Agricultural cooperativization played a pivotal role in the transformation of North Korean society into a socialist system in the mid-to-late 1950s. Consequently, the nature, development, and characteristics of agricultural cooperation in North Korea have been the focus of academic research. Regarding the productivity of agricultural cooperatives, existing research has focused on the North Korean authorities’ exaggeration of grain production statistics. The prevailing view has regarded agricultural cooperatives as the root cause of structural problems in North Korean agriculture, positing that they have not effectively increased productivity. This paper builds upon existing research and proposes to historicize the relationship between agricultural cooperativization and productivity in North Korea according to the stages of cooperative development. Huaiyin Li, an American historian of China, has highlighted the differing outcomes of primary versus advanced cooperatives in China in terms of agricultural productivity. Li attributes the decline in shared interests and shared identity among farmers in advanced cooperatives, which were restructured into large cooperatives, as a primary reason for this disparity. Similar to China, North Korea’s process of cooperativization can be delineated into three phases: a period during which farmers could choose between three types of cooperatives, a subsequent phase where a third type of cooperative was established under Party guidance, and finally, an advanced stage of cooperativization in 1959-60 when cooperatives were restructured into ri units . By scrutinizing the productivity across these stages of cooperativization, this article endeavors to introduce new interpretations into the discourse surrounding agricultural cooperativization and productivity in North Korea.