N. Dorjsuren,
Director of the
Mongolian Institute of Northeast Asian Safety and Strategy
The respected Comrade
Self-reliance in the new five-year plan period should be developed into nationwide self-reliance.
The main in self-reliance and self-sufficiency is to scrupulously revitalize the economy on a nationwide scale and maximize the production and supply of locally available goods necessary for the people’s livelihood. The spirit and fighting trait of self-reliance of the popular masses who are the master of production and administration should be directed to producing by relying on one’s own raw materials and technology, ensuring unified guidance of the state over the economic work, strengthening the national system of unified statistics and boosting the mainstay of the national economy. Only when all the strength, technology and resources of the country are appropriated to ensure unified guidance over the overall economic work and prioritize the prestige and interests of the state, can the economy be developed in a balanced way and revitalized.
Self-reliance in the new five-year plan period should be developed into planned self-reliance.
Targets and order of nationwide self-reliance must be set correctly so as to prevent the waste of time and labour, materials and fund, and produce optimization and best effectiveness in the economic construction.
It is important to set it as the target of self-reliance, as indicated by the Eighth Congress of the WPK, to develop the metallurgical and chemical industry, which form the lifeline of the national economy and are of big significance in the overall economic development and the improvement of people’s standard of living, into those of Juche-based industry which relies on one’s own raw materials and to strengthen the independent character in the sectors of key industry. Targets and order of priority of self-reliance including in sectors like agriculture, light industry, railway transport and construction must be planned accurately and implement them successfully by concentrating the manpower and material resources on one’s wisdom and strength. Only then, is it possible to bring valuable fruition of self-reliance in short period.
Self-reliance in the new five-year plan period should be developed into scientific self-reliance.
Science and technology is the engine of socialist construction and major driving force for development of the national economy.
Self-reliance based on science and technology can be the powerful and reliable motive force for economic development.
It is necessary to develop by dint of one’s strength and wisdom the cutting-edge science and technology, which actively promotes the strengthening of the lifeline and integrity of the country’s economy, improving its economic management and the normalization of production, renovation and local provision of raw and other materials.
The Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea set forth the new 5-year plan for the national economic development which had it as its goal to advance toward sustained economic growth and remarkable improvement of the people’s standard of living on the basis of the present situation and potentiality of the national economy.
The general orientation of the five-year plan for the national economic development is to lay solid foundations for reenergizing the overall national economy and improving the people’s standard of living by concentrating efforts on the main links in the whole chain of economic development.
The major tasks of the new five-year plan aim at focusing investment with the metal industry and chemical industry as key links so as to normalize production in all sectors of the national economy, consolidate the material and technical foundations of the agricultural field and supply enough raw and other materials to light industry for increased production of consumer goods.
The Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea defined that the economy in the DPRK is a self-supporting and planned one that serves the people and herein lies the essential characteristics and superiority of the economy.
The economy in the DPRK is a self-supporting one.
The self-supporting economy is the one which is free from dependence on others and which stands on its own feet. In other words, it is the economy that has its own solid foundations of an independent industry and develops by relying on them. In this respect, self-supporting economy is fundamentally different from the economy depending on the outside forces, which is seriously affected by a slight external factor.
The economy in the DPRK is a planned economy.
The planned economy is the one that develops in a planned and balanced manner under the unified guidance and strategic control of the state.
In the DPRK, the state exercises centralized guidance and control so as to numerically envisage objects of and ways for economic development on the basis of a unified control of resources of the country and include them in plans, thus conducting the economic activities including production and distribution, circulation and consumption in a planned way.
The DPRK’s planned economy is fundamentally different from the capitalist economy in which spontaneity, economic imbalance and anarchy of production are proved, as the latter aims at the increase of profit based on capitalist ownership.
The economy in the DPRK is the one that serves the people.
That the economy serves the people means that all the economic affairs are organized on the principle of gearing all the material wealth of the country towards the promoting the welfare of the people, the masters of the economy.
For this reason the economy in the DPRK is quite distinctive from the capitalist economy in which all the material wealth are focused on the minor exploiting class possessed of the means of production and the people are forced the absence of rights and the poverty.
Today the DPRK people make positive efforts to improve the economic management true to the tasks set forth by the Eighth Congress of the WPK.
