On 24 December 2008, the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) Kim Jong-Il “kindled the torch of a new revolutionary upsurge”, symbolising the initiation of a renewed Chollima campaign for a third time in the history of the nation, to replicate the success to rescue the crumbling economy. In a failing state that is desperate for economic and indeed, physical survival, we can see how special the Chollima movement is for North Korea when it was still used to boost public morale almost half a century after it was first introduced. Indeed, the movement was important both in the history of the nation and to North Korean people.[i] Yet, this successful movement in the formative years of North Korea in the communist bloc has since then largely glossed over, perhaps for ideological reasons and the lack of primary materials. With the prominence of the Juche idea and the continuation of the North Korean nuclear crisis, the history of the Chollima Movement both as an ideological and industrial movement deserves further attention.
More specifically, parallel to the Chollima Movement, another budding communist state, the People’s Republic of China had carried out a similar Great Leap Forward campaign. Although the Chollima Movement was first mentioned by North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung in 1956 under the country’s first Five-year Plan (1957-61), it was not carried out until 1959, a year after the Chinese campaign started. This paper asks: what is the relationship between the two movements? How can we make sense of the symbiotic influence and emulation efforts between the two movements?[ii] To investigate these issues, the paper will first introduce the two movements before moving on to a comparative analysis between the two. It will then explore the emulation behaviour, including the reasons and motives behind. The paper concludes that the Chollima Movement was largely an emulation of the Chinese Great Leap Forward and such emulation was voluntary in nature.
The ‘Revolutionary’ Movements
The Chinese Great Leap Forward campaign began in 1958, in the aftermath of the Anti-Rightist movement, and was rooted in Chairman Mao Zedong’s belief that human will and revolutionary zeal could overcome technological difficulties and the scarcity of resources. The movement was aimed at rapidly transforming the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society by industrialisation and collectivisation. The Chollima Movement, on the other hand, was part of the most monumental period in the history of the nation to North Koreans. Nevertheless, its origin was ambiguous and debatable. While the term Chollima, literally meaning “thousand-mile horse”, was mentioned in pre-modern Chinese texts, the North Koreans insisted that it was inspired by a Korean mythical creature.[iii] Although the Chollima movement began in 1959, a year after the start of the Great Leap Forward, it was heralded in North Korea as a truly original Korean approach to economic development that was drawn up by President Kim Il-Sung; its indebtedness to the Chinese was not acknowledged. Instead, the North Korean city of Nampo was officially hailed as the ‘birthplace of the Chollima Movement’, when workers at the local steel plant ‘took the lead in bringing about an upswing in socialist construction’.[iv]
The North Korean Chollima and the Chinese Great Leap Forward Movements are fundamentally similar in three ways: their being underpinned by communist ideology, their emphasis on communal spirit and their specific policies. Firstly, both movements were aimed at accelerating and completing the socialist transformation physically and ideologically. While Mao claimed that, through the movement, China aimed to achieve ‘full communism’ before the USSR, the Korean Chollima Movement was aimed at transforming the working class with communist ideology and to ‘reach portals of communism’.[v] Both movements tried to achieve their aims by boosting the national economy and speeding up production. While Mao proclaimed that China would surpass the United Kingdom in steel production in three years, Kim Il-Sung proclaimed that North Korea would catch up on Japan’s per capita output of heavy industry within a year.[vi] Although, unlike the Great Leap Forward, the Chollima Movement did successfully transform the country from a backward agricultural state to an agricultural-industrial state, the claim of surpassing Japan was, just like the Chinese claim of surpassing the United Kingdom, never materialised. Both movements were also united by the aim of achieving political, ideological and economic self-reliance despite Soviet hegemony. There was an immediate need to strengthen North Korea’s autonomy to avoid Soviet and Chinese influence, particularly through the development of its own Jucheideology. Whereas China was more interested in increasing production for export. As a young communist power, Kim Il-sung was growing desperate for economic success to prove the supremacy of communism, as well as to consolidate his leadership.[vii]
Secondly, the Chollima and Great Leap Forward movements also share emphasis on communal spirit and effort in their campaigns. For example, the North Koreans carried out a communalisation movement by amalgamating smaller cooperatives into larger administrative units called ri (lit. village). The administration and operation of those Agricultural Cooperatives also closely emulated many distinct features of the Chinese People’s Communes so that the Korean ri can in fact be seen as the Chinese xiang (village). For example, a typical ri would contain most of the facilities in a People’s Commune, such as production establishments, educational, cultural, health and welfare facilities. Under this communal unit, there were attempts to establish a “free supply” commodities distribution system, and to mobilise female labour at nurseries and communal cooking facilities.[viii] In other words, the only major difference was that the Korean communalisation movement was smaller in scale. In addition, similar to that in the Great Leap Forward, the Chollima spirit was charged up by intensive propagandisation in workplaces, which created a battlefield mentality. It is under this ‘de-stalinisation’ attitude that the ‘revolutionary fervour’ had penetrated into every aspect of social life, such as language, education and organisations of production. Reflected in utilising intensive exploitation of human labour as the major means to achieve the sky-high production targets, the Chollima Movement also owed its ideological origin from Mao’s belief that moral and ideological vigour would overcome physical limitations.[ix] As a result of the over-emphasis on production quantity, both movements suffered from substantial over-stating of official output figures, especially in machinery, fuel and agriculture.
