North Korea’s local factory policy failing to reach rural store shelves, students discover

Students from the North Korean city of Sinuiju who were sent to support agricultural work in rural areas have returned home shocked by the state of local stores, where shelves were nearly bare despite state claims that newly built local factories are supplying goods to the population, a source told Daily NK on Monday. 

A source in North Pyongan province said students from multiple Sinuiju schools traveled to mountainous rural counties including Tongchang and Pyokdong as part of obligatory rural support mobilizations, a recurring practice in which urban students and workers are dispatched to assist with farming tasks. After returning, many expressed disbelief at what they had seen on the ground.

“There were a lot of stories about students being particularly shocked by the poor supply situation in rural stores,” the source said.

But what students witnessed bore little resemblance to that picture. Basic foodstuffs and consumer goods were in short supply at rural stores, and even when items were available, supply was inconsistent enough that people with money still struggled to find what they needed through official channels.

“What they called stores had fewer types of goods and more empty display cases than the soft-drink stalls in front of schools in Sinuiju,” the source said, quoting the students’ reaction: “They say so much is being produced at the local factories — so why isn’t any of it in the stores? We had no idea the gap between the propaganda and reality would be this big.”

Factory goods nowhere to be found in rural villages

The students had assumed that rural people could readily buy what they needed if they had money, the source said. Seeing store shelves that were simply empty was a direct encounter with the urban-rural divide that left many of them shaken.

What surprised the students further, the source added, was learning that the small amount of goods that had been on display during their visit had been temporarily stocked to coincide with the influx of outside visitors. More striking still: local factory products were almost nowhere to be seen in rural stores, while Chinese-made goods were comparatively easy to find.

“The question students came back asking most often was, ‘Where do all the goods produced at the local factories actually go?'” the source said. “The state publicizes the normalization of local factory production as a success, but on the ground in rural areas, people aren’t feeling it.”

The broader assessment is that the gap between the policy achievements Pyongyang trumpets in state media and the reality people experience remains wide, with rural communities not yet feeling the effects of the Local Development 20×10 Policy.

Local people in the areas visited offered their own explanation for the empty shelves, however. The source noted that purchasing power in rural communities is so low that demand for store goods is limited to begin with, and anyone who does need something can usually find it more cheaply at the jangmadang, the informal markets that have become the primary retail channel for most North Korean people. As a result, state-run stores in rural areas operate largely as a formality.

“Rural people simply don’t buy much from stores,” the source said. “Because there aren’t many people who will buy consistently, stores mostly run as a show — just for appearances.”

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