ABSTRACT
In 1958 the indices of modernisation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) were substantial. The DPRK state had decisively broken with the traditional political culture and was now directed by the new elite that was affecting a profound material and spiritual transformation. In 1950 Kim and his colleagues had seen the solution to the problem in purely military terms, but in the 1960s Kim II Sung began to acknowledge the need to combine military struggle with political and diplomatic campaigns. DPRK state policies during this period became closely linked to the Three Fronts strategy. Equal Emphasis itself was a policy designed to maximise the development of military production in the North, and to regiment politics and society in anticipation of future conflict. The DPRK was no different from other industrialising countries in generating capital for industrial expansion from the agricultural sector, and Stalinist precedent mandated the strategy of agricultural collectivisation.