In terms of specific policies, the Chinese and North Korean movements also share many similarities. For example, the Chinese policies such as ‘combining native and foreign methods’ and ‘Backyard Steel Furnace campaigns’ were emulated in North Korea with the construction of small local blast furnaces.[x] Although superficially these policies may seem to be part of a bigger movement to decentralise major modern industries and to use local resources effectively, it is in fact very much an ideological practice in disguise. On the one hand, as North Korea had already built an adequate steel industry at that time, practically these primitive backyard furnaces were practically rather unnecessary. Moreover, possessing 76% and 92% of the Korean peninsula’s mining and electricity production capacity, North Korea had far more favourable conditions to develop its heavy industry than China.[xi] On the other hand, while Mao believed in the wisdom of peasants and thus adopted less-scientific production methods, Kim Il-Sung trusted more the science and technology expertise in North Korea, which was shown in his numerous speeches stressing on how important science and rational methods were to socialist construction.[xii] One can also observe such difference in their party emblem – the calligraphy brush, reflecting the North Korean’s belief in the importance of intellectuals and scientists, featured in the Korean Workers’ Party emblem is absent from the Chinese Communist Party’s emblem. This shows how North Korea’s policy was aimed more at drumming up the Chollima spirit, a battlefield mentality also promoted in China.
The huge differences of the two countries in economic capabilities, terrain and international situation undoubtedly brought about different needs and variations to the movements. For example, North Korea’s reward and incentive structure during the Chollima period, which was mainly derived from the Soviet Stakhanovite Movement. For example, the physical embodiment of the ideological incentives, such as the medals and title of “Chollima Work Team”, were unique to North Korea, in which awardees were granted special privileges.[xiii] However, realising this did not work very well, Kim Il-Sung turned away from mere ideological incentives and offered ‘prizes’ such as free vacations to these ‘Chollima riders’.[xiv] In addition, as the two countries had different terrains, North Korea did not emulate the Chinese-style mass irrigation project that involved peasants in opening up land. These factors also led to different results in the movements.
The Chollima Movement was relatively more successful than the Great Leap Forward in that it transformed, at least partially, North Korea into an industrialised country and produced obvious economic progress. Although not being able to surpass Japanese production volume, North Korea was recognised as the second industrialised country in Asia after Japan in the early 1960s with one of the living standards in Asia, and the success left a sense of purpose and togetherness among people that continued even nowadays.[xv] As the Chollima movement was not so extreme as the Great Leap Forward, some policies, most notably the communalisation policy, in North Korea differed in scale compared with their Chinese counterparts. In fact, Kim Il-Sung once complained to the USSR ambassador that the Chinese-style huge communes just “did not work” as “everyone’s [sic] getting same meals regardless of accomplished work”, and so complete Chinese-style communalisation was not found in North Korea.[xvi] While the Great Leap Forward policies were mostly reversed and abandoned as soon as the Chinese Great Famine began, the Chollima Movement was never officially abandoned – it was even enshrined into North Korea’s constitution as the “General Line for Socialist Construction” in 1972. However, the partial success of the Chollima Movement gave false hope to North Korea leadership, which led to an inflated production target for the country’s Seven Year Plan.[xvii]
Nevertheless, common scenes can be observed in the aftermath of the movements. Both the Chollima Movement and Great Leap Forward enormously increased the human cost of modernisation and created noticeable strains and population exhaustion in both North Korean and Chinese economies. Also, short-term gain in production quantity was achieved at the expense of quality – even Kim Il-Sung once criticised the quality of the products and machineries as “inferior” and “unsellable in the international market”.[xviii] Moreover, both movements led to huge imbalances in the economy of the countries. Under the competitive Chollima Workteam Movement, the ‘victory’ of one industry was achieved at the expense of other industries.[xix] Therefore, despite the short-lived economic boom in the First Five Year Plan, the North Korean economy soon suffered from industrial imbalance since the mid 1960s, when the regime stopped publishing quantitative production statistics. Although the Chollima Movement did not lead to anything like the Chinese Great Famine, the food shortage problem in North Korea remains unresolved, despite the marked improvements heavy industrial performance. For instance, even foreign embassies such as that of East Germany complained about the serious lack of food for foreigners in Pyongyang in 1959.[xx] In short, the Korean Chollima Movement was fundamentally similar to the Chinese Great Leap Forward in aims and content, despite the minor differences in execution and scale.
