The DPRK regime survived famine and the death of Kim Jong Il in 2011 to continue into a third generation. It proved to be more enduring than many observers had expected. By a mix of pragmatism, oppression and relentless indoctrination of the general populace, the state and the elite families who dominated it maintained their grip on power. Yet, while North Korea was not a failed state, it presided over a failed revolution. The goal of the North Korean revolution to create a strong, prosperous state was pathetically unfulfilled, and its plan to reunify the country under its leadership abandoned. The regime’s main objective was to hang on to power. For most non-elite North Koreans, their goal was to somehow get by; for a few, it was to get out.
Retreat from Reform
By 2005 North Korea had seemed to have survived the worst of the famine conditions. The government had carried out a few modest reforms, a partially market-based economy was emerging, and relations with the South, while still often tense, were improving. The first steps toward investment and tourism from the ROK led to the hope by Seoul and its allies that the North’s economy would gradually be internationalized, modernized and at least partially integrated into the South’s. The rigid, state-defined social order was cracking as was the information cordon that kept the population isolated. The long-term viability of the regime was still in doubt, but it appeared that in the near future it might follow the reformist path of its Asian communist neighbors. North Korea, however, did not pursue a path to economic or political reform. Rather with economic conditions easing somewhat, the regime began to curb private markets, reimpose some of the previous controls over society, ramp up tensions with the South as well as with the USA and Japan, and reaffirm the basic principles of its unique path to socialism. Indeed, the moderate reforms and concessions to private markets seemed to have been a tactical retreat; once the regime became more confident that it would weather the economic crisis it began to reimpose greater state control over the economy. However, North Korean society had changed and the pre-famine economic and social order could not be restored.
Curbing Private Markets
The first major step in the retreat from reform took place in the summer of 2005 when the old ban on the sale of grain in private markets was reimposed. First enacted in the 1950s the ban had ceased to be enforced with the famine. In October 2005, during the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) the state announced it was reintroducing the public distribution system (PDS), supplying 15-day rations of basic food items twice a month.1 In December 2006 men of working age were prohibited from trading in the markets. One year later, in December 2007, all women under 50 were also banned from trading. Thus, market activity was restricted to older women; all others were supposed to be at their assigned work units. Other restrictions limited the type and amount of items that could be sold. Bans were issued on the use of trucks for private trade. In January 2008 private markets were limited to operating just three days a month, once every ten days, and could not include industrial goods.2 Regular inspections of changmadang (general markets) began that year.3 To crack down on the markets and on corruption the government created Anti-Socialist Patrols. It tightened controls along the Chinese border in an effort not only to curb illegal crossings but to crack down on official corruption and bribery that made these crossings relatively easy. Officials carried out public executions of illegal cross-border traders. In 2008 there were 15 reported such executions.4
However, limiting the markets was difficult. This was because of widespread government corruption. Members of the elite, the military and the police were increasingly involved in black marketing and smuggling activities or taking bribes from those who were. Informal transportation systems, using military or civilian government vehicles or the railway, distributed food and black market goods. Even at the highest ranks there was involvement in these illegal activities. The market had become so lucrative for the country’s elite that it was difficult for the state to control it. Furthermore, the reintroduction of the PDS was slow-going and it never was able to provide full rations; and there were reports of the PDS breaking down completely in places. As long as the state was unable to provide the basic nutritional needs of the people, individuals and families had to resort to the markets. Estimates in 2011 were that 40 percent of households were receiving almost all of their food from private markets and 95 percent at least some.5 Another estimate at the time was that two-thirds of all households were receiving half or more of their income from private activities.6
One of the most extreme and disastrous efforts to control market forces was the December 2009 currency reform. Many North Koreans had begun saving cash. The supply of this cash, like the markets, limited the state’s control over the economy. On November 30, 2009 the government suddenly announced new currency notes. The old notes were devalued by 99 percent. People were allowed to exchange only $40 of old notes for the new; the rest became worthless. By this measure the state was attempting to wipe out capital accumulation. A month later the authorities also banned the possession of foreign currencies. Suddenly people’s savings vanished. The reaction was panic buying; wild inflation, with the price of staple foods soaring; and, most unusual, public displays of anger. Items of all kinds disappeared from shops and even the hard currency shops visited by the elite were closed. The government responded by raising the limit on money that could be converted. In an unprecedented move Pak Nam-ki, the 76-year-old official reportedly behind the policy, and Prime Minister Kim Yong-il made a public apology in February 2010. Pak was forced to resign and according to some reports was charged with being a life-long American spy and executed.7
Reimposing Controls
The government began to enforce many of the controls over movement that had broken down during the famine. Other crackdowns were directed at illegal South Korean videos. Restrictions were placed on the ability of workers to leave failing state-owned enterprises to seek work elsewhere. Workers were forced to report at their jobs even if there was little work to do. Especially tragic were the plights of North Korean refugees. The border between North Korea and China was never hermetically sealed. During Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, which resulted in mass hunger in China, some ethnically Korean residents in Manchuria crossed into North Korea in search of food. With the famine in the late 1990s, thousands of North Koreans began crossing into China, walking across the frozen Tumen and Yalu rivers, bribing border guards and risking arrest to look for food and work in China. Many returned or made multiple trips, so the population was not stable, but at any one time there were as many as 200,000 North Koreans living in China, mostly near the border. With the greater enforcement of border controls, they faced arrest when returning; many were sent to prison camps. The remainder became caught in an uncertain limbo, fearing punishment if they returned but living miserable and dangerous lives as illegal aliens in China. Many of the women entering China became victims of human traffickers, working in brothels or becoming unwilling brides of Chinese men suffering from a shortage of women. Beijing refused to acknowledge them as political refugees or grant them asylum. China also denied NGOs seeking to offer assistance access to the North Korean community.
North Korea took steps to limit the information from the outside world. This was sometimes difficult with the influx of pirated South Korean videos, the importation of televisions and radios that could pick up foreign broadcasts, and as cell phones became available and those living near the Chinese border were able to make calls and gather information from outside the country. To deal with this potential threat to the regime, Kim Jong Il ordered stepped-up inspections to catch people with illegal videos. He created a special “Bureau 27” to control computers. In early 2011 he ordered an inventory of all the nation’s computers, cell phones, flash drives and MP3 players, and created mobile riot squads. Security was tightened at the universities to prevent subversive ideas from entering.8 South Korean-style haircuts were prohibited and it became more dangerous to play South Korean songs or watch DVDs; this may have hindered people but it did not stop them from continuing to do so.9 Public executions increased in 2007, after becoming less common since 2000. According to unconfirmed accounts from defectors, entire stadiums were filled with spectators required to watch them. Meanwhile, there was no letup in political indoctrination. In 2007 the state launched a “Portrait Project,” a campaign for citizens to clean the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Those found with “illegal” frames in their homes and workplaces, bought on the private market, had to replace them.10
Knowledge of the outside world by a people who were told they were the envy of their southern cousins, however, continued to seep in via those who had traveled to China, through pirated videos, through South Korean stations that could be heard on imported radios being smuggled into the country and through cell phones. This along with the pervasive corruption by civilian and military authorities threatened to undermine whatever public support there was for the regime. It is difficult to determine how much skepticism or even hostility there was among the general population. Existence of widespread public cynicism was suggested by a series of interviews of refugees in China published in early 2008. The interviewers found that most of the refugees believed that officials regularly stole or otherwise denied food aid to those in need.11 However, these refugees coming predominately from the northern borders areas may not have been fully representative of the general population. They were, of course, the people who took risks to leave, so it was not easy to gauge just how much cynicism, disillusionment or even latent hostility to the regime existed.
