SEOUL (AFP) — North Korea has announced a three-year drive to revive its moribund economy, invoking the spirit of a mass campaign launched half a century ago, but analysts said it is fearful of the necessary reforms.
The impoverished hardline communist nation revived the "Chollima" (flying horse) campaign begun in 1956 after founding president Kim Il-Sung visited the Chollima Steel Complex at Kangson west of Pyongyang.
A joint editorial setting policy goals for 2009 said the ruling party had set a "far-reaching target to open the gate to a thriving nation" in 2012, the centenary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung who died in 1994.
It also highlighted comments by his son and current ruler Kim Jong-Il during an inspection of the Chollima complex on December 24.
"The whole country and all the people, as in those years of bringing about a great Chollima upsurge after the war, should launch a general offensive dynamically," he was quoted as saying.
He "kindled the torch of a new revolutionary upsurge in Kangson, the birthplace of the Chollima Movement," the editorial said, adding an important task is to put production "on a normal track."
Analysts said the North is exploiting its human resources but shying away from essential changes to its state-directed economy.
"Many North Koreans remember the good days which followed the Chollima movement," Kim Yong-Hyun, a Dongguk University professor, told AFP.
"By reviving it, the North is urging its people to make a new start for economic reconstruction. At the same time, it is strengthening its ideological grip.
"North Korea is using human resources because it has almost nothing to mobilise. However the new campaign will not work" because the centralised command economy cannot do its job, Kim said.
"It needs reforms and openness to solve fundamental problems, not such an ineffective campaign."
In the mid to late-1990s the North suffered a famine which killed hundreds of thousands and it still relies on foreign aid to feed millions.
In addition to the state-directed system, outdated facilities, a crippling energy shortage and a prolonged nuclear standoff with the West have complicated efforts for economic revival.
In 2002 the regime introduced limited economic reforms but rolled them back three years later, apparently fearful of relaxing its grip.
Late last year the North clamped down on fast-growing free markets for fear they could loosen the regime's grip, observers said.
Andrei Lankov, associate professor at Kookmin University, has said the North's rulers will probably never initiate economic reforms.
They fear "that Chinese-style reforms might trigger regime collapse if common North Koreans learn too much about South Korean prosperity and freedom," he told the Korea Times in a recent commentary.
Sandip Kumar Mishra of the University of Delhi said in a report last year the North could learn important lessons from two fellow communist nations.
"However, it seems less probable that North Korea's unique situation would permit it to follow either Vietnamese or Chinese models," he said.
In their case, reforms did not pose any serious threat to political existence or legitimacy.
"However in the case of North Korea, if the regime opts for a move toward a market economy, it might be perceived as not only a shift in the economic model but also erosion of the legitimacy of the North Korean state itself," he said.
The economy contracted for nine years in succession in the 1990s after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the loss of crucial aid.
From 1999 onwards the country managed seven years of growth, but gross domestic product shrank an estimated 1.1 percent in 2006 and 2.3 percent in 2007.
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