North Korea Under Kim Jong Il: From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance

North Korea under Kim Jong Il From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance Sung Chull Kim North Korea under Kim Jong Il ...

Author: Sung Chull Kim

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North Korea under Kim Jong Il From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance

Sung Chull Kim

North Korea under Kim Jong Il

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North Korea under Kim Jong Il From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance

Sung Chull Kim

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2006 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kim, Sung Chull, 1956– North Korea under Kim Jong Il : from consolidation to systemic dissonance / Sung Chull Kim. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6927-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7914-6927-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Korea (North)—Politics and government. 2. Kim, Cho˘ng-il, 1942– . 3. Korea (North)—Foreign relations. 4. National security—Korea (North). 5. Political leadership—Korea (North). I. Title. JQ1729.5.A58K555 2007 951.9304'3—dc22

2006001295 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents Tables and Figures Abbreviations Note on Romanization Preface 1. Introduction: A Conceptual Frame for Systemic Changes Emergence of the Systemic Identity of North Korea Embodiment of the System: Functional Differentiation Systemic Dissonance and Major Conjunctures Requirement for Systemic Viability: Openness Tour of the Book

vii ix xi xiii 1 3 10 13 24 26

2. Kim Jong Il: The Political Man and His Leadership Character 29 The Shaping of a Political Personality 31 The Political Man’s Road to Succession 41 Active-Negative Leadership Character 45 Implications for Systemic Changes 54 3. The Party’s Strengthening Discipline and Weakening Efficiency Kim Il Sung’s Legacy: From a Mass Party to an Institutionalized Party Kim Jong Il and Organizational Changes Party-Life Criticism as a Disciplinary Instrument The Declining Efficiency of the Party Dual Implications

57 59 65 69 75 79

4. Military-First Politics and Changes in Party-Military Relations 81 Power Dynamics and Party-Military Relations 83 Military-First Politics under Kim Jong Il 91 Institutional Differentiation between the Party and the Military 96 Relevance to Kim Jong Il’s Management Style 101

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Contents

5. Chuch’e in Transformation Chuch’e and Power Succession Socialism in Historical Development Estrangement from Marxism-Leninism On Capitalism and Opening Up Reflections on Chuch’e: With Special Reference to Systemic Identity 6. The Fluctuation of Economic Institutions and the Emergence of Entrepreneurship Institutions of Economic Management: Traditions and Their Dislocation Increased Local Latitude The Emergence of Private Entrepreneurs Informal Transition of Property Rights Implications for Systemic Dissonance

105 106 112 121 130 135

137 138 147 150 157 163

7. The Changing Roles of Intellectuals Socialist Transformation and Persecution of Intellectuals Socialist Mobilization and Changes in the Class Status of Intellectuals Kim Jong Il’s Rise and His Mobilization of Intellectuals The Perceived “Internal Enemy” in Times of Decaying Socialism Facilitation of the “Skip-Over Strategy”

165 166

183 186

8. Conclusion: Dilemmas of Opening Up Special Features of Systemic Dissonance Defiance in 2002

193 193 199

Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

207 211 251 267

174 178

Contents

vii

Tables and Figures Table 1.1. Table 1.2. Figure 5.1.

Trends of Oil Imports and Energy Consumption, 1980–2002

21

Grain Imports and International Assistance, 1989–98

22

Development of Mode of Production: Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s Scheme

113

Authority Relations in the Sociopolitical Organism

125

Table 6.1.

Types of Property Rights Transitions

161

Table 8.1.

Degradation of Systemic Identity

195

Figure 5.2.

vii


Abbreviations ADB CC CCP CoCom DPRK IMF KAPF KCB KCIA KCNA KEDO KINU KPA LWR NDC PRC PSM SCH SPA SSA SYL WPK

Asian Development Bank Central Committee Chinese Communist Party Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls Democratic People’s Republic of Korea International Monetary Fund Korean Artists Proletarian Federation Korean Central Broadcast (of North Korea) Korea Central Intelligence Agency (of South Korea) Korea Central News Agency (of North Korea) Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization Korea Institute for National Unification Korean People’s Army light-water reactor National Defense Commission People’s Republic of China People’s Safety Ministry Safety Commanding Headquarters (in KPA) Supreme People’s Assembly State Security Agency Socialist Youth League Workers’ Party of Korea

ix


Note on Romanization In the romanization of titles of Korean sources and names of Koreans, this book adopts the McCune-Reischauer system, with the exception of commonly used spellings such as Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. In the ordering of given and family names, I have given Korean and Japanese names with the family name first and then the given name: for example, Pak HÆn-yÆng and Wada Haruki. However, names of Koreans who have written in English are cited in their Westernized form: for instance, Dae-Sook Suh and Byung Chul Koh.

xi


Preface It would be inappropriate to attribute North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy renewed in October 2002—and supported by the missile test in July 2006—either to the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il or to American sanctions alone. With regard to North Korea, there exists a huge intellectual gap between understanding the country’s diplomatic behavior patterns, on the one hand, and the individual leader factor or the international factor, on the other hand. The goal of this book is to fill this gap through a close examination of the transformation of the North Korean system under Kim Jong Il. Change in a system is not a simple product of stimuli-responses; rather, it stems from a host of differentiations within the system and of interactions between the system and its environment. North Korea in the past three decades of Kim Jong Il’s active engagement in politics, dating back to 1973, has experienced significant changes in its systemic identity, which had been based on the three reference points— socialist principles, anti-imperialism, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. The country’s socialist principles mostly eroded, and both its diplomatic and its provocative approaches to the United States, the primary enemy, proved vain and deviated from the North’s original identity. Military-first politics constituted Kim Jong Il’s response to the situation, and it replaced the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition that had worked in the consolidation of monolithic power centered on the father-to-son succession. The second nuclear crisis that erupted in 2002 must be a consequence of the dilemma that had been confronting the North Korean system, over which Kim Jong Il had exerted his personal influence to effect a transformation. Covering chiefly the three decades from 1973 to 2002, this book explores the submerged elements of the system. This work was conceived four years ago, when I was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002–03. My experiences there were encouraging, and I would especially like to thank,

xiii

xiv

Preface

of the many who helped me, Edward Friedman, Mark Beissinger, and Michael Barnett, who provided me with a warm environment in which I could concentrate on the research. Also, Edward Reed of the Center for East Asian Studies at the university facilitated my stay in various ways. Because my interest in socialist systems, including North Korea, dates back more than two decades, I am indebted to many teachers, colleagues, and friends. Chun In Young, Lee On-jook, and the late Rhee Yong Pil introduced me to critical approaches to Marxist and other social thought and international relations during my school days at Seoul National University. The scholarly leadership of the former presidents of the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), Lee Byoung-yong and Jeong Se-hyun, led me to a pool of information on North Korea and related issues. In writing the book, I have been grateful to old colleagues at KINU for their moral support and encouragement, and I apologize that space limitations prevent me from naming each of them. In completing this manuscript, I have benefited from the critical comments and invaluable suggestions in detail made by my longtime teacher Dorothy J. Solinger and old friends such as Park Jong-chul, Lee Kyo-duk, Park Hyeong-jung, Kim Philo, and Chon Hyun-joon. T. J. Cheng read each of the chapters and made very useful comments for the clarification of my analysis. Dae-Sook Suh read the entire manuscript and then provided me with extremely valuable suggestions about how to tighten the argument and clarify various facts. Bruce Cumings’s insights encouraged my writing on this topic. Several discussions with Wada Haruki enriched my ideas on the transformation of the North Korean system, especially the military-first politics. Talks with Kang In-duck, who worked in intelligence on North Korea and later served as minister in the Kim Dae-jung administration, provided me with information on the clandestine country in the early 1970s. In proposing the conceptual outlines of this work, Kenneth Bailey inspired me, particularly with regard to the notions of systems theory in general and of Niklas Luhmann in particular. My longtime teacher and friend David Easton not only taught me about systems theory but also shared with me his insights on this work. I am indebted to the International Society for Systems Sciences, where I have enjoyed the scholarly culture of creativity and learned from mentors such as James G. Miller and Ilya Prigogine and many distinguished scholars, such as G. A. Swanson, Ervin Laszlo, Len R. Troncale, Lane Tracy, and Peter Corning. I would like to express a deep gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that allowed

Preface

xv

me to revise the manuscript. However, I should note that the analysis and any errors in this book are my own. I received help and assistance from a number of other people and institutions. My colleagues at the Hiroshima Peace Institute— Haruhiro Fukui, Motofumi Asai, Yuki Tanaka, Christian P. Scherrer, Kazumi Mizumoto, Narayanan Ganesan, Hitoshi Nagai, and Hiroko Takahashi—have helped me learn how to utilize sources in Japan, and private talks with them have sharpened my objective appraisal of the North Korean system. Kim Yong-hyun, Jeong Sei-jin, and Chung Young-chul helped me to search primary and secondary sources on North Korea. I am grateful to the librarians at KINU in Seoul and the Institute of Developing Economies in Chiba, Japan, for their kind assistance. Peter Seelig did a wonderful job making my manuscript more readable. Over the last decade, I have interviewed many refugees from North Korea. I wish that their dreams of peace on the Korean peninsula and of family reunion come true. In completing chapters 6 and 7, I have utilized (though extensively rewritten) articles that appeared previously in other places: “Fluctuating Institutions of Enterprise Management in North Korea: Prospects for Local Enterprise Reform,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 19, no. 1 (2003), published by Taylor and Francis, Ltd. (http://tandf.co.uk); and “Dynamism of Politics and Status of Intellectuals in North Korea,” Development and Society 31, no. 1 (2002), published by the Institute for Social Development and Policy Research, Seoul National University, respectively. I thank the publishers for permission to use them here. Also, in undertaking this work, I have benefited from the financial support of the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (C-2-16510189). Special thanks go to Michael Rinella and Diane Ganeles of State University of New York Press for their excellent editorial direction. Finally, I would like to express appreciation to my aging mother and to my wife, Hyun Suk, and my two sons, Dalin and Joshua, for their support and patience in all senses. In accounting many events in North Korea, I quoted various primary sources, such as the works of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and articles in the newspapers and journals. All translations of them into English are my own.


1

Introduction A Conceptual Frame for Systemic Changes

In general, there are two contrasting interpretations of North Korea’s provocative posture on its nuclear weapons program and the country’s launch of economic reform measures, both of which occurred in 2002. Emphasizing the pressure maintained by the outside world, one interpretation maintains that North Korea’s provocative security posture, particularly in terms of nuclear weapons development, should be attributed to the long isolation that has characterized this nation even after the breakdown of state socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. According to this view, since North Korea was devastated during the Korean War by American air bombing and was isolated by various forms of U.S.-imposed sanctions, Pyongyang has had no other way but to search for its own means for survival, including heavy military buildup and particularly nuclear development. The other interpretation posits that North Korea’s provocative posture is attributable to the nation’s regime, characterized by Kim Jong Il’s monolithic power. This interpretation, focusing on internal factors, underscores the point that the existing oppressive system has to act aggressively, employing external threats or confrontations as a centerpiece for internal political integration. Despite the two interpretations’ respective merits, it is fair to say that a country’s behavior pattern toward the outside world is based on a combination of external and internal factors. A security policy of a country as a system is not a simple response to stimuli from the 1

2


outside but a consequence of continuous interactions within the system and with its environment.1 The means whereby such interactions are channeled and the ways in which policy-making processes are nested are dependent on the capacities of the given system. In this respect, the understanding of North Korea’s external behavior pattern requires an investigation of the systemic dynamism of national identity formation and its reproduction and transformation. Systems theory, from which I adopt many concepts in this book, has contributed to the development of propositions on not only interactive relations between a system and its environment but also systemic dynamism. Employing concepts of systems theory, this book delves into an important question: Between 1973 and 2002, how have internal changes in North Korea under the expanding rule of Kim Jong Il structured the country’s apparently provocative—but actually defensive—diplomacy and recent economic reform measures? (The three-decade period starts with Kim Jong Il’s full involvement in the party’s organizational affairs in 1973 and extends through North Korea’s launch of economic reform measures and the emergence of the second nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula in 2002.) In order to answer this question, this book examines the origins, consolidation, and dissonance of North Korea’s systemic identity by illustrating various unofficial developments in that system. It is noteworthy that the examination of such changes pertaining to systemic identity involves consideration of interactions between the system and the environment. Two concepts need a brief definitional clarification for the convenience of the reader, even though they will be more fully discussed in the following parts.2 First, environment, in general, refers to either a composite of neighboring systems or a suprasystem that includes the given system and those neighbors.3 A system’s relations with its environment implies various forms of interactions—between the system and the environment and between subsystems of the system and the environment.4 Second, the system-environment interaction does not necessarily produce a smooth transition of the system. The asymmetrical characteristics of the interaction between a system and its environment—as Niklas Luhmann stated, “The environment is always more complex than the system itself”5—render the system vulnerable to fluctuations in the environment. Depending on the level of interactive capacity to cope with the environmental fluctuations, a system may or may not overcome various challenges and finally would experience either systemic evolution or dissonance.

