Editing Economy of North Korea (section)

====Ch'ŏngsan-ni Method====
The ''[[Ch'ŏngsan-ni Method]]'' ({{lang|ko|청산리방법}}) of management was born out of Kim Il Sung's February 1960 visit to the Ch'ŏngsan-ni Cooperative Farm in [[South Pyongan|South P'yŏngan]] Province. Influenced by [[Mao Zedong]]'s Great Leap Forward Policy, Kim and other members of the KWP Central Committee offered "[[on-the-spot guidance]]" ({{lang|ko|현지지도}}, ''hyŏnji chido'') and spent two months instructing and interacting with the workers. The avowed objective of this new method is to combat "[[Bureaucracy|bureaucratism]]" and "formalism" in the farm management system.<ref name="Savada1994"/>

The leadership claimed that farm workers were unhappy and produced low output because low-ranking functionaries of the [[Workers' Party of Korea]] (who expounded abstract [[Marxism|Marxist]] theories and slogans) were using tactics that failed to motivate. To correct this, the leadership recommended that the workers receive specific guidance in solving production problems and be promised readily available material incentives. The Ch'ŏngsan-ni Method called for high-ranking party officials, party cadres, and administrative officials to emulate [[Kim Il Sung]] by making field inspections. The system provided opportunities for farmers to present their grievances and ideas to leading cadres and managers.<ref name="Savada1994"/>

Perhaps more important than involving administrative personnel in on-site inspections was the increased use of material incentives, such as paid vacations, special bonuses, honorific titles, and monetary rewards. In fact, the Ch'ŏngsan-ni Method appeared to accommodate almost any expedient to spur production. The method, subsequently, was undercut by heavy-handed efforts to increase farm production and amalgamate farms into ever-larger units. Actual improvement in the agricultural sector began with the adoption of the subteam contract system as a means of increasing peasant productivity by adjusting individual incentives to those of the immediate, small working group. Thus the increasing scale of collective farms was somewhat offset by the reduction in the size of the working unit. "On-the-spot guidance" by high government functionaries, however, continued in the early 1990s, as exemplified by Kim Il Sung's visits to such places as the Wangjaesan Cooperative Farm in [[Onsong|Onsŏng County]] and the Kyŏngsŏn Branch Experimental Farm of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences between August 20 and 30, 1991.<ref name="Savada1994"/> Kim Jong Il carried on the tradition, despite having refused to do so before, and even expanded it to the Korean People's Army. Today, Kim Jong Un continues the practices of the method.