Chollima

Chollima Monument in Pyongyang

The chŏllima (lit. thousand-ri horse; often mistranslated as "unicorn" by Western media) is a legendary flying horse in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese mythology. It is able to run 1,000 ri (500 km) in a single day. In the DPRK, it is used as a symbol of the heroic stamina of the working class.

Chollima Movement

The legendary horse's name is used in DPRK's Chollima Movement (Korean: 천리마운동; Hanja: 千里馬運動), which was adopted by the Workers' Party of Korea as its general line of socialist construction in the late 1950s. The symbolism of the thousand-ri horse evokes the rapid speed of development undertaken during the period, in which the tasks of the Five Year Plan decided in 1956 were overfulfilled ahead of schedule due to innovations made by workers striving to overcome shortages and surpass old records and norms. The movement first began in the Kangson Steel Works, and then spread throughout multiple other locations and industries.

Over time, the movement became more organized, raising the Chollima movement to a new stage of development in the form of the Chollima work team movement, which emphasized the link between education and production. According to Kim Byong Sik in his 1970 work Modern Korea, it is an "all-people innovation movement" that was "created by the masses from among themselves according to the law of necessary development of socialist society", and was reflected correctly in policy by Party leadership. He describes its central task as being "to do political and ideological work among the people, to arm them with the ideas of collectivism and communism, to eliminate the old ideas still found among the masses, in order to revolutionize them and convert them into a fully conscious proletariat," adding that the Chollima work team movement "is a school of communist education, created by the workers themselves for their own education in the ideas of collectivism."

In a May 15, 1963 speech, Kim Il Sung remarked, "The Chollima Workteam Movement is for us a drive to take one hundred steps while others take ten, to know ten things while others know one, to read ten books while others read one. The Chollima Workteam Movement is a campaign for learning, a drive to educate and remodel people, a movement to create more things new, through the technical revolution. This movement splendidly applies our Party’s mass line in the building of socialism." He emphasized that communist education, specifically "class education" and education in "socialist patriotism" are key in propelling Chollima, and that care should be taken to prevent national chauvinism during education on socialist patriotic pride. In a February 8, 1963 speech, Kim Il Sung described "the heroic struggle of the working class in our country" that was manifested in the Chollima Movement, stating, "What we have built on the debris during the postwar years has not come all by itself: it is the result of the heroic struggle waged by our working class which displayed extraordinary patriotic devotion."

History

The Chollima movement began with the plenum of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea in December 1956, and with Kim Il Sung's on-the-spot guidance at the Kangson Steel Works. Kim Il Sung appealed directly to the workers of the Kangson Steel Works, "telling them about the grave internal and external situation and the intentions of the Party," calling on all workers to forge ahead at the speed of the Chollima horse. He also appealed directly to workers in several other locations and industries in the following months. Kim Byong Sik describes the workers' response as follows:

The workers responded to the appeal, effecting a great innovation in socialist construction. They discovered items in short supply, created goods that were non-available, destroyed old standards and designs, and established new standards. They built a blast furnace with an annual capacity of 300,000 to 400,000 tons in less than a year, laid over 80 kilometers of wide-gauge railway in 75 days, and built a large-scale vinylon factory in a little more than one year on a broad expanse of wasteland. They developed a “machine-tool-to-beget-machines” movement and produced some 13,000 machine tools in excess of the state plan; they constructed over 1,000 local enterprises, utilizing idle local materials and labor, and they carried out a large-scale reclamation project to irrigate 370,000 hectares of farmland in only six months. Countless other examples could be cited. In this way, the flames of the Chollima movement, kindled among the workers of the Kangson Steel Works by Kim II Sung, spread like wildfire over all areas, factories and enterprises in the northern part of the Republic.

Kim II Sung again visited the Kangson Steel Works in February 1959, and suggested that the workers initiate a Chollima work team movement to strengthen the Chollima movement in a more organized way, with the Chollima movement developing into the Chollima work team movement.

Mallima

In 2016, Kim Jong-un announced that the DPRK has begun the mallima age. Mallima means "ten-thousand ri horse" and is ten times as fast as a chollima.