Kim Il Sung Claimed 92 Percent Autonomy to Mask Soviet Credit Needs
By Vera Kessler ·
Pyongyang hid its reliance on Soviet credits for steel mills and power plants behind a mask of total autonomy while shifting its political allegiance toward Beijing.
Berlin, 20 June 1963. A memorandum from the East German embassy in Pyongyang arrives at the SED Central Committee's Department of International Relations. It is an assessment of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), delivered in English translation via the Cold War International History Project and the Wilson Center Digital Archive. The report describes a regime in the midst of a calculated psychological and political shift, attempting to project a mask of total autonomy while quietly soliciting Soviet credits to keep its steel mills running.
"Everything by our own force"
The embassy reports on two major events from May 1963: the 6th Plenum of the WPK and the 2nd Session of the Supreme People's Assembly. The official line was one of strenuous economic stabilization, driven by the "Chollima movement"—a system of socialist mass competitions involving approximately 3 million workers. The rhetoric was aggressively nationalist, centered on the slogan "everything by our own force."
The WPK's Minister of Finance spent two hours speaking to the assembly without once mentioning international cooperation or aid from socialist states. Instead, he claimed the DPRK could produce 92 percent of its own necessary machine tools and equipment. To the GDR analysts, this was a performance. Even as the Minister touted this "autonomous national economy," the embassy noted that a Soviet delegation had just spent May negotiating credits for the expansion of a steel factory in Kimchaek and a thermal power plant.
Internal contradictions extended to the management of these factories. While the 6th Plenum emphasized "collective leadership," the embassy observers noted that in practice, factory directors ignored their own thoughts and measures, relying instead on "direct instructions by Comrade Kim Il Sung." The report explicitly identifies an "increasing cult of personality" surrounding Kim, which the analysts suggest was impairing the very collective leadership the party claimed to champion.
Choe Yong-geon's Beijing trip
Beyond the factories, the document captures the deepening fractures of the Sino-Soviet split. The DPRK was increasingly pushing political cooperation with Comecon member states into the background. This chill was felt personally by the East Germans; the embassy noted that Korean officials were "unwilling to support" the GDR's 7-Point-Program intended to solve the German problem. Despite the GDR's political arguments, the Koreans offered nothing more than "general expressions of support."
The diplomacy in Pyongyang had become a game of selective proximity. The embassy reported that the Romanian ambassador was pointedly avoiding political conversations with Comecon colleagues, showing a marked preference for the Chinese and Albanian ambassadors. This mirrored the broader movement of the WPK leadership toward Beijing.
In June 1963, a WPK delegation headed by politburo member Choe Yong-geon was scheduled to visit the People's Republic of China to coordinate positions before a meeting between the Soviet and Chinese central committees. Of particular note was the presence of Ri Hyo-sun, the official responsible for work vis-a-vis South Korea. The East Germans interpreted this as a sign that the DPRK was coordinating its approach to the South with the PRC, moving away from the Soviet line of "peaceful coexistence."
Park Chung-hee and the 78.6 Percent
The report is surprisingly candid about the DPRK's failure to influence the South. While the WPK claimed the U.S. imperialists and their "minions" were isolated, the GDR embassy disagreed. They observed real economic progress in South Korea, particularly in the state-capitalist sector fueled by foreign credits. The report notes that the DPRK was "closing its eyes" to this development.
The analysts point to a specific data point: a referendum on 17 December 1962, where 78.6 percent of voters opted for a new constitution under Park Chung-hee. The embassy concluded that the DPRK's propagandistic attempts to influence the South were bearing "not much fruit" because there was no revolutionary party in the South and no "exact analysis of class forces" being utilized by Pyongyang.
This failure triggered a shift in rhetoric. Having found no echo for peaceful reunification proposals made in 1962, the DPRK returned to a more aggressive stance: "First destroy the military-fascist regime in South Korea, then negotiate." The East Germans linked this hardening to the Cuban Missile Crisis, noting that KWP leaders viewed the Soviet Union's actions in the Caribbean as "giving in to the imperialists."
By the end of the report, the GDR embassy warns that the slogan of "reunification by our own force" is as much a shield against Soviet influence as it is a nationalist goal. The analysts conclude that by distancing itself from the technological and political support of the socialist fraternal countries to avoid the appearance of "dependency," the DPRK would find it increasingly difficult to maintain its technological standards. This, they argued, would ultimately undermine its ability to serve as a model for the South.