In the face of a struggling economy the DPRK government relied on such traditional but now pathetically inadequate measures such as a mass mobilization campaign to collect human feces from public and private toilets in order to mix it with ash to make fertilizer. Food rations were reduced even in the armed forces, where rank-and-file soldiers were restricted to two meals a day.12 North Korea continued to blame the international situation on food shortages. The Great Leader was officially reported as duly concerned about the suffering this caused. Despite his portly frame he was presented in the media as skimping on meals as he traveled about the country giving on-the-spot guidance and commiserating with his people. Kim Jong Il, the Rodong sinmun reported on February 1, 2010, “My heart bleeds for our people who are still eating corn. Now what I have to do is feed our great people as much white rice, bread and noodles as they want.” It assured its readers that Kim Jong Il planned to “implement definitively [Kim Il Sung]’s last testament … so that the people can live a contented life as soon as possible.”13
The Foreign Policy of Survival
Pyongyang’s foreign policy reflect the changed situation from the 1990s. The regime was realistic enough to understand that reunification under its leadership was no longer possible. Its efforts focused on survival. This required some foreign exchange to keep its economy functioning, and to provide luxury goods for the elite to keep them loyal and contented, and imports of materials and equipment needed for the military. But foreign currency continued to be a problem. In the 2000s the activities of Room 39, the organization set up by Kim Jong Il in the 1970s as a means to earn foreign exchange, were a target of international efforts. Few things illustrate North Korea’s lack of commitment to reform or adherence to international norms of behavior than this shadowy branch of government. It was a key part of the “court economy” that provided the foreign exchange to support Kim Jong Il, his family and his core supporters. Room 39, with its alleged headquarters at a KWP office near one of his villas, was believed to be overseeing the running of restaurants in foreign countries and conducting a variety of illegality activities, including the production and sale of heroin, crystal methamphetamine and knockoff premium brands of cigarettes; and the notorious counterfeiting of high-quality US$100 dollar bills called “superbills.”14 The USA and other countries took measures such as closing down the Banco Delta Asia bank in Macau, which was involved in money laundering for North Korea. But new schemes emerged. One was insurance fraud in which the government’s Korean National Insurance Corporation would seek reinsurance from major Western firms such as Lloyds of London and then issue false claims. Since restrictions on entry into the country made it impossible to verify these claims the companies paid up. Gradually realizing they were involved in state-sponsored fraud major reinsurers began to sue in court and refused to take on new policies but only after admitting to losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
The regime earned some foreign exchange from sending an estimated 20,000 workers to Russian timber camps on three-year contracts. This was the result of a 1967 agreement in which the profits were split with Russia. Working conditions were so harsh in the heavily guarded camps that they drew the attention of Russian human rights groups in the 1990s. In 1995 an agreement opened the camps to inspection but little changed. Perhaps another 25,000 worked in the Gulf states, Mongolia and Africa. Most lived and worked under extremely harsh conditions.15 In addition, thousands of North Koreans labored in factories in the Dandong area of China just across the Yalu River, and 40,000 worked for South Korean firms at Kaesŏng.
Its efforts at survival included receiving as much aid from South Korea and the USA as possible. This meant making tactful gestures at reconciliation or at what appeared to be concessions in its weapons development program in exchange for aid. At the same time, Pyongyang needed to maintain tensions with the ROK and the USA, as this justified the existence of the regime as the protector of the North Korean people while providing an explanation and purpose for their hardships. The state needed to maintain a constant atmosphere of imminent war with imperialist forces – primarily the USA and its southern collaborators – that would crush the independence and violate the purity of the Korean people. Military strength was also a source of pride for a revolutionary regime that had so far failed in its goals to create a prosperous, unified state. At the same time, Pyongyang needed the support of China without getting so close that it would threaten its sovereignty. This then was the basis for its foreign policy. While it seemed at times irrational and erratic it was rational and consistent within its own logic of survival even if crudely and often clumsily executed.
A central element in that survival strategy was developing nuclear weapons and a delivery system including a missile with the capability to reach the USA. This was not only for domestic reasons but also as a means of protecting itself. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 only reinforced the need to develop these. Evidence suggests that, despite some agreements to the contrary, the country worked continuously on its nuclear and missile projects. It test-fired a series of missiles, including on July 4, 2006, but its attempt to launch a long-range missile was unsuccessful. Later that year, on October 9, it detonated a nuclear weapon. This was a rather modest-sized detonation, suggesting that the weapon may have misfired. Nonetheless, it had the intended effect of making the country a nuclear power. The nuclear test was in violation of its 1991 agreement with South Korea, and outraged China and much of international society who had a hard time accepting that an impoverished state that was unable to feed its own people could devote scarce resources for this purpose. However, it was promoted as a great source of pride at home and increased Pyongyang’s leverage in talks, as well as drawing US attention to the need to negotiate with the DPRK. When the six-party talks resumed in 2007, the USA showed more willingness to meet bilaterally with North Korean officials. Pyongyang’s nuclear test had achieved its intended outcome.
Not long after becoming a nuclear power North Korea shifted to a more conciliatory tack, agreeing in February 2007 to shut down the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and to permit IAEA inspectors to return. Pyongyang also agreed to “disable” all nuclear facilities and give a full accounting of all their nuclear programs. In exchange Washington agreed to return frozen assets held by the Banco Delta Asia in Macao, to supply heavy fuel oil and to move toward normalization. Another bargaining chip North Korea had was the fear by the USA and other nations that it would sell its nuclear technology abroad. That this was a real possibility was confirmed by a nuclear facility the North Koreans were helping Syria to construct until it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in September 2007. North Korea soon after this, in the fall of 2007, promised not to transfer nuclear materials, weapons or weapons-making knowledge; in turn, the USA hinted at taking the country off the state sponsors of terrorism list. While Pyongyang allowed IAEA inspectors to return, and in 2008 the main nuclear cooling tower at Yongbyon was destroyed, it continued to clandestinely work on developing weapons of mass destruction. Tensions were again raised when Pyongyang launched a multistage rocket on April 5, 2009, in a trajectory that sent it over Japan; it was probably a failed attempt to launch a satellite. On May 25, 2009, North Korea tested a second and larger nuclear bomb. This second underground nuclear test was more successful than the first, and resulted in a larger explosion – though still smaller than that of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The international reaction to it was stronger than for previous ones. This time China and Russia joined the USA, South Korea and Japan in strongly condemning the nuclear test. On June 12, 2009, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1874. This imposed further economic and commercial sanctions on North Korea. It also authorized UN members to stop, search and destroy on land, sea and air any transport suspected of supplying or aiding its nuclear program.
North Korea’s relations with the world now followed a pattern that has not changed as of the time of writing. The USA and other members pressured Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and at the very least stop nuclear and missile tests. North Korea continued with its nuclear and missile program anyway. The UN responded to each test by imposing economic sanctions intended to make it difficult to import materials for weapons and to halt the flow of luxury goods for the elite. But these sanctions were largely toothless since at least three-quarters of the DPRK’s imports and exports came through China which paid lip service to the sanctions but did not enforce them. China feared the collapse of North Korea if economic sanctions were too severe, a scenario that would mean chaos on its border and a wave of desperate refugees flooding its northeast provinces, and it did not like the prospect of a unified democratic Korea allied with the USA and Japan on its border.
Shortly before the missile launch and nuclear test, in March 2009, two American journalists, who had allegedly crossed into the DPRK when making a documentary about the trafficking of North Korean women, were arrested and tried. This led to the visit of former President Bill Clinton to Pyongyang in August 2009 where he met with Kim Jong Il. Although Washington denied it, the North Korean officials claimed he was bringing an official message to Kim. Following the meeting, Kim Jong Il granted a pardon to the two journalists. A photo op released by the DPRK gives some insight into the propaganda purposes of North Korea’s provocative actions. A proud Kim Jong Il was shown seated next to Clinton. In the background was a huge painting of stormy waves crashing against a rock. It was a symbol, easy for a Korean audience to decode, of the defiant resistance of their small country in the face of imperialist aggressors.
From Sunshine to Renewed Confrontation with the South
Pyongyang’s relationship with South Korea was if anything more complicated and more fraught with danger to the regime than relations with the USA. South Korea became extremely important to the North Korean economy, second only to China. Not only did trade between the two Koreas expand, but South Korea became a principal supplier of food aid which provided a substantial amount of basic foodstuffs consumed in the North. It also supplied large quantities of fertilizers. Earnings from the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex and from South Korean tourism were a significant source of foreign exchange. However, the regime, while finding South Korean aid and some trade a useful economic lifeline, could not afford to allow the public to realize just how prosperous the South was. Perhaps even more threatening to its continued grip on power, it could not allow its people to learn the truth that the ROK was not a US puppet and its people had no interest in reunification under the leadership in Pyongyang. In fact, increasingly the younger generation of South Koreans had little interest in reunification at all, viewing the North as a backward society whose population would be an economic burden.