Introduction

3

Emergence of the Systemic Identity of North Korea North Korea as a system Systems theory has posited that a system is open to the environment.6 This famous proposition about open systems has been considered a core element of the theory. According to this proposition, one can also posit, by hypothesis, a closed system by way of contrast. But without transactions of resources and information with the surrounding environment, a closed system cannot persist. Even though it was formulated in relation to the physical world in the early stages of systems theory, the proposition about open systems has subsequently undergone extensive applications to the social sciences.7 North Korea, just like other systems, is an open system in that it has to interact with its environment. Differences between democratic systems and nondemocratic systems like North Korea lie in the structure of that system, which channels degrees and patterns of interactions with the environment. Despite some conceptual advantages, the proposition about open systems by itself cannot account for a system’s various degrees of external differentiation or separation from an environment. In other words, the proposition does not detail how a system maintains its original identity to signify distinctiveness, while retaining interactions with the environment. The limitation of the proposition of open systems lies in that it does not help us explain both how the hard shell of the system develops and why internal contradictions emerge in the system later on. Moreover, the proposition of open systems alone is unable to account for the ways in which the system differentiates itself from its surroundings through self-reproduction, which may be regarded as inertia of its systemic identity. It is worth noting that the notion of autopoiesis—with which the social sciences community is more or less unfamiliar8—may provide us with a better configuration of the system’s differentiation and separation from its environment and of the system’s dynamics with relevance to system-environment interactions. Autopoiesis, whose rich meaning was intensively explored by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, refers to an interactive network that recursively produces components that realize the network. Autopoiesis involves the maintaining and the strengthening of a given system’s essential variables, as long as the process of self-reproduction continues.9 The self-reproduction is a recursive process whereby the result of its own operations, as Niklas Luhmann noted, is used as the basis for further

4


operations. That is, when self-reproduction takes place, “what is undertaken is determined in part by what has occurred in earlier operations.”10 The notion of self-reproduction enhances the plausibility of systems theory by unifying individuality and identity, on the one hand, and interconnectedness and interpenetration through open interactions, on the other. A system is not closed, in a genuine sense, but externally differentiated from its environment in terms of organizational characteristics. The self-reproduction promotes systemic individuality and identity and maintains a certain degree of symmetry—or slows down the emergence of asymmetry—among subsystems or parts within a system. In this vein, John Mingers posited that a system is “organizationally” closed but “interactively” open.11 The emphasis on individuality and identity does not necessitate the closure of the system but implies differentiation or separation between the system and its environment, an implication that should be called external differentiation. Luhmann intensively utilized the notion of differentiation for not only external processes but internal processes, as well.12 He illuminated systemic identity by elaborating on the internal differentiation processes that enhance degrees of complexity.13 In other words, the system becomes more externally distinctive from the outside through internal reproduction of the components, while maintaining the relatively constant features of the system’s individuality. In this respect, it is fair to say that the internal differentiation is a requisite for the external differentiation of a given system and for the system’s distinguishable identity. The main objective of this book is to illustrate the thirty years of internal differentiation processes, both official and unofficial, between 1973 and 2002 in North Korea under Kim Jong Il’s rule. These processes have contributed to a gradual transition of the systemic identity that formed in the early Kim Il Sung era. The emergence of the North Korean system—commonly called state-building—started as Kim Il Sung and his Manchurian guerrillas returned from the far eastern regions of the Soviet Union in September 1945, which was three years before the formal launch of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in September 1948. The state-building involved both power competition and collaboration among the factions. Kim Il Sung and the Manchurian guerillas were challenged by the Yanan faction (headed by Kim Tu-bong and Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik), Soviet-conscripted Koreans (represented by HÆ Ka-i), and indigenous Communists, especially those from South Korea (led by Pak HÆn-yÆng). However, with the assistance of the Soviet army, which had entered northern Korea to disarm Japanese forces, Kim’s faction

Introduction

5

began to expand power in the newly formed interim government and the party. In the economic arena, they expanded their support among poor peasants through radical land reform enacted in February 1946. Furthermore, because the land reform drove the landlord class, a privileged class in the Japanese colonial period, into southern Korea, Kim and the Manchurian guerrillas faced very little resistance from the general public. In the affairs of ideology, the new holders of power in northern Korea officially adopted Marxism-Leninism in the process of rationalizing their rule over the society. In the intellectual arena, they established Kim Il Sung University and other training institutions where new intellectuals, party cadres, and administrative bureaucrats were educated, while they abolished the vestiges of Japanese intellectual traditions. For the emergence of a system in the northern part of Korea, a “comparison effect” between the northern and southern parts was an important factor.14 Helped by the American forces who occupied the southern part, Rhee Syngman, an independence movement leader with a doctoral degree from Princeton University, became the principal figure in the political arena. Rhee’s early political success should be attributed to his practical stance of mobilizing the support both of old bureaucrats, who came from the landlord class and were trained under Japanese colonial rule, and of the United States for the immediate building of a separate anti-Communist state in the South.15 In this way, two contrasting systems emerged: one in the northern part of the Korean peninsula and the other in the southern part after independence in August 1945.16 These two systems solidified the demarcation between the two geographic regions. In turn, the comparison effect, generated by the radical transformation in the North and the conservative transition in the South, reinforced the external differentiation between the two systems. Before the official launch of the two sovereign states on the Korean peninsula in 1948, the landlord class in the North moved to the South in order to escape political oppression, while the Communist leaders in Seoul crossed the border to the North in order to avoid repression under the American Military Government. The twoway flows further sharpened the external differentiation between the two emerging systems and finally brought about a serious confrontation that, by June 1950, culminated in the Korean War. Reference points of the systemic identity To account for its unique development path, one must take into account the recursive processes in the period of emergence of the North

6


Korean system. The systemic emergence involves self-reproduction in which each subsystem or part produces properties that differ little or not at all from the properties of a given system.17 Because selfreproduction is a process that intensifies individuality and identity, there should be reference points18 whereby a particular mode of interaction legitimizes the relations not only among subsystems or parts but between a system and its environment, as well. At the phase of systemic emergence (state-building in this work), the object of reference in self-reproduction is fluid. Therefore, the emergence of a system may give rise to a pursuit of interpenetration among subsystems and, at the same time, establish a certain degree of internally differentiated functions at each subsystem level. Enhancing the degree by which North Korea differentiated itself from its environment, the system’s subunits interpenetrated one another with special reference to the following points: 1. Socialist principles of giving priority to public goods. This is the reference point that could be seen, at the time of North Korean system formation, in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in Communist China during the civil war. Processes of the embodiment of socialist principles—bureaucratization of the party-state, nationalization of major industries, land reform (later agricultural collectivization), and establishment of official ideology—have reproduced public ownership and the collectivist identity of human and material resources. The socialist principles not only extol the ideal of egalitarianism but also play important roles in binding the society together through such institutions as regular party-life criticisms and party committees. Furthermore, a unique application of socialist principles to the North Korean system contributed to ideological integration under the banner of Chuch’e (meaning “self-reliance” in Korean), and to the conversion of social groups, particularly intellectuals, into the working class. 2. Anti-imperialism. This reference point is based on North Korea’s antagonism to both the United States and its perceived puppet, South Korea. While the socialist principles above are in common with values attributable to other socialist systems, anti-imperialism was caused by unique historical experiences: the national division and the Korean War.19 Indeed, in North Korea they call it the “National Liberation War,” and say it was waged to free fellow Koreans in the South from American imperialism and Rhee Syngman’s dictatorship. The U.S. economic sanctions, imposed after the war, have strangled the North Korean economy and have contributed to a phobia about all

Introduction

7

things American.20 While being utilized for the integration of the society, this reference point has reproduced distinctive policy features of autarchy and isolation from the outside world. In formulating and advocating the unification policy of the Korean federation, this reference point provided Pyongyang with useful arguments about the withdrawal of American military forces from the Korean peninsula, cooperation among Korean people, and the grand unity of Koreans in the North, the South, and abroad. 3. The anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. This tradition became a reference point in the process of Kim Il Sung and the Manchurian guerrilla faction’s monopolizing of power in the second half of the 1950s. The reference point is based both on the fact of the Kim-led armed resistance under Chinese command in the late 1930s and on the exaggeration of the fact.21 The significance of a political meaning therein was revealed by Kim Il Sung when he first proclaimed at the tenth anniversary commemoration of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in February 1958 that the KPA was the successor of the Manchurian-based partisans’ tradition of the anti-Japanese armed struggle.22 Likewise, the reference point came to be coded in the party bylaws at the Fourth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) held in September 1961. They stated that “The WPK is the direct successor of the glorious revolutionary tradition achieved by the Korean Communists’ anti-Japanese armed struggle.”23 In April 1973, when preparations were underway for Kim Jong Il’s succession, O Chin-u, then chief of staff of the KPA, laid out this reference point of the DPRK’s identity by highly praising the anti-Japanese struggle.24 Combined with anti-imperialism, this reference point has continued since 1974 to create social uniformity with the slogan “the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Style in Production, Learning, and Life.” This slogan justified, in particular, the Kim family’s monolithic power and hereditary succession. In support of the existing power monopoly centered on Kim Jong Il, the reference point of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition eliminated those potential groups that might have contributed to the enhancement of an interactive capacity of the system. The Kims’ monolithic power has suffocated the articulation of different voices or interests. It is notable that the upholding of the “military-first politics” after the death of its mentor, Kim Il Sung, in July 1994 has brought about a significant change in the meaning of this reference point. The main actor supporting the system has shifted in popular perception from guerrillas to the regular army.25

8


All three reference points have been reflected in the Chuch’e idea, North Korea’s official ideology, which has been frequently regarded by outside observers as a composite of the most significant propositions regarding the uniqueness of the system. At the same time, it is noteworthy that these reference points are also embedded in the institutions and the behavior patterns of each subsystem. Furthermore, the reference points are closely associated with actors. That is, in the formation and maintenance of reference points, it matters seriously who rules on behalf of what. In this respect, it is indispensable to identify a link between actors and a system in general. Notably, systems theory admits the methodological necessity of “pragmatic holism and theoretical individualism” at the same time.26 It is impossible to trace all empirical interactions at the microlevel. The complexity of the interactions impedes us from giving a complete explanation of them. This situation compels us to seek out the assistance of the holistic approach when we are scrutinizing a given complexity. The holistic approach portrays a general configuration in which various types of questions regarding relationships between variables arise—that is, holism helps highlight those nodal points whereby variables have diverse interactive relations. Accounting for the complementary roles of the macro and the micro, the following chapters accordingly deal with the activities of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as well as subsystems and their institutions within which Kim and other types of actors have interacted with one another. The significance of actors in the embodiment of reference points in North Korean society was particularly distinctive in the period of the Korean War (1950–53). There are different interpretations about the characteristics of the war, but the most contentious debate has taken place between the advocates of the “civil war” theory and those of the “international war” theory. Bruce Cumings has represented the theory of civil war in his two-volume seminal work, The Origins of the Korean War, where the author underscores the rise of two ideologically divergent communities and their subsequent military provocations, even before the war broke out.27 According to this theory, the question of how the contrasting systems emerged is more significant than the inquiry into who triggered the all-out massive attack. The other interpretation, emphasizing international factors related to the Korean War, came to attract a good deal of scholarly attention, especially after many historical archives of the former Soviet Union became available in the 1990s. The theory of international war stresses the particular significance of Stalin and Mao’s assistance to Kim Il Sung’s initiation of the war. According to this theory, the war was an international war in

Introduction

9

which not only North Korea and South Korea but also major powers in Northeast Asia participated.28 A rigorous analysis of the debates on the origin of the Korean War reveals that the theory of international war complements the theory of civil war rather than vice versa. The process of severe external differentiation between the North and the South was intertwined with the engagement of the major powers in regional Cold War competition. The occupation of the North by the Red Army and that of the South by the United States forces was the first hard evidence of the backdrop of the Korean War as an international war. However, without taking into account the grip of power centered around Kim Il Sung and Rhee Syngman in the North and the South, respectively, one cannot characterize the Korean War. These leaders were the main actors who contributed to the development of divergent reference points after the national liberation in 1945 and further intensified the divergence during the war.29 In the North, in particular, it was a significant shift that Kim Il Sung launched attacks against other factions in the WPK by utilizing resources at his disposal and by exploiting tactical situations favorable to his political goals. Inasmuch as politics is a cause for the production of binding decisions that affect the authoritative allocation of social values,30 Kim Il Sung, thanks to the wartime consolidation of a strong party-state, was now able to disseminate those values embedded in the reference points, particularly socialist principles and anti-imperialism. A handy example of the swift dissemination of the socialist principles is the agricultural collectivization that was completed in 1956, three years after the end of the Korean War. Of course, Kim Il Sung’s dominance over the party-state was achieved only after power struggles, which culminated in August 1956, between Kim’s Manchurian guerillas, on the one hand, and the SovietKoreans and the Yanan faction, on the other hand. In the power struggle, the main resource for Kim’s faction, the Manchurian guerillas, was the military even before the war. Under the auspices of the Red Army, his faction became the only political faction that could secure armed forces. The Yanan faction, which had acquired a solid reputation for its anti-Japanese resistance in China, was disarmed as it crossed the border at the end of 1945.31 Soviet-Koreans and domestic Communists were composed of descendants of emigrants to the Soviet Union and of progressive intellectuals of southern origin, respectively. It is not surprising, then, that they had no chance to develop an armed power-base. Consequently, the Korean War expedited the process of systemic formation centered on Kim. Taking advantage of his official military position as the supreme commander

10


of the KPA during the war, Kim Il Sung could mobilize all the resources for the consolidation of his power in the party as well as for the conducting of the war. In contrast, most leaders of the southern faction became stigmatized for their failure to incite South Korean popular support for the KPA at the war’s outbreak, and for this reason, most of them were purged during the war period. In the same vein, the top leaders of the Soviet-Koreans were pushed away, one by one, from high posts in the party. Embodiment of the System: Functional Differentiation Systemic emergence is a process whereby a system externally differentiates itself from the environment and begins to have its own distinctive individuality and identity. Such external differentiation from the environment necessarily accompanies internal differentiation—that is, the self-reproduction of subunits in conformity with the emerging overall identity of the system which may be phrased as “higher institutionalization,” to use Samuel S. Kim’s term.32 The initial form of internal differentiation is a functional differentiation among subsystems. Systemic emergence pursues a common identity that characterizes the system as a whole and also it experiences internal complexity owing to the functional differentiation within the system. In North Korea, the impact of national division and the Korean War on the embodiment of the system was so enormous that socialist principles, antiAmericanism, and a sense of rivalry with the South penetrated into every subsystem. Also, the impact of the two events—along with the revival, in the early 1970s, of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition— contributed to the rationalization of Kim Il Sung’s power and the succession to power of his son, Kim Jong Il. In light of these events, one asks, what kinds of subsystems should be accounted for? Subsystem refers to a set of interactions between people who are concerned with particular functions in a system. In each subsystem, a limited number of people exercise influence, especially in a nondemocratic country like North Korea. And yet, all members of the system are involved in the subsystem composite, either directly or indirectly. The four subsystems categorized here are the political, ideological, economic, and intellectual-cultural subsystems.33 At the stages of state-building and consolidation in North Korea, the political subsystem was the party-state under Kim Il Sung’s leadership, which played a leading role in the embodiment of the entire system. The ideological subsystem was Chuch’e, or self-reliance, which came to represent a “creative application of Marxism-Leninism to