Importing Chinese Revolution: Emulation and Imitation
The fundamental similarities between the two movements do not necessarily imply that the Chollima Movement is an emulation of the Great Leap Forward. In fact, to affirm ideological independence and the Juche self-reliance ideology, the North Korean government has been trying hard to distance itself from Chinese and Soviet influence. This desire for ideological independence motivated the North Koreans to dismiss any claims for emulation. For example, the North Koreans claimed that the Chollima Movement in fact originated in 1956 well before the Chinese movement under the slogan of “Let us produce more, practice economy, and over-fulfil the five-year plan ahead of schedule!”. [xxi] However, contemporary newspaper articles revealed some interesting patterns. While the Chinese also used the phrase “riding the Qianlima” (Thousand-mile horse, Chollima in Korean) to refer to the ‘accomplishments’ of the Chinese peasants and workers at the time, the Korean term did not appear until 1958 in the Renmin Ribao or Nodong Sinmun (the official Chinese and Korean newspaper respectively).[xxii] Thus, while the idea of speeding up production might have emerged in North Korea by 1956, the actual implementation plans and policies for advancing such idea were not drawn out until a year after the beginning of the Great Leap Forward in China. So, what are the connections between the two movements? How has the Chollima movement, if at all, emulated the Great Leap Forward?
The Chollima Movement emulated the Great Leap Forward in three main aspects, namely the frantic pace of socialist transformation, the reorganisation and expansion of the Agricultural Cooperatives, and the sole usage of ideological incentives (at the beginning) to boost economic production. In addition to movement policies, there were many more exchanges and emulations between the two countries that did not fall into the three main categories. Technological and cultural exchanges, on top of economic ones, were frequent between North Korea and China since 1958.[xxiii] During the years, Kim Il-Sung sent four special delegations to China to observe and learn about the Great Leap Forward policies. As a frequent visitor of China, Kim Il-Sung was shown the Chinese communes in 1958 and urged by Mao to set up similar ones in North Korea. Kim assured Mao that he would “pass on to our peasants the great results you have achieved from your commune movement”.[xxiv] Furthermore, there were other kinds of unofficial relationships or exchanges at popular level between Chinese and Koreans. For example, the Taekam Korea-China Friendship Cooperative Farm near Pyongyang had a sister relationship with the Hongxing China-Korea Friendship People’s Commune in Beijing.[xxv]
Both Great Leap Forward and Chollima movements were inspired by the Soviet Stakhanovite movement in the 1930s, a trend revived in the 1950s in post-war reconstruction period promoted by the International Communist Movement. [xxvi] Upon closer investigation, the Chollima Movement was in fact Great Leap Forward in style but Korean at heart.[xxvii] For example, one of the Korean ‘innovative’ policies was the “Drink No Soup” Campaign, which urged workers not to drink soup to minimise the need of toilet breaks when they were working.[xxviii] The North Koreans also refused to follow the Chinese in abolishing Machine-tractor stations, but instead turned them into ‘Agricultural Machinery Stations’ under the Agricultural Cooperatives.[xxix] These show not only did the Koreans imitate the Chinese Great Leap Forward policies, but also emulated them to better suit their own situation. Kim Il-Sung even had the ambition not just to catch up but also to surpass the Soviet and Chinese. This competitiveness coupled with worsening Sino-Soviet split finally led to the abrupt end of the Chollima policies in the early 1960s, when Kim began to disavow the Chinese communes as the model for their emulation and reverse if not abandon most of the Chinese-style ventures.[xxx]
Causes of the Emulation Behaviour
Up to the start of the First Five Year Plan in 1957, North Korea had been following Soviet examples and experiences in agricultural and industrial development. As the leader of the eastern bloc, with more resources and better technology, it is natural that North Korea would appeal to Soviets. So what motivated the Koreans to turn their attention to China instead and emulate the Chinese ‘revolutionary’ model? While Paige suggested that Korean emulation of the Chinese model was mainly due to its relevance to the Korean situation,[xxxi] this paper suggests that the emulation behaviour must be viewed in conjunction to the international situation as well as the attitude of the communist leaderships.
