North Korea and the Path to Socialism

Abstract

A LTHOUGH INFORMATION on North Korea remains scanty, a certain amount of data is available from Communist sources which, though limited in scope and largely propagandistic, permits some insight into North Korean political and economic trends. This article, based on such sources, attempts trace some of the more important internal developments since the Korean War. North Korea has not always followed the same pattern of socialist development as have the East European satellites of the Soviet Union. This has been particularly true of the North Korean economy in the period since the Korean War. The economic measures which characterized the period of the thaw in Eastern Europe do not seem have manifested themselves in North Korea. At a time when there was a general movement toward relaxation of the collectivization effort and even decollectivization in some areas of Eastern Europe, North Korea embarked on an intensive collectivization program. Thus, the timing of collectivization was much the same as that of China. At the Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee in August I953, Kim II Sung called for the collectivization of agriculture commence in 1954; it was be carried out on a voluntary basis and was to preserve the principle of private property.' In North Korea, as in China and the East European countries, a few types of collective farms, characterized by varying degrees of socialization, were utilized. Agricultural cooperatives took three forms.2 In the first, the members preserved their private ownership of land, draft animals, and agricultural implements. The income was not shared but belonged each individual landowner. However, the cattle and agricultural equipment were used for collective working of the fields. In the second form, the land remained the private property of the peasant. His land was given the cooperative as a kind of share, with the exception of his private kitchen garden. The draft animals and agricultural implements were private or cooperative property. The work was performed in common, and income (after payment of the tax in kind, payment for the work of the machine-hire and horse-hire