Introduction

11

Korean society.” The economic subsystem was public ownership based on the collectivization of agriculture, industry, and commerce; and the intellectual-cultural subsystem involved the new genre of writings called “socialist realism,” which served the reproduction of values and knowledge in accordance with objectives of the party-state centered around Kim Il Sung. It is noteworthy that the emergence of these subsystems was a process of functional differentiation within the scope of embodiment of the three reference points mentioned before—socialist principles, anti-imperialism, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. Political subsystem The political subsystem, the party-state in the socialist system, involves a generally authoritative allocation of collectivist values that are incorporated into the official ideology. The party-state has a hierarchical bureaucracy for the transmission of intentions and policies made by core party leaders to the cabinet and local organizations in the society. The subsystem does not allow for any alternative political organization but makes use of various party units as a nexus of the system. Thus, as T. H. Rigby noted, the socialist system exhibits monoorganizational characteristics.34 North Korea has maintained a peculiar form of the mono-organizational party-state, one that is based on an authority structure centered on the “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung and the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il. It is noteworthy that one of the goals associated with the political subsystem is the expelling of U.S. forces from the Korean peninsula and the independent achievement of national unification.35 That is, the political subsystem not only adopted a mono-organizational party-state, as seen in the Soviet Union and China, but also has reflected those values embedded in the reference points of anti-imperialism and the North’s rivalry with the South. Ideological subsystem The ideology in socialist systems, in general, is known as MarxismLeninism and as Stalinism or Maoism, and that of North Korea is the application of Marxism-Leninism to the Korean situation known as the Chuch’e idea. Active participants in the ideology are limited to party cadres in propaganda and educational affairs, and the general public is also an important actor, even if passive, because the stability of the ideology depends on a relatively high degree of internalization among the people. More than often, it is exploited by the leaders for their own personality cult, as seen in the cases of Stalin and Mao. This

12


is also true in the case of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in North Korea. The Chuch’e idea surfaced in the mid-1950s amid the postwar power struggle between Kim Il Sung and other factions, and later evolved into an ideological composite of self-reliance during the period of SinoSoviet conflict in the 1960s. In 1974, Kim Jong Il formulated Kimilsungism, matching his father’s idea to Marxism-Leninism and Maoism; in turn, he became the exclusive authoritative interpreter of the ideology, unveiling the father-to-son power succession. Even though the propositions have undergone many changes over the last five decades, the Chuch’e idea has remained a constant conceptual tool in the indoctrination of the North Korean people, reproducing the systemic identity by referring to socialist principles, anti-imperialism, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. Economic subsystem The economy of the socialist system is based on central planning, nationalization of the means of production, and rapid industrialization, characterized by a prioritization of heavy industry. The North Korean economy showed remarkable growth right after the Korean War, but has slowed down considerably since the late 1960s.36 There were several reasons for the limits on continuous growth: ideological constraints over economic reasoning, shrunken diplomatic behavior space in the midst of the Sino-Soviet conflict, a reliance on heavy industry due to interKorean tensions, and a drain on material and intellectual resources due to North Korea’s isolation. Since the mid-1980s, North Korea has initiated changes in its economy, such as its adoption of the Joint Venture Law and the independent accounting method in enterprise management, to cope with economic deterioration. However, Pyongyang implemented the joint venture and the independent accounting method without fulfilling any conditions for reform.37 In this respect, the initiatives are considered adjustment measures intended for minimal policy outcomes within the scope of a socialist economy.38 Intellectual-cultural subsystem The intellectual-cultural subsystem is a behavior set of intellectuals— a quasi class, to use the Leninist term—such as writers, artists, professors, teachers, researchers, technicians, physicians, and clerical workers. It should be pointed out that the role of intellectuals in bringing about a systemic change depends largely on not only cultural and educational policies but also the system’s previous historical tradition and

Introduction

13

the resulting international impact. In North Korea, the class policy on intellectuals was closely intertwined with both the division of Korea and the Korean War. Before the war, intellectuals of southern origin comprised a core element of the intellectual community in the North. But their linkage to the domestic Communist leaders of southern origin, who were purged during and after the war, left them under harsh surveillance. In the late 1950s, the WPK scrutinized and classified them through the intellectual policy called “Central Party’s Concentrated Guidance” and “Meetings for the Scrutinizing of Thoughts.” Intellectuals, and especially those of southern origin, completely lost their social status as members of a quasi class in the mid-1960s because of the class policy called “Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Converting Them to the Working Class.” This policy suffocated the capacity of intellectuals in the fields of engineering and the natural sciences, as well as the social sciences, while the party-state privileged—particularly with reference to the notion of Chuch’e—its ideological interpretation of academic concepts.39 In this way, national division and the Korean War, as well as the employment of socialist principles, have had a great impact on North Korea’s unique developmental path. The priority given to public goods in the Soviet Union and China worked as a general reference source for the functional differentiation of subsystems in the North Korean socialist system. At the same time, the developmental path, as manifested in Chuch’e, has characterized North Korea’s systemic isolation from the outside, because of Pyongyang’s antagonism toward perceived imperialism and because of its competition with the South. Systemic Dissonance and Major Conjunctures The North Korean system under Kim Jong Il is characterized not only by functional differentiation at four subsystem levels, as mentioned above, but also by the spread of unofficial spheres and the resulting systemic dissonance, both of which have appeared since the second half of the 1980s and intensified amid the breakdown of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and the famine in the mid-1990s. Systemic dissonance may be represented not only by the contradiction between the existing collectivist idea in the Chuch’e idea and the spread of private entrepreneurship and familism, but also by the seemingly serious repudiation of the reference points and its resultant degradation of systemic identity. In a sense, systemic dissonance may be regarded as a breakdown of Harry Eckstein’s notion of congruence. According to Eckstein,

14


congruence between the governmental authority pattern and other social authority patterns guarantees stability of a political system.40 By following this logic, one can say that in a socialist system like North Korea, systemic dissonance conceptually notes incongruence between officially authorized spheres and unofficially existing spheres, as seen in the second economy. But this is not quite enough to explain the systemic dissonance. Systemic dissonance involves not only the meaning of furthering discrepancy between the official sphere and the unofficial social sphere but also the connotation of the degradation of the overall identity of a given system, a situation that is, of course, caused by the discrepancy itself. In other words, systemic dissonance is an inclusive notion rather than incongruence. Systemic dissonance does not necessarily bring immediate breakdown of the system. But if the systemic dissonance is not followed by an adaptive process, like transformation of a certain reference point of the systemic identity, then the system will enter a critical phase. In order to account for systemic dissonance, it is necessary to examine in detail the processes of further internal differentiations that yield especially unofficial spheres and to investigate the processes of the latter spheres’ disassociation of the existing reference points. Internal differentiation and nature of unofficial spheres A system is not static but dynamic.41 As systems theorists have aptly noted, it is not just the continuation and preservation of identity in the face of change. There may occur structural changes with conservation of the system itself.42 In general, continuous internal differentiation may enhance the degree of a system’s viability. With internal differentiation, the system becomes a more flexible and adaptable one in coping with its environment. In this respect, a system that exhibits a high degree of internal differentiation appears, at first glance, to be unstable, but is durable in the long run. Such a highly internally differentiated system is exemplified by a democracy. As James March and Johan Olsen have written, a democracy is a “collection of loosely coupled institutional spheres with different purposes, logics, principles, and dynamics.”43 In other words, the internal differentiation in democracy increases internal diversity and dynamics whereby selforganizing networks among independent and autonomous actors are constructed. It is remarkable that internal differentiation is a result not necessarily of rational human choices but frequently of natural processes, regardless of system types. Even in a monolithic socialist system like North Korea, not all internal differentiation processes are a

Introduction

15

consequence of a top leader’s policy choices; many of them are unintended outcomes and therefore are called unofficial or illicit spheres. This is because the leader dominates the authority relations at the top but cannot control all the variables in the system. Whatever the form a system may have, the aging of a system results in various types of internal differentiation. In the socialist system, internal differentiation continues to occur, particularly in unofficial spheres. For instance, inequality may arise on the basis of cleavages between family background, income, education, or ethnicity;44 countercultures of youth or another specific generation may compete with the socialist culture; the underground market may appear to cover dysfunction in the official economy; and a new social hierarchy may come into being even after the revolutionary breakdown of an old social class. The sustainability of the system depends on how various forms of internal differentiation coexist with one another, while maintaining a certain degree of integrity that maintains systemic individuality in contrast to the environment. However, it should be noted that the internal differentiation has different meanings depending upon the system type, democratic or monolithic. In a democratic system, the internal differentiation develops a high interactive capacity, which is a requisite for systemic viability. This is so because the internal differentiation allows for diverse gatekeepers to deal with issues originating from the environment.45 A democratic system that is oriented toward internationalization and globalization is a system of a high degree of complexity. Examples of internal differentiation in this system are plentiful: the establishment of formal committees and informal research circles in the legislature, the dispersal of a peace movement group into many reconstruction volunteer groups and humanitarian aid projects, the separation of small businesses from a federation of business groups, and the diversification of academic associations in a discipline. Unlike socialist systems with monolithic power, this internal differentiation allows for diverse relations with neighboring systems. Mixed relations made by differentiated parts contribute to the interlocking of the democratic system with the environment. These relations let the system as a whole be viable in the context of a swift adaptation to rapid changes in the surroundings. That is, these relations allow for “coevolution,” to use Erich Jantsch’s term, between the system and its environment.46 It is not a surprise that there exists variety in the internal differentiation pattern, even among the systems categorized as the same democratic type. Depending on references for self-reproduction at the early stage of the systemic emergence, the internal differentiation

16


pattern and the ensuing complexity may be dissimilar with one another. It is noteworthy that the school of new institutionalism has presented a similar idea by invoking “path dependence” or “historical dependence.”47 These notions reflect the significance of the original individuality to which the processes of internal differentiation and self-reproduction always refer. That is, these notions in new institutionalism run parallel to the term of self-reproduction in systems theory. James March and Johan Olsen have used a comparative example to illustrate this. Even though the United States and Canada resemble each other more than they do other countries, their institutions differ consistently as a result of distinct historical experiences, starting from the American Revolution. Such a historical difference, with its origins to be found in the formation of the state, has continued to produce different political institutions with distinctive characteristic traits.48 March and Olsen say that the historically dependent institution contributes to the perpetuation of a given social tradition. In this way, each democratic system, by following unique references, may develop its own identity within a certain range of commonality. In contrast, imagine a case in which the political subsystem—for instance, the party-state in the Soviet Union, China under Mao, and North Korea under Kim Il Sung—would not admit further, indeed unofficial internal differentiation other than the functional differentiation of four subsystems. This would result in a degradation of the system’s viability, because of a lack of both interactive and selecting capacity to cope with the fluctuating environment. Even in a socialist system, it is necessary for its survival that the system accommodates unofficial internal differentiation, while maintaining a balance between the self-reproduction referring to the original identity for a certain degree of internal integrity, on the one hand, and the acceptance of a gradual transition in the original systemic identity and individuality, on the other. Prolonged disregard of unofficial internal differentiation in a socialist system should be attributed to the “politicization” of an entire system and to the “routinization of revolution” for development purposes, to borrow Richard Lowenthal’s terms.49 For the longevity of the party’s rule and mass mobilization, the political leadership, the socalled proletarian dictatorship, attempts to endlessly stimulate a societal uniformity that distinguishes the system from neighboring systems. Both the politicization of an entire system and the routinization of a revolution tend to sacrifice the evolution of the system toward greater complexity. When the party-state, the core of the political subsystem, neither welcomes nor officially acknowledges diverse internal differ-

Introduction

17

entiation, a given system will suffer from systemic monotonousness: power is concentrated in a few leaders in the Politburo and the Secretariat of the party; propaganda and ideological education are repeated for various forms of campaign marches; public ownership suppresses the profit-seeking incentives of individuals; and socialist literature displays a revolutionary model figure. Here we have no “withering away of the state”; instead, the party-state is something more than just one of four subsystems. The party-state comes to dominate the three other neighboring subsystems. The disregard of unofficial internal differentiation was evident in North Korea in the launch of economic reform measures in July 2002. The system had clearly become incapable of entertaining different kinds of relations with its neighboring systems by isolating itself from necessary information and resources from outside in a selective way. But even after the 2002 reform measures, North Korea has maintained a simple mechanism of input, conversion, output, and feedback. Such a straightforward mechanism, built around Kim Jong Il, has relied on the expertise and skills of the assorted parts much less than complex systems do. During and after the famine in the mid-1990s, there arose distinctive features of unofficial internal differentiation in North Korea. These internal differentiation processes came to be apparent in each subsystem, and Kim Jong Il alone could not resist them but had to acknowledge them. Here are several examples of them: • political subsystem: collapse of the WPK’s guiding role vs. relative autonomy of the military from the party. Even before the famine, not only the crippled economy but also the disciplining of the party deteriorated the party’s guiding role. But the nationwide famine in the mid-1900s further devastated the party’s guiding role on economic affairs, in particular. During and after the famine, the party lost the authority and legitimacy to compel the people to return to their workplaces. Within this unruly situation, not only have propaganda machines extolled the military as a protector of the existing system, but also Kim Jong Il has differentiated the military, as an institution, from the party in the name of the “military-first politics.” • ideological subsystem: collectivism and continuous revolution in the Chuch’e idea vs. familism and individualism in daily life. Despite the ideological education through both regular party-life criticism meetings and praise of the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea, there has been little evidence of an internalization

18

North Korea under Kim Jong Il of collectivist and revolutionary values in the heart of the people. Instead, familism and individualism have flourished, and profitseeking behavior for individual survival has spread.

