Via NK News, a look at how the private market brought pork to the table in North Korea:

North Korean founding leader Kim Il Sung once famously promised that every citizen would soon be able to eat meat (that is, pork) soup daily. However, three decades of attempts to create a state-controlled system of pig farming ended in failure. 

Instead, it was a rare, officially sanctioned turn to the private market that brought Kim’s dream closer to reality.

International sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic have since disrupted all sectors of the North Korean economy in recent years, pig farming included. But the experiment in private farming showed what markets can produce when the state gets out of the way, even as the regime now seeks to assert greater control over the economy.

PRIVATE PORK

Strictly speaking, North Korean farmers had always raised pigs at home. It was perfectly legal, if sometimes viewed by authorities with suspicion. 

But in a 1984 speech to top officials, Kim changed course and explicitly endorsed the practice, announcing that farmers should be allowed to sell pork freely and at market prices as long as they had met their obligatory procurement targets — that is, sold a certain amount of pork to the state at the heavily discounted official prices. 

The Great Leader criticized those officials who had opposed private pig farming, saying they “failed to understand” the party policy. He made it clear: Private pig farming should be seen as compatible with the socialist system.

Kim even said that farmers should be in full control of what they produce in excess of the required amount —  a progressive and, frankly, rather non-kimilsungist idea. 

The message was repeated in a 1985 address to the Cabinet of Ministers, with Kim going so far as to make an uncharacteristically positive reference to a foreign country.

“In China, farmers raise pigs privately so they can eat meat and fat regularly,” Kim said, according to his collected works. “If our farmers do private husbandry well, and raise many pigs, they will also be able to eat meat and fat regularly.”

The speeches initiated (or at least emphasized) a major policy reversal. As one refugee informant said in the late 1990s: “Once upon a time, pigs had to be procured by the state, but then it became OK to sell pork privately.”

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET

The attitude to nearly all forms of private business was still negative at the time, so why was (small-scale) private pig farming seen as acceptable?

A possible explanation is the comparative weakness of the ideological concerns related to pork production. When policymakers and ideologues encountered someone raising a pig or two at home, they likely felt less unease than seeing a farmer toiling his or her own plot, let alone an entrepreneur running a workshop with hired labor. 

Meat and poultry were by no means cheap. In 1984, one kilogram of pork at the Pyongyang market cost 20-25 won — roughly one-third of the average monthly salary at the time, according to my contemporaneous travel notes.

By the early 1990s prices fluctuated between 120 and 200 won per kilo. A North Korean refugee, when explaining the situation in the early 1990s, said matter-of-factly: “It is difficult for commoners to buy pork, since it is expensive.”

However, family-based production of pork soon increased dramatically and by the early 2000s it was estimated that some 70-80% of all farming households reared pigs.

And with that growth came a noticeable uptick in meat consumption, especially in the early days of Kim Jong Un’s regime. 

According to one study of recently arrived defectors, in 2012 only 3.2% of the polled North Koreans said they were eating meat “almost every day,” but by 2016 that share had increased fourfold to 13%.

The number of those who ate meat one to two times a week (a luxury lifestyle by 1970s standards) nearly doubled, from 21.6% in 2012 to 37.7% in 2016. 

In other words, by 2016 slightly over half of polled defectors reported that they ate meat at least weekly. Pork had become part of a regular diet for mid- and high-income families.

PIGS FOR PROFIT AND PROSPERITY

A number of surveys indicated that by 2010 some 80-90% of all pork was produced privately and for some farmers and even investors, there were profits to be made. As a refugee wrote when recalling her teen years spent in the countryside: “My family raised many animals, but no animal was as good as a pig in bringing prosperity.”

Fodder for the pigs is one of the biggest challenges farmers face. The poorest pig farmers, following an old Korean tradition, feed pigs with human feces. Mid-income families, which tended to produce pork partially for market sale and partially for family consumption, usually use food refuse from their own or neighbors’ households.

The top tier of the industry, the prosperous farmers who rear a large number of pigs for sale, need abundant and high-quality fodder, so they use refuse from liquor or tofu manufacturing as well as food waste, potato and corn. Interviewees often mention liquor or tofu paste production together with pig raising as related and integrated activities.  

Most pig farmers remain modestly affluent people who can afford to raise a swine or two. However, in the 2000s large private farms also emerged. 

Around 2008, for instance, a rich investor, or donju, chose to get into pig farming. Being unable and unwilling to handle the venture himself, he found a local family who agreed to take responsibility for the project. 

The investor provided them with six piglets and 100 kg of corn, whose total price at the time was 170,000 won. It was implied that the family would also make home liquor, to provide pigs with fodder.

The family worked hard and managed to raise all six piglets successfully. In six months’ time the animals were sold for a total of 690,0000 won. Of this amount, the investor was paid his agreed half, or 345,000 won. This meant that in six months he more than doubled his initial investment of 170,000 won — a good rate of return indeed.

For a larger-scale production one needs land and facilities which, under North Korean law, cannot be officially bought, rented or owned by individuals. 

Thus, as usually is the case in the North Korean economy, larger private pig farms need some kind of official cover, or hat.

Under this scheme, a private investor files a fake company registration with the government. Technically the pig farm is considered to be the property of a county municipal government, collective farm or a side work unit of some factory, but in practice it is completely private. For the registration rights, the de facto owner pays money to the factory or administrative body, which provides her or him with the proverbial hat. 

From the aspiring investor’s point of view, pig production has advantages and disadvantages. Its major benefit is safety and stability. A larger pig farm, in spite of occasional pork price fluctuations, still produces a sure and steady income. 

It also helps that the state has treated private pork production with uncharacteristic leniency: unlike most other private businesses, pig farms are very seldom disturbed by authorities. On the other hand, this relative security also means that pig farms are less profitable than more risky private enterprises.

Ultimately it’s fair to say that in 15 years, private farmers did what the state failed to do for some four decades — they brought a pork dish within the reach of the average North Korean.