Updated at 17:30 KST to alter the translation of “Mallima Generation” to “Mallima Era.”
A propaganda poster promoting North Korea’s “five-year economic development strategy” was blurred on state TV this week, NK News has found, in what appears to be the latest sign that the plan may have been officially scrapped.
The move follows recent blurring of a key slogan associated with the five-year strategy, and other glaring omissions of the slogan and plan following the December ruling Party plenum.
It also comes as North Korean TV has increased general censorship of objects and backgrounds and initiated a campaign to eliminate from history a key emblem representing Kim Jong Un’s military leadership.
In a May 25 Korean Central Television (KCTV) program on the Pukchang Thermal Power Complex, the words appearing on a large propaganda poster were blurred out.
The poster in another shot during the same program, however, was not blurred, revealing the words “five-year strategy (5개년전략),” which refers to the “strategy for the state economic development” for 2016-2020.
The same exact shot where the poster was blurred on Monday also appeared during a separate program aired on KCTV just five days earlier, but was not at that time censored, NK News analysis found.
DPRK leader Kim Jong Un announced the strategy during the 7th Party Congress held in May 2016, leading to the phrase becoming a rallying cry for increased production across state media and at later political events.
That is, until this year, when analysts took note of the omission of the strategy during Kim’s speech at the late-December Party Plenary Meeting and at the April Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) meeting.
Peter Ward, a writer and researcher focusing on the North Korean economy, highlighted to NK Newsin February the absence of the five-year strategy’s mention again at a Cabinet meeting on the new year’s economic line, initiated at the Party plenum.
“The five-year economic strategy is now forgotten and replaced, at least temporarily, by ‘full-frontal assault’” as the primary mobilizing call, Ward suggested at the time, referring to the government’s top propaganda slogan of 2020.
Writing for NK News last month, Wang Son-taek, a veteran reporter on North Korean affairs for South Korean broadcaster YTN, said the apparent demise of the five-year strategy is reflected in the current refocus of state resources on a major hospital construction project in Pyongyang and parallel delay of a giant tourist beach resort.
That’s because, he suggested, the largest state projects such as the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Area were previously based on Kim’s hopes for overcoming sanctions — hopes dashed after the failed U.S.-DPRK Hanoi summit in February 2019.
He added that, as a result, the chances of achieving economic goals within the strict time frame of the strategy set to expire in 2020 diminished, forcing Kim to cautiously move on to a less restrictive policy.
But variations of the phrase “five-year economic development strategy” continued to appear in state media through the end of last year, including as the top reported subject at a mid-December pre-plenum Cabinet meeting.
Since then, however, mentions in state print media have either omitted the words “five-year” from the phrase or, when including the full term, referred to past success by factories or organizations carrying out the strategy.
BACK TO THE CHOLLIMA, COMRADE!
Another phrase that has disappeared from state print media in recent months is a key propaganda slogan that rose to prominence with the five-year strategy.
Mentions of “Mallima Era (만리마시대)” dropped off completely after January this year, according to state media aggregator KCNA Watch.
This slogan literally means the “era of [workers or good citizens]” riding the “horse which crosses 10,000 ri [to make contributions to the state],” and builds off the older “Chollima Era (천리마시대)” slogan referring to the horse which travels a shorter 1,000-ri distance.
Following its departure from print media, its appearance in a propaganda banner in the background of a shot was also blurred on KCTV.
A program on the Kim Jong Suk Pyongyang Textile Mill (titled “천리마시대의 녀성영웅들 – 인간개조의 선구자 길확실”) featured the blurred slogan in showings on April 26 and May 18 this year, while the banner was shown in full in the same shot on KCTV in the past.
Peter Ward, the researcher on the North Korean economy, told NK News that “the beginning of the Mallima mass campaign coincided with the launching of the five-year economic strategy.”
“The fact that the strategy and the mass campaign have disappeared from North Korean agitprop – newspapers, TV, periodicals and even academic journals – speaks to the fact that the strategy and the mass campaign connected to it have been abandoned,” Ward said.
“We now live in the era of the ‘head-on battle to breakthrough,’ when survival, not development, is the core objective and is at stake.”
The newfound sensitivity over the slogan comes immediately after it was used prominently in the title of North Korea’s end-of-year awards show focusing on model workers aired in early January this year, and a related recognition campaign across other media in 2019.
But given the inconsistent blurring in the above examples, it is difficult to determine when precisely the “Mallima Era” slogan was deemed off-limits in both print media and KCTV, just as the deletion of Kim Jong Un’s Supreme Commander emblem from frequently-airing programs on state TV occurred across different dates in February.
Further direct censorship, or the less obvious omission, of past footage on KCTV associated with the five-year strategy is likely to continue if there has indeed been an official directive to eliminate the former pinnacle plan from official North Korean history.
Updated at 17:30 KST to alter the translation of "Mallima Generation" to "Mallima Era."
A propaganda poster promoting North Korea’s “five-year economic development strategy” was blurred on state TV this week, NK News has found, in what appears to be the latest sign that the plan may have been officially scrapped.
Become a member for less than $4 per week.
Unlimited access to all of NK News: reporting, investigations, analysis
The NK News Daily Update, an email newsletter to keep you in the loop
Searchable archive of all content, photo galleries, special columns
Contact NK News reporters with tips or requests for reporting
Get unlimited access to all NK News content, including original reporting, investigations, and analyses by our team of DPRK experts.
Colin Zwirko is a Senior Analytic Correspondent for NK News based in Seoul. He joined the company in 2018 after receiving a master's degree in international security and foreign policy from South Korea's Yonsei University. Follow him on Twitter.