Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm – DPRK Guide

Introduction

The Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm is the most famous farm in North Korea. It was first visited by Kim Il Sung, the former leader and the founder of North Korea back in 1960. At this time the DPRK government focused their efforts on making this particular cooperative farm the ideal model farm for the entire nation for others to learn the techniques taught to the local farmers here.

These techniques we later called and now known to farmers as the Chongsan-ri Method. The Chongsanri method is as the North Koreans put it “the embodiment and development of the revolutionary mass line, a tradition of the Workers’ Party of Korea, adapted to the new realities of socialist construction.”

The term cooperative farm means hundreds sometimes thousands of North Korean families working together on land provided by the DPRK government to produce a single crop or multiple crops. The government gives the cooperative farm a targeted quota to reach each year. The more effort the families put into farming, the more they’re able to benefit from the number of crops they grow. Villages and towns are built for the locals as the farmland surrounds their livelihood.

Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm Location

The Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm is located 28km south of Pyongyang in South Pyongyan province. You can access the farm from the Youth Highway that leads between Pyongyang and Nampo – the port city southwest of the capital.

Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm facilities

Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm has a theatre, a nursery, a revolutionary museum where each visit by Kim Il Sung is recorded, a grocery store, a shop, an administrative office and homes for the farmers and their family. The farm mostly grows rice on their paddy fields and cucumbers, potatoes and cabbage in the greenhouses.

There is a large bronze statue of Kim Il Sung located on the farm. This was erected in respects of the former leader visiting the farm countless times during the 60s and 70, and a way of signifying the Chongsan-ri method.

Visit Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm

It is possible to arrange your visit to the co-op farm as part of your tour to North Korea. A local guide from the farm will show you around the greenhouse, and depending on the day a farmer’s family will invite you into their home, and you may be able to visit the nursery and play outside activities with the students. The farm has a loud propaganda speaker connected playing North Korean music to really give off the North Korean vibe.

Volunteer at Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm

It is also possible to arrange your volunteer program at Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm. Here you can learn the organic method of farming, assist North Koreans with transplanting rice or harvest. The North Korean families prepare meals for you and is a great way to get up in personal with North Koreans about farming life.