North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected prototypes of farming drones and other agricultural machinery at an expo in Pyongyang on Tuesday, according to state media, calling for a review of the industry’s production capacity.
The inspection reflected an ongoing push to increase domestic production of farm machinery amid a continued reliance on Chinese tractors, and it comes after Kim said at last week’s party plenum that crop output has rebounded after the country recently experienced a “serious food shortage.”
Touring the “Farm machine industry development-2023” exhibition at the Three Revolutions Exhibition House complex, Kim said it is “urgent” to make a “radical improvement in the field of farm machine industry” including “mechanization” of equipment available to farmers, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Wednesday.
But he said officials must first “make a correct assessment of the existing technical capability for manufacturing farm machines” and that a long-term view toward quality should be prioritized over production quantity, implying many of the items on display are not ready for mass production.
At least four large quadcopter UAV models equipped with tanks and spray nozzle arrays appeared at the expo.
NK News found evidence that agricultural drones on display at the expo use imported Chinese parts | Images: KCNA (Jan. 3, 2024), Hobbywing, edited by NK News
Chinese agricultural UAV firms openly made connections with potential North Korean customers at a foreign products exhibition in 2019 in Pyongyang, and DPRK state media has since promoted the use of such multi-rotor drones at select farms, though there is no evidence that their use is widespread across the country.
NK News analysis shows that at least some drone components seen in the KCNA images were likely imported from China, such as rotors that appear identical to the X9 all-in-one power system made by the Shenzhen-based Hobbywing.
Meanwhile, Kim also inspected a large single-rotor unmanned helicopter called the “Phungnyonsae 100A” (풍년새 100가) during his visit to the Pyongyang expo.
The Phungnyonsae unmanned helicopter appears much larger than ones used for similar purposes in other countries since the 1990s | Image: KCNA
Appearing taller than Kim in the photo, the model is much larger than similar unmanned helicopters commonly used in other countries like the Yamaha R-MAX, which are typically around 3 feet tall. Militaries have developed similar models for use as reconnaissance UAVs.
And though state media reported in 2022 that authorities ordered the munitions industry and its weapons factories to divert resources toward building farm machines, Wednesday’s KCNA report did not mention the involvement of such factories in producing the prototypes on display.
Source: NK News