Kim Jong-un has admitted to feelings of shame and regret for neglecting North Korea’s rural economy, a rare expression of failure by the supreme leader of a land that usually presents itself as a flawless paradise.
He was inaugurating a project to build factories across the North Korean regions which, he admitted, have lagged behind the capital, Pyongyang, in terms of development.
“I cannot suppress my huge emotion at the thought of giving aid to millions of people in every city and county in the countryside,” he said, according to remarks reported in the Rodong Sinmun, the state newspaper. “But on the other hand, honestly I’m ashamed and sorry that we have only started now.”
Speaking at a ground-breaking ceremony in Songchon County, northeast of Pyongyang, Kim said: “Establishing regional industry factories equipped with modern equipment and production lines in every city and county of the country within the next ten years is truly a great revolution with enormous epochal significance … We are reaching out powerfully to take a step toward grandiose change in the rural industrial revolution.”
The “regional development 20×10 policy” was unveiled last month and aims to establish modern factories in at least 20 remote counties every year for the next decade.
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North Korea has had chronic food shortages and since the collapse of its economic supporters in the former Soviet bloc the socialist distribution system designed to distribute supplies equally has broken down. It has been replaced with a combination of state hand outs and private markets.
Inhabitants of Pyongyang, the home of the political elite, are the last to experience shortages, but the accounts of defectors suggest that there has been deprivation, hunger and even starvation in the regions.
Kim has other big spending priorities — above all his armed forces and his expanding missile and nuclear programmes. He has also promised to build 50,000 new apartments in Pyongyang by the end of next year.
Scrutiny of satellite photographs reveal that, unseen by ordinary North Koreans, he has also built huge palatial villas for himself around the country, including one with a private railway station.
His predecessors almost never acknowledged shortcomings of any kind, but Kim has occasionally admitted to failures, usually in a way that projects an image of his untiring love and devotion to the cause of the people’s welfare.
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In 2020, he wept as he spoke at a military parade. “Our people have placed trust as high as the sky and as deep as the sea,in me, but I have failed to always live up to it satisfactorily,” he said. “I am really sorry for that.”
