North Korean leader Kim Jong Un admitted that decades of party policy has failed to bring economic development to the country, introducing a new plan to build industrial centers in 200 cities and counties within ten years, according to state media on Tuesday.

In a striking speech at a Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) session the previous day, Kim said his government has offered “empty words” on rural development in the past, leading to “backward” conditions nationwide that mean not a single factory is up to standards.

He vowed to personally take responsibility for a new policy to construct “modern regional industry factories in 20 counties every year” over the next decade, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The rubber-stamp parliament passed two motions at the assembly Monday — one on budget plans and another on abolishing inter-Korean cooperation organizations — with Kim calling for follow-up meetings to cement his new policies. 

He also dedicated a large part of his speech to announcing plans to further sever ties with South Korea and build up the military.

“LOCAL DEVELOPMENT 20×10 POLICY”

North Korea has introduced major rural policies in recent years to build new housing and improve access to modern equipment at farms in all cities and counties, and the focus of Kim’s speech Monday was largely on overall economic development and building more factories.

“There is no iconic regional factory meeting the requirements of the times in provinces. We should no longer ignore this fact but face up to it,” Kim said.

He lamented a widening wealth gap between residents in Pyongyang and rural areas, as well as within “every province, city and county.” 

“I am going to make our Party keep hold on the construction of modern regional industry factories in 20 counties every year as an unerring policy task, carry it out successfully on such level as Kimhwa County and thus raise on one stage the basic material and cultural living standards of the people in all cities and counties and, in another word, across the country within 10 years.”

Kimhwa refers to a project finished in 2022 to build a small cluster of “model” light industry factories producing foodstuffs, garments and daily necessities like soap and paper.

The DPRK leader said the selection of the order of locations for construction in the “local development 20×10 policy” should avoid corruption and favoritism while recognizing that some areas have more resources or infrastructure to facilitate the project earlier than others. He will convene a politburo meeting “soon” to discuss the policy further.

The project will start with the city of Kaesong near the inter-Korean border and the counties of Jaeryong, Yonthan and Usi, he said, while lamenting that officials had a “passive attitude” by only committing to “step up preparations” for the project nationwide without more concrete action.

“This is another gigantic change and revolution, not just empty words, to eliminate the century-old backwardness of regions, realize the long-cherished desire of regional people and bring about a turn in the realm of our people’s understanding.”

He referenced his predecessors Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il who oversaw regional development initiatives “in the 1970s and 1980s” but said that “due to the wrong viewpoint and attitude of our officials … no fundamental change was witnessed in the actual standard of living of the regional people.”

As for his last 12 years in power, Kim said he failed to “work for developing the regional economy” but that at least since a major party congress in 2016, his “important policies” have been “successfully pushed ahead without a moment’s delay to bring about many changes.”

Kim has appeared to use a similar rhetorical style of admitting past policy failures in his speeches on revolutionizing party ideological training, where he has asked officials at every level to become true altruists and believers in socialist ideals without any individualistic concerns.

He also previously used the word “backward” to describe various industries and the country’s most important mining region. 

North Korean economy expert and NK Pro contributor Peter Ward told NK News that Kim may be limiting his plan to building light industry factories for import substitution in rural areas and that this could entail producing “more processed food, better quality clothes and other basic consumer goods rather than something like refrigerators, which seems rather unlikely.”

He said it is unlikely Kim would succeed if his plan called for building factories meant to compete on global markets, due to infrastructure challenges, sanctions and especially the country’s “information control policy, which makes it very difficult to maintain, upscale and innovate within your industrial sector.”

If the scope of the project is limited to import substitution, Pyongyang “will still have to worry about getting some of what they need from China,” Ward said, adding Kim may have already received assurance from China, its largest trading partner, on increasing trade in sanctioned areas.

OTHER ECONOMIC POLICIES

Kim mentioned several other nationwide economic projects in his speech, including plans to build “modern general hospitals” in various provinces every year, after finally opening the long-delayed Pyongyang General Hospital project in the capital this year.

New chicken farms will also be built in “every province in the future,” starting with one in Pyongyang this year modeled after the recently opened Kwangchon Chicken Farm. 

The DPRK leader has repeatedly called for the construction of vegetable greenhouse farms in every province in recent years. He said Pyongyang experienced a “serious food shortage” last year and a “food crisis” in 2021.

Kim mentioned his “grand canal” project “??connecting the East and West Seas” again on Monday, after first mentioning it in Sept. 2022, though it is still unclear how advanced these plans are or when construction will start.

And like in past major speeches, he called for operating “atomic and tidal power stations in the future” to “solve the problem of power shortages.”

The Cabinet should have absolute authority over economic matters and “correctly predict” all economic factors of every development decision such as “infrastructure, population and manpower management,” Kim said.

A separate KCNA report Tuesday said the Cabinet successfully carried out the state budget for 2023 with a 0.2% surplus and that the 2024 budget will increase by 3.4%. As is standard with such yearly reports, it only provided percentage terms and no monetary amounts.

It said 15.9% of the budget last year was for defense spending and that it would be the same for 2024, though this is not believed to include missile development and other areas not under the Cabinet’s control.