In October 2007 South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, a strong advocate of continuing his predecessor’s Sunshine Policy walked across the DMZ and held a second summit conference with Kim Jong Il. The election of Lee Myung-bak (1941–) as president of the ROK in December 2007, however, changed the tone of the relationship. Lee was firmly opposed to the Sunshine Policy. He was critical of the large but poorly monitored aid it was supplying and with DPRK’s lack of significant political or substantial economic and social reform. Many in the South wondered if its generous aid was simply propping up the northern regime and providing it with a disincentive to reform. In the spring of 2008 the Lee Myung-bak administration began insisting on the same monitoring procedures that the UN World Food Program required. North Korea responded angrily, cancelling military agreements and ratcheting up tensions along the peninsula. It threatened to close down the industrial complex at Kaesŏng even though this would hurt it more than the ROK, and began to order South Korean businessmen to leave the country. The newly elected president, however, was not a cold warrior, rather he presented what he called “Vision 3000,” a plan aimed at developing the North Korean economy, helping it to achieve a growth rate of 10 percent a year for a decade so that it would reach a GDP per capita of $3,000. This would be done through targeting aid toward industrial, infrastructural and educational development, and carrying out financial reforms – all to be financed by an international aid fund. Aid from this fund in turn would be tied to political and economic reforms. At the minimum Lee insisted that North Korea adhere to its 1991 agreement with the ROK, calling for a denuclearized peninsula. In other words, aid would be on the condition of the country abandoning its nuclear program.16
Pyongyang reacted to this plan with unsurprising hostility. On the same day Lee made his proposal before the South Korean National Assembly on July 11, 2008, a South Korean woman visiting the Kŭmgang complex was shot and killed by a North Korean guard when she strayed over the strictly enforced boundaries of the resort. It is not clear whether this shooting was intentional, perhaps part of an effort to ratchet up tensions to test the new ROK president, or whether it was an accident. The woman’s death and Pyongyang’s refusal to apologize outraged the South Korean public and contributed to doubts about whether the DPRK really wanted to have better relations. The Lee Myung-bak administration reacted to the incident by suspending all visits to the resort complex. The DPRK then confiscated the $200 million resort without compensation. It also imposed restrictions on the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex, ordering many of the South Korean managers to leave and raising fees for utilities and other expenses, but it did not close the industrial park. Relations soured and Seoul suspended food aid to the North, refusing to supply grain, fertilizer and other assistance until it saw progress toward abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programs. This suspension was a blow to the North’s economy. China supplied some food aid but not enough to make up for the deficit. Still despite a decline in two-way trade, the ROK remained a major trading partner.
A Hurried Succession
In August 2008 Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke. This was kept secret but when on September 9 he failed to show up for a military parade commemorating the founding of the DPRK rumors floated about. When he did appear in public his gaunt pallor and loss of weight indicated poor health. His concern with and total control over the media suggested that by allowing himself to be shown this way he was preparing the public for the possibility of his own demise. At this time he began to prepare for his own successor.
It seemed almost a necessity that the succession would remain in the Kim family. The entire ideology of the state was so centered on the Kim Il Sung family that it was difficult to conceive of how anyone outside the family could comfortably serve as the legitimate leader. By the 2000s internal propaganda had presented the following: the Korean people were a unique, pure and virtuous race. After millennia of resisting foreign invaders and suffering under exploitive elites they were now independent, strong and were constructing a socialist paradise. However, half the nation was under repressive domination of foreign imperialists and their local collaborators who were feverish plotting to bring the free half under their control and crush its efforts toward socialist progress. Fortunately, a line of truly virtuous, brilliant and totally dedicated leaders from a family that embodied all that was best about Korea were protecting them. This virtuous family and the Korean people when united were invincible. It was a long “arduous march” but as long as the Kim family led and the people were united “with one mind” they would prevail to build a rich and strong country and liberate their cousins to the south. This narrative framework made succession within the family imperative. So while some analysts speculated on a powerful military person succeeding the ailing Kim Jong Il, he looked toward members of his immediate family.
The most obvious candidate was his eldest son, Kim Jong Nam (Kim Chŏng-nam). But he fell out of favor with his father. Allegedly this was because he was arrested in Tokyo in 2001 trying to enter Japan on a false passport, reportedly to visit Tokyo Disneyland. Later he moved to China where he was often seen at the casinos in Macau. The second son, Kim Jong Chul (Kim Ch’ŏng-ch’ŏl), was passed over, reportedly because his father found him too weak-willed and girlish.17 Instead, Kim Jong Il designated his youngest son, Kim Jong Un (Kim Chŏng-ŭn), as his successor. Reports, most famously by his sushi chef, said that Kim Jong Il found his youngest son most like him. There were other possibilities. The succession could have gone to his sister Kim Kyŏng-hŭi’s husband, Chang Sŏng-t’aek, much as Kim Il Sung had once serious considered his younger brother as his political heir; but it seems that Kim Jong Un was the first choice from 2008.18
Kim Jong Un was born either January 8, 1983, or 1984, the second son of the Japanese-born dancer Ko Young-hee, Kim Jong Il’s third wife. Information about his early life is sketchy but he is known to have attended an English-language international school in Bern, Switzerland, for several years in his early adolescence, returning home in 1998. Later he attended his father’s alma mater, Kim Il Sung University, where he received a degree in physics. He received another degree at the Kim Il Sung Military Academy. He was said to be a lover of sports, especially basketball. He looked strikingly like his grandfather Kim Il Sung. His hair was cut in a similar style, and some South Koreans rumored that he had plastic surgery to enhance this resemblance. As with Kim Jong Il’s other children he was unknown to the public.
Kim Jong Un was gradually introduced to the public. In September 2009 school children were being taught a song praising “the Young General Kim Jong Un.”19 In June 2010 the Supreme People’s Assembly made the young Kim vice chair of National Defense Commission. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il made two trips to China in 2010, first in May and then in August. Since two such trips only months apart was unprecedented, he might have been seeking Chinese approval or at least making sure they would not create problems about the succession. It is believed that Kim Jong Un accompanied his father as he met the Chinese leaders. Visiting China, Kim Jong Il traveled to Manchuria where according to the Rodong sinmun he visited the places associated with his father.20 Perhaps this too was to remind the people of the historic roots of the regime, roots inseparable from the Kim family.
At the end of September 2010 a party conference took place, the first since 1966. On September 28, 2010, just before the start of the Third Party Conference Kim Jong Un was made a four-star general. At the party conference he was appointed vice chairman of the KWP’s Central Military Commission. For the first time the media mentioned him by name. Shortly after the conference the 65th anniversary of the founding of the KWP on October 10 was celebrated in grand style with him appearing prominently, making it a sort of coronation ceremony. Thereafter Kim Jong Un appeared regularly in public, most often at his father’s side, although be made no public speeches. The young Kim now accompanied his father on frequent “on-the-spot guidance” tours, most often at military-related sites. In the media he was referred to as the “yŏngmyŏnghan tongji” (brilliant comrade). Meanwhile his eldest brother Kim Jong Nam, who lived in exile in China, dividing his time between Beijing and Macao, told an Asahi TV reporter on October 9, 2010: “Personally, I am opposed to the hereditary transfer to a third generation of the family.”21
It was not clear how much if any involvement in policy making the young, inexperienced successor had but some speculated that his emergence might have been linked to two unusually provocative developments in 2010. On March 26 the South Korean ship Cheonan was sunk by what was believed to have been a North Korean torpedo; 46 ROK sailors were killed. On November 23 North Korean artillery shelled the South Korean inhabited island of Yeonpyeongdo killing two marines and two villagers. Could these acts have been carried out to demonstrate the Kim Jong Un toughness or military prowess? Were they intended to make him more acceptable to military hardliners? Whatever the case it seemed unpromising for the future.
On December 17, 2011 Kim Jong Il died, officially of a stroke, while riding on a train inspecting the countryside. Although he had been ailing for three years, he showed no signs of deteriorating health in previous months and had appeared to have had an active schedule so his death came with unexpected suddenness, much as his father’s had. Kim Jong Il’s death was a major milestone in the history of North Korea. He ruled the DPRK for 17 years. Compared with the nearly half-century reign of his father this was brief but it was much longer than many thought likely in 1994. His impact on the country was enormous. For two decades before coming to power he had been the second most powerful figure in the country, shaping its performing arts, its ideology, its security systems and its party structure. And he entirely dominated the country during the time he led it. State media portrayed him as a dedicated figure devoted to his people. Supposedly, he made a hundred inspection tours a year around the country with no time to eat more than a simple ball of rice.22 Yet he was never the beloved figure his father had been. Lacking any personal charisma, reclusive, physical unimposing, he never gave public speeches and his often dour expression contrasted with the beaming, outgoing, gregarious nature of his father. Despite the massive indoctrination, which may have succeeded in making most citizens accept his rule as necessary, refugees from North Korea frequently displayed contempt for him while remaining respectful of his father. His rule was one of almost constant deprivation, which continued long after the horrific famine ended. The economic failure of the country and the chronic hunger of millions of its people continued to his last days.
