Journal of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 10 March 1960

USSR EMBASSY IN THE DPRK [faded USSR   TOP SECRET

MFA stamp:                     Copy Nº 3

Nº 58 0767s

25 March 1960 9 April 1960]

[handwritten:

"to Cdes. [[N. P. Varnov?]] and Samsonov, G. Ye.

9 April 1960 [[illegible signature]]"]

JOURNAL

of Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK A. M. Puzanov for the period

16 February through 24 March 1960

Pyongyang

[…]

10 March 1960

I had a meeting with Kim Il Sung. I finished familiarizing him with the record of the conversation held on 12 February between Cde. N. S. Khrushchev and J. Nehru.

After hearing the content of the conversation Kim Il Sung thanked the CPSU CC for offering the opportunity to become familiar with the record of the conversation and said that "the conversation was very interesting and substantive".

I passed Kim Il Sung a CPSU CC letter with an invitation for a group of DPRK Party and government leaders for rest and treatment in the USSR.

Kim Il Sung expressed his gratitude.

Then a natural conversation was held for 40-50 minutes.

I asked whether Kim Il Sung knew that the Soviet government had granted their request for an additional delivery of 50,000 tons of grain.

Kim Il Sung replied that the Minister of Foreign Trade had informed him about this several days ago and thanked the Soviet government for granting the request.

I told Kim Il Sung of my impressions from the visit to several industrial enterprises of the city of Sineuiju.

Kim Il Sung listened closely and thanked [me] for the information.

In turn, Kim Il Sung said that at the present time the issue is being discussed in the KWP CC Presidium of whether to build a plant in the city of Sineuiju to produce soda ash needed to produce synthetic fiber or to begin its construction in the city of Anju and then transport the soda ash to Sineuiju. He noted that according to the second five-year plan the city of Anju is defined as a new center of the chemical industry and develop of the chemical industry in the center will obviously begin with the construction of a soda ash plant.

Kim Il Sung said, we are also proposing have four bases of the textile industry in the future - in the city of Sineuiju based on raw material of reeds and cornstalks; in Cheongjin based on raw material from timber; in the city of Hamheung from raw material calcium carbide; and finally the existing textile industry base in the city of Pyongyang where the raw material is cotton.

In Cheongjin, he continued, there is already a certain basis of a textile industry. In the future not only yarn will be produced there but also textiles, when a new textile mill is built. Then the construction of dyeing and finishing factories is proposed in the four textile industry centers.

[The following] will be produced in the new textile industry centers being created: in Cheongjin, 60 million meters of textiles; in Hamheung, 50-60 million meters of textiles; and in Sineuiju, 60 million meters of textiles. Thus by 1965 the annual production of textiles will be up to 360 million meters.

However, Kim Il Sung stressed, there are still a whole series of questions requiring further study. In particular, although the production of Vinalon from calcium carbide by the method of scientist Ri Seung-gi [sic] was successfully done in laboratory conditions, additional work is required however on reducing raw material costs for the production of the main product.

For example, one ton of synthetic fiber is produced from four tons of calcium carbide. The task is to further economize the calcium carbide requiring considerable expenditures of electrical power for its production. Nevertheless, stressed Kim Il Sung, the production of synthetic fiber from calcium carbide is considerably cheaper than the production of textiles from cotton; the production of calcium carbide does not depend on climate conditions. Ten times more men and materiel are required to produce 20,000 tons of cotton than to get an equivalent amount of chemical raw material.

I observed that at the present time the production of synthetic fiber from chemical raw material is being introduced increasingly widely in spite of the fact that the USSR produced more than four million tons of cotton annually.

I noted that while the latest session of the Committee on Technical Cooperation was held in Moscow the DPRK represented as interested in the underground gasification of coal being done in the USSR in Tula Oblast' and stressed the broad prospects that the DPRK has in the efficient use of coal reserves.

Kim Il Sung noted that natural gas has also been found in the Samen [sic] coal basin not far from Pyongyang and the opportunities for its industrial use are being researched.

I said that during the visit to India and the inspection of the Bhilai Metallurgical Works Cde. N. S. Khrushchev observed that at the present time scientists are working on the problem of obtaining coke from power-generating coal and stressed in this connection the enormous prospects of the DPRK metallurgical industry in the even this problem is successfully solved.

I also said that it was decided to raise the production capacity of the Bhilai Metallurgical Works from 1 million to 2.5 million tons of steel per year; in these conditions the cost of a unit of production is reduced by one-third. I noted in this connection that such prospects for reducing a unit of production also have great importance for the DPRK in conditions where it is proposed to bring the production capacity of Cheongjin's Kim Chaek metallurgical plant to 2.5-3 million tons of steel per year.

In conclusion I thanked Kim Il Sung for the conversation and asked whether he plans to go to the USSR to rest this year inasmuch as in previous conversations he expressed such an intention.

Kim Il Sung replied that this question has not yet been finally decided.

Pak Seong-cheol, Pak Yong-guk, Choe Won-sik, and Embassy interpreter D. A. Priyemsky were present at the conversation.

[…]

USSR AMBASSADOR IN THE DPRK

[signature]

(A. PUZANOV)

Five copies printed

1 - Cde. A. A. Gromyko

2 - Cde. Yu. V. Andropov

3 - Cde. DVO, USSR MFA

4 - Cde. I. I. Tugarinov

5 - to file

Nº [208]