Revisiting Changing Patterns of North Korea’s Fisheries Production: 1990s-2000s

Unprecedented economic crisis in 1990s led North Korea’s fisheries sector severely stricken to a degree of “collapse”. In response to the crisis, and especially since Kim Jong II’s ascendence to supreme leadership in 1998, North Korea made much efforts to address the challenge mainly by rapid growth of fresh-water aquaculture and coastal mariculture, while abandoning traditionally acclaimed fishing industry. As a result, most fisheries production organizations and agencies have experienced fundamental change of their natures and functions. On the one hand, state-owned fisheries companies, which had led North Korea’s fishing industry, have been transformed from fishing bases to “growing bases”, while many fresh-water aquaculture companies and coastal mariculture companies have been constructed or reconstructed by Kim Jong Il’s directions. On the other hand, in the name of “solving food problem by oneself”, and under the banner of the “Military-first” politics, prerogative organs from the Party and the military have been monopolizing the bulk of fisheries production sector, isolating it from North Korea’s “people’s economy”. These two aspects of Kim Jong Il’s legacy left behind North Korea’s fisheries sector seem to be continued in the Kim Jong Un’s era, which was started with the senior Kim’s death in December 2011.