North Korea Under Kim Jong Un
Initially the new transition in leadership resembled the previous one in 1994. No radical changes took place in policy and many familiar figures still populated the leadership ranks. On December 28, 2011, Kim Jong Un was declared Supreme Leader. Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s de facto head of state, declared: “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un is our party, military and country’s supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong Il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage.” On December 30 the Politburo of the KWP formally appointed him Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army. The media declared him to be an “outstanding leader of the party, army and people,” and a “respected comrade who is identical to Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il.” Within days of his succession the “Great Successor” was being given the same revered status of his father, with his picture ubiquitous, his name always set in bold type and his quotations appearing in print in a special font.23
Surrounding Kim Jong Un was an inner core of leaders thought to serve as the young son’s mentors or regents. These included Kim Jong Il’s sister, Kim Kyŏng-hŭi, and her husband, Chang Sŏng-t’aek. Kim Kyŏng-hŭi had long been close to her brother, and her husband at times had even been rumored as a possible successor. Kim Jong Un’s sudden rise was accompanied by their rise as well. Both were more widely seen in public in 2010 than the young Kim. Kim Kyŏng-hŭi was also made a four-star general on September 28. She had also been elected to the Politburo and was in charge of light industry. Chang had long been prominent in the regime but fell out of favor in the period 2003–2006. Back in favor, he became an alternative member of the Politburo in 2010, as well as vice chairman of the National Defense Commission and was director of the KWP Administrative Department which gave him oversight over internal security offices. Chang was also involved in economic projects with China. He was seen standing beside Kim Jong Un at Kim Jong Il’s funeral ceremony wearing a military uniform. Since their only child, a daughter, had died Chang and his wife, Kim Jung Un’s aunt, posed no dynastic threat and were well placed to serve as guardians to the young, inexperienced leader. Another important figure was Ri Yŏng-ho a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and former head of the Pyongyang Defense Command, a key military position in charge of the forces protecting the capital. Ri was promoted to vice marshal in September 2010 and ranked fourth on the funeral committee list. Another military man, General O Kuk-yŏl, was also considered an important person around the new designated successor.
Kim Jong Un’s meteoric rise continued. In the days before the big event he was given new positions. On April 1, at the Fourth Party Conference he was appointed first secretary of the KWP. This was a new title. His father had served as general secretary, a position by which he had become more frequently referred to in the last few years of his rule. Khrushchev used the term “First Secretary” in 1953, to differentiate himself from the authoritarian rule of Stalin who had served as general secretary for 30 years. North Korea now adopted the title but for somewhat different reasons. Just as Kim Jong Il did not assume his father’s position as president but declared Kim Il Sung the eternal president, his father became “the eternal general secretary.” On April 13, the young leader became head of the National Defense Commission. He now assumed almost every post or its equivalent held by his predecessors. On July 18, Kim Jong Un became “Marshal of the Korean People’s Army,” a title that made him a rank higher than all others in the military.
However, there were some real changes under the new leadership. One was a move away from Kim Jong Il’s Military-First policy. The top echelon of the party and state was now dominated by non-military men. Top military ranks were given to people with a more technocratic background. An example was Choe Ryong Hae (Ch’oe Ryŏng-hae), son of Ch’oe Hyŏn one of Kim Il Sung’s guerilla comrades, who had a background in economics. Born in 1950 he was a relatively youthful 62 upon his appointment. Choe held various mid-level positions before rising rapidly in the ranks between 2010 and 2011, being promoted to the rank of general and made an alternate member of the Politburo. In April 2012 he was made a vice marshal and member of the Standing Committee.24 The most dramatic change in leadership came in July 2012 when Ri Yŏng-ho, the highest ranking military man, was suddenly removed from his posts. A brief public announcement said he had resigned due to poor health. A new military man replaced him as the army’s chief of staff. His sudden fall from power took observers by surprise since, up till then, he had featured prominently, standing by Kim Jong Un’s side in public photos. The removal of the only military person in the inner circle along with the re-emergence of Pak Pong-ju, the head of the Ministry of Light Industry, which oversees the civilian economy, suggested a shift in emphasis from military to economic development. Pak was regarded by foreign observers as a more technocratic and reform-minded official. His removal from the cabinet in 2005 has previously been interpreted as a retreat from reform.
Overall the leadership was looking more civilian and technocratic. About 40 percent of the top 106 positions were held by graduates of Kim Il Sung University and 9 percent from Kim Ch’aek University of Technology. Among the cabinet about a quarter were Kim Ch’aek graduates. About 1 percent of the top leadership positions were held by Kim Il Sung Military Academy graduates. It was not, however, a major break with the past. Most of the top leaders were second-generation family members or related to family members of Kim Il Sung and his guerilla comrades. Nor was it a youthful leadership; the average age of party central committee members was 72 and for the cabinet a youthful 63. And it was overwhelmingly male. Women held only 2 percent of upper elite positions. This included, of course, Kim Kyŏng-hŭi, the sister of Kim Jong Il. A third were from the poor Hamgyŏng region in the northeast, including 16.3% from North Hamgyŏng province, near the area where Kim Il Sung had operated.25 Since this was a region where many people of undesirable background were sent and often the most neglected part of the country this might seem odd, but it reflected the fact that so many guerillas before 1945 came from this region along the Manchurian border. They hardly appeared to be a group that would push radical change.
Consolidating Power
Perhaps because he was so young and inexperienced Kim Jong Un’s ascension to power was followed by frequent purges and shake-ups among those in key positions. The most dramatic development was the removal of his uncle, Chang Sŏng-t’aek, from power. On December 8, 2013, he was shown on television being unceremoniously dragged from a Central Committee meeting. Publicly he was charged with plotting to overthrow the government and shot four days later. This was unprecedented in several ways: it was the first major purge of a top leader in decades, it was the first time a top official was publicly arrested or tried since the purges of the 1950s, and it was the first time someone so closely related to the ruling family was known to have been executed. Speculation arose about whether this meant Kim Jong Un was uncertain of his power – his father rarely purged top officials while he was in power – or did it represent a ruthless or even recklessness among the young leader? Unconfirmed reports suggested that the animosity between Kim and Chang arose over conflicts about access to foreign exchange between rival patronage groups, and that Chang had developed his own independent power base which was a threat to Kim’s absolute authority.26
At about the same time Choe Ryong Hae, who briefly appeared to hold the number two position was demoted, supposedly because of money and women problems.27 Rumored to have been purged he reappeared in late 2014 when he accompanied Hwang Pyong So (Hwang Pyŏng-sŏ) and Kim Yang-Gon (Kim Yang-gŏn), who headed the ruling party’s United Front Department in charge of South Korea-related affairs, to a visit to the Asian Games in South Korea in October.28 Hwang, a close aid to Kim Jong Un and an official in the powerful Organization and Guidance Department, emerged in 2014 as a key figure in the regime, serving as director of the KPA’s political bureau, a vice marshal and a member of the Politburo. Purges continued during the first five years of Kim Jong Un’s rule. Some of these moves seemed intended to clip the power of the military and to strengthen that of the KWP and the civilian bureaucracy. Several high-ranking military officers were removed from their posts – altogether 44 percent of the top 218 military officers in the KPA were removed.29 However, the downgraded status of military leaders did not necessary mark a major shift in the ruling structure. The leadership had since the late 1950s consisted of Kim Il Sung, his family, his guerilla comrades and their families and clients. This elite had intermarried and was now in its third generation. Politics was often about rivalry between families and their patronage networks. Since, as mentioned, powerful families tended to have members in both the military and the party, as well as different sectors of the state apparatus, the military was not a separate caste. The politics of North Korea had evolved to become similar to the precolonial old dynastic state, with bitter factional disputes among members of the elite families, sometimes disguised or misinterpreted as policy issues.
Kim Jong Un attempted to strengthen his legitimacy and authority by situating it within the dynastic family or, as it was often termed, the “Paektu Bloodline.” In the spring of 2014 the 94-year-old Kim Yŏng Ju, the younger brother of, and one-time possible successor to, Kim Il Sung was reappointed honorary vice chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly. A powerless post, it nonetheless served to underline the continuity of the Kim family. More special days were added to the calendar, including December 17, Kim Jong Il’s death day, and December 26, the birthday of Kim Chŏng-suk, Kim Jong Il’s mother. Oddly, Kim Jong Un’s own birthday, January 8, was not made a holiday. But even members of the “Paektu Bloodline” were not immune to Kim Jong Un’s brutal elimination of all or potential rivals to his authority. On February 14, 2017 DPRK-employed agents assassinated his elder half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, an exile living in China, by putting a deadly poison on his face at Kuala Lumpur international airport.