• economic subsystem: socialist economic institutions vs. institutionalization of unofficial commercial practices. The emergence of entrepreneurship, starting in the mid-1980s, has been accompanied by the erosion of significant aspects of public ownership. Unofficial contract relations between individuals and enterprises have become prevalent, replacing the socialist ownership mode with a new exercise of property rights on use, control, income, and even transfer. The 7-1 economic measures, undertaken in 2002, intended to accommodate, in part, the unofficial components within the official economy by raising salary and consumer price at the same time. But it could not help but foster the informal institutionalization of the new practices. • intellectual-cultural subsystem: the official policy for converting intellectuals to the working class vs. intellectuals’ status as a perceived potential “internal enemy.” By pointing out the role of intellectuals in the process of the breakdown of socialist systems in Eastern European countries, Kim Jong Il warned against their potential for being co-opted by imperialists. The disregard of unofficial internal differentiation in socialist systems and particularly in North Korea cannot extinguish the processes of change. If the internal differentiation is not admitted at the official level, it comes to multiply at the unofficial level. Such processes of unofficial internal differentiation and of prolonged negligence at the official level contribute to systemic dissonance. Unofficial internal differentiation in a subsystem necessarily brings about dual operations within each subsystem, which, in turn, come into conflict with the official spheres of other subsystems. For instance, in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev and in China in the early reform period, the spread of a second economy—in which party-state bureaucratic corruption was involved—contrasted with public ownership and consequently yielded a systemwide asymmetrical relation owing to its incongruity with the official ideology of collectivism or egalitarianism.50 At any rate, the dual operation of subsystems, incurred by internal differentiation at the unofficial level, is necessarily accompanied by systemic dissonance. In North Korea, the unofficial internal differentiation and the ensuing systemic dissonance had

Introduction

19

appeared during the second half of the 1980s and became distinctive amid the famine in the 1990s. More importantly, systemic dissonance refers to the systemwide fluctuation caused by a serious degradation of the systemic identity. As noted earlier, there were three reference points that constituted the original identity and the individuality of the North Korean system and that externally differentiated the system from neighboring systems or the environment. Now, the unofficial internal differentiation in each subsystem came to be accompanied by partial disclaimers to the reference points: for example, some elements of socialist principles were discarded by permitting entrepreneurship and commercial practices, anti-imperialism was disclaimed by attempting to approach the United States and to expand the economic opening to the South, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition was replaced with the militarybased social order that is reflected in the “military-first politics.” In this respect, the systemic dissonance has involved a transitional phase in the emergence of a revised mode of systemic identity and individuality, while both pursuing other means of viability and distinguishing the system from others. There is a cautionary note about understanding the internal differentiation process. The terms unofficial and illicit belong to a perceptual text defined by a binary code that is an officially accepted moral artifact reflecting reference points. The rigid binary code in this system defines—from the official perspective—any deviant behavior as behavior that is morally wrong and harmful to the existing identity and individuality of the system. To define the unofficial sphere as immoral and harmful is a form of resistance to natural processes of internal differentiation. In North Korea, just as in other previous socialist systems, the most distinctive aspect of the duality caused by such a binary definitional situation has been the second economy. In the last two decades, as the party-state has officially left unacknowledged the existence of this second economy in daily life, there has been a dissonance between official identity and reality; that is, the second economy has continuously conflicted with the ideological doctrines of Chuch’e in North Korea. Furthermore, the second economy has eroded the legitimacy of the party-state guidance of society, because the party-state no longer gives out proper food rations. Given this extreme situation, it became impossible for bureaucrats to restrain themselves from involvement in the second economy. Harshly criticizing such involvement as corruption, the leadership in the first half of the 1990s led socialist campaigns against it.51

20


Major conjunctures As an open system, even if isolated, the North Korean system has had to cope with more or less unexpected internal and external fluctuations. What led the system to experience abrupt internal differentiation and systemic dissonance? There were two major conjunctures. One was the breakdown of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the other, the severe famine in the three consecutive years from 1996 through 1998. Without doubt, these conjunctures revealed North Korea’s vulnerability in the securing of materials that are essential for the maintenance of a country’s internal economy: energy and food. The collapse of the socialist bloc not only awakened North Korean leaders to a sense of crisis about the fate of socialism but also created a severe energy shortage, since the system had heavily relied on the Soviet Union and China for its oil imports. The data of the Korea National Statistical Office shows that as the amount of oil imports sharply declined at the beginning of the 1990s, energy consumption also fell (see table 1.1). Despite desperate efforts to increase coal production and to construct medium- and small-scale hydraulic power facilities since the end of the 1990s, the famine and its demobilization effect have hindered the concentration of labor power, which would be needed to resolve the energy shortage. Because North Korea’s political leaders consider military industries to be the most important strategic choice, they have tried to maintain the energy supply line to these industries as much as possible, reducing energy consumption among the general public. As a result, most North Koreans have been suffering from a shortage of energy more seriously than ever before. More importantly, the extreme famine starting in the mid-1990s weakened the capacity of the system. It is certain that the famine, not the shortage of energy (particularly oil), had the most devastating effect on the society. Because coal has been the main energy resource in North Korea, for the purpose of either electricity or fuel, the decrease in oil imports has contributed to deforestation and other negative environmental effects but has not grown so detrimental that it has strangled the life of the general public. However, the decline, by half, of the grain supply, which occurred between 1996 and 1998 (as seen in table 1.2), brought about a large number of deaths by starvation. As Nicholas Eberstadt has noted, the North Korean famine was an unprecedented one in the Communist countries that had already completed the socialist transformation—that is, land reform and agricultural collectivization.52 Among the many assessments of the death toll caused

Introduction

21

Table 1.1. Trends of Oil Imports and Energy Consumption, 1980–2002 Oil imports Total energy consumption (thousand barrels) (thousand TOE) 1980 1985 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002

15,393 14,369 18,472 11,142 6,670 6,861 3,694 2,851 4,376

21,013 24,940 23,963 20,450 17,870 15,836 14,030 15,687 15,638

Energy consumption (TOE/person) 1.19 1.31 1.19 0.98 0.84 0.73 0.64 0.71 0.70

NOTE (i) The energy is composed of coal (70%), oil (8%), and hydraulic power (12%) as of 2002. (ii) TOE is the abbreviation of Ton(s) of Oil Equivalent. Source: http:// kosis.nso.go.kr/cgi-bin/sws_999.cgi (accessed on March 11, 2005).

by the famine, a reliable statistical analysis, conducted by Lee Suk, estimated that between 1994 and 2000, the death toll reached 630,000– 690,000, at a narrow range, or 580,000–1,120,000, at a wide range.53 While this death rate is not so high as those of other famines in socialist countries, the impact of this famine on the North Korean system was so severe. An abrupt collapse of food security was followed by an exceptional urban famine. The urban famine had a special meaning with regard to internal differentiation in the unofficial sphere and to the ensuing systemic dissonance, because it must have demoralized the highly regarded class consciousness of the workers in this highly urbanized country.54 It has been said that special consideration for food distribution during the famine was given to the military, the residents of Pyongyang, and the people employed in priority enterprises. If this is true, then the most miserable victims of the famine were the workers in the second- and third-tier cities. In this regard, the famine produced enormous social and political effects and thus was apparently the core of the economic crisis in North Korea.55 The collapse of the socialist bloc, the decline of its energy supply, and the famine enormously influenced North Korea’s processes of internal differentiation at the unofficial level. The impact of the conjunctures was not limited to economic affairs: it extended to an extensive deurbanization process whereby urban residents scattered into the countryside, searching for food. The process brought a sharp decline


22

Table 1.2. Grain Imports and International Assistance, 1989–98 Total supply (S)

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

Imports

International assistance

million metric ton

million metric ton

% of (S)

million metric ton

% of (S)

8.61 8.73 8.10 7.17 4.22 3.57 3.86

0.38 0.55 1.56 1.15 1.54 0.56 1.01 1.11 1.45 1.50

13 18 7 14 26 41 39

0.32 0.30 0.84 0.75

4 7 24 19

Source: Suk Lee, Food Shortages and Economic Institutions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Warwick, 2003), 268.

in the lingering effects of the collectivist idea, a mushrooming of entrepreneurship among the people, and a sense of crisis among political leaders. All these changes were closely related to the internal differentiation of each subsystem and to the emergence of systemic dissonance. Reform: Official accommodation of unofficial spheres Unofficial transition and systemic dissonance are normally followed by a “reform,” whose initial stage involves processes for the integration of the second economy into official policy.56 The reform undertaken in July 2002 exhibits a twofold meaning. On the one hand, the reform was initiated by the party-state’s decision to officially acknowledge the unofficial changes that had been flourishing, especially in the second half of the 1990s—mushrooming private entrepreneurship and the uncontrollable geographical mobility of the people in the critical juncture of the party’s rapid decline in its function and morale. On the other hand, the reform process, by officially permitting unofficial internal differentiation in the economy, has allowed for the dissemination of its effects to other subsystems; therefore, the reform has necessarily fostered a transition of systemic identity.57 It is also noteworthy that dissonance, in general, remains in the system even in the reform period, because the reform does not resolve much of the moral tension that exists. The reform accompanies a shift

Introduction

23

in the mode of the employment of the official binary moral code: from the application of a rigid socialist code to the establishment of a moderate code. As the range of variation in the mode of what is morally right extends, the corresponding range of what is morally wrong shrinks; however, there still exists a tension between the two modes.58 Given this situation, there emerges a gray zone, which might be called the “defeat of ideological and moral distinctiveness” in the transition economy, to use Yan Sun’s term, and to which the binary code cannot be strictly applied.59 There were two contrasting responses to such gray zones, as seen in socialist systems in transition. One is that local party cadres and local government officials in some regions, especially at the initial stage of reform, dare to adopt adventurous experiments. For example, in agricultural reform, Anhui Province in China and the Long An area in Vietnam became spearheads of reform in the early stage by adopting a broad interpretation of the indecisive guidelines. The Anhui area in China adopted a broad interpretation of the twenty-five articles on agriculture—in which the third plenary session of the Eleventh Central Committee (CC) of the party in 1978 agreed to correct old mistakes of “equal divisionism”—and moved forward to experiment with diverse forms of responsibility systems targeting productivity.60 Likewise, Long An in Vietnam, after the sixth plenary session of the Fourth CC in 1979, took a bold local initiative for wage and price changes that would reflect the economic situation. The success of this initiative compelled the central party not only to adopt Long An’s policy as an official policy but also to name it the “Long An model” in order to disseminate a message of spirit and experience.61 The other response is that apparatuses and bureaucrats of the party-state, unlike reform-oriented political leaders and the general public, often fall into a competency trap, retarding the transformation of institutional arrangements.62 The competency trap is a useful notion that may contribute to the understanding of those elements interfering with the swift transition of a lowly differentiated system. The competency trap here means that remaining old institutional arrangements slow down the pace of efforts to accommodate unofficial or informal spheres and resist a greater internal differentiation in the economy. They cling to previous norms and practices of the planned economy, because of either economic benefits of organizational survival or political and ideological factors. In the Chinese case, the competency trap involves advocacy of “institutional interests,” especially regarding the redistribution of resources.63 Bureaucrats of ministries in the central government compete

24


and speak on behalf of their organizations in a horizontal sense, whereas officials in the local government compete with bureaucrats of the related ministries in a vertical sense.64 A second form of the competency trap is the bureaucracy’s hesitation to accept the reform orientation. As Dorothy J. Solinger termed it, the “bureaucratic tendency” contributes to the persistent presentation of a conservative and control-focused strain during the first years of reform. The bureaucrats continuously attempt to insulate the state’s fiscal capacity—for instance, state treasury benefits—from any productivity increase elicited by reform measures.65 A third form is the “political safety device,” which concerns bureaucrats’ hesitation to take on adventurous tasks because of their limited scope in the expression of loyalty to the existing system. Despite intending to maximize profits in the transitional phase, the bureaucrats feel politically safe by following the conservative norms that dictate a strict stance against liberal modes of behavior. For the middle range of bureaucrats in North Korea, this willing association with previous official norms remains particularly strong, owing to the ideologically based education about the widely feared “yellow wind” (the capitalist effect from the South) and to North Koreans’ abhorrence of American influence that, it is believed, too strongly constrains their behavior space. Requirement for Systemic Viability: Openness The central logic of the relationship between internal differentiation and complexity, on the one hand, and systemic viability, on the other, lies in the openness of a system, especially through each part’s diverse interactions with the outside, as well as system-level relations to the environment.66 In a highly differentiated system, individual parts with expertise and skills in certain fields may directly cope with neighboring systems. The relations increase the openness of the system to the environment. While maintaining the identity and individuality of a system, the selectivity of differentiated parts alleviates the system’s vulnerability to fluctuations in the environment and heightens an interactive capacity and viability. Without depending on arbitrary decisions at the top, differentiated parts utilize their own specific knowledge and knowhow. The differentiated parts may screen and sort information and resources from outside before transmitting them—producing demands or pressures, in a political sense—to the policy-making circle. In other words, the processes of input, conversion, output, and feedback occur in diverse ways in the system. For this reason, a highly internally

Introduction

25

differentiated system with openness may have a safety device that buffers shocks produced by fluctuations in the environment. In contrast, the continuous neglect of unofficial internal differentiation, accompanied by prolonged systemic dissonance, calcifies the system and decreases the interactive capacity that enables it to cope with changes in the environment. The above discussion on openness in an internally differentiated system may promote a more rigorous understanding of the current internal hardships and provocative security postures in North Korea. Political leaders there have led the movement toward isolation, and in turn, the isolation has further constrained the development of channels of interaction with neighboring systems. The uniformity of the system, whose identity and individuality are embodied in the reference points, has retarded the diversification in subsystems and in the system as a whole. In North Korea’s relations to the outside world, the function of selection has mainly relied on the top level of the partystate alone. Neglect of unofficial internal differentiation has prevented the cabinet and the party’s auxiliary organizations from developing specific expertise and skills for interactions with the environment.67 In this way, the structuration of a low interactive capacity correlates with the overall retardation of the adaptation, even when the partystate intends to open the system and, thus, to enhance its viability. Indeed, North Korea has attempted to attract foreign direct investment since the early 1990s but could not achieve the results that it had intended. In 1991, it established a special economic zone in Najin-SÆnbong, a northeast area strategically located at the border with China and Russia. However, the special economic zone failed to capture the attention of foreign companies essentially because of the low profile of management expertise and skills. Frequently, it is said that the backwardness of infrastructure, such as telecommunications, the water supply, electricity, roads, and railroads, has impeded the introduction of foreign direct investment in the special economic zone. Indeed, the most important factor hindering the opening has been the lack of an interactive counterpart that could deal with and buffer shocks from the outside. As Bradley Babson, a former World Bank officer, has noted, it is precisely this lack of interaction that constitutes the most urgent issue facing North Korean bureaucrats—an issue that requires a substantive change in mind-set. Babson experienced the many difficulties in doing business with North Koreans, and underlying these difficulties was invariably the lack of North Korean counterparts possessing skills in foreign currency management, investment planning, statistics, and so on.68 To neglect the development of these skills is, for North Korea, to

