Mick Hartley

Back to the subject of manure in North Korea. [Yes I know – a niche and somewhat distasteful concern.] Last week we heard of the army trainees who are forced to spend much of their time collecting manure instead of learning how to drive tanks. Now this:

North Korea has announced that only people who have fulfilled their manure quota will be permitted to enter markets, Daily NK has learned. 

This comes as the authorities make securing supplies of manure the country’s first “struggle” of 2022.

Much as South Korea has instituted “quarantine passes” to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by verifying residents’ vaccination status, North Korea is essentially pressuring people to fulfill their quota with a sort of “manure pass.”

According to a Daily NK source in Yanggang Province, the Central Committee has ordered that markets in the province shorten their operating time by an hour through Jan. 10. The order aims to give people an extra hour to produce manure. While markets used to operate from 2:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon, they now operate from 3:00 to 5:00.

Moreover, while market operating hours will return to normal from Jan. 11, when the “battle for manure” ends, only people carrying confirmation that they fulfilled their manure quota will be allowed in, as per orders from the authorities.

The move suggests North Korea is doing its utmost to produce manure, a substitute for fertilizer needed for farming, from the start of the year.

This comes after the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee late last year designated solving the nation’s food problem as the “top task” for achieving rural development.

A top task to prevent mass starvation, more like.

That is to say, with the border closed due to COVID-19 quarantine efforts, the authorities believe it necessary to substitute wheat for white rice as the people’s staple, and that securing manure supplies is essential to boosting agricultural production by an additional ton per 10 square meters of farmland.

However, local residents find the manure quotas, shortened market hours, and now restricted market access all very burdensome.

In South Korea, debate rages whether quarantine passes violate freedom of choice, a basic right. In North Korea, the perception is spreading that the “manure passes” violate the people’s right to survival.

A resident of Hyesan contacted by Daily NK said she is already unable to engage in much market activity as she is too busy trying to fulfil the manure quota, and it makes her angry to think she will be unable to sit at her stall from Jan. 11.

“Kim” — a merchant selling bean sprouts to make ends meet — finds himself in the same boat. He has been unable to earn a single penny since the New Year due to the manure quota. Unable to earn money, he has been eating bean sprout soup to survive.

Nonetheless, nobody can call for an end to the manure pass scheme. People know that they cannot object to an order from the Central Committee.

However, some locals are setting up shop in areas and alleyways near the markets regardless of the government’s measures, readily engaging in fights with enforcement agents.

The source said the market is a space that determines the people’s survival, and because of this, locals say they cannot tell whether the authorities are telling them to live or to die with their market controls.

Again what's not made explicit here is where this manure comes from. Are we talking about human excrement? And if not, what? These people presumably don't keep animals. Pigs and cows and so on – farm animals – are largely bred in large-scale facilities: they're well out of the range of ordinary people.

And if we are talking about human excrement, then, as I said before, there are problems. A few years back we had the case of Oh Chong-song, the soldier who fled North Korea across the DMZ through a hail of bullets. When operated on, his intestines were found to contain parasitic worms – a likely result of the North Korean practice of using human excrement as fertiliser. Efforts have been made to improve the situation with fertiliser factories and the like – that is, drag the country out of the agricultural dark ages – but there's clearly a long way to go.

So these wretched people spend their time squatting on the toilet in a desperate effort to produce more shit – which is not easy when you're on the edge of starvation – or they go round trying to steal other people's shit. 

Desperate times.