Modest Changes in Style and More Tinkering with the System
The first focus of the new Kim Jong Un administration was preparing for the April 15, 2012 celebration of the centennial of Kim Il Sung’s birth. For some time this date had been hailed as the point at which the DPRK would become a rich and powerful state. Throughout much of 2011, campaigns were carried out to complete various construction projects, such as new housing, by this special day. The preparations for the centennial followed the old pattern of constant exhortations, mass mobilizations and calls for extra human effort to meet targets that were almost never attainable. The idea that the impoverished society could possibly achieve this goal when it was making little headway in even dealing with chronic malnutrition, when electricity was often available only one or two hours a day and when even the limited improvements made by the existence of free markets was being undermined by efforts to curb them seem fantastical. The disconnect between reality and propaganda seemed to be so extreme as to question the credibility of the regime even to its own people. But it was not that different than in the past decades when grandiose and totally unrealistic plans were made along with claims that they had been met.
A notable change in governance under Kim Jong Un was in style. In contrast to his reclusive father, who never gave public speeches, Kim Jong Un spoke at the centennial ceremonies. While not a polished speaker he spoke comfortably, and often frankly and directly to the people. He showed his grandfather’s outgoingness, traveling about and mixing with the people. On July 6 national television showed Kim Jong Un and other officials attending a concert with characters such as Mickey Mouse and Winnie-the-Pooh dancing on stage before them. Alongside the costumed characters there were screen projections of Disney characters such as Snow White and Dumbo. He was also depicted with a fashionably dressed young woman who was later, in July, identified as his wife Ri Sol Joo (Ri Sŏl-ju), a popular singer. Since Kim Il Sung’s wife Kim Kyŏng-ae was dropped from the media’s attention in the early 1970s, spouses of the inner circle were rarely seen or mentioned in public. The pictures of Kim and his wife, whispering, smiling and talking to each other, were a break from the past, an attempt to humanize and soften the image of the leader. The direct appeal to the people, the more playful style and his wife’s fashionable clothes all suggested a difference – a possible liberalization.
Liberalizing reforms, however, were as superficial such as permission for women to wear shorter skirts. A movie that opened in the Toronto Film Festival in the fall of 2012 “Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” a romantic comedy about a girl who joins the circus and a boy who falls in love with her, contained no overt propaganda. Yet these modest developments were accompanied by continual calls about being vigilant against the seductions of the imperialist aggressors. In fact, in many ways the authoritarian nature of the regime increased, suggested by the tightening of its borders. Rather than opening more to the outside world, the state took measures to prevent illegal crossings into China. The central government launched a crackdown on border guards notoriously open to bribes, on black marketers and on those seeking to leave. About 20,000 troops were dispatched to the border. Guards were punished if caught accepting bribes and frequently rotated. Not only defectors but also their families were now punished. Those who crossed to buy food, medicine and other goods were no longer treated with leniency. The result was that the flow of refugees was reduced from 2,000 a year to perhaps less than a tenth of that. There were also a renewed crackdown on South Korean videos, CDs and DVDs. The regime continued the practice of forging internal unity by creating a sense of being under siege from outside forces.
A bizarre campaign was carried out in the summer of 2012 urging the population to be vigilant against a plot by the US imperialists and South Korea. Media in the DPRK reported that the Lee Myung-bak regime had created a so-called Statue Demolition Society, and with the support of ROK and US intelligence were sneaking agents into the country to destroy statues of Kim Il Sung. A former defector, Jon Yong Chol (Chŏn Yong-ch’ŏl), was arrested on July 19, 2012 re-entering the country as part of this plan. Meetings were held to deal with this threat and citizens formed guard watches from 7 pm to 7 am to protect statues of Kim Il Sung as well as History Museums, Towers of Eternal Life and Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il Revolutionary Ideology and Research Institutes.30 Meanwhile, there were no ideological changes. There was less interest in juche thought than in the past, a trend that had begun under Kim Jong Il when his Military-First policy pushed juche into the background. Kim Jong Un did not even mention the term in his 2013 or 2014 New Year’s Addresses.31 In 2013 meetings were held at all levels to introduce the modifications to the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Monolithic Ideological System. These amounted to merely adding the name Kim Jong Il after that of Kim Il Sung. For example, the second principle, “We must honor Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung with all our loyalty,” was amended to “We must honor Great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung and General Kim Jong Il with all our loyalty,”32 an emendation that suggested there was no change, only continuity. In October 2012 the Rodong sinmun declared, “The imperialists see the young as the main target of their cultural and ideological invasion scheme.” It went on to say, “This reality demands that we wake up to the imperialists’ plan to undermine our youth.”33
There were some moves to economic reform. On June 28 a new set of guidelines entitled “One establishing a new economic management system in our own style” was promulgated among officials. Called simply the June 28 Policy this was to be implemented from October 1, 2012. The policy, details of which were not made public, gave more authority to local managers. A more significant change was in the policy on agriculture. Experimenting with several counties the plan allowed farmers to keep 30 percent of their produce and have the state collect only 70 percent. This would be in addition to anything they produced that was above the quota. Farmers would be free to sell this 30 percent of the crop. This would be an improvement over the past, although it was not clear how effectively it would be implemented since officials were known to collect as much from farmers as possible, as was the case in the 1990s when the military was sent in to collect the harvest. The punjo, the basic production unit on the cooperatives, was to be reduced from 10–25 to only 3–4 members. And procurement prices were to be “realistically” adjusted to match market prices.34 While this was an important reform it was far short of the Vietnam model let alone the Chinese.
The June 28 measures of 2012 were put into practice in 2013 and resulted in good harvests. In 2014 the state announced the “May 30 Measures” to be implemented in 2015. These would go even further giving “production teams” up to 60 percent of the crop. Production teams were reduced to household units. Furthermore, they would increase the size of private family plots to 3,300 square meters up from the tiny kitchen plots of only 100 square meters. Industry would be reformed by the introduction of a “direct responsibility system” in which factory managers would be given far more freedom to buy and sell materials. They would also be given the power to hire and fire workers and determine pay scales. Implementation of these changes was slow and did not signal a change from the official commitment to a command economy. DPRK officials in the media and in conversations with foreigners stressed that the country would not abandoned its socialist path. One official was quoted by the Korean Central News Agency as saying that calls for reform were a “hallucination” by South Korea’s “hostile forces.” To expect policy change and reform in the North “is nothing but a foolish and silly dream, just like wanting the sun to rise in the west, ” he said.35 State media blamed foreigners for economic hardships and urged citizens to be self-reliant rather than look to outsider powers for assistance. “Dry bread at home is better than roast meat abroad,” a Korean Central News Agency editorial proclaimed.36 The harshness of everyday life was suggested by the new requirement that students bring firewood to school to heat the classroom stove. Previously this was supplied, when available, by the local government.37
More fundamental than these “measures” was the continued trend toward a semi market-oriented economy – described by journalists Daniel Tudor and James Pearson as “self-reliance by hook-by-crook capitalism.”38 Salaries and the PDS could not meet the needs of those beyond the elite. Most people made do with sideline jobs, by trading, by any way possible. The army and officialdom also depended on private trade and bribes from those engaged in it to supplement their income. The result was a complex, factionalized, corrupt system that combined markets and trade with socialism. North Korea had become especially dependent on foreign trade to keep the economy from collapse. The actual scale of foreign trade is modest, only a tiny fraction of South Korea’s trade, but it remains a crucial lifeline to the impoverished state.
North Korea and the Outside World
In foreign affairs, the international community at first looked to the new leadership for changes in policy, but what transpired was continuity. Kim Jong Un followed what was essentially a revival of the “equal emphasis” policy inaugurated in the early 1960s. He called the “new strategic line” a policy of simultaneously increasing the country’s military capabilities while pursuing economic growth. He pursued his nuclear and missile program with renewed energy. At first quiet negotiations with Washington in Beijing, which had begun toward the end of Kim Jong Il’s reign, continued. On February 29, a breakthrough took place. Under the “leap year agreement,” North Korea would halt its nuclear program, open its nuclear facilities to international inspections, refrain from new missile tests and agree to return to the six-party talks. In return the USA would supply 240,000 tons of nutritionally rich foodstuffs such as biscuits. These special foods would alleviate the food shortage and would avoid the problem of monitoring where the food aid went since there was little market value for these foods and they would not by coveted by the elite as would be rice. The agreement was a verbal commitment, subject to somewhat different interpretations by the two sides, yet regarded as an important breakthrough. Almost immediately North Korea violated it when it announced plans for a missile test during the centennial celebration. Pyongyang announced it would be launching a new Kwangmyŏngsŏng (“Brilliant Star”) satellite, from a multistage rocket. This appeared to be another attempt to test a long-range missile capable of reaching parts of the USA. Two previous attempts in 1998 and 2009 had both failed, although the state media declared them successful. North Korea took the unusual step of allowing foreign journalists to witness the missile launch. Journalists from 21 foreign media organizations in the USA, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Brazil and South Africa attended. The missile launch took place on Friday, April 13, which proved an unlucky day when the rocket disintegrated 90 seconds after blast-off. The launch, besides embarrassing the regime, ended the February 29 agreement. The regime went on to test a nuclear weapon on February 12, 2013, another one on January 6, 2016, and a large one on September 9, 2016. UN sanctions were passed but without China’s active enforcement their impact was limited.