26


ensure that their capacity remains low. Rather than engage in novel approaches to the solving of existing problems, the bureaucrats tend to cling to obsolete methods for political reasons, including a desire to maintain their present privileges and to avoid the stigma of being labeled capitalist traitors or liberals. In this respect, the North Korean case, as with other transition system cases such as Vietnam and China, reveals that, in regards to reform and opening, the human and institutional factors turn out to be more urgent than the infrastructure factors. As a consequence, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) usually stress the importance of aid for technical assistance, like the training of bureaucrats in economic and legal affairs that relate to international commercial laws and practices, even before official membership is given to the recipient country. In fact, the construction of infrastructure requiring large and numerous loans would occur only after the potential recipient country fulfills the qualifications for receiving technical assistances from those financial institutions and then registers for official membership in these institutions. In sum, in the given situation of systemic dissonance, the scope and the means of the opening must be a precarious issue for North Korea under Kim Jong Il. And yet, the opening is a requirement of the viability of the system as a whole. In view of the reference points, the United States is the primary enemy and, at the same time, the key to the solution of Pyongyang’s diplomatic isolation. In other words, North Korea’s isolation is not equivalent to its intended closedness. In a limited sense, there has existed a certain leeway about openness even in the solidified autarky system. The limited openness has been motivated not only by outside organizations knocking at the door but also by internal demands for access to the outside.69 The illicit profit-seeking activities by “foreign currency earners” since the early 1990s illustrate the latter case, whereas international humanitarian assistance during the famine period of the mid-1990s exemplifies the former case. In other words, both unofficial internal differentiation and international aid have been two sources of North Korea’s limited opening. Meanwhile, taking advantage of South Korea’s engagement policy, called the Sunshine Policy, North Korea has practiced a kind of “detour diplomacy” to ultimately access the United States and to induce foreign resources. Tour of the Book Viewing North Korea as a system, this book investigates processes of internal differentiation in the four subsystems—the political, ideologi-

Introduction

27

cal, economic, and intellectual-cultural—between 1973 and 2002, the period that begins with Kim Jong Il’s rise as de facto heir apparent to his father, Kim Il Sung, and concludes with North Korea’s adoption of economic reform measures on the domestic front and the eruption of the second nuclear crisis on the diplomatic front. An analysis of the internal differentiation illuminates eventually the essential and relevant ways in which the systemwide dissonance gradually repudiates the reference points of the systemic identity: namely, socialist principles, anti-imperialism, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. The three chapters (2, 3, and 4) investigate changes in the political subsystem. Chapter 2 examines the actor Kim Jong Il, the most fundamental element for the operation of the subsystem. The chapter surveys Kim’s growth as a political man and then examines the relationship between his political personality and his active-negative leadership character. Chapter 3 examines the core political organization, the WPK, particularly its strengthening discipline but weakening efficiency, which dates from Kim Jong Il’s first involvement in the party’s organizational affairs in 1973. Chapter 4 illustrates institutional differentiation between the party and the military. It highlights the “military-first politics” whereby Kim Jong Il has applied a strategy of divide-and-rule especially since the rapid decline of the WPK’s guiding role in times of the famine and the subsequent economic collapse. The following three chapters (5, 6, and 7) illustrate the transformation of the ideological, economic, and intellectual-cultural subsystems, respectively. Chapter 5 analyzes the processes in which the propositions of Chuch’e that had begun with a creative application of Marxism-Leninism gradually deviated from their orthodox doctrine, as the human-centered worldview and the sociopolitical organism propositions made abundantly clear. Chapter 6 illustrates that the emergence of private entrepreneurs and their commercial practices have contributed to the internal differentiation between the official and the unofficial, a situation that then forced the state to adopt the 7-1 economic reform measures in 2002. Chapter 7 examines intellectuals in terms of their changing status and their changing role as respondents to political dynamism. It analyzes also the “skip-over strategy” on information technology, with which North Korea has attempted to confront its economic deterioration, and the implications of the strategy for the status of intellectuals. Finally, chapter 8 concludes with the special features of systemic dissonance by highlighting the degradation of the original national identity—that is, the three reference points—and then to the domestic and external constraints that have limited the scope of North Korea’s

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opening, a requisite for system viability. The chapter also points out that the second nuclear crisis, which erupted in 2002 when North Korea admitted to having a uranium enrichment program, reflected the dilemmas plaguing the system: on the one hand, a scarcely explored interactive capacity; on the other hand, the limitations of “detour diplomacy” by way of South Korea and Western countries, a diplomacy that ultimately pursues access to the United States.

2

Kim Jong Il The Political Man and His Leadership Character

An adequate understanding of Kim Jong Il’s emergence as a political man will help us to assess a unique feature of the authority structure of the party-state and to identify and understand the continuity and changes of systemic identity. The study of political leadership is to examine a complex phenomenon that contains certain unique characteristics, as well as generalized factors.1 Given that Kim Jong Il has been the leader of a secretive and autocratic system, the uniqueness of his leadership characteristics should be stronger and more significant than that of anyone else in the contemporary world. This uniqueness does not actually diminish the necessity of inquiry into the subject; rather, it encourages an analysis of the relationship between Kim’s political personality and his leadership character, on the one hand, and the internal and external differentiation processes of the system, on the other. In other words, a relatively high significance of the leadership compels us to examine not simply its policy implications but also the means contributing to the dissonance in the unique identity of the North Korean system. Kim Jong Il was only thirty-one years old when, in September 1973, he assumed the position of party secretary in charge of organization affairs and, simultaneously, propaganda and agitation affairs— the chief position in the party. This position enabled him to become the authoritative interpreter of the ideas developed by his father, Kim Il Sung. Since that time, no political figure has rivaled Kim Jong Il. 29

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Kim’s elevation to the position second only to that of his father at the Sixth Congress of the WPK in 1980 swept away any doubt regarding the father-to-son hereditary succession. The political status of Kim Jong Il at the age of thirty-eight in 1980 might be comparable to that of the young Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and the equally young Mao Zedong in China. Stalin was forty-eight years old in 1927, when he defeated his opponent Nikolai Bukharin by officially adopting a heavy-industry-oriented development strategy at the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.2 Mao was forty-one years old in 1934, when he led the Long March, which is now depicted as the historical event underlying Mao’s consolidation of political power and his rural-based revolutionary strategy.3 Kim Jong Il’s image as a leader has been so strongly imprinted in the minds of twenty-three million people that no other hero in history, with the exception of his father, has been able to challenge his prestige in North Korea. In view of the hereditary succession, some might mistakenly compare the status of Kim Jong Il to that of kings in the ChosÆn dynasty and especially to YÆnsan’gun, a late fifteenthcentury tyrannical king. This comparison to Kim’s retention of a ruler’s legitimacy may be based on the recognition that Kim exercises arbitrary power and on Max Weber’s notion of patrimonial tradition.4 These presumptions are inaccurate. Rather, his power has stemmed from not only a hereditary succession from his father but also his nature as a political man. His status and power have been both inherited and cultivated. Therefore, rather than treat Kim Jong Il as a fortunate successor, it is necessary to examine his experiences in the period of his growth and to investigate their relevance to his leadership character in later years. One’s understanding of Kim Jong Il might benefit from a kind of political psychology approach. This approach was pioneered by Harold D. Lasswell and others who posited that personal traits for political man, or political personality, develop from the rationalization of private motives in terms of public interests.5 Labeled the “compensatory striving hypothesis” by Glenn D. Paige, a focal point in the discussion of political man lies in depicting how psychological deprivation in the early days of one’s life forms political personality in the later days of one’s political career and implicitly influences the operation of the system as a whole.6 While such studies concerning political leaders’ psychological motivations attract our special attention,7 one problem confronting the empirical analysis of political leaders’ motivations is the difficulty of how to identify complex cause-and-effect relations. Diverse motiva-

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tions and experiences influence the form of political personality, and these factors are particularly difficult to grasp in cases where researchers have limited information about the political actor’s past experiences. Kim Jong Il’s case belongs to this genre. As an alternative strategy I will point out the unique modes of his experiences—shown in the periods of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—in order to explain the formation of his political personality, and then try to establish a relationship between his political personality and his leadership character. Even though this strategy has limited utility, it helps us illuminate how a political actor’s motivations in youth interact with the actor’s leadership style. The Shaping of a Political Personality Psychologist David G. Winter uses the following analogy to describe the impact of a politician’s personality on politics: While it is easy to think of personality as a static set of fixed “qualities,” a more modern conception would view personality as an array of capacities or dispositions that may be engaged, primed, or brought forward depending on the demands of the situation and a person’s own “executive apparatus.” On this view, personality is like a personal computer: with some relatively fixed “hardware” characteristics and also many “software” applications, each of which can be “opened” or “closed” by the operator—some running in a “window” at the center of the screen, others available in the immediate background “windows,” and a few running almost undetected in the “deeper” background.8 Likewise, various types of “windows” of the operator Kim Jong Il must have functioned in a way that aligns significant parts of the existing system with one another: institutions of the party-state, relations between the party and the military, the transformation of the official ideology of Chuch’e, the launch of reform measures, and the control of intellectuals. The structurally constrained scope that Kim Jong Il inherited from his father has seemingly worked as the undetected deeper background window, whereas the personality of Kim Jong Il, cultivated during his growth, has been like a running window at the center and immediate background windows. In this section, I will trace some unique traits in his youth that appear relevant to the formation of these windows.

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Childhood: Trust-building defect There have been various interpretations of Kim Jong Il’s birth, particularly of the birthplace itself. But it is generally accepted that Kim Jong Il—his Russian name was Yura—was born to Kim Il Sung and Kim ChÆng-suk on the base of the Soviet Eighty-eighth Brigade at Vyatskoe, or Vyatsk, located near Khabarovsk in the far eastern part of Russia, on February 16, 1942.9 However, North Korea has maintained that Kim was born in the secret military barracks at Mt. Paektu, which has long been considered the spiritual symbol for Koreans, just as Mt. Fuji is for Japanese. It was on February 15, 1982 that Nodong Sinmun, the North Korean party organ, publicized the assertion that Kim’s birthplace was the wooden barracks that had been used for the headquarters of the anti-Japanese revolutionary army led by Kim Il Sung. In order to support this assertion, North Korean propaganda has claimed that Kim’s mother, Kim ChÆng-suk, stayed in the barracks at Mt. Paektu between June 1941 and March 1943 and that she led the anti-Japanese guerillas residing in the northern part of Korea and the Mt. Paektu area.10 It was reasonable for North Korea to identify Mt. Paektu, with its tradition of sacredness, as Kim Jong Il’s birthplace so as to create a mythical image of him. Remarkably, Kim’s birthplace was publicized at the beginning of the 1980s, when the society was colored by the unitary ideology of Chuch’e, which promotes an abhorrence of dependence on foreign influence. The myth of Mt. Paektu as Kim’s birthplace was systematically repeated in the book entitled Leader Kim Jong Il, written by Korean-Japanese biographers in 198411 and again in Kim Il Sung’s autobiography, Living with a Century, written in 1998.12 It is noteworthy that North Korea’s interpretation on Kim Jong Il’s birthplace is related to the glorifying of Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla activities in Manchuria. It is said that Kim Il Sung smuggled himself into Korea to command the anti-Japanese struggle and that, during this period, his wife gave birth to Kim Jong Il. It is also said that Kim Il Sung moved around the Tumen River area and crossed the river to supervise the secret camps and organizations on Mt. Paektu, which were led by Kim’s wife. This story is intended to capitalize on Kim Il Sung’s career as a leader of anti-Japanese resistance on the Korean peninsula in the early 1940s. As Dae-Sook Suh has aptly noted, Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla accomplishments were impressive but, at the same time, were exaggerated. Indeed, Kim retreated into the Soviet Union to escape the pursuing Japanese forces in spring 1941, a fact that exposes as false the myth of Kim Jong Il’s birthplace.13 In view of the fact that the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition was officially established in

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the first half of the 1970s, it is understandable that the creation of the myth followed the advent of the tradition chronologically. Kim Jong Il’s childhood was not an average one. The poor health of his mother prevented her from breast-feeding her baby boy. As a substitute, a wet nurse by the name of Yi Chae-dÆk breast-fed Kim. He was fortunate, as well, to be surrounded by Kim Il Sung’s comrades and to grow up in an environment of affection. According to the testimony of Sin KyÆng-hwan, a former North Korean party cadre on South Korean affairs who defected to Seoul, those comrades such as ChÆn Mun-sÆp, Cho MyÆng-nok, and Paek Hak-nim treated Kim Jong Il as a symbol of hope during the period of hardships accompanying the forces’ retreat to the Red Army and considered him a younger brother or a nephew in their homeland.14 It is presumable that in this affectionate environment, Kim learned organizational integrity and loyalty as well as comradeship. It is presumable also that such childhood experiences familiarized Kim with the military and infused in him a desire to exercise military leadership. For Kim Jong Il, one of the most painful experiences to beset him was the death of his mother in September 1949, when he was seven years old. It is not an easy task to identify how and to what extent this event affected the formation of Kim’s political personality. On the one hand, Kim attempted to avoid any appearance of sorrowfulness and made efforts to appear dauntless. Indeed, he demonstrated maturity in taking care of his sister, Kim KyÆng-h„i. He spared no pain in helping her to commute to and from kindergarten. On the other hand, it is said that Kim Il Sung’s comrades sometimes admonished him for misbehavior and often made an effort to comfort him when he was sad or upset.15 These stories suggest that Kim Jong Il often behaved defiantly and that he felt depressed from time to time, even though it is not clear what the underlying reasons were. The death of Kim’s mother must have been a significant event in the formation of his political personality not simply because her passing left him filled with sorrow but also because its aftermath magnified in him the contradictory emotions of love and hate. After his mother’s death, two women took on many chores in Kim’s household. One woman was Kim SÆng-ae, a telephone operator in Kim Il Sung’s office building, and the other was Hong Ki-yÆn, the daughter of Hong MyÆng-h„i, who wrote the famous novel Yim Ko˘k-cho˘ng.16 In fall 1952, when Kim Jong Il was ten years old, Kim Il Sung on the suggestion of his comrades married Kim SÆng-ae, who was only fourteen years older than the junior Kim. There is no document detailing Kim Il Sung’s remarriage, and it is probable that it took place informally, instead of

