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Treasured Swords: Environment Under the Byungjin Line

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Treasured Swords: Environment Under the Byungjin Line TREASURED SWORDS: ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE BYUNGJIN LINE by Robert Winstanley-Chesters Sino-NK Director of Research October 2013 TREASURED SWORDS: ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE BYUNGJIN LINE > A party apparatchik informs workers of the key tenets of the Byungjin line Image: Rodong Sinmun The Byungjin Line, not to mention its accompanying framing in developmental and environmental terms, the “minaturized, lightened, diversified, and precise better to understand the place of Sepho in a North Korea nukes,” is everywhere these days. And with good under this new strategic line. reason: ”Byungjin” surely merits examination and reportage, for it marks a vitally important, even definitive, AMPLIFIED LEGACY: KIM JONG-UN AS HOLISTIC change of emphasis at the dawn of the Kim Jong-un era. ENVIRONMENTALIST? Within this paper I plan to delve deeper into the Before examining the historical context for the historical context for this new strategic line, which will developmental approach in which Sepho sits, a rare support the construction of an analytical framework opportunity has been presented to the analyst which through which the place of the environmental in the new might better lay the ground for this context. The arrival theorization can be determined. It is already clear that on April 27, 2012, of Kim Jong-un’s first published one key aspect of this is the Sepho Grassland reclamation work, “On Effecting a Drastic Turn in Land Management project. Emblematic of a shift in developmental paradigms to Meet the Requirements for Building a Thriving of land reclamation and rehabilitation in North Korea, Socialist Nation,” brought with it the intriguing notion Sepho is essential to the environmental narrative of the that a youthful leader would see land management as byungjinist state. Comprehending and rendering Sepho the ideal focus for his first theoretical output. However, will be one key to constructing a framework for broader commentators could initially do little more than note the analysis. fact of its arrival and their interest in its existence. Writing But before Sepho is reached there is work to do. at NK Economy Watch, Curtis Melvin commented that Just as North Korean narratives are often cohesive and the text “was not posted[,] but will no doubt be offered encapsulatory, they can also be utterly incomprehensible for sale to Pyongyang tourists before too long….” without contextualisation. It would surely be impossible However, this has since changed. It is rare for a full to engage with Sepho and the strategies of land use it may version of such a text to emerge in an accessible way, represent without this contextualizing effort. Therefore, especially in English translation, but that is the case this essay aims to establish the context for Byungjin’s with this one, courtesy of Dermot Hudson’s Association SinoNK.com 2 TREASURED SWORDS: ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE BYUNGJIN LINE for the Study of Songun Politics UK. (When KCNA agendas, the statement also connects North Korean features an article entitled “British organization heralds environmental and developmental efforts with those of the publication of Kim Il-sung/Kim Jong-il/Kim Jong- the wider world: “In the sector of land administration un’s work,” there is no need to read it to establish which and environment conservation there are many things to organization is responsible.). be introduced from among the world trends and foreign Kim Jong-un’s “On Bringing About a Revolutionary countries’ advanced technologies….” Turn in Land Administration with the Requirements But more than simple restatement of these themes, of the Building of a Thriving Socialist Country” which in embryonic form have appeared elsewhere (“revolutionary” somehow substituted for “drastic” at in North Korean environmental narratives in recent some point during translation), which was seemingly years, within the text there appears greater evidence of presented at a meeting of senior Korean Workers Party a thematic change within Kim Jong-un’s conception officials on April 27, 2012, arrived as part of a push of what nature and the environment might possibly to embed the “young Generalissimo’s” authority and represent or manifest in society itself, and what function authenticity in a framework of posthumous hagiography it might serve in the institutional framework of a political of both previous leaders. Thus “President Kim Il- space focused on economic capacity. sung and General Kim Jong-il, peerless patriots and One key difference between developmental approach benevolent fathers of the people, always paid close and theoretics between North Korea and other nations attention to land administration and devoted painstaking in its neighbourhood is its seeming inability to conceive efforts to developing the rivers and mountains of the of environmental or natural space as anything other country in an excellent way.” � It is apparent also that than a conduit for production and capacity increases, key themes from previous developmental eras still discounting its usage within frameworks of leisure or guide the text and its underlying approach, as much as consumption. the authoritative guidance of the deceased Kims: ”… Yet Kim Jong-un appears not merely capable but Land Administration is a patriotic undertaking of lasting also willing to internalise the conservational paradigm significance for achieving the prosperity of the country so that shared environmental space might be used and and a noble undertaking for creating an excellent base experienced by citizens and residents on its own simple of living for the people….” However, at some 19 pages terms, providing abstract value in its amenity: “… long the text of Kim Jong-un’s “Land Administration” environment and nature conservation is an important and matches Kim Il-sung’s statements of the 1960s and responsible undertaking to make mountains and rivers of 1970s for its extent and range, containing space not the country more beautiful, conserve and increase natural only for covering purely environmental or agricultural resources, protect peoples’ health and provide them with matters such as forest cover or agricultural output, but a better living environment….” also reviewing policy direction on diverse issues such as tidal reclamation, road construction and urban planning, TOO EARLY TO SAY: WAITING FOR MORE DATA railway maintenance and aquatic resources. We need to see more publications from Kim Jong-un What is more intriguing and distinctive about the on environmental and developmental matters to come to latest document is the embedding of many of the more any realistic conclusions, and only the briefest of reviews conservational and mitigational themes developed of his first published text is possible here. The reader will during the later years of Kim Jong-il’s reign: for example, also be deprived, for the moment, of knowledge of Kim “We should make good arrangements to plant trees and Jong-un’s thoughts on issues of moment such as railway conserve forests to cover the country with trees and construction or ventilation devices. However, from this flowers.” While there are, alas, no calls to commit further section’s brief review of Kim’s potential foundational to the UNFCCC process or other external environmental document in the field of environmental development, I SinoNK.com 3 TREASURED SWORDS: ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE BYUNGJIN LINE > Planning the future of the Sepho area of Gangwon Province. All with one eye on Kim Il-sung’s “Rural Theses,” no doubt. Image: Rodong Sinmun believe it is possible to discern an outline of the Byungjin this essay here (a chapter in this year’s “Korea Yearbook: line developmental-theoretic approach. Politics, Economy, Society,” gives an extensive review of Of course, this is in some way an exercise in homage their focus and direction). To investigate Kim Jong Un’s to the strategies of leaders Dear and Great, incorporating developmental framing within the Byungjin era and the many of their principles and conceptions. But at the same place of Sepho it is, however, necessary to give a brief time, Kim Jong-un’s text incorporates developments from explication of the content. Bringing an end to the initial the conservational paradigm and connects environmental developmental period in North Korea, one characterized developments in North Korea with those of the wider by post war reconstruction, Soviet-inspired industrial world. Both of these elements ultimately allow for the imposition and disruptive utopian application of Maoist conception of environmental or natural resource as a revolutionary mass action, the “Theses” attempted the supportive “sword” of state to combine with a mitigative construction of a framework under which developmental or environmentally protective tendency that it is possible projects might be undertaken. Primarily, this framework to categorise as a “treasure.” was one of coordinated political inculcation and control. To assess the validity and veracity for this claim to Environmental management and development was to be “treasured status” however and to determine whether achieved through the functioning of a new strategy for it will be institutional capability and practice that embedding ideological praxis within the rural realm: ultimately allow for a combination in the environmental/ developmental field during the era of Byungjin that begins …the backwardness of the farm villages a vital process of disconnection and reconnection of compared with the towns finds expression spatial form and relation from that of simple productivity
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