Besides nuclear weapons and missiles the DPRK invested in cyberwarfare, creating Unit 121 for that purpose. Despite the fact that North Korea was the only nation on earth not significantly connected to the World Wide Web and access was limited to a tiny number of trusted officials, it made some headway in this field. Its capabilities came as a surprise when in late 2014 it hacked Sony Pictures, an American affiliate of the Japanese corporation. This was in response to a movie, The Interview, a comedy about two Americans who assassinate Kim Jong Un. North Korea denied it carried out the hacks but had warned the studio of the consequences of releasing the film. Following more threats, the movie was distributed on a limited basis after most theaters were afraid to show it. This internet attack and blackmail raised a disturbing new form of terrorism. North Korea also attacked South Korean internet sites and attempted, with only limited success, to hack into the country’s nuclear power stations.
Kim Jong Un sought not openness but crises to continue the siege mentality that served the regime well. During the spring of 2013 he created one with South Korea. Using the regularly scheduled joint military exercises between US and ROK forces, Pyongyang began to accuse Washington and Seoul of planning aggression toward the DPRK. There was nothing new in these charges but the rhetoric was more heated than usual. On March 7, Pyongyang threatened to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the USA, calling it the “sworn enemy of the Korean people.” The following day it announced that it was cancelling its non-aggression pacts with South Korea, closing the border crossing and disconnecting the hotline. On March 13, it announced that it was unilaterally ending the 1953 Armistice. At the end of the month it actually cut the hotline, declaring on March 30 that it was at “a state of war” with South Korea. The DPRK declared that it “exercises the right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike in order to destroy strongholds of the aggressors.”39 Propaganda videos showed missiles destroying US cities, and one that showed Obama in flames became an internet hit. The DPRK withdrew 53,000 workers at the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex, even though this was an important source of foreign exchange. On May 18 and 19 it fired four short-range guided missiles into the waters off the coast. The level of violent rhetoric went beyond that of the past. Yet despite the talk of war, observers in Pyongyang saw little evidence of the country being on a war footing. Soldiers seen in the capital in April were mainly busy planting flowers and sprucing up the city for Kim Il Sung’s birthday. And, in early June, the rhetoric died down, and Pyongyang announced it was to open the first dialogue in years with the South. In the several months that followed the two sides began negotiating an agreement to arrange another family meeting, which was unilaterally cancelled by the North, and the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex was reopened in September 2013, only to be closed again in 2016, this time by Seoul after relations again soured.
The state continued to be increasingly dependent on China. Since trade statistics published by the People’s Republic of China were unclear on the matter, it was a not certain just how extensive the trade between the two countries was. According to one estimate, by 2010 China was providing North Korea with 80 percent of its imported consumer goods and 45 percent of its imported food.40 Overall, the volume of trade with China grew while from 2009 that with South Korea declined, although in 2012 the ROK was still North Korea’s second largest trading partner. In 2011, according to South Korean analysts, North Korea’s exports and imports with China reached US$5.63 billion, up 60 percent from the previous year. China accounted for 70 percent of the DPRK’s total foreign trade.41 The Chinese were particularly interested in the DPRK’s considerable mineral resources. For a small country, North Korea is well endowed with minerals. One US Geological Survey report estimated the market value of exploited minerals as being enormous, in excess of 1 trillion dollars.42 Other estimates range as high as $10 trillion.43 It has globally significant deposits of iron ore, coal, limestone, magnesite, copper, lead, graphite, tungsten, zinc, molybdenum and some gold. It may also have significant deposits of rare earths. These minerals attracted the attention of Chinese investors, mainly from the two bordering provinces of Jilin and Liaoning. Chinese investments in North Korea were rare until after 1997. Only after 2004 did these involve minerals. Between that year and 2010, 138 Chinese firms established joint ventures with North Korea.44 The biggest attractions were the extractive industries. Most of these were small-scale private enterprises with only four known state-owned enterprises and only two major firms participating.
Beijing had begun to see North Korea as useful for its plans to develop the relatively poor northeastern region. This region, known to the West as Manchuria, had long been linked with Korea, and was where Kim Il Sung grew up and the base for his guerilla warfare against the Japanese. By the late twentieth century, what had once been the most industrialized region of China had become its rust bucket of old, heavy industry plants. It had failed to attract the modern foreign investment of the southern coastal provinces. Trade and investment in North Korea was part of the answer. North Korea also provided access to the sea for the landlocked Jilin province. The largely forlorn Rasŏn Special Economic zone in the extreme northeast corner of the country began to receive greater attraction as an outlet to the sea since the port of Rajin was only 50 kilometers from the border. To encourage commerce in Jilin and to link it with North Korea, in 2009 the government launched a Changchun–Jilin–Tumen Regional Economic Pilot Zone or Changjitu with the goal of tripling income in the region by 2020.45 As they invested in infrastructure they saw Rasŏn port as a key component. In the summer of 2012 Chinese tourists arrived in enough numbers that the previously empty hotels were overbooked on the weekends.46 More than half of all foreign trade went through the city of Dandong across the Yalu from the DPRK city of Sinŭiju. The contrast between the bright lights of Dandong and the darkness on the North Korean side was striking. It is estimated that in 2015 a quarter of Dandong’s labor force is employed in businesses linked with North Korea. Besides the steady flow of trucks across the bridge connecting the two countries an estimated 13,000 North Koreans work in grim, unheated factories in the Chinese city.47
So a combination of geography and the growing demand in China for mineral resources encouraged investment in North Korea. This followed a broader pattern where China in its search for minerals, energy and commodities invested in pariah states where Western firms could not because of sanctions or because of high risks – countries such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar. But doing business in North Korea was not easy. As other investors found there was little rule of law, corruption was rampant and regulations were subject to sudden and arbitrary change. Many Chinese firms lost heavily and all complained about the difficulties of doing business there.
However, China’s economic ties with North Korea had a character different from other states. Its proximity, its historical ties to China and the special geopolitics of the region all led to concerns that it was becoming what the South Korean press called “the fourth Northeast province” (the other three being the Manchurian provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang; the first two form the border with the DPRK). These concerns were reinforced by China’s “Northeast Borderlands and Chain of Events Research Project,” known simply as the “Northeast Project.” Funded by the Chinese government in 2002 its task was to investigate the ancient history of the region. Scholarship focused on the ancient Koguryŏ kingdom which flourished from the first to the seventh century. It was based in southern Manchuria and in what is now North Korea, eventually moving its capital from Manchuria to Pyongyang. Conclusions by some scholars that this state was part of Chinese history caused outrage in South Korea in the 2000s. In 2004 the government promised Seoul that these claims would not appear in the textbooks. But suspicions remained in South Korea that the historical research could be used in the event of the collapse of North Korea to justify its annexation. This would follow the pattern taken by the Japanese government in the early twentieth century when it sponsored historical and archaeological research that promoted the claim that Korea was once part of the Japanese polity in ancient times, a claim used to justify the annexation of Korea.
As good nationalists, North Korea’s rulers were no doubt fully aware of this and had no desire to become a Chinese satellite. In fact, North Korea viewed Koguryŏ as the real ancestor of modern Korea. In 2001 it applied to UNESCO to have the tombs which it was restoring registered as the country’s first “world heritage” site.48 According to the interpretation given by North Korean histories, after an interlude when the southern-based Silla ruled, the descendants of Koguryŏ created the Koryŏ state which achieved the first real unification of the country since Silla had to share some of what constitutes Korea today with the Manchurian-based Parhae state. This differed from the view in Seoul where the Silla, whose boundaries roughly coincide with the modern South Korean state, is seen as the unifier of the peninsula, possessing a culture that formed the foundations for later Korean society.
