Mick Hartley

Meanwhile, back in North Korea, how are they proposing to deal with their urgent problems? – a severe food shortage, Covid with no effective medical system and no drugs, homeless children starving on the streets?

More ideology, of course!

Workers’ Party of Korea officials in South Hamgyong Province recently attended lectures calling for intensified ideological indoctrination of provincial residents, Daily NK has learned. 

A source in South Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Monday that the province’s party committee carried out lectures for cadres in party propaganda and agitation departments at the provincial, city and county level in mid-January. 

The lectures were entitled “Party Cadres Must Become High-output Loudspeakers.”

“Following the lectures for the cadres, lectures were carried out for party officials at the city and county level early this month, and even in Hamhung, lectures were held for the party secretaries of individual agencies and enterprises and cell secretaries,” he said.

Last year, North Korea’s leadership stressed during lectures for party cadres that they must make efforts to implement ideological indoctrination that accurately conveys party ideology to the people.

This year’s lectures had the same message, with the authorities calling for officials to make all-out efforts in propaganda and agitation activities to spark innovation in ideological education amid the difficult period the country is experiencing. 

However, officials who took part in the lectures have been less than enthusiastic about their message. 

According to Daily NK’s source, a party cell secretary at a workplace in Hamhung asked, “How can we tell people who are hungry and cold to simply trust and follow the Workers’ Party?”

The cell secretary said he was too embarrassed to speak with ordinary people anymore given that the Workers’ Party is simply telling him to indoctrinate people without resolving the country’s fundamental problems. 

In fact, Daily NK’s source said there were lots of people with faces swollen from hunger in not only rural counties and villages, but also cities.

“Even party officials feel troubled that they must ideologically indoctrinate such people to live according to the ideology and will of the Workers’ Party,” he said. “You can’t soothe public discontent with propaganda and agitation work these days.”

In fact, the source said local residents who heard about the message of the lectures complained, “Are they saying we can’t survive because our ideology is wanting?”

The source said the state is using all means at its disposal to correct worsening public sentiment, but “it’s only leading to blowback.”

“If the state really cares about the people, it should allow markets to stay open at least a little longer rather than intensifying ideological education,” he said.

Hmm. "Only leading to blowback". Let's hope…