It's 7 o'clock on Sunday morning, and outside Pyongyang's train station the trams and buses are already packed with commuters - urged on their way to a full-day's work by a drum-beating, flag-waving propaganda troupe. For anyone unsure of the performance's underlying message, a large placard erected in front of the troupe - and replicated in work units across the country - offers a blunt clarification: "Comrade, have you carried out your battle plan today?"
The martial tone is echoed in combative posters and giant red-and-white slogans adorning buildings and roadsides across the North Korean capital. Their combined focus is a 200-day mass mobilisation campaign, aimed at boosting an economy struggling with a fresh round of substantially upgraded UN sanctions imposed after the country's fourth nuclear test in January.
Coming hard on the heels of a similar 70-day campaign that only ended in May, the 200-day version kicked off in early June, pushing extra hours and working weekends. "We're here every morning and we perform for one hour," said the leader of the all-female propaganda team that was sweating through its routine outside the train station.
"It's not so tiring. We're proud to do it. We want to encourage and cheer all the people in Pyongyang who are taking part in the campaign," she told AFP through an official translator. With their red flags and drums, and a high-decibel loudspeaker soundtrack, the 30-strong troupe was colourful and loud enough, but the public response was muted, with few sparing it more than a glance as they moved on their way.
Outside experts say the economic benefits of such campaigns are dubious at best, with some suggesting they have a negative net impact on productivity as exhaustion fuels inefficiency. New York-based Human Rights Watch has condemned them as mass exercises in "forced labour" that use political coercion to extract economic gain. Andrei Lankov, a veteran North Korea watcher and professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, said the modern-day campaigns were more show than substance - a strategy from a bygone socialist era that was long past its sell-by date.
"Back in the 60s and 70s, these military-style mobilisations were a genuine battle, with people expected to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week," Lankov said. "These days it's really more of a ritual. They organise them because, well ... because that's what they did before. I don't think many people take it particularly seriously," he added. State media has, predictably, already hailed the campaign as a success, with the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun trumpeting increases during the first month of between 120-130 percent in electricity and coal production.
The primary focus is on industrial output, with top priority given to reducing a yawning energy deficit that acts as a constantly tripping circuit breaker on economic growth. The Rodong Sinmun offered no verifiable data to support its production claims, and power outages remain commonplace in Pyongyang which, as the country's showcase capital, receives privileged utilities supplies.
Heavy batteries and power saving LED lights are popular items in markets for those who can afford them, while the balconies of Pyongyang's apartment blocks bristle with solar panels to keep basic household appliances running. The past decade or so has seen the emergence of a closely monitored but tolerated grassroots capitalism in North Korea, born out of a spirit of survivalist self-sufficiency that got many through the catastrophic failure of the state distribution system in the famine years of the 1990s.
This unofficial economy is seen as playing an increasingly important role in propping up the regime, but defectors now living in South Korea say mass mobilisation campaigns disrupt its operations by eliminating the free time people need to tend to small-scale, private commerce.
The current 200-day campaign was launched to kick-start a new five-year economic plan unveiled by supreme leader Kim Jong-Un at a ruling party congress in May. The plan was long on ambition but short on detail, offering no clear hint of reform despite Kim's call to "expand our method of economic management". According to South Korea's central bank, the North Korean economy contracted by 1.1 percent last year - the first downturn since 2010. Given the paucity of economic data released by the North, estimating its GDP is a hazardous exercise, but experts say upgraded sanctions are clearly posing a challenge that old-school, mass mobilisation campaigns are simply no match for.
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