Since both South Korea and increasingly North Korea looked to ancient times to lay the basis of their competing claims to being the mainstream, and torchbearers, of Korean nationalism both viewed China’s interest in North Korea with suspicion. The southern boundaries of Koguryŏ were roughly where the boundaries between the two Koreas are today. So it did look suspiciously as though China were laying the basis for some sort of contingency to take over the North in the event of a collapse. South Koreans were concerned that a unified Korea, under Seoul, posed a threat to China since it would mean an open, democratic state allied to the USA, and perhaps Japan, would be on their border. Chinese officials may have also been concerned by irredentist claims to parts of Manchuria, sometimes made by ultra-nationalists in the South and the existence of nearly 2 million ethnic Koreans near the Chinese border with North Korea. Some South Koreans, including lawmakers, called for the abrogation of the 1909 treaty between China and Japan which demarcated the boundary, since it left out the predominantly ethnically Korean Kando (Chinese: Jiando) area which became part of Jilin province. Any claim by a borderland ethnic group from China had unacceptable implications for the country which had contentious minorities covering huge portions of its outer territories – notably the Uighurs in the northwest and the Tibetans in the southwest. Whatever China’s intentions, it was clear that North Korea had no intention of being the “fourth Northeast province” or being a tributary state of Beijing. Thus, it limited the amount of Chinese involvement in linking its infrastructure with that of Manchuria.
As humiliating as it might be for the fiercely independent regime, the DPRK had found itself by the 2010s dependent on China for survival. It needed Beijing’s support or at least tolerance since with UN sanctions in place the vast majority of its international trade, important to its survival, was with or went through China. The lack of high-level visits between the two countries was an indication of how frosty relations were. Still, China deemed even a difficult and dangerous North Korea better than chaos or a Western-allied Republic of Korea or even US troops on its border. Nonetheless, Beijing often signaled its displeasure with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program, for example banning coal imports, the DPRK’s most important export in the February 2017 in response to a series of missile tests.
Prospects for unification seem to become ever less promising. In North Korea, even with tightening measures under Kim Jong Un, South Korean culture penetrated the North. Reports were that in 2010 the two biggest hit TV dramas in South Korea were both known and popular in the North. Girls Generation, a K-Pop all-girls group was also popular.49 But in South Korea attitudes toward the North among the younger generation had changed from a fashionable admiration by many college students and younger intellectuals to a disdain for what they regarded as backward and brainwashed cousins. Between 1990 and 1994 there were only 86 defectors; from 1994 to 2000, 100 a year; and then over a 1,000 a year in 2002. The number began to taper off after 2011.50 By early 2017 there were 30,000 North Korean refugees living in the South. They were smaller in stature, less healthy, less well educated and suffered from discrimination. South Koreans associated them with laziness, irresponsibility, drunkenness, criminal activity and seeking government handouts. Many wondered if the two Koreas had grown too far apart to be easily unified even if the situation made this possible.
Reviving the Past, Moving to an Uncertain Future
The Seventh Party Congress
On October 20, 2015 the DPRK announced that a Seventh Congress of the KWP would be meeting in the spring. The announcement was particularly surprising as it had been 36 years since the last party congress met in 1980. Such a move, along with the great attention that was given to it, could have signaled a major shift in policy. There was nothing new in the preparations for the gathering. It was preceded by the usual mass mobilization campaign – a “Seventy-Day Battle” (ch’il sip-il il chŏnt’u) in which citizens of the capital were rounded up to spruce up the streets. As in the past, for important meetings the exact dates and even the venue for the congress were kept secret. The five-day congress opened on May 6, 2016 with 3,500 delegates and 1,500 observers attending. One hundred foreign journalists were also invited but were not allowed to watch but rather only allowed inside for a few minutes. There were no official foreign delegations; this was a purely internal affair.
Rather than initiating bold reforms the Seventh Party Congress was instead an expression of continuity with the past. Kim Jong Un became chairman of the KWP, reviving a post that had been abolished a half-century earlier. He also became chairman of the new Commission for State Affairs that replaced the National Defense Commission. Thus, both of these changes as well as the congress itself appeared to be a revival of some of the forms and atmosphere of the Kim Il Sung era. There were no major changes in leadership. The same family members held the top positions, including the “royal” Kim family. Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yŏ-jŏng, was appointed to the Central Committee. The meeting took place in the April 25th Building, named after the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean army and perhaps symbolizing the continued importance of the military. Yet the locus of power seemed to be recentered back in the party.
As his grandfather had done Kim Jong Un provided a lengthy main speech; his was 14,000 words. He began his speech with a eulogy to the revolutionary comrades who had passed away since the last congress. The list included almost all the members of the first generation of Manchurian partisans, underlining that the revolution had passed to newer generations. Kim referred to the period since the last congress as a time of “grim struggle,” implying that was now over.51 Much of the attention of his speech was devoted to his byungjin (pyŏngjin, “equal emphasis”) policy, giving equal emphasis to economic and military development. This too was hardly new, but rather a continuation of the policy formulated at the December 1962 Party Plenum. His father had shifted this policy from the double emphasis on economic progress and military strength as the basis of legitimacy to a single reliance on military strength. Kim Jong Un was bringing the focus back to where it had been before the economic disasters. The congress appeared to be about reasserting the past, not breaking with it.
Kim Jong Un called for self-sufficiency in food production, for increased energy production and for an increase in foreign trade. Nothing here was new. Even the call for foreign trade focused on increasing the production of minerals and not special economic zones or the development of export industries. For outside observers looking for signs of economic reform the congress was a disappointment. In an obvious and insulting reference to China Kim Jong Un declared: “Despite the filthy wind of bourgeois liberty and ‘reform’ and ‘openness’ blowing in our neighborhood, we let the spirit of sŏn’gun rifles fly and advance according to the path of socialism that we had chosen.”52 Thus making it clear that North Korea had no intention of emulating its reform-minded communist neighbor. One important announcement was of a new five-year plan for 2016–2020. Not only was it the first new five-year plan since 1956, but it was the first economic plan of any defined length in over two decades. Since the economic crises of the 1990s North Korea had broken with the tradition of socialist economies by not having any central plans with their specific if often unrealistic targets. Rather, North Korea had simply improvised and limped on in a strange hybrid of socialism and de facto market economics. Now it appeared that the intention was to bring the DPRK back to its pre-1990s normalcy – a normalcy in which the party was supreme, the economy was centrally coordinated and the emphasis would be on growth. This return to normalcy was further reinforced by hints that there would be an eighth party conference, perhaps in five years, at the end of the new economic plan.
For ordinary North Koreans too the immediate future appeared to be more of the same. To highlight this, within days after the congress officials announced the start of a 200-day “loyalty campaign” to fulfill the new five-year plan. It was yet another effort at calling upon the citizens to work harder to achieve party goals. There was no hint of liberalization of any kind.
Yet so much had changed since the last congress in 1980 that North Korea could not go back to “normalcy.” In 1980 there was still an international socialist movement that the DPRK could align itself with. North Korea had a powerful ally and benefactor – the Soviet Union. China, its other ally, had just begun to move away from Maoist policies. Pyongyang could attempt to be a leader of the Third World; it was not yet an international pariah. South Korea was a military dictatorship that was undergoing an economic crisis, and not the vibrant first world democracy it now was. There was no internet, cell phones nor smuggled DVDs of the globally popular South Korean pop music videos and TV soap dramas. And, of course, the economic crisis and the famine of the 1990s had not yet turned much of the bureaucracy, the military and a hungry under-employed population into entrepreneurs. In 1980 there was still hope for the regime that North Korea would become a strong, prosperous state that could win over the people of the South and reunify the country under its leadership. In 2016 the best the leadership could hope for was to make some modest improvements in the poor, aid-dependent country’s economy.
North Korea in 2017
After the Seventh Party Congress the economy did improve modestly, with significant growth in 2016 which continued into 2017. Most of the benefits of this prosperity went to the elite. In 2017 Pyongyang was experiencing a construction boom with luxury apartments, supermarkets and stores springing up selling imported goods. Despite UN sanctions designed to restrict exports of luxury goods for the upper echelons of society, the number of new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes on the streets was increasing. The role of the private market continued to grow, symbolized by the appearance of street vendors for the first time in many decades. Economic growth was fueled by exports of coal, iron and increasingly textiles. The latter were manufactured in North Korea and then shipped to China where they were labeled “Made in China.” While most of the foreign exports, perhaps 90 percent, were with or went through China, an illicit trade with Russia was also expanding. The modest agricultural reforms and the gradual enlarging of the private sector were probably also a contributing factor in the improving economy. But the country still ranked among the world’s poorest countries, suffered food shortages and needed international aid.
As he promised at the party congress, Kim Jong Un expanded the country’s military strength. His main focus was on accelerating missile and nuclear weapons development. The 68th anniversary of the DPRK on September 9, 2016, was marked with the country’s fifth nuclear test, the second in that same year. More impressive was the sixth nuclear test on September 3, 2017, far larger than the previous ones and causing earth tremors in adjacent regions of China and Russia. North Korea claimed plausibly that it was a hydrogen bomb. Missile development took a quantum leap with the successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Alaska, launched provocatively on July 4, 2017. A second successful test of a missile capable of reaching most of the continental USA took place three weeks later on July 28. On August 29 and September 15, 2017 Pyongyang fired missiles over northern Japan.
