by Ralph Hassig
A detailed account of worker motivation is provided by a former labor battalion commander of a workers’ shock brigade assigned to construct the high-rise apartments that Kim Jong-il commissioned for Pyongyang in advance of the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students.9 In addition to reporting on the unsafe work conditions (he claimed to have seen statistics showing that an average of one worker died per day during a three-year period of construction), he described how difficult it was to motivate his men. To get to their work sites, the workers first had to climb twenty to thirty flights of stairs. “Upon reaching the top, I would find my men loafing, enjoying the panoramic view of Pyongyang like sparrows perched side by side on a telephone line.… I had no strength to scold them, so I would quietly sit down near them.… Only after I prompted them several times, would they slowly get up and get ready for work. Half an hour passed this way. Some mean fellows still remained sitting, protesting in silence.” Throughout the day they worked only sporadically. “Wherever the regimental commander and the political director went, the mobile propaganda team appeared beforehand with bugles blowing, and the battalion and company commanders barked at their men blowing whistles and pointing their fingers at them. Each tried to show that they were the masters in creating a ‘combat atmosphere.’ ” All that the typical worker could bring home after two years of labor was some saved food-ration coupons, a few biscuits, and such necessities as toothpaste and facial soap obtained from friends or relatives in Pyongyang, where such items are available.
Anecdotal evidence from defectors suggests that job satisfaction in North Korea is low, which is hardly surprising given how little control people have over job selection and how low their wages are. With few material incentives for superior performance, working for the state is drudgery; but then again, until recently that drudgery was all that people knew. Consequently, most of the people, most of the time, do not work hard—not because they are lazy but because they do not have the opportunity to work for themselves in a productive environment. The government launches one campaign after another in a vain attempt to persuade workers to honor the “480-minute” workday as a “sacred duty” and to think of their time “like combat hours at a decisive battlefield.”10
Kim Jong-il seems to hope that eventually the North Korean people can be made to love labor for its own sake, motivated only by political and moral incentives, thereby making it possible to dispense with the need to provide them with any material incentives. The press is filled with calls for officials to “properly conduct labor education so that the working people will love to work, participate in social labor voluntarily and faithfully, and thoroughly abide by socialist labor life norms and the labor discipline.”11 But Kim, and presumably everyone else in North Korea, realizes that socialist motivation alone will not run the country. The official explanation of the continued need for material incentives is that socialist society is in transition, still burdened by the bad habits and outmoded thoughts of the old capitalist society—not that many North Koreans ever had the opportunity to be capitalists.
The North Korean press claims that in a theoretical work dating from the 1960s, Kim Jong-il “completely elucidates the directions and methods necessary to realize the political and moral incentive and the material incentive,” thereby providing “a theoretical weapon which we should persistently maintain throughout the entire course of socialist construction.”12 But Kim has only offered the notion that political and moral incentives should always take precedence over material incentives, and this remains the official doctrine.13 That said, on Kim’s recommendation labor administrators have tried to boost the role of material incentives since the advent of the July 2002 economic measures, even while articles in the press continue to stress the primacy of political and moral incentives. Workers are told they are the “masters of the society and the economy,” and thus “the material and cultural wealth created in the socialist society is absolutely the property of the masses of people, and used for their independent and creative lives.”14 In the 1950s and 1960s, most North Koreans truly believed they were building a prosperous state and would soon be living in a socialist paradise, and every year their lives improved. But today, after several decades of economic decline, and seeing before them the corruption of party officials, the people largely discount political and moral incentives.
Another aspect of work motivation that has received much attention in the North Korean press since July 2002 is the matter of “socialist distribution.” Those who know communism from the textbooks will be familiar with the precept “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Instead, in today’s North Korea people are told, “Those who have contributed more to the society and the group receive more material incentives and proper political assessments suitable for their achievements.”15 Now the problem for the bankrupt state is to find resources with which to reward top performers.
As one can imagine, when people are assigned to jobs they have not chosen for themselves, and when their efforts are not materially rewarded, they use whatever extra energy they have to pursue sideline occupations such as tending a vegetable garden, raising chickens, or trading in the local market. Since the mid-1990s, sideline employment has become an economic necessity as the availability of goods in the PDS declines and state wages can hardly buy anything at the markets. Time spent at the office or the factory is time wasted.
Working for Oneself
North Korean propaganda organs teach that if people are boundlessly loyal to the party and the leader, they can even “grow flowers on rocks if the party wishes them to.”16 It turns out that people who ignore the party line and go to work for themselves are the ones who can perform economic miracles. Yet, even though most factories are not operating and the distribution system is bankrupt, people are still supposed to show up for work.
A partial exception to this work regime is the case of women, who, as mentioned earlier, are less likely than men to be assigned full-time jobs. Thus, they have more opportunity to work outside the socialist economy as small traders and merchants, selling household goods and homemade articles. Women also take jobs as waitresses or maids (because householders in a communist economy are not supposed to have servants, employers may introduce their maids as “distant relatives”). Some women become mistresses of the newly rich, and others engage in prostitution.