To begin with, the emulation of Chinese policies should be seen as part of the Korean strategy to impress the Chinese and at the same time stay neutral in the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s. Kim Il-Sung’s major concern in this period was the rapid development of the North Korean economy, in which foreign assistance was absolutely essential to his war-torn country. On the one hand, Soviet assistance dropped substantially in the mid-1950s as their leaders were displeased with the imbalanced Korean First Three Year Plan. [xxxii] On the other hand, despite China’s own growing socio-economic problems, Chinese assistance to North Korea was not affected and even at one point surpassed the Soviet assistance.[xxxiii] In fact, Mao even took the initiative and met Kim Il-Sung in 1957 to resolve the August faction incident that adversely affected the Sino-Korean relationship. The Chinese leader proposed to withdraw his Army from North Korea while making huge economic and trade concessions to North Korea.[xxxiv] Kim Il-Sung was greatly impressed and thus the bilateral relationship flourished. Under this climate, North Korea endorsed and even emulated the Chinese Great Leap Forward policies, despite Soviet criticisms and Kim Il-Sung’s own doubts on effectiveness. At the same time, Kim also acknowledged of the Chinese claim that they would overtake the British steel productions. In this context, the year 1958 was not just coincidentally a turning point in North Korea’s policy orientation but indeed in wider Sino-Korean relationship. Nevertheless, when strains between the Chinese and the Soviets became clear in late 1950s, North Korea chose to remain neutral to maximise the assistance they could get from both sides. Although they increasingly sided with the Chinese and began emulating the Chinese policies, North Korea was extremely cautious not to annoy the Soviets too much. For example, even during the emulation North Korea avoided direct confrontation with the Soviets by refusing to imitate certain controversial Chinese policies and constantly emphasising how important Soviet experiences were to them. Indeed, that the size of the Korean Agricultural Cooperatives was chosen not to follow that of the Chinese People’s Communes so as not to exceed the Soviet style Kolkhoz was a way to justify such Korean emulation to be an extension of Soviet experience.[xxxv] Such tactic was indeed rather successful, as North Korea received an estimated total of more than $950 million in grants and loans from the Chinese and more than $1500 million from the Soviets.[xxxvi]
In the same vein, the ineffectiveness of the emulated policies and the worsening Sino-Chinese relationship finally led to the abrupt end of Korean emulation. By 1960, the Chinese was only able to offer half as much economic assistance as the Soviets due to its deteriorating economy.[xxxvii] Afterwards, Kim claimed that he actually “categorically disagree with many Chinese policies, such as the [People’s] Communes”.[xxxviii] In addition, intensifying Soviet criticisms on the Chinese-style policies and the increasing pressure on North Korea to take a definite side also played a role in the abrupt end of the Korean emulation behaviour. In such sense, the matching time of the improving Sino-Korean relations and the emulation of the Chollima Movement can be regarded as a clue of Kim’s intention of employing emulation efforts to bargain for more Chinese economic assistance.