Kim Jong Un appeared to be deliberately demonstrating his country’s power and creating international tensions. Both purposes served domestic audiences, keeping the country in a state of military vigilance and fulfilling his pledge to strengthen the military. A public exchange of personal insults with American President Trump and the latter’s threat to “totally destroy” the DPRK reaffirmed Pyongyang’s warning to its people of the aggressive intentions of imperialists, aggressive intentions that only its military might and steadfast leadership were able to thwart. He appeared to have no desire to improve relations with the South but rather seemed intent on keeping the two Koreas apart. In May 2017 South Korea elected a new liberal president, Moon Jae-in, who had hoped to abandon the hardline stance of his two conservative predecessors and resuscitate the Sunshine Policy. Kim’s lack of interest in cooperating with the new administration and his nuclear and missile tests and rhetoric forced Moon to shift quickly to a policy emphasizing the ROK’s military preparedness. South Korean public opinion was increasingly hostile and impatient with the North.
China, in the face of tightening international sanctions, seemed to be more crucial to the survival of the regime than ever. However, Kim Jong Un did little to improve the frosty relations between Pyongyang and Beijing. Some of his actions seem defiant and insulting. In February 2017 he assassinated Kim Jong Nam, despite that fact that his half-brother was living under Chinese protection, and he tested a nuclear weapon in September 2017 as President Xi Jinping was presenting a key foreign policy speech boasting of his efforts to promote global harmony. China, however, despite its clear frustration with North Korea, did not fully comply with the economic sanctions fearing the economic collapse of the regime and its unification under the US-allied South.
By 2017 the North Korean state had survived but its revolution had failed. Modern revolutions more often than not fall short of achieving their aims but few have failed as much as had North Korea’s. A revolutionary state, which once carried out a radical egalitarian agenda, had developed into one of the most inequitable societies on the face of the earth, a land where most led desperate lives of hunger, darkness and deprivation while a tiny elite lived in luxury. A state founded on the universal beliefs of Marxist-Leninist socialism had become a cult society based on an ideology of racial-nationalism. A revolutionary regime that sought to be at the vanguard of human progress presided over an impoverished, isolated society, the only major one not connected to the World Wide Web. A revolutionary state whose aim was to achieve national unity became the chief obstacle to that unity. A regime that once sought international respect was universally reviled. Seven decades after its founding, the main accomplishment of Kim Il Sung’s state was that it had managed not to disintegrate into chaos as some outsiders had expected.
The failure of the North Korean revolution is a tragedy for the 25 million people that have led hard lives of endless labor campaigns, harsh living conditions, food shortages, malnutrition, starvation and political oppression on an almost unprecedented scale and degree, and who have been cordoned off from the outside world. The extent of this tragedy is clear when their lives are contrasted with those of their fellow Koreans in the South who enjoy what to most North Koreans must be unimaginable prosperity and personal freedom. In fact, the gap in living standards and the difference in lifestyles among North Koreans and South Koreans is probably the greatest between any two neighboring societies in the world. Yet they share the same cultural heritage, and they were part of the same ethnically homogeneous nation until suddenly, unexpectedly divided by an arbitrary line drawn up in 1945 by outside powers. The history of North Korea is also the story of its ordinary men and women. They have not simply been passive or faceless masses carrying out the will of the leader, but have helped shape its history. At times they enthusiastically embraced the goals of the state. Most at least came to accept the system. When it failed them they refashioned it, not through rebellion, but out of necessity. The people of North Korea made so many sacrifices, endured so much suffering, under the leadership and direction of those who ill-served them.
References
Haggard, Stephan and Marcus Noland. Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2011.
Lim, Jae-Cheon Lim. Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea. London: Routledge, 2015.
Beck, Peter M. “North Korea in 2010,” Asian Survey, 51, no.1 (January/February 2011): 33–40.Crossref
Lankov, Andrei. “Pyongyang Strikes Back: North Korean Policies of 2002–08 and Attempts to Reverse “De-Stalinization from Below”,” Asia Policy 8 (July 2009): 47–71.Crossref
Footnotes
1
Andrei Lankov, “Pyongyang Strikes Back: North Korean Policies of 2002–08 and Attempts to Reverse ‘De-Stalinization from Below’,” Asia Policy 8 (July 2009): 47–71; Gause, p. 81.
2
Lankov, 2009; Stephan Haggard, and Marcus Noland, “Sanctioning North Korea: The Political Economy of Denuclearization and Proliferation,” Asian Survey 50, no. 3 (May/June 2010): 539–568.
7
“North Korean Tecnhnocrat Executed for Bungled Currency Reform: Yonhap News Agency, 18 March 2010, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/%26/0401000000AEN20100318004400315F.HT
8
Reporters Without Borders, “North Korea: The Web as a Pawn with Power Game” (March 2014), http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/tag/bureau-27/. Accessed April 29, 2015.
10
Joo, Hyung-Min, “Visualizing the Invisible Hands: The Shadow Economy in North Korea,” Economy and Society 39, no.1 (2010): 110–145.
11
Washington Post, March 6, 2009; Yoonok Chang, Stephan M. Haggard, Marcus Noland, “Exit Polls: Refugee Assessments of North Korea’s Transition,” (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, January 2008), Working Paper No. 08-1,https://piie.com/publications/working-papers/exit-polls-refugee-assessments-north-koreas-transition
12
Yoonok Chang, Stephan M. Haggard, Marcus Noland, “Exit Polls: Refugee Assessments of North Korea’s Transition,” (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, January 2008), Working Paper No. 08-1./?
15
Aiden Foster-Carter, “Keys to the Kingdom: North Korea’s Economic heritage and Prospects After Kim Jong-Il’s Death,” Korean Economic Institute, On Korea 2013 6 (2013): 23–47.
16
Aidan Foster-Carter, “Lee Myung Bak’s Nordpolitik: A U-Turn in the Pipeline?” 38North (September 11, 2011), http://www.38north.org Accessed April 12, 2016.
21
Peter Foster, “Kim Jong Il’s Oldest Son Against Dynastic Succession,” Daily Telegraph, October 12, 2010.
28
Kim Yang Gon was reported to have been killed in a car accident in 2015 and was given a state funeral. “North Korean Official Dies in Car Accident,” Choson ilbo, December 31, 2015,http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2015/12/31/2015123101249.html
29
Hong Yung Lee, “North Korea in 2013: Economy, Executions, and Nuclear Brinkmanship,” Asian Survey 94, no. 1 (January/February 2014): 89–100.
38
Daniel Tudor and James Pearson, North Korea Confidential: Private markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defector, (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2015), 16.
40
Drew Thompson, Silent Partners, Chinese Joint Ventures in North Korea, U.S. Korea Institute at SAIS, February 2011. http://uskoreainstitute.org/research/special-reports/silent-partners-chinese-joint-ventures-in-north-korea/.
42
US Geological Survey John C. Wu, “The Mineral Industry of NK,” 2005 Minerals Yearbook: North Korea, US Geological Survey (June 2007): 15.1.
43
Aiden Foster-Carter, “Keys to the Kingdom: North Korea’s Economic heritage and Prospects After Kim Jong-Il’s Death,” Korean Economic Institute. On Korea 2013 6 (2013): 23–47.
46
Andray Abrahamian, “A Convergence of Interests: Prospects for Rason Special Economic Zone,” 69–80.
48
Peter Hays Gries, “The Koguryo Controversy, National Identity, and Sino-Korean Relations Today,” East Asia 22, no. 4 (2005): 3–17.
49
Woo Young Lee and Jungmin Seo, “‘Cultural Pollution’ from the South?,” in Kyung-Ae Park and Scott Snyder, editors, North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economy and Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, pp. 195–207.
50
International Crisis Group, Strangers At Home: North Koreans in the South Report No.208 Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2011, pp. 14–15.
51
Stephan Haggard, “Kim Jong Un Doubles Down I: The Opening Speech and the Central Committee Report. Petersen Institute for International Economics (May 9, 2016) https://piie.com/blogs/north-korea-witness-transformation/kim-jong-un-doubles-down-i-opening-speech-and-central Accessed July 28, 2016.
52
Frank Ruediger, “The 7th Party Congress in North Korea: A Return to the New Normal” 38th North (May 20, 2016) http://38north.org/2016/05/rfrank052016/ Accessed July 29, 2016.