＜Inside N. Korea＞ Are Cooperative Farms Being Nationalized? Local Confirmation of Name Changes - Potential Major Shift in Agricultural Land Ownership - Why Are "Farmers Unconcerned"?

2025.02.25

A large slogan reading "Let's Go to Communism!" on a steep mountainside. Photographed from the Chinese side of the border across from Hyesan, Ryanggang Province, October 2024 (ASIAPRESS)

◆State Ownership of Farmland Also Specified in Laws

Recent legal amendments also provide evidence for the transition to state ownership of farmland.

First, let's look at Article 23 of the North Korean Constitution (amended September 2023):

'The state raises farmers' ideological consciousness and technical/cultural levels, and increases the leading role of all-people ownership over cooperative ownership... (omitted)... gradually converts cooperative ownership to all-people ownership according to the voluntary will of all members in cooperative organizations'

Note: "All-people ownership" is North Korean terminology for state ownership.

Article 11 of the Land Law (amended May 2022) states:

'Cooperatively owned land is the collective property of workers in cooperative management'

Additionally, Article 4 of the Agricultural Law (amended September 2020) states that 'The state shall enhance the leading role of state-run management and gradually convert cooperative management to state-run management according to mature conditions, possibilities, and the voluntary will of members in cooperative organizations.'

In other words, cooperative farms are something that must be overcome to achieve North Korea's goal of communism.

◆History of Agricultural Cooperativization

In March 1946, private farmland over 5 jeongbo (about 5 hectares) was redistributed under the principle of "confiscation without compensation, distribution without compensation." This distributed farmland owned by a small number of landlords to individual farmers.

Subsequently, most farmer-owned land was converted to cooperative ownership of agricultural associations when agricultural cooperativization was completed in 1958. After the associations were reorganized into ri-level cooperative farms in 1962, the land remained under collective ownership of farmers for over 60 years.

◆If Land is Nationalized, It's a Major Policy Shift

If the nationwide nationalization of cooperative farms is true, the land ownership rights have now completely transferred to the state. This represents the first transition of agricultural land from cooperative to state ownership since liberation from Japanese colonial rule - a significant change that cannot be overlooked.

This is also an event that indicates the long-term state management direction of the Kim Jong-Un regime, which has shown moves to strengthen centralized state control since the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus bears watching.

ASIAPRESS has not yet confirmed whether farm name changes have occurred outside of North Hamgyong Province.

※ASIAPRESS communicates with its reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.