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at a formal wedding ceremony. There might be two reasons for the informality: One is the Korean tradition of marrying a second wife in an intimate setting with close relatives and friends in attendance, and the other is a tense social and political situation in the midst of the Korean War.17 At any rate, it must have been a shock for young Kim Jong Il to have a stepmother whom he had considered his mother’s secretary or like an elder sister working in his father’s office building. Kim Jong Il resented this fact and tried to offset this shock by dropping by the house of his uncle, Kim YÆng-ju.18 Kim Jong Il’s hatred supposedly deepened when his stepmother gave birth to a half sister and a half brother in 1953 and 1954, respectively. In other words, during his childhood, the sorrow that Kim felt at his mother’s death turned into hatred of his stepmother and her children. Rumors regarding defiant behavior spread among partisan comrades of Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il’s only sister, Kim KyÆng-h„i, endured great friction with her stepmother, because the latter was partial to her own children. This situation provides further evidence that Kim Jong Il felt antagonism toward his stepmother, half sister, and half brother, and, more than before, he felt affection for his own sister. It can be said that, in this regard, Kim Jong Il’s childhood suffered from a trust-building defect caused not simply by the loss of his mother’s love but also by resentfulness of his stepmother and her children.19 A childhood like this should be closely related to the fostering of contrasts in one’s personality: distrust, hatred, and competition, on the one hand, and extreme affection, on the other. How does the notion of the oedipus complex, an important notion in psychoanalysis, interpret the formation of Kim Jong Il’s political personality? Drawing from the Greek myth, Sigmund Freud developed this notion as an explanation of human psychological development. By the oedipus complex is meant a boy’s tendency not only to seek his mother’s affection and to try to monopolize her presence in his childhood but also to view his father as a competitor and to have a vague desire to kill—to eliminate the presence of—his father. Such development in a boy’s childhood brings him into conflict with his father, but the boy typically recognizes the father’s dominant power and attempts to assimilate himself to the father’s power and authority. Freud said that this complex is a normal process of personality development, one that allows the boy to gradually obtain moral consciousness—to resolve this stage of the oedipus complex. It seems that Kim Jong Il’s experience of his mother’s early death fostered the transition from the first stage, characterized by a boy’s antagonism toward his father, to the next stage, characterized by the boy’s assimi-

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lation of himself into the father’s authority and the development of his own moral consciousness. In other words, in partly offsetting the antagonism toward his father through the hatred of his stepmother and her children, he could resolve the oedipus complex. Indeed, Kim in his adolescence attempted to be close to his father as much as he could and, throughout his youth, upheld his father’s authority by extolling the elder Kim’s past revolutionary resistance against Japanese forces. These displays of affection were, in part, the younger Kim’s attempts to expand his power and to enhance his status as the heir apparent. In other words, Kim Jong Il’s goal-oriented behavior of seeking and expanding power appears to be compatible with his attachment and adherence to his father. In this regard, it seems inappropriate to attribute the shaping of Kim’s unique political personality solely to the oedipus complex. Adolescence: Eye-opening leadership Because of the Korean War and his status as the top leader’s son, Kim Jong Il had an unusual educational experience during his adolescence. After his graduation from a one-year kindergarten program, in September 1950 Kim entered into an elementary division of the Man’gyÆngdae Revolutionary Academy, established for children of veterans and of victims of the anti-Japanese struggle. During the Korean War, however, as the success of the Incheon landing operation led by General Douglas MacArthur brought about a remarkable turnaround of the situation in favor of the advancement of the South Korean army and American-led U.N. forces into the northern part of Korea, Kim Jong Il and his younger sister left Pyongyang for Jilin Province in northeast China, where they spent two years attending the Jilin Academy. Right after the end of the war, he returned to Pyongyang to finish elementary school. He graduated from Pyongyang First Middle School and Namsan Higher Middle School in 1957 and 1960, respectively. It is known that, at these academic institutions, Kim studied various subjects such as politics, economics, literature, arts, and military affairs. In particular, he received special tutoring in the social sciences.20 It should be noted that Kim could cultivate a political grounding through the affectionate support from his father’s partisan comrades and through frequent foreign travels. Kim Jong Il accompanied these elders on business trips and went with them to party activities, during which Kim became acquainted with the management and administration of political affairs. In addition, he had chances to travel abroad, especially to the Soviet Union and China, through which he could

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extend his views of the world. For this reason, Cho Yong-hwan has speculated in his analysis of Kim Jong Il that Kim might have studied at the Air Force Academy in East Germany and might have been trained as a helicopter pilot in the Soviet Union.21 But there is no evidence that he experienced such military training. These speculations are attributable to his frequent unofficial trips abroad and to the propaganda of his military leadership in later years. The characteristics of Kim Jong Il as a political man were already evident in his seventeenth year, when he, as an observer, accompanied Kim Il Sung to the Twenty-first Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1959. In his autobiography published in Seoul, Hwang Chang-yÆp—then a professor at Kim Il Sung University and now a citizen of South Korea (he defected in 1996)—has mentioned Kim Jong Il’s idiosyncratic behavior.22 According to Hwang, Kim was very smart and showed an interest in many things. He raised various questions about Kim Il Sung University and its academic programs. Kim’s inquiries were so broad as to include various fields in the social sciences, the humanities, and the natural sciences. His enthusiasm for knowledge might have originated from not only a curiosity in academic subjects but also his familiarity with Kim Il Sung’s political orientation. That is, the junior Kim, as the eldest son of a political leader possessing monolithic power, intended to broaden his knowledge base to meet his father’s policy demands. Hwang also noted that Kim, as a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, was precocious in showing an interest in exercising leadership. During his trip to the Soviet Union, Kim made efforts to take care of his father and showed his capacity to manage the attendance team. He physically supported his father, who was a relatively young and strong man of only forty-seven years, by helping him into his shoes and by assisting him to stand up and walk. For Hwang, this was behavior that seemingly went beyond just affection between a father and a son. When Kim Il Sung went out for official meetings with Moscow leaders, Kim Jong Il summoned a meeting of his father’s attendants, including an adjutant, a medical doctor, and a nurse, so as to be debriefed by them and to give instructions to them for the next round of schedules. Because this was Kim Il Sung’s official trip as head of state, the leader was accompanied by the party’s Political Committee members and by state officials, who could have supervised Kim Il Sung’s attendants. Despite the supervisors’ presence, Kim Jong Il volunteered to exercise his leadership by leading the attendant team. It is not clear whether this behavior should be attributed to his management capacity, to his early passion for power, or to both, but it is apparent that, in any event, the junior Kim intended to be close to the senior Kim.

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According to Hwang, Kim Jong Il exhibited unusually fervent pride in his nation, North Korea. There is an anecdote about this. When Kim visited Moscow State University during his trip with his father, a Soviet party official in charge of Korean affairs inquired into the possibility of Kim’s intention to study at the university after his graduation from higher middle school in Pyongyang. Kim said no and added that North Korea had a very prestigious university, Kim Il Sung University. He said that he would continue to study at this university in his own country.23 Because North Korea at the end of the 1950s implemented the notion of Chuch’e and independence, it is imaginable that Kim’s stated admiration for Kim Il Sung University paralleled North Korea’s social atmosphere. At the same time, Kim’s stay in Pyongyang for higher education and his postgraduate career were evidences of his desire to adhere to his father. Because he felt competition with, and antagonism toward, his stepmother and her children, it seems that Kim sought to live in Pyongyang to have as much access as possible to his father, the source of essential power.24 In this way, Kim Jong Il during his adolescence began to emerge as a political man marked by curiosity, enthusiasm, pride, and more importantly a strong desire for access to power. Youth: Growth of a political man As a young man, Kim Jong Il started to learn politics in an intensive manner. When he was a student at Kim Il Sung University, Kim had an exceptional chance to expand his policy-oriented knowledge. Not only did the university provide him with special arrangements for his political training, but also his uncle Kim YÆng-ju, then first deputy director of the Organization and Guidance Department of the WPK, organized an advisory group made up of Kim Il Sung’s staff and resident experts. The advisory group often gave Kim Jong Il the special task of writing on party affairs and policy issues. This delegation of responsibility was unusual—to speak more appropriately, impossible—for a college student, and only the younger Kim could get away with such a feat. In 1962, Kim as a junior-level student wrote a manuscript on the party’s role in local economies, entitled “The Legitimacy of Our Party’s Instruction for the Development of a Local Economy.” It is said that the central party utilized this article as a basic source at the meeting of local party cadres and bureaucrats on economic affairs in August of that year.25 Kim Jong Il also extended his views on political affairs by accompanying Kim Il Sung’s “on-spot guidance” tours, travels abroad, and attendance at party and cabinet meetings. The on-spot guidance tours

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enriched Kim Jong Il’s understanding of the real economy and effective modes of guidance and instruction, and provided him with both experience and useful information. The travels abroad with his father contributed to an enhancement of the younger Kim’s discernment of, and his sensibilities toward, international affairs. Furthermore, he as a junior and senior at college attended the sessions of crucial decisionmaking bodies of the party-state, such as the WPK’s Political Committee and Central Committee meetings, cabinet meetings, the Supreme People’s Assembly sessions, and military-related meetings. It is likely that through participation in these meetings, he made the acquaintance of high-ranking officials and delved into fundamental issues concerning domestic and international affairs, as well as had the chance to acquire knowledge on decision-making procedures. Above all, Kim demonstrated his aptitude for guidance. In accompanying his father’s on-spot guidance tours, Kim practiced a similar role as instructor. For instance, when he followed his father’s local guidance tour in South HamgyÆng Province and Yanggang Province, Kim made a separate visit to a town in P’ungsan County in August 1963. He stopped at a grocery store and, as his father usually did, gave the locals instructions on how to improve the living standard of peasants. Not only did Kim take samples of soy sauce and bean paste at the store, but he showed them to his father and explained their relation to needed improvements in the dietary life of countryside residents. He then broached this issue at an official meeting in Pyongyang. In addition, Kim portrayed himself as a model of benevolent leadership. According to one telling anecdote, Kim’s leadership image came to the fore when, as a college student, he participated in a reconstruction campaign for Pyongyang on a chilly and snowy day. Witnessing a truck slip into the mud, he contacted the Special Guard Corps and mobilized some of its troops to help the truck back onto the roadway. A book written by a Korean-Japanese affiliated with North Korea described Kim’s heroic action by declaring that “he threw his body into the mud and snow.”26 Such forthright practices of political leadership were often accompanied by an improper exercise of power. For a college student, his arbitrary intervention was apparent in the affairs of the party committee at Kim Il Sung University. The operation of the university-level party committee was normally reserved for a group of school and party authorities, such as the university president, college deans, and full-time party cadres sent from the central party. However, Kim arbitrated the activities of the university, particularly in the Socialist Youth League. Given that the league was a de facto student body at

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the university level, it is evident that Kim’s arbitrary intervention reflected his prevailing influence on his peers and his elders. In this way, Kim Jong Il not only imitated his father’s political leadership but also attempted to portray himself to others as the “benevolent son of the general secretary of the WPK.” This audacious political behavior should not be separated from the trust-building defect that occurred in his childhood under his stepmother. Kim’s attempt to build up an image of himself as a benevolent leader must have been related to the sense of competition and the contrasting emotions of affection and hatred that were cultivated in the depressive psychological situation of his early years. As soon as he graduated from the university, Kim started his career as a political man. He got his first job at the central party. In September 1964, he was appointed to a guidance personnel position in the Central Guidance Division of the Organization and Guidance Department in the WPK. Guidance personnel refers to professional party cadres who, by themselves, organize certain tasks and who sometimes supervise lower party units. With this position, Kim was now able to utilize the party’s power and conduct his own duties independently. His major duty was the dissemination of Kim Il Sung’s instructions and the party’s documents to the general public. For this purpose, he handled literature and arts, publications, and broadcasting, all of which were not only his favorite fields but also significant subjects for the personality cult of his father and for his own image-building. Even before his elevation to the position of party secretary in charge of organization and propaganda and agitation in September 1973, Kim Jong Il experienced some positions that were closely related to the secretary post. In February 1966, he moved his position as one of the guidance personnel from the Organization and Guidance Department to an equivalent rank at the Propaganda and Agitation Department. In February 1968, he was named director of the Movie and Arts Division in this department. In March 1969, he returned to the Organization and Guidance Department and was elevated to the position of deputy director of the department. In October 1970, he moved again to the position of deputy director in charge of culture and arts in the Propaganda and Agitation Department. In other words, the first ten years of Kim’s political career were characterized by skyrocketing mobility between two core departments in the party. Profiting from these positions, Kim took on the ambitious task of exalting the history of the revolutionary struggle led by Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla comrades during the Japanese colonial period. He founded the P’ibada Opera Group in July 1971 (P’ibada means “the

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sea of blood” in Korean and symbolizes Koreans’ bloody armed struggle against the Japanese forces in Manchuria). The opera group under the guidance of Kim Jong Il produced five revolutionary operas that have been considered classical works of art in North Korea: P’ibada, Flower-Selling Girl, The Party’s Sincere Daughter, Tell, Oh Forest! and Song of Mt. Ku˘mgang. It is not easy to tell how much artistic value they have, especially from the perspective of Western and traditional Korean musical arts. But it is certain that they have maintained a lofty political significance in North Korea, since the operas have been so frequently performed for the political education of the general public. In the case of P’ibada, the number of public performances exceeded fifteen hundred by the end of 2002, which translates roughly to fifty times per year since the establishment of the opera group.27 The revolutionary operas have not only enhanced the publicity surrounding Kim Il Sung’s leadership in the resistance to the Japanese occupation but also highlighted the great sacrifice of the partisans under Kim’s leadership. It is said that after the preview of P’ibada, all the old guerrilla leaders watching the performance could not stop themselves from weeping as they reflected on their past fierce struggle against the notorious Japanese Kantogun unit in Manchuria. For Kim Jong Il, the political benefits that came from the choreographed honoring of Korea’s revolutionary history were obviously enormous. Not only did Kim win himself support relative to the succession issue, but also this revolutionary product has directly contributed to a sense of the legitimacy of the party-state among the people of North Korea, which has been in fierce competition with the South. In Communist countries, in general, the top leader makes every effort to maintain the system and, to this end, strives to ensure that organizational strength and propaganda affairs are neatly intertwined with one another. Propaganda is a tool that legitimates the system by dressing up the official ideology, whereas organizational binding involves an internalization of ideology through a solidification of multilayered control mechanisms. This is the reason that core political leaders in power typically never yield their control of organization and propaganda affairs to other competing or potentially emerging groups in the party-state. In this respect, it was natural for Kim Jong Il, who grew up as a political man, to have experienced those positions in the Propaganda and Agitation Department and the Organization and Guidance Department, both of which have had political importance for system maintenance. His brilliant political performance in the different positions consequently boosted his heir-apparent status, in particular, and the persistence of an orderly authority structure, centered on Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, in general.