Secondly, Kim Il-Sung’s original belief that the Chinese innovative policies could help resolve the Korean socio-economic problems also led to emulation. Despite the pressure from the Chinese and Soviets, the North Korean decision was made free of coercion. Earlier Korean political dependence on Soviet and Chinese sponsorship was greatly reduced after 1958.[xxxix] With the withdrawal of the Chinese Volunteer army in North Korea in 1958, Chinese ability to directly influence North Korean internal policies was greatly restricted. By eliminating the remaining Chinese Yanan and Soviet Korean faction in the Korean Workers’ Party during the 1956-7 August Faction incident, Kim Il-Sung was thereafter able to make political decisions without direct foreign influence.[xl] On the other hand, while the economic decisions were mainly determined by a few top policy makers in the 1950s North Korea, Kim Il-Sung held the veto power himself. It follows that Kim played an important role in deciding to emulate the Chinese Great Leap Forward, especially with his personal background and Korea’s historical relationship with China. Historically, Koreans have long considered the Chinese civilization worthy of imitation and modification.[xli] Kim spent more than 13 years - most of his youth - in Northeastern China, where he received formal schooling and was exposed to communist ideology and Chinese culture.[xlii] Furthermore, 1950s Kim’s ideology was fundamentally influenced by Maoism, which shows that he was greatly influenced by Chinese ideologies at the time.[xliii] Moreover, with great similarities in their experience, culture and state of affairs, the North Korea leadership saw the Chinese version of Marxist-Leninism more relevant to their country.
Conclusion
To conclude, the Korean Chollima Movement was an emulation of the Chinese Great Leap Forward movement aimed at solving North Korea’s socio-economic problems at the time. The emulation behaviour was also part of Korea’s effort in maintaining neutrality in the 1950-60s Sino-Soviet split. The Chollima Movement was not the only Chinese-inspired campaign; North Korea also tried to replicate other Chinese policies and innovations. For example, Kim Il-Sung adopted the ‘Chongsan-ri method’ in 1960, which was an equivalent of the Chinese Mass-line theory that that urged party cadres to work directly with the people.[xliv] But this paper shows the monumental nature of the Chollima movement. The relative success of the Chollima Movement and especially the self-reliant nature of the movement made it an important episode in North Korean history.
While the failure of the Great Leap Forward shook people’s confidence on the Maoist Chinese regime, the success of Chollima consolidated the Kimist Korean regime and provided favourable situation to adopt their own Juche idea and policies. So, while Hoare identified the emergence of the Juche idea as the side product of the Sino-Soviet split, [xlv] this paper instead takes the view that the successful Chollima Movement played an important role in the emergence of the Juche idea, as it boosted the confidence of the regime in searching for more independent, organic “Korean” solutions to their problems. Since the 1970s, the Korean communists even started to consider their Juche ideology and related policies suitable for emulation by other emerging nations of Asia and Africa.[xlvi] Nevertheless, while the Chollima Movement has long been propagandised by the state as a symbol of the Juche ideology of self-reliance, it was ironically just an emulation of the Chinese Great Leap Forward movement after all. Had North Korea experienced something as disastrous as the Great Leap Forward, it might have changed directions towards a more radical liberalisation programme as China did in the 1970s. It is debatable whether the success of the Chollima movement is truly a blessing.
Key words: Chollima movement, North Korea, Great Leap Forward, emulation, revolution
Biography: Joseph Yu is currently a secondary history and politics teacher in London. He completed his doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford University researching the development of museum in postcolonial Hong Kong. Trained in anthropology, history, international relations and education, Joseph's research interest lies in the development of colonial social institutions.
Footnotes
[i] See Kim Cheehyung, “Total, Thus Broken: Chuch'e Sasang and North Korea's Terrain of Subjectivity”, The Journal of Korean Studies 17 (2012), p. 92 for further discussion.
[ii] It is important to note the differences between emulation and imitation. Paige defined emulation as an “organisational behaviour … reproducing behaviour patterns, including policies, of another organisation”. In essence, emulation involves not only the copying of behaviour patterns (imitation), but also a certain degree of intention to match and surpass the original model. For further discussions see Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964).
[iii] For further discussion, see Barry Gills, “North Korea and the Crisis of Socialism: The Historical Ironies of National Division,” Third World Quarterly 13 (1992), p. 114. And Peter Moody, “Chollima, the Thousand Li Flying Horse: Neo-traditionalism at Work in North Korea” in Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 13 (2013), p. 211.
[iv] For example, a North Korean publication dated 1977 described the movement as uniquely Korean. See Genaro Carnero Checa, Korea: Rice and Steel (Pyongyang: Foreign Press, 1977), p. 108.
[v] See further, Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964), p. 224.
[vi] Whan Kihl Young, “The Cultural Dimension and Context of North Korean Communism”, Korean Studies 18 (1994), p. 150.
