AS FAR as national celebrations go, North Korea pulls out all the stops.

And this weekend’s 70th anniversary of the founding Worker’s Party will be no exception.

In fact preparations have been ongoing since February.

And not the usual type of preparations. These have been totalitarian-style preparations.

Just about every single person in the communist state, including children, has had to drop everything to build, paint, or practise for the upcoming affair.

There will be the usual pomp and show of military strength, with an estimated 30,000 troops expected to march through Kim Il-sung Square as well as mass demonstrations from loyal citizens dressed in their finest traditional outfits.

There was also supposed to be launch of a satellite rocket — much to the disapproval of the west which believes it’s a front to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile — however researchers at the US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies say it is now unlikely, The Telegraph reported.

They say recent satellite images of North Korea’s Sohae Satellite Launching Station show no sign of the required activity for a launch to take place on October 10.

Besides gathering all its military might, officials have also been collecting food and home fuel to ensure the extravaganza is on a similar scale to the 100th birthday of the late Kim Il-sung in 2012.

However this has reportedly led to shortages in the capital of Pyongyang and a big surge in prices and resentment among locals.

The cost of the big event has blown out so much that North Korea is actually charging its foreign guests around 70 euro a day to attend to cover accommodation, transportation, meals, and other activities, but not flights, the South Korean newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, reported.

“Kim Jong-un wants an extravaganza on a similar scale as in 2012, but the money has been spent and North Korean trade officials and diplomats overseas have done a poor job in bringing back hard currency this year,” a South Korean government official told the newspaper. “In that situation they seem to have decided the only option is to try and extort money from invited guests.”

Bronwen Dalton, an expert in North Korea from the University of Technology in Sydney, who visited the country last month, told news.com.au she was surprised by the efforts the government had gone to for the 70th anniversary celebration.

“I was quite taken aback by the amount of resources being provided for the preparation of the 70th anniversary,” she said. “Kids were out of school, workers out of factories across the countryside, building squares, painting buildings around the various city squares. Regional areas were getting new monuments which have been hastily built.

“It’s been all hands on deck. The entire country has been mobilised for the upcoming celebrations.

“The Koreans always mobilise labour when it needs to — during harvest kids are taken out of school to harvest — that’s how the regime works — but this has been done on a widespread scale.”

Ms Dalton says the control North Korea still has on its citizens is strong but there are signs it could be waning.

While citizens do not enjoy the same freedoms as westerners, today’s North Koreans do enjoy more than previous generations.

She explained Kim Jong-un’s government, while still brutal, also turns a blind eye to small, but burgeoning businesses.

“The mass spread of capitalism, which I saw when I was there (has lessened the entrenched cult worshipping). The end of rations, of the iron rice bowl, and the facts that goods are getting traded freely. And the fact that people are even buying and selling their own homes. This show that no longer does the state control the destiny of an individual from birth.

“And with that I think has come a greater interconnectedness socially.

“I am scared to predict this: they don’t seem to be completely enamoured with the leadership as they did when I first went there in 1992.

“The policy at the moment is no policy, just toleration. They will never change the law but they turn a blind eye to small farming, they turn a blind eye to the spread of local markets but they never officially endorse it. To that extent they accommodate rather than change. But they won’t make any radical changes.”

Ms Dalton says North Korea is a totalitarian government, and its ruling Workers Party, which was started by Kim Il-sung, has managed to maintain control by using one key factor — fear.

“The secret to the Korean Worker’s Party success is that they don’t hold back on their key mechanisms for refresh and renewal which is purges,” she said. “People have been shocked with Kim Jong-un’s brutal ways with his relatives and purges in the inner circle but that’s the only mechanism that can work in totalitarian states. It’s their answer to senate estimates.

“It’s been a long time since the time of Stalin, so people think it’s unusual, but when you think historically, all totalitarian states had to have the ultimate hand of terror. Behind all the parades and circuses there has to be force and no hesitation in using it. They don’t shy away from reducing their enemies, or neutralising their enemies.”