Korea, Chollima Movement

(2001)

At the beginning of the Five-Year Plan the internal and external situation was extremely complex and our people were confronted with new difficulties and trials. The colossal tasks of the Five-Year Plan demanded a very rapid development of production, but there were shortages of materials, funds and everything else, and the people were still badly off. On top of all this, the forces of international reaction spearheaded by US imperialism were raising a vociferous anti-communist racket. In South Korea the US imperialists and their stooges were going wild with their "march north” rantings and intensifying reactionary offensives against the Republic on an unprecedented scale. Within the Party, traitorous, counter-revolutionary factionalists with external backing were engaging in sinister activities to oppose the Party and the state and to frustrate the revolution. In these grim days, the great leader President Kim IL Sung held high the revolutionary banner of the Juche idea and confidently led our people on to greater progress in the building of socialism. At the December 1956 Plenary Meeting of the Party Central Committee the great leader advanced a militant slogan, "Let us produce more, practice economy, and overfulfill the Five-Year Plan ahead of schedule!” Shortly afterwards he visited the workers at the Kangson Steel Plant and kindled the flames of the Chollima Movement in their hearts. The working class and all the other working people across the country responded to the great leader's call and displayed the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance. They found what they were lacking. They made what they did not have. They crushed all the old norms and rated capacities and created new ones. They effected achievements which defied imagination. This brought about a great upswing on all fronts of socialist construction. The workers of the Kangson Steel Plant produced 120,000 tons of steel billets from a blooming mill with a rated capacity of 60,000 tons. The workers of the Kim Chaek Iron Works made 270,000 tons of pig iron out of a blast furnace with a rated capacity of 190,000 tons. Industrial production grew at the extremely high rate of 44 per cent in 1957. In the same year there was a bumper harvest in farming. The Chollima Movement in our country started amid this great advance in socialist construction. 

The great leader President Kim IL Sung said: “... the Chollima Movement has become a great revolutionary movement of the working millions of our country, sweeping away everything old-fashioned from all spheres of the economy, culture, ideology and morality, and constantly making innovations and accelerating socialist construction at an unprecedented rate. The movement has become our Party's general line in the construction of socialism.” 

All the working people in our country vigorously enforced the Chollima Movement, the general line of socialist construction. They performed splendid feats in their work and achieved miracles everywhere, smashing the conservatism, passivity and mysticism surrounding technique which stood in the way of their advance movement and their collective innovations. Inspired with the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance our heroic working class produced tractors and trucks through their own efforts where before they just used to make farming tools and a few accessories. They manufactured excavators, bulldozers, 8-metre turning lathes and many other modern machines and equipment. They also introduced new innovations in the construction of the city of Pyongyang. Amid the flames of the Chollima Movement our working people vigorously conducted the let-each-machine-tool-make-more movement. Everyone was involved in this movement. As a result, they achieved miracles by producing over 13,000 machine tools over and above the yearly plan in 1959. In 1958 they built more than 1,000 local industry factories in only a few months throughout the country. Meanwhile, a concerted movement of the people for a great transformation of nature was accomplished in only six months in 1959 to irrigate nearly 380,000 hectares of paddy and non-paddy fields. Industrial production grew at the rate of 36.6 per cent on an annual average. All this showed the heroic spirit and creative talent of our people who rushed at the speed of Chollima. The Five-Year Plan was successfully fulfilled as the Chollima Movement developed in depth and the great revolutionary advance in socialist construction continued to grow. As a result of the successful fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan the foundation of socialist industrialization was laid in the northern half of the Republic and our country was transformed into a socialist industrial-agrarian state with a firm foundation for an independent national economy.