November 8, 2000	atimes.com

The Koreas PYONGYANG WATCH Kim Jong-il on catfish row By Aidan Foster-Carter What does Kim Jong-il do when he is not meeting presidents, or escorting Madeleine Albright to watch jolly mass displays of loyal youngsters cavorting in his honor with pictures of missiles? The answer is distinctly fishy. Having in the past few few months received presidents Kim Dae-jung and Vladamir Putin as well as the US secretary of state, while himself journeying to meet Chinese leaders in Beijing, the Dear Leader these days begins to have a schedule and a profile a little more like those of his counterparts elsewhere. But North Korea is still North Korea. Just days before greeting Albright, Kim had weightier matters to deal with. According to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA): "Kim Jong-il, general secretary of the Korean Workers Party, chairman of the National Defense Commission of the DPRK, and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, on October 18 provided on-the-spot guidance to a catfish farm newly built by People's Army soldiers." His No 2, Vice Marshal Cho Myong-rok, probably still jetlagged from his trip to Washington, also attended this auspicious event. Why catfish? Kim, whose omniscience is regularly lauded in the Pyongyang media, explained that "Catfish is the best fish to be bred because it grows fast while requiring less food." A useful quality, but one that works less well with humans. UN nutrition surveys show that North Korean 7-year-olds today are fully 20 centimeters shorter and 10 kilograms lighter than their South Korean equivalents. Yet in Pyongyang's priorities, protein is for soldiers. The army built this farm for itself. "Based on the lastest [sic] piscicultural science and technology," according to KCNA, it "will greatly contribute to improving the dietary life of soldiers by turning out catfish in every season." The Dear Leader was duly impressed, calling the new farm a "praiseworthy creation [and] shining fruition of the noble spiritual world of the KPA soldiers who live today for tomorrow with ardent love for the country". As such, this farm - whose location was not given: a military secret, perhaps? - is be a model to others. Kim "urged the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces to extensively develop the fish culture so as to bring affluent food to dear soldiers at an early date". (All the English here is KCNA's own.) Presumably the supreme commander's urgings count as an order. Likewise, when KCNA says "he noted that 'a great number of refrigerator cars should be supplied to catfish farms so that' fish might be supplied to KPA units in time", woe betide any other sector lucky enough to be in possession of such a rare resource. Whatever its current uses, chances are it will now be commandeered to carry the army's catfish. After all, that's what daddy did. It was Kim Il-sung who pioneered the practice of on-the-spot guidance, which he performed more energetically than his son. Kim junior at first stuck mainly to the arts - his real passion, especially film. Later came endless visits to army units, to cement his control over a KPA initially suspicious of having someone with no military experience foisted on them as commander-in-chief. By contrast, the elder Kim mainly used to inspect factories, farms, and other economic facilities. The Great Leader's every remark was dutifully noted and published in his Collected Works - which as a result offer an unintentionally revealing picture of how dictatorship operates on a day-to-day basis. One problem with dictators is the bees in their bonnets. For Kim Jong-il, catfish are flavor of the month. For his father it was vinalon: a shiny fabric, made from limestone by indigenous technology, which North Koreans had to wear. So keen was the Great Leader to roll out this cloth that he ordered all possible equipment to be sent to the February 8 Vinalon Complex - even if already installed elsewhere. That was 20 years ago. Small wonder the North Korean economy is in crisis. With central planning already liable to skew resource allocation, this is double jeopardy - when the leader interferes to play havoc even with plans already set. In this, as in so much else, Kim Jong-il remains his father's son. Earlier this year, Kim inaugurated a model village at Taehongdan in the far northeast to grow another of his obsessions: the humble potato. It was possibly a better bet than the old mad policy of terracing hillsides to grow maize - which was mostly swept away by floods, leaving a treeless, eroded waste. But then the call went out to the whole country to send whatever it could to Taehongdan. That's cheating, comrade. Yet another leaderly priority is to make salt by creating tidal salterns. Fish, potatoes, salt: is there a pattern emerging here? Harry Ramsdens, purveyors of that great British delicacy fish and chips, are going global: They already have outlets in Hong Kong. Surely a North Korean franchise beckons. (Special to Asia Times Online)

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