[vii] For further discussions, see Daniel Schwekendiek, A Socioeconomic History of North Korea (London: McFarland, 2011), Peter Moody, “Chollima, the Thousand Li Flying Horse: Neo-traditionalism at Work in North Korea” in Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 13 (2013); as well as Tae Hwan Ok and Hong Yung Lee (eds.), Prospects for Change in North Korea (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994).
[viii] See for example, Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964). See also John Bradbury, "Sino-Soviet Competition in North Korea", The China Quarterly 6 (1961). See also and Philip Rudolph, "North Korea and the Path to Socialism", Pacific Affairs 32 (1959) for further discussion.
[ix] See Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978) for further discussion.
[x] See more in Rudolph, Philip, "North Korea and the Path to Socialism" in Pacific Affairs 32 (1959); Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978); Joungwon Alexander Kim, “The ‘Peak of Socialism’ in North Korea: The Five and Seven Year Plans” in Jan Prybyla (ed.), Comparative Economic Systems(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969).
[xi]Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, North Korea through the Looking Glass (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), p.48.
[xii] See Kim Il Sung, On the Building of the Workers’ Party of Korea 2 (Pyongyang: Foreign Press, 1978) for example.
[xiii] Joungwon Alexander Kim, “The ‘Peak of Socialism’ in North Korea: The Five and Seven Year Plans” in Jan Prybyla (ed.), Comparative Economic Systems (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), p. 260.
[xiv] The author visited North Korea three times during 2013-2014, observing first-hand how this reward system is still in place when citizens were offered holidays to the beaches.
[xv] See James Hoare, Historical dictionary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), p. 19. See also Cheehyung Kim, “Total, Thus Broken: Chuch'e Sasang and North Korea's Terrain of Subjectivity”, The Journal of Korean Studies 17 (2012), p. 76. See also B.C. Koh, “North Korea and Its Quest for Autonomy”, Pacific Affairs 38 (1965), p. 300.
[xvi] See James Person (ed.), New Evidence on North Korea's Chollima Movement and First Five-Year Plan (1957–1961) (Washington D.C.: Wilson Center, 2009), p. 58. Indeed, most Chinese policies were reversed after Great Leap Forward was seen as a failure. For example, previously state-owned small hand-tools, kitchen plots and draft animals were returned to the peasants as the policies were reversed. See Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964), p. 248; see also B.C. Koh, “The Impact of the Chinese Model on North Korea”, Asian Survey18 (1978), p. 643.
[xvii] Joseph Sang-Hoon Chung, “North Korea's "Seven Year Plan" (1961-70): Economic Performance and Reform”, Asian Survey 12 (1972), p. 535.
[xviii] Paul French, North Korea: State of Paranoia (London: Zed Books, 2014), p. 112.
[xix] Joseph Chung, “North Korea's economic development and capabilities”, Asian Perspective 11 (1987), p. 58.
[xx] "Food Situation in Pyongyang," 14 September 1959, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, PolA AA, MfAA, A 6979. Translated for NKIDP by Bernd Schaefer. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114975 , accessed December 12, 2022.
[xxi] Korean Central News Agency, "Kim Il Sung's Korea (16): Kim Il Sung Initiates Chollima Movement”, Korean Central News Agency, 31 March 2012, http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2012/201203/news31/20120331-22ee.html, accessed December 12, 2022.
[xxii] The use of the term Qianlima (Thousand-mile horse) can be seen in titles of Chinese newspaper articles such as “We must lead the Agricultural Great Leap Forward, and ride on the Thousand-mile horse at National Farms” (15 March 1958, Chinese:“一定要走在农业生产大跃进前面 国营农场跨上千里马”), and “The Red Banner on top of the Kawa Mountain – The Henan Peoples Commune of the Kawa Autonomous County in Cangyuan, Yunnan has ridden on the Thousand-mile horse” (14 March 1960, Chinese: “佧佤山上的红旗——云南沧源佧佤族自治县贺南人民公社跨上了千里马”). See also B.C. Koh, “The Impact of the Chinese Model on North Korea”, Asian Survey 18 (1978), p. 641.
[xxiii] Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978), p. 30.
[xxiv] See further in James Person (ed.), New Evidence on North Korea's Chollima Movement and First Five-Year Plan (1957–1961) (Washington D.C.: Wilson Center, 2009), p. 58; and John Bradbury, "Sino-Soviet Competition in North Korea", The China Quarterly 6 (1961), p. 19.
[xxv] Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea: Dynamic Relations (Stanford: Hoover Inst. Press, 1996), p. 135.
