factories and enterprises are conducting large-scale political and ideological activities at the end of the year,” a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province said Monday. “Factories and enterprises in Hamhung and Hamju county are calling on young people to raise their fighting fervor and launch a total campaign to complete the five-year plan.”
According to the source, SPYL organizations at a machinery factory and foodstuff factory in Hamhung led a lecture on Nov. 20 on how young people “must become the vanguard in completing the five-year plan for national economic development by raising their political consciousness.”
In the lectures, the SPYL organizations strongly emphasized that young people must serve as a model for the era by taking the lead in accomplishing their revolutionary tasks in accordance with the party’s expectations, as this year is the final year to complete the five-year plan for national economic development presented at the Eighth Party Congress. They also encouraged young people to work double shifts and put in overtime to complete the five-year plan.
However, the SPYL members reacted indifferently to this.
Young workers cite lack of political benefits and material compensation
“The party always calls young people a ‘vanguard’ or ‘suicide squad,’ but they gain almost no political benefits or material compensation for this,” the source said. “So, young people hardly react every time there’s a lecture like this, taking everything in glumly.”
Above all else, young people appear uncomfortable with the party’s repeated political indoctrination activities that simply emphasize production results, even when no improvements are made in the working environment.
“Just in the case of the machinery factory in Hamhung, there are frequent power outages, so workers often have no choice but to stop what they’re doing and wait,” the source said. “On top of the power shortages, the equipment also breaks down, so fulfilling production targets is difficult. But the lecture calls on young people to take the lead in completing the five-year plan, emphasizing willpower, so SPYL members adopt a cool attitude to it all.”
North Korean propaganda is encouraging young people to produce results ahead of the Ninth Party Congress, pointing to their fighting fervor.
The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s ruling party, reported on Oct. 28 that “young people across the country are further heightening their fighting spirit at the vanguard of the all-people creative struggle to greet the Ninth Party Congress with proud achievements,” and that “SPYL organizations at all levels are vigorously arousing the young masses to a continuous struggle for the successful completion of the five-year plan.”
The paper listed the accomplishments of the young people of the 8.28 Youth Shock Brigade Management Bureau, young train conductors of the Pyongyang Railway Bureau’s West Pyongyang Locomotive Depot, young people at the Pyongyang Building-materials Factory and young people at the Sunghori Cement Factory, seemingly to boost the fighting fervor of young people ahead of the Ninth Party Congress.
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