In the absence of a functioning domestic manufacturing sector, most of the goods in the market are imported from China by big traders, who then export North Korean antiques, narcotics, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and natural resources such as ginseng, mushrooms, and herbal medicine. Traders who work for themselves must have access to hard currency, usually through family connections in China or Japan. Other traders work for state, party, and military organizations, who enlist their own employees or hire outsiders to purchase manufacturing resources and food for the organization. If an organization hires a trader or manager who provides his own operating capital, he is registered as an “honorary” employee and pays the organization a portion of the profits. Traders, whether they work for themselves or for an organization, also end up paying a sizeable portion of their profits as bribes to border guards and security personnel who intercept deliveries along the way. Whatever the trading or business endeavor, the important principle for earning money is to keep one step ahead of the competition—and the police—by discovering new businesses or new ways to do business.
To get out of their useless job assignments, men often buy out their work contracts, so to speak, by paying the workplace management a nominal fee to keep their absence from being recorded. Some organizations that have no work for their employees simply permit workers to sign in for work in the morning and then go out and produce something of value for the organization, such as homemade consumer goods. Workers are even permitted by their workplace managers (but not by the central government) to sell the organization’s assets, such as machinery salvaged from a factory that is no longer operating. The mos
t notorious case of factory-stripping occurred at the Hwanghae Steel Mill, where, according to what Kim Jong-il told members of a visiting delegation from Japan’s North Korea organization, “Some bad elements of our society in cahoots with the mill management began to dismantle the mill and sell its machines as scrap metal to Chinese merchants.… [The bad elements] bought out party leaders and security officers, and consequently, no one had informed us about their thievery. Everybody was on the take at the mill and we had to send in the army to retake it.”17
Even those who do not engage in marketing or trading as a full-time business have become part-time small-scale merchants and traders, producing handmade goods at home, growing vegetables, collecting firewood to sell on the street or at the market, or buying goods in one place and selling them in another. For example, cheap consumer goods purchased in China or along the border are transported in bundles to the southern part of the country, rice grown in the south is sold in the north, and fish from the seashore is sold inland. There is no evidence that the economy is actually producing more goods (other than homemade goods); rather, more people are trying their hand at trading.
Selling goods in a local market is a popular way to make money. Almost anything can be purchased there, although most vendors sell inexpensive articles such as soap and homemade food. The markets also attract criminals, including the kotchebi, or “swallows”—orphaned children who work alone or in small gangs picking pockets and swiping bags and merchandise.
The authorities have relaxed the ban on street vending. In Pyongyang and other cities, food stalls sponsored by party, government, and military organizations sell snacks. On the back streets, women squat on the sidewalks with a few articles for sale: a couple of chickens, a half-dozen fish, some knitted socks, a few bottles of homemade liquor, herbal medicines, and so forth. The scene is reminiscent of South Korea in the 1950s and 1960s, and the variety of goods is so vast that it is said, “You can buy everything except cat’s horns.” Merchants also conduct business in houses and apartments located near the markets, especially when they have been chased off the street by the police.
Workers also sell their labor. Referred to variously as ppolppori (“people who sweat for a living”), sakbari (“people who receive small wages”), and ilkkun (“ordinary workers”), these individuals assemble at informal day-labor sites and hire themselves out for 1,000 to 2,000 won a day, far more than the official government wages of 4,000 to 6,000 won a month.18
Because private enterprise is antithetical to socialism, people who engage in business activities are walking on thin ice, politically and legally, and thus are easy prey for those in a position to demand bribes. Small businesspeople bribe local officials; big businesspeople bribe higher-level cadres. Whether sitting on the sidewalk, standing in a street stall, or selling in a market, people must bribe police officers and market officials for permission to sell, and (at least in the markets) it is also necessary to share a portion of the profits. Raids conducted by inspectors sent down from Pyongyang temporarily disrupt business. While the visiting inspectors are in town, merchants lie low, hence the term “locust markets,” referring to markets whose vendors flee like locusts at the sight of inspectors. If the visiting inspectors stay for long, the merchants become acquainted with them and buy them off just as they do the local officials.19
Working Abroad
An estimated fifteen to thirty thousand North Koreans work abroad legally, not counting diplomatic and military personnel.20 One large group of workers includes the five to ten thousand laborers employed in the Russian Far East to work in North Korean–run logging camps, at construction sites, and on fishing boats. Approximately seven thousand North Koreans are engaged in construction work in the Middle East, primarily in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Several hundred workers are also employed in Eastern Europe, mostly in the garment industry, and North Korean waitresses staff hundreds of North Korean–owned restaurants in China and Southeast Asia. And then there are the thousands of North Koreans employed by South Korean companies in the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
Foreign and South Korean companies hire North Korean workers from a labor pool supplied by the North Korean government, and workers’ wages are paid to the government, which then pays the workers only a portion of them. Even in the Kaesong zone, the South Korean government does not know how much money the workers actually receive, and the workers themselves do not report their earnings for fear of being excluded from the labor pool.21 It has been estimated that their take-home pay is a quarter to a fifth of their wages. Still, because North Koreans working for South Korean and foreign companies are able to escape the stifling conditions of the North Korean economy, they are extremely grateful for the opportunity. Even difficult jobs such as logging in Siberia are much sought after, and only politically reliable people are sent abroad. For example, the attractive singing and dancing waitresses working in North Korean restaurants in China and several other countries are likely to be the daughters of high-level party officials in Pyongyang and certainly not working-class women from the provinces. Applications for jobs with foreign companies in Kaesong or abroad far outnumber the available positions, and in order to be accepted into the job pool, workers must bribe North Korean officials.