[xxvi] The frantic pace and spirit of both the movements was borrowed from the Soviet Stakhanovite movement in the 1930s, in which the Russian miner Aleksei Stakhanovite was credited with his heroic production feats. See Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, North Korea through the Looking Glass (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), pp. 47, 220.
[xxvii] These ‘innovative’ policies were a response to the Korean Workers’ Party’s call for “creative application of Marxism-Leninism to the realities of the country”. See Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978), p. 31.
[xxviii] Paul French, North Korea: State of Paranoia (London: Zed Books, 2014), p. 111.
[xxix] Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964), p. 245.
[xxx] For the termination of the movement, see discussions in Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978), p. 35. See also B.C. Koh, “North Korea and Its Quest for Autonomy”, Pacific Affairs 38 (1965), p. 303.
[xxxi] Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964), p. 242.
[xxxii] Victor Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea Past and Future (London: Vintage Press, 2013), pp. 44, 111.
[xxxiii] B.C. Koh, “North Korea and Its Quest for Autonomy”, Pacific Affairs 38 (1965), p. 302.
[xxxiv] Shen zhihua 沈志华 and Dong Jie 董洁, “中苏援助与朝鲜战后经济重建 [Sino and Soviet Assistance and the Post-war Economic Reconstruction of North Korea]”, Yanhuang Chunqiu 6 炎黄春秋第6期 (2011), p. 9.
[xxxv] For further discussion, see John Bradbury, "Sino-Soviet Competition in North Korea", The China Quarterly 6 (1961), pp. 20-21; and Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama” University of Alabama Press, 1978), p. 36.
[xxxvi] Chin O Chung, Pyongyang between Peking and Moscow: North Korea's involvement in the Sino-Soviet dispute, 1958-1975 (Alabama” University of Alabama Press, 1978), p. 33; and Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea: Dynamic Relations (Stanford: Hoover Inst. Press, 1996), p. 134.
[xxxvii] Ironically, the deterioration was partly due to Great Leap Forward. See further in Simmons, Robert, “China's Cautious Relations with North Korea and Indochina” in Asian Survey 11 (1971), p. 631. There were also rumours that Mao enraged Kim Il-Sung by criticising him as a “traitor of revolution” during his visit to the Soviet Union in 1960. Shen Zhihua沈志华, 中朝关系惊天内幕 [The Shocking Inside Story of Sino-North Korean Relations], Gongshi wang 共识网, 25 August 2013, http://www.21ccom.net/articles/qqsw/zlwj/article_2013082790746.html, accessed 10 December, 2022.
[xxxviii] James Person (ed.), New Evidence on North Korea's Chollima Movement and First Five-Year Plan (1957–1961) (Washington D.C.: Wilson Center, 2009), p. 58.
[xxxix] Andrei Lankov, “Kim Takes Control: The ‘Great Purge’ in North Korea, 1956—1960”, Korean Studies 26 (2002), p. 89.
[xl] Adrian Buzo, The Making of Modern Korea (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p. 90.
[xli] Peter Moody, “Chollima, the Thousand Li Flying Horse: Neo-traditionalism at Work in North Korea”, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 13 (2013), p. 213.
[xlii] B.C. Koh, “The Impact of the Chinese Model on North Korea”, Asian Survey 18 (1978), p. 633.
[xliii] For examples of Maoist influences in Kimist ideology, see Robert Scalpiano and Dalchoong Kim (eds.), Asian Communism: Continuity and Transition (Berkeley, CA: University of Berkeley Press, 1988), p. 40.
[xliv] While the Soviet ‘mass-line’ simply referred to the communication channel through which leaders could listen to masses and collect opinions, Mao’s ‘mass-line’ specifically demanded cadres to go down to the front line of operation and experience their problems. The method is still in use in nowadays DPRK, when leaders like Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un led their cadres to carry out ‘On the Spot Guidance’ in factories and collective farms. See also Han S. Park, “‘Juche’ as Foreign Policy Constraint in North Korea”, Asian Perspective 11 (1987); and Kang Suk Rhee, “North Korea's Pragmatism: A Turning Point?”, Asian Survey 27 (1987).
[xlv] James Hoare, Historical dictionary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), p. 20.
[xlvi] Glenn Paige, “North Korea and the Emulation of Russian and Chinese Behavior” in A Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia: a comparative analysis of governments and parties (London: Pall Mall, 1964), p. 254.
Comments