Chollima Movement

The Chollima Movement was a state-sponsored mass mobilisation campaign in North Korea, launched in 1956 or 1958 to speed economic development through ideological incentives to work harder and the personal guidance of Kim Il Sung rather than economic management. It took its name from the winged horse of East Asian legend, said to cover a thousand li in a day, which Kim Il Sung first invoked in December 1956 before the five-year plan of 1957 to 1961; workers who surpassed their targets were named Chollima riders, and from 1959 the Chollima Work Team Movement set teams competing for production titles. The plan’s aims were met within four years, but at the cost of quality, a distorted economy and an exhausted workforce, and North Korea has never acknowledged the movement’s failures. The winged horse became an icon of the state: the Chollima Statue on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang was unveiled in 1961, and the name has since been given to trucks, a metro line, the national football team and a rocket.