Foreign employers are enthusiastic about North Korean workers because they do whatever their government handlers tell them to do, typically working ten hours a day or longer, seven days a week, with no absences. A Polish foreman supervising several North Korean welders working in Gdansk told news reporters, “They are perfect welders. They do not cause any problems and never come to work with a hangover. Do not write anything bad about them because my department will come to a standstill if those Kim Ir Sen [Kim Il-sung?] guys take them away. One North Korean is worth five Poles.”22
North Korean guest workers live in crowded dormitories, are not permitted to associate with foreigners, and go to work in company vans or on foot, accompanied by North Korean security agents. Foreign human rights organizations and labor departments have tried, usually unsuccessfully, to investigate their wage payments and working conditions, but neither the employers nor the North Korean government is willing to release information. Nevertheless, the situation where North Korean “prisoners” are working in the midst of a democracy is anomalous and, to many, morally wrong. In 2007, the Czech government decided not to renew work visas for North Korean laborers because of negative reports about their working conditions.
Even though they are thousands of miles away from their country, North Korean workers are expected to behave as if they were back home. They are required to write letters of loyalty to Kim Jong-il on his birthday and to donate money to the various campaigns glorifying their leader. North Korean workers rarely defect not only because they come from the loyal political class but because their families are held hostage in Pyongyang. After a few years abroad, they are called back home, bringing with them some hard currency and foreign-made goods. For them, the overseas work experience is just a taste of what the outside world is like, but that is better than nothing. As one North Korean welder in Gdansk said, “We are well fed now and enjoy a glass of beer every day. Every day seems to me like my birthday.”23
A Soldier’s Life
In the late 1990s, Kim Jong-il designated the military as the leading political force of the revolution, replacing the working class. “No other people in this land today are bigger, more precious, and more sacred than soldiers.”24 A 2004 Nodong Sinmun essay titled “Love Gun-Barrel Families” states that “the gun-barrel family is a new type of family for mankind, where all the family members regard wearing a military uniform and holding a gun as the greatest happiness and the best family tradition and where they all become soldiers.” The article goes on to claim that the “three generals of Mt. Paektu” (i.e., Kim Jong-il and his parents) were the first gun-barrel family.25
Kim’s heavy reliance on the army does not, however, translate into a better life for soldiers. Conditions i
n the Korean People’s Army (KPA) have materially worsened since the 1980s. Formerly, soldiers were fed, clothed, and housed about as well as the general population, but in recent years, despite Kim’s “military-first” policy, soldiers in the enlisted ranks must scramble to find food to eat and suitable clothing to wear, with the consequence that military morale has plummeted. Foreign analysts estimate the size of the KPA, which includes the country’s navy and air force, at 1.2 million out of a population of 23 million. If the various police and security agencies are included, the number is closer to 1.8 million. Adding reserve units, including 1.7 million in reserve training units, 4 million in the Worker-Peasant Guards, and 1 million in the teenage Young Red Guards, the total number of North Koreans ready to bear arms is over 8 million. This large military force is consistent with Kim Il-sung’s Four Military Lines of 1962, which called for the entire country to be fortified, the entire population to be armed, the military to be modernized, and soldiers to become absolutely loyal to the regime.
Until the 1990s, soldiers could at least look forward to the opportunity to join the Korean Workers’ Party on completing their military service, and in order to attain this goal, they were more concerned about pleasing the political officers than the units’ commanding officers (every unit has a parallel political-military command). Today, however, party membership has only limited economic value, so the decade of military service is increasingly seen as a waste.
According to the law, all able-bodied men are required to serve in the military. Men serve for ten years (formerly thirteen years), and women who choose to enlist (comprising 5 to 10 percent of the army) serve for six or seven years. It is possible to get a deferment if one has good political connections or has been accepted by a top university (which in itself requires good political connections), and defectors say that by paying a few hundred dollars in bribes, it is possible to obtain an early release from military service.