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The Political Man’s Road to Succession The timing The year 1973 was an important historical juncture both for Kim Jong Il as a political leader and for the North Korean system as a whole. Although there exist disagreements on assessing the timing of Kim Jong Il’s rise as de facto successor to his father, there should be no question that his appointment as a party secretary in 1973 allowed him to gain power, particularly over the party’s organizational affairs. According to Suzuki Masayuki, a Japanese expert on North Korea, Kim Jong Il was appointed to the position of a party secretary in charge of organization and propaganda and agitation at the seventh plenary session of the Fifth CC of the WPK, held in September 1973. Suzuki argues that Kim climbed still further at the Political Committee (whose name was changed to Politburo in 1980) meeting in February 1974, the meeting that decided the double appointment of Kim as a committee member and a party secretary in charge of the party, the cabinet, and the military.28 For Suzuki, these appointments were historic political events in North Korean politics on the grounds that Kim could utilize the positions not only for extending his power base in the party and state apparatuses but also for launching ideological initiatives to idolize his father, Kim Il Sung. Another assessment slightly differs from that of Suzuki. Kim Yong-kyu, a former North Korean spy who had been able to access unpublicized materials in the closed society, maintains that Kim Jong Il was appointed to the secretary position not in September but in February 1973. Or so he remembers it. When Kim Yong-kyu was receiving clandestine training at the Political School of the WPK in February 1973, Kim In-mo, then the party secretary of the school, instructed the spy trainees that Kim Jong Il had been appointed to be the party secretary in charge of organization and propaganda and agitation. Kim Yong-kyu mentions that the instruction in February was followed by every spy trainee’s solemn declaration of loyalty to both Kim Il Sung and the “party center,” which was a mysterious word indicating Kim Jong Il throughout the early 1970s.29 Considering the above assessments together, it is highly probable that Kim Jong Il’s appointment as a party secretary was already decided at the Political Committee meeting in February and was voted, even if merely as a formality, at the closed plenary session of the CC in September. This two-step procedure was quite an acceptable practice in a society where informal politics, in general, and personal loyalty and intimate ties, in particular, are more significant than a formal

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anointment.30 In view of the fact that the Political Committee was dominated by Kim Il Sung and the Manchurian guerrilla comrades, such as Ch’oe Yong-gÆn, Kim Il, Pak SÆng-ch’Æl, Ch’oe HyÆn, O Chin-u, and SÆ Ch’Æl, there was no obstacle at all for an informal arrangement for the appointment of Kim Jong Il as a party secretary at the February meeting. And yet, this informal arrangement was followed by the formal appointment procedure at the CC meeting in September in compliance with the WKP’s bylaw that stipulates that “election of party secretaries are made at the CC meetings of the party.”31 Who were active supporters for Kim’s positions at this significant time? To what extent was Kim Il Sung involved in the succession process? Regarding these questions, there are different accounts. Hwang Chang-yÆp, a former secretary of the WPK, maintains that Kim Il Sung had an orchestrating role in the succession and made related judgments on the basis of Kim Jong Il’s skillful sidelining of potential competitors, including Kim YÆng-ju, who is Kim Il Sung’s younger brother and Kim Jong Il’s uncle. According to Hwang, Kim Jong Il contributed to the consolidation of Kim Il Sung’s cult by purging, in 1967 and 1968, his father’s former associates, the so-called Kapsan faction centered on Pak K„m-ch’Æl and Yi Hyo-sun, on the charge that they had been building a bureaucratic kingdom in the party; in reality, they were purged from the party for their failure to adequately worship Kim Il Sung. Of the many who were purged later, two of the most important were the secretary of propaganda, Kim To-man, and the secretary of international affairs, Pak Yong-guk, who were considered the left and right arms of Kim YÆng-ju. Insofar as Kim YÆng-ju was then in charge of all organizational affairs of the WPK, the purge, allegedly ordered by Kim Il Sung, must have been a serious blow to Kim YÆng-ju himself, a potential—but never an actual—competitor to Kim Jong Il.32 Hwang’s point underscores Kim Il Sung’s role in facilitating Kim Jong Il’s involvement in the political game, while sacrificing even Kim YÆng-ju. Observing Kim Jong Il’s successful performance, Kim Il Sung came to seriously consider his son’s succession to the top leadership position of North Korea. A critical problem with Hwang’s point is that (as Dae-Sook Suh has pointed out), there is little evidence that Kim Jong Il was involved in the purge of the Kapsan leaders, including his uncle’s confidants.33 From the fact that Kim Jong Il worked in the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the WPK between 1966 and 1968, one may reason that the younger Kim prepared the propagation of his father’s personality cult rather than was directly engaged in the purges of top party officials.

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On the other hand, there is evidence to support the belief that Kim Il Sung had made a final pronouncement on the succession issue on the basis of his partisan comrades’ recommendations. Sin KyÆnghwan, a former cadre on South Korean affairs at the WPK, testifies that there was a significant degree of personal ties between Kim Jong Il and the former guerrilla leaders who had committed themselves to a lifetime loyalty to Kim Il Sung.34 Not only had the guerrilla comrades, as substitutes for a natural mother, taken care of Kim Jong Il, but they had also come to be very impressed by Kim’s political performance, particularly by his interweaving of their past struggle against the Japanese into socialist arts, particularly the revolutionary operas. The guerrilla comrades proposed that North Korea should arrange the succession ahead of time in order to avoid the political disorder that, owing to institutional deficiencies, had accompanied shifts in both the Soviet Union’s top elite and in China’s top elite. At a secret meeting held in December 1972, right after the formal disclosure of the sixth plenary session of the Fifth CC of the WPK, Ch’oe Yong-gÆn and Kim Il were quoted as saying, “In the Soviet Union, there was a disturbance after the death of Stalin, and there emerged a revisionist idea because of the absence of a distinct figure who could match Stalin’s political leadership. In China, the Cultural Revolution as a political struggle occurred because the succession was inadequately prepared. Later, China decided on Lin Biao as the successor to Mao Zedong. However, the political disorder that erupted after the Lin Biao Incident continues to manifest itself in anti-Lin and anti-Confucian movements.”35 Even though there were no specific references to Kim Jong Il at the meeting, it is apparent that the guerrilla comrades already were focusing on the father-to-son succession issue. This was a year before the appointment of Kim Jong Il to the position of a party secretary and a year after the first public performance of the revolutionary opera P’ibada, which highlighted the bloody guerrilla warfare in Manchuria against Japanese colonial rule. Therefore, it is fair to say that the guerrilla comrades’ active roles in, and their foresight regarding, the succession issue were attributable to the timing of Kim Jong Il’s emergence as the de facto heir apparent in 1973. Qualifications for succession It appears that the father’s confidence in his son’s political leadership was the crucial factor in the decision about the succession. But while a political decision at the top is a necessary condition for a succession, it does not account for the whole story. In the history of Korea’s ancient

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hereditary successions, there were kings who chose not the eldest son as the successor but the brightest son. For instance, T’aejo, the first king of the ChosÆn dynasty, at first transferred his throne to the second son, ChÆngjong, but later allowed his fifth son, T’aejong, to take over the power. In a similar fashion, T’aejong transferred the throne to the third son, who later became the Great King Sejong, the inventor of the Korean alphabet, Han’g„l. Therefore, the choice of a successor even in the days of hereditary succession was sometimes based on political talent that, it was hoped, would lead to the orderly management of the country. As I discussed earlier, Kim Jong Il as a political man grew to acquire the characteristic traits of a leader, in general, and a passion for power, in particular. Also, Kim’s actual involvement in the power competition, whether explicit or implicit, was crucial for the decision on the succession. Right after the decision of succession was made in September 1973, Kim Jong Il demonstrated his political talent in launching an authoritative interpretation of the Chuch’e idea and in spreading the logic of uninterrupted revolution from generation to generation. Kim made every attempt to establish his father’s idea of Chuch’e as the monolithic ideology of the party and ultimately of the society.36 Also, with his elevation in power, the notion of continuous revolution developed into the Three Great Revolutions in Thought, Technology, and Culture. These tasks were enacted by work teams composed not only of party cadres but also of young college students. The work teams were under the control of the designated successor, Kim Jong Il. Accordingly, the launch of the Three Great Revolutions resulted in an expansion of Kim’s power by replacing old cadres in state-owned enterprises and collective farms with enthusiastic youth. Since the revolution in ideological affairs had been the most important task among the three revolutions, the rise of Kim Jong Il guaranteed the dissemination of Chuch’e and its high status. In turn, the junior Kim praised the idea of his father as “an idea that provided solutions to problems arising in a new age different from the era that gave rise to Marxism-Leninism.”37 As heir apparent, the junior Kim’s commitment to the spread of the leader’s idea was quite similar to that of Lin Biao during the early stage of the Cultural Revolution in China. Just as Lin turned the military into a politicized instrument to spread Maoism, Kim Jong Il fully mobilized the work teams to impose the Chuch’e idea on North Korea. One difference is that even though Lin was a designated successor to Mao, his power was limited, not only because Mao himself had constrained Lin’s behavioral space but also because Lin remained as

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a defense minister under the premiership of Zhou Enlai.38 In short, Kim had no competitor, whereas Lin had been checked by Mao and Zhou. Active-Negative Leadership Character A model figure of active-negative character It would be useful for us to inquire into how Kim Jong Il’s political personality, which evolved during his early years, has influenced his leadership character. James D. Barber’s work on American presidential character gives us some insights into this kind of issue. According to Barber, personality does not determine style of leadership or of management; instead, personality influences general patterns of a political leader’s character. His analytic model may be a useful tool for an investigation of the relation between Kim’s background and his present leadership character. In Barber’s model, four types of leadership character exist according to two criteria: active versus passive and positive versus negative. The criterion of active versus passive depends on the degree of a politician’s investment of energy in, and adhesiveness to, a given job, whereas that of positive versus negative depends on the degree of happiness and enjoyment experienced in political life. The four types are the active-positive character, in which a politician feels productive and satisfactory in the job; the active-negative character, in which one adheres to power and its maintenance because of low satisfaction from the actual result of active engagement; the passive-positive character, in which a politician is interested in getting support and affection for the achievement of an optimistic objective; and the passive-negative character, in which one carries out the duties of a job to fulfill an obligation and considers morality and ethics the most important values.39 Considering Kim Jong Il’s behavior pattern in power, one can infer that, of the four types, he has the active-negative leadership character. Just as this model indicates that there is an internal contradiction between the intense effort and the low emotional reward for that effort, so too is there evidence that Kim, although he has made every effort to establish an organizational discipline in the party and to strengthen the personality cult of Kim Il Sung, has failed to find satisfaction in the results. Such discrepancy between investment of energy and low emotional reward has surfaced in Kim’s speeches: Of the many that were made, one was aired by the state’s central broadcast in December 1995, and the other was delivered to high-ranking party

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cadres on the occasion of a graduation ceremony at Kim Il Sung University in December 1996. Revolutionaries should continue to defend and support the Great Leader [Kim Il Sung]’s thought and works and his revolutionary achievements. In history, imperialists and betrayers of the revolutionary cause fiercely attacked both the top leader of the working class and his revolutionary predecessors and opposed socialist accomplishments. . . . Modern revisionists and betrayers of socialism have attempted to defile the leader and his revolutionary predecessors and to abolish their achievements and finally have pursued the distortion and collapse of socialism.40 I have assisted in works of the Great Leader since the 1960s. But I cannot find anybody who helps my work sincerely. I am working alone. If the professional party cadres in the Central Committee do not help my job, they are useless. During the National Liberation War [the Korean War], the Central Committee did not play its proper role in support of the Great Leader. It seems that the Central Committee nowadays is likely to repeat its inadequate exercise of duties. Of course, I do not believe that it will turn out so badly. The central party may become a decrepit party or a dead party, provided the cadres do not work hard or in a proper way.41 The period in which he gave these speeches was one of the most challenging since he started his career in the party after his college graduation. The death of his father, Kim Il Sung, generated a public panic in 1994, and a chronic shortage of food developed into widespread starvation owing to natural disasters—that is, droughts and floods—in the three years following 1995. The morale and discipline of the party eroded rapidly. Presumably, the cadres who advocated the revolutionary cause lost much of their passion in this disastrous situation. Furthermore, the party’s role in the policy arena, particularly the guiding of economic affairs, almost stopped. Because the most significant thing for the people was to survive the famine, there was no economy for the WPK to plan and supervise. Factories and enterprises stopped operating, with the exception of military industries, because there were neither workers nor raw materials. Schools and hospitals discontinued their services because there were neither students for enrollment nor medical supplies for patients. Given this

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situation, there was no space in which the party could play a dominant role in the famine-stricken society, and in turn, it is understandable that Kim Jong Il felt helpless and lonely. In the speeches, however, Kim’s depression went beyond a simple emotional vulnerability caused by a disastrous social situation. Kim’s dichotomous understanding of history as consisting of revolutionaries and betrayers reflected the divergence between his twenty-year commitment to the party’s organizational affairs and the actual sense of reward that he felt from contributing to North Korean socialism. Reflecting on the factional strife that spread during the Korean War, he warned against a possible repetition of party malfunction. Indeed, although the morale of the cadres had significantly deteriorated, there still remained an ideological orientation guided by Chuch’e, even in a minimal sense, in the famine-stricken society. The party had lost control of its economic affairs but still worked to control and scrutinize the society. The loss of the party’s policy-making role and the deterioration of revolutionary morale did not necessarily translate into the party’s overall collapse. But it seems that Kim’s sense of reward for his long-standing commitment to North Korea’s political apparatus was nearing collapse. Interestingly, Kim Jong Il’s leadership character seems to be different from that of his father, Kim Il Sung, who apparently possessed an active-positive leadership character. It appears that Kim Il Sung’s positive makeup led him to insist on the complete realization of socialist ideology. His consistency in ideological commitment may be exemplified by a letter he wrote in February 1994 for the commemoration of the thirtieth year of the proclamation of the Socialist Agriculture Thesis. In the 1994 letter, he repeated an argument that he had made thirty years earlier on the transformation of collective ownership in agricultural cooperatives into state ownership.42 Moreover, Kim Il Sung considered the Chuch’e idea the most valuable asset of the system and made every effort to spread the idea throughout developing countries during the 1970s and 1980s. Hwang Chang-yÆp, the former secretary of international affairs in the WPK, was an instrument for that purpose, owing to Hwang’s marvelous talent in ideological matters. Kim Il Sung was primarily concerned with a realization of the ideals of a classless society and egalitarianism. In contrast, Kim Jong Il’s negative makeup has compelled him to project his sense of self onto the public’s eye. Even though he has valued the Chuch’e idea, the junior Kim has arbitrarily changed the propositions of the ideology, especially after his father’s death, to serve his personal objectives.


