In North Korea, standards laws pertain to North Korea’s standardization policy and there is a national standard called KPS. The Korea National Quality Supervision Agency (SAQM) is operating under the National Academy of Sciences of North Korea, one of North Korea’s cabinet agencies.
The SAQM is in charge of policies and administration related to the North’s standards, product quality and quantification. Under the SAQM is the Committee for Standardization of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (CSK), which is representing North Korea at various international organizations dedicated to standardization and quantification. The SAQM has recently been renamed the Korea National Quality Supervision Committee.
Standards are legally binding frameworks, set based on reasonable criteria, to ensure the best possible socioeconomic results from what can be achieved through science, technology and practical experiences. The term standardization is also used in the same meaning as systematization for efficient management in North Korea.
When it comes to standardization, North Korea resolvedly says, “Standing on our home turf and having a broad, innovative world view, we have to fight to bring revolutionary changes to the units of measurements.” While North Korea champions standardization efforts based on Juche (or Kimilsungism), the state ideology of North Korea, it is, at the same time, more acceptive of international standards than generally expected.
First of all, North Korea says it is trying to accept international standards in order to improve the lives of the people and revitalize international trade. Hence the North has been keen on standardizing quality management systems, with a view to developing its light industry. In addition, perceiving standardization policy as part of its policy for the development of science and technology, it is seeking ways to facilitate the introduction of advanced technologies through the systemization of information on standards.
Meanwhile, while stressing the importance of nationalism, North Korea has been vigorously carrying out standardization projects in various cultural sectors, including agriculture (e.g. Juche farming techniques and how to cultivate Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia), in order to establish ‘North Korean’ standards.
North Korea’s concerns over the introduction of intentional standards to the nation are somewhat in the same vein as those over marketization. As the people are suffering from food shortages after its centrally planned economy collapsed and internal resources got depleted, the North Korean leadership started to resort to marketization.
However, as marketization has made progress, political pressure on the leadership has increased accordingly. As a result, the N. Korean leadership is faced with the economic dilemma of whether or not to put brake on marketization. In the process of accepting international standards, North Korea underlines “DPRK-specific standardization projects that aim to turn North Korea into a “militarily strong and economically prosperous” communist state through improvements in the lives of the people and the revitalization of international trade.”
In particular, the key to inter-Korean standard unification is North Korea’s embrace of international standards. Since North Korea is willing to adopt intentional standards, we need to seek ways to efficiently support their standardization efforts.
For a start, North Korea has shown a great interest in international standardization in quality certification, management system standards and service standards. As a matter of fact, the North has already made much headway with its international standardization work, so we need to help the North join international certification systems.
On the other hand, economic, industrial demands are not the sole driver of standardization projects. The two Koreas need to explore ways to develop joint standardization projects in the socio-cultural sector. Since such projects can be carried out in the form of socio-cultural exchanges between the two, those projects can be relatively fee from political constraints.
And efforts to spur on North Korea’s embrace of international standards and inter-Korean standard unification should be preceded by the establishment of an information system and exchanges of information on standards. Since North Korea has already set up a database called ‘Raeil,’ the first order of business should be to lay the foundation for inter-Korean standard unification by linking Raeil with KSSN (Korean Standards Service Network).
North and South Korean scholars can get together and we can make the most of intentional policies regarding standardization. For a start, we can take advantage of the keynote of international policies aimed at helping developing nations’ endeavors to embrace international standards.
North Korea has been proactively cooperating with international organizations committed to standardization. North Korea is signatories to varied intentional organizations, including the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) because the standardization sector is relatively nonpolitical compared to other sectors.
Taking cues from the operation of joint standards-developing technical committees (TCs) between developing and developed nations under ISO 26000 (an International Standard providing guidelines for social responsibility (SR)), the two Koreas can form a joint technical committee. Given that the role of technical committee chair or chair nation is assumed by a nation with clout over the international standardization sector, setting up a joint technical committee can work as a meaningful strategy for both sides.
In the long run, we need to capitalize on the framework of ODA (Official Development Assistance). Cooperation for standardization between developing and developed nations is emerging as an uncharted area deserving of ODA. The need for providing development aid to North Korea has been continuously talked about for the past 16 years. We now need to find ways to do so in real terms.
Though the complexity of inter-Korean relations poses a challenge to us, we should come up with long-term, detailed solutions, such as fighting poverty through technical assistance, so as to back North Korea’s multifaceted struggles to address food shortages.
By Choi Sung (sstar@nsu.ac.kr), professor of Computer Science at Namseoul University and chairman of the Korean Language Information Science Society
