North Korean Technological Progress
The modernization of North Korea continues:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is urging workers to produce more bicycles to cope with the lack of transport, improve people’s health and prevent pollution just days after the country’s first bike factory opened.
Visitors to North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, say traffic pollution is not a major environmental concern simply because there is hardly any traffic. Fuel is short and so are vehicles — whether with four or two wheels.
North Korea’s official KCNA news agency reported Monday that Kim visited the Pyongyang Joint Venture Bicycle Factory — the country’s first.
It did not say when he visited the plant, which followed a trip to an electric wire factory and one that makes cranes.
But China’s Xinhua news agency reported on October 7 the North had started producing bicycles at the factory and could produce 300,000 “Peony Peak” bikes a year.
“He was satisfied to see various types of bicycles successfully manufactured for different purposes including those for urban, rural and mountainous uses and for children and the carriage of goods,” KCNA said of Kim’s visit.
“He underscored the need to significantly increase the production of bicycles, noting that the use of bicycles is very good for satisfactorily solving the problem of transport, promoting the convenience of people in their living and their health and preventing the pollution in cities,” it said.
Who says the Juche Philosophy and the Sunshine Policy isn’t working. North Korea has advanced from the nuclear age to the bicycle age in record time. Actually is there another country that has ever produced nuclear weapons before being able to produce bicycles? I guess the South Koreans can finally scratch bicycles from their North Korean extortion list.
