A North Korean factory in Hyesan has ordered each of its workers to submit one farming tool by mid-March under the banner of “rural support,” reviving annual complaints about a state collection drive that many workers say yields no visible improvement in food production, Daily NK has learned.
A Daily NK source in Ryanggang province reported Friday that the factory issued the directive to employees, requiring submission by mid-month. “They call it rural support, but not every household owns farming tools,” the source said. “In practice, it’s the same as telling workers to go buy something at the market and hand it over.”
Shovels, sickles and skepticism
According to the source, factories are fulfilling their quotas by collecting items such as shovels, pickaxes, hoes and sickles from workers before passing them up to higher authorities. This annual “farming tool tribute,” as locals call it, is a recurring fixture of the pre-planting season in North Korea.
“Work unit leaders and party cell secretaries sometimes buy new tools at the market to save face, but most ordinary workers just bring whatever they have at home,” the source said.
Criticism of the practice is widespread on the factory floor. “Every year people hand over that many shovels and pickaxes, but nobody knows how much actually reaches the farms,” the source said. “Workers are saying, ‘We have no idea where all these tools we keep giving away actually end up.’”
Some workers have gone further, voicing suspicion that even tools that do reach collective farms are quickly sold off by farm workers at local markets for cash. The depth of distrust, sources say, reflects years of accumulated frustration with the program.
A separate suspicion has also taken hold in connection with a series of tool and equipment exhibitions held at various locations around North Korea in recent months. Workers have begun questioning whether the collected implements are being repurposed as display items rather than distributed to farms.
“There’s talk that tools collected from each work unit are being classified as industrial implements, put on display, and then reported to superiors as fulfillment of productivity targets,” the source said.
No gains in food production despite annual mobilizations
Underlying the frustration is a broader grievance: the farming tool drives, alongside the mass rural labor mobilizations that pull virtually all working-age North Koreans into agricultural work each season, have not translated into any meaningful increase in food output or improvement in daily food access.
“The whole country gets mobilized in the name of helping with the harvest, but people’s actual experience of their food situation has not improved much,” the source said. “Being asked year after year to hand over tools under those circumstances only deepens the resentment.”
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Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime.
We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication. Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea—discovery means imprisonment or execution.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: dailynk.com