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Sources and features of active-negative character How is Kim Jong Il’s active-negative leadership character related to his background, to his growth as a political man? Despite the incompleteness of the data, particularly on Kim’s psychological world, it is possible for us to detect a correlation between his background growth and his leadership character, a correlation that can assist us in identifying clues to North Korea’s foreign policy, as well as the general operations of the system. ACTIVE

ELEMENT

The active element of Kim Jong Il’s leadership character apparently stems from his zeal to acquire information and knowledge and his energetic passion for political affairs. It is said that Kim’s zeal was accompanied by training he underwent to develop speed-reading abilities, essentially based on concentration, in his college days. According to the former minister of foreign affairs HÆ Tam, Kim had read two books—Victor Hugo’s Les miserables and Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.—in a half day.43 Furthermore, by fully utilizing his status as the eldest son of the general secretary of the WPK, Kim not only established his own image as a benevolent leader but also impressed prospective supporters of his succession to supreme power. Considering that he has conducted sixty to seventy on-spot guidance tours per year—five or six times per month on average—after his father’s death, it seems that he remains as energetic as ever in the pursuit of his leadership duties. Also, considering that he reads several hundred pages of reports every day, it is obvious that Kim’s thirst for information and knowledge is enormous.44 The psychiatrist Rhee Kun-hoo has stated that with more than a twenty-yearlong preparation period for his succession, Kim could develop skills to deal with the issues surrounding him and to restrain any emotional impulses that might interfere with the leader’s active engagement in political business.45 That is, the training of a politician, along with his political personality, could facilitate the leadership character that strengthens the politician’s greater commitment to political affairs. It is noteworthy that the active element in Kim Jong Il’s leadership character, his particularly energetic passion, has been inseparable from meticulous calculations and thorough analyses of political affairs.46 For example, Kim Jong Il’s meticulous calculations appeared in his approach to the constitutional revision of 1998. In contrast to expectations from inside and outside North Korea, his constitutional

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revisions divided the functions of the state into three tiers: the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), the cabinet, and the National Defense Commission (NDC). But this formal functional division has implied neither authority endorsement nor a division of powers. Insofar as he places the highest priority on the security of the existing system, Kim excludes any possibility of power decentralization.47 First of all, the newly revised constitution eliminates the position of state president, previously assumed by the late Kim Il Sung, and transferred that position’s formal role to the chairman of the Standing Committee of the SPA. Kim Jong Il invented the latter post in order to have it formally represent the state of the DPRK but not to have it exercise actual power. The chairman of the SPA is a nominal state head who receives foreign ambassadors’ credentials and who greets foreign visitors (Article 111). Second, the constitution states that the prime minister of the cabinet shall—as the head of the institution for administrative implementation of the highest sovereignty and for overall management of state affairs—represent the government of the DPRK (Article 117). This statement sounds a little bit odd, because it offers no clear differentiation between the state head and the government head but indicates that the cabinet has more power than before in policy planning and policy implementation, particularly in economic affairs. The highlight of the constitutional revision lies in the expansion of the NDC’s role. The constitution states that the NDC shall exercise the highest military command over both state sovereignty and overall defense affairs (Article 100). Remarkably, Kim Jong Il himself assumed the position of commission chairman. Instead of taking the nominal posts, Kim took the top position of military affairs, assigning two other positions to loyal experts of no political ambition. The revision of the constitution reflects scrupulous calculations on Kim’s part, whereby he exercises supreme power but shares responsibilities. Such an approach had already appeared in contemporary Chinese politics. With the chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Committee, Deng Xiaoping had exercised power behind two general secretaries of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang between 1981 and 1989. In short, there can be no doubt that Kim has been in full charge of military affairs, as well as important domestic and foreign affairs, even under the new constitution of 1998. In foreign affairs, particularly in relations to the United States, Kim Jong Il’s active involvement and meticulous calculations have resulted in reverses and delays in decision-making. Consider his decision-making regarding the opening of an American liaison office

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in Pyongyang in 1995. The Agreed Framework on North Korea’s nuclear issue, drafted by the United States and North Korea in Geneva in 1994, assured North Korea that it would be provided two lightwater nuclear reactors in compensation for Pyongyang’s freezing of its nuclear facilities. At the working-level talks, these countries reached an agreement on the establishment of liaison offices in the two capitals. The Armistice Agreement, although it put a practical end to the Korean War in July 1953, had not stopped the war, in a legal sense, for the four decades preceding the Geneva Agreed Framework. Therefore, the opening of a representative office in an enemy country’s capital would have had a significant meaning of reconciliation if it had occurred. Along with some other reasons, however, Kim Jong Il’s cautious assessment of the political costs and benefits blocked progress in both the reconciliation process and the further development of the bilateral relationship. It is said that, at that time, the United States was interested in the establishment of its liaison office at the former East German Embassy and inquired seriously into its possibility to Pyongyang authorities. In a response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs submitted a proposal to Kim Jong Il on the prospects of allowing the American government to open the office. Kim reversed his decision five times, finally rejecting the proposed opening: first, he agreed to the opening; second, he ordered a reassessment of the effects, both positive and negative; third, he issued instructions for reconsideration; fourth, he approved the opening; fifth, he reexamined the political costs and benefits; and finally he rejected the proposal.48 Kim’s careful calculations, in addition to the sheer number and scale of matters he confronts, impede a timely decision. Thus, when the 2000 presidential campaign in the United States was nearing its final stages, North Korea decided to enter into direct negotiations with the Clinton administration on the missile issue. The two adversaries exchanged envoys to deal with the issue, but it was too late to reach a binding agreement. The North Korean negotiators, as well as the Clinton team, were not prepared to make a commitment, even though the two sides reached a tentative agreement concerning a ban on exports of North Korea’s missile technology in exchange for American security guarantees for North Korea. It seems that on the North Korean end, the failure to reach a binding agreement was not simply attributable to Kim’s meticulous and vigilant calculation of the costs and benefits of the missile deal but also to the overwhelming burden that he shouldered in his decision-making tasks in the short period of time before the presidential election in the United States.

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ELEMENT

Kim Jong Il’s leadership character has revealed a negative element, as well. It should be cautioned that the negative element does not necessarily disqualify the leadership, in general, as Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George have noted. Different combinations of elements yield diverse types of leadership character but do not determine the qualification or disqualification of a political leader.49 Indeed, the more important thing is to identify the sources of the unique elements and the ways in which these elements are projected in the exercise of leadership. It seems that Kim’s negative element originated from the trust-building defect that characterized his childhood after the death of his mother. I noted earlier the lack of maternal affection imprinted on the young boy. In the older Kim Jong Il, that led to streaks of competition and jealousy, as well as distrust, which became increasingly apparent in the development of his political personality. In particular, there appeared emotions that wavered between hostility against his stepmother and her children, on the one hand, and affection for his only sister, Kim KyÆng-h„i, on the other. These contrasting emotions have contributed to Kim’s unshakable allegiance to his father and to power. Despite possible opportunities to study abroad, particularly in Moscow, he declined them, preferring to pursue his education in North Korea. After all, as the eldest son of the Great Leader, he could receive a highly qualified education through a specially arranged teaching team in his homeland. But more importantly, he felt the need to stay as close as possible to his father, while separating his half brother, Kim P’yÆng-il, from his father. It is widely known that Kim P’yÆng-il has spent his political career, after discharge from military service, as an ambassador to Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland, and Poland since the late 1980s. Even though Kim P’yÆng-il is considered to be and treated as a royal family member, he is tightly checked by the party and the intelligence agency under Kim Jong Il’s control. One of the most startling manifestations of Kim Jong Il’s trustbuilding defect was his disgrace before a group of women band members in 1983. This was depicted by the abducted South Korean actor Sin Sang-ok, who had helped Kim’s favorite film production team and later escaped to the West. One night, at a party attended by highranking party faithful and Kim himself, the band team chanted “Long Live Dear Leader Kim Jong Il!” In his autobiography, Sin stated, “Kim Jong Il responded to their chanting and then gestured for them to stop

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it, but they continued making eccentric noises. Suddenly, Kim Jong Il made an unexpected comment, shaking my left hand back and forth. “Mr. Sin, this is a lie. It is an imposture.” Although the comment was made after some drinks had been consumed, it sounded genuine to me. . . . It must be true that he sees things for what they really are.”50 Considering that Sin is one of only a handful of people who, over a relatively long period of time, have had close access to Kim Jong Il, it is reasonable to conclude that Kim does indeed distrust those people who praise him. In other words, Kim is suspicious of even those whom the party-state under his control has both indoctrinated to be subordinate to the regime and provided with privileges to create loyalty to Kim.51 Defense mechanism against discrepancy How has Kim Jong Il dealt with the tensions that exist between an active engagement in politics and the negative sense of reward that follows the investment of all this energy? Psychoanalysts utilize the term defense mechanism in explaining responses to emotional conflict and refer specifically to restraint, reaction formation, rationalization, projection, displacement, and regression as examples of such a psychological mechanism. Among the defense mechanism’s many modes, restraint is a typical type of subconscious response that enables the conscious mind to either ignore or reject sources of tension. The restraint is usually supported by the defense mechanism’s other modes: reaction formation leads to behavior that is superficially distinct from— and therefore a disguise of—actual intention; rationalization justifies real intention by finding other seemingly defensible reasons; projection attributes sources of tension to external factors; displacement substitutes an innocuous object for the object inspiring reaction; and regression returns a person to a childish and familiar response pattern in coping with difficulties.52 Kim as a political man developed his own defense mechanism for alleviating internal contradiction and for exploring a possible means of external consistency in appearance. His defense mechanism is a combination of rationalization, projection, and displacement. The rationalization and the projection may be found in the maneuvering of the “military-first politics,” whereby he rationalizes his intention to maintain power but attributes the hardships of the people solely to American imperialism and its hostile policy toward Pyongyang. A cautionary note is necessary here. The military-first politics is not a simple mechanism explored for the defense of Kim Jong Il’s emotional conflict alone.

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As will be seen in chapter 4, the military-first politics and the militarization of the North Korean system have had their own institutional significance as a bulwark of the existing system. That is, the militaryfirst politics originated not only from Kim’s defensive motivation regarding the active-negative leadership character, but also from the centrality of the military as an institution in times of crisis. On the other hand, Kim Jong Il’s defense mechanism, particularly displacement, is well reflected in the political style of his slogans: “broad-minded politics” and “generous politics.” Indeed, Kim’s style reveals examples of his protective mind-set. For instance, Kim has initiated several huge architectural structures in Pyongyang since the early 1980s, when he officially became the second-highest-ranking leader in the party. On Kim’s order, North Korea established the Chuch’e Idea Tower and the KaesÆn Arch in April 1982 in commemoration of his father’s seventieth birthday. The Chuch’e Idea Tower has a height of 170 meters, which allows it to overlook Pyongyang and the suburbs, whereas the KaesÆn Arch is a North Korean replica of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. North Korean people are particularly proud of the fact that the KaesÆn Arch was designed to be ten meters higher than the original Arc de Triomphe in France. Also, in 2001 Kim ordered the construction of the Commemorating Tower of the Three Great Constitutions for National Unification, a year after the NorthSouth summit talks in Pyongyang. North Korean guides are proud of the vast scale and delicate stone-carved decorations of this arch-type tower through which high-ranking cadres’ old or new Mercedes cars race toward the city’s downtown. North Korean propaganda machines repeatedly assert that these grand architectural feats are products of the Dear Leader’s boldness and broad-minded management style. There are some other examples of Kim’s “broad-minded politics” and “generous politics.” Kim Jong Il has shown his generosity to the people he likes. At the time of a completion ceremony for a joint venture company, KyÆngh„ng Foreigners’ Store, in July 1987, Kim invited his attendants to select items that they wished to have. It seems that Kim wanted to thank the people who had expended every effort in the construction of the store. Kim watched them pick small, inexpensive items like fountain pens and souvenirs, and then displayed his generosity by intervening in the modest shopping spree, selecting for the attendants expensive home appliances such as refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, and cameras, and declaring that only broad-minded people could carry out grand revolutionary tasks. Of course, those attendants, who would have been grateful even for small gifts, were surprised by Kim’s bighearted gesture. On another

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occasion an Italian businessman, Carlo Baeli, visited North Korea. At a party where both Kim and Baeli were in attendance, the North Korean leader recognized that his Italian visitor was particularly fond of the mushroom dish. Then, Kim ordered his staff to load Baeli’s return plane with tons of these special mushrooms. Such cases exemplify the particular defensive mechanism of displacement that characterizes, in Kim’s life, the gap between investment and reward. Seemingly bold and gallant gestures that symbolize to the people their leader’s benevolence are, in fact, an effort by the leader to bridge the gap between an exertion of effort and a perceived deficit of reward. Implications for Systemic Changes To date, scholars on North Korea have completed no encompassing scheme that identifies a relationship between Kim Jong Il’s motivation and his leadership character, because of the incompleteness of the available information about his past. However, a portrait of his growth, even within a limited scope, helps us illuminate the formation of a political man. To recapitulate: The early loss of his mother and her maternal affection apparently fostered in him a distrust of his surroundings, particularly after the elder Kim Il Sung’s remarriage to Kim SÆng-ae. As a consequence, Kim Jong Il associated himself with his father and his father’s power as much as possible. He developed useful skills by portraying himself as the benevolent son of the Great Leader, his father. He then exploited his newfound elevated status to gain close access to the center of power and finally to inherit his father’s power. He was a political man who extolled the anti-Japanese Manchurian guerilla activities of his father and guerrilla comrades and transformed Kim Il Sung’s idea into Kimilsungism, which symbolically paralleled Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism. In this respect, it is fair to say that North Korea’s hereditary succession, a unique phenomenon in the socialist world, was not a simple gift from the elder Kim but a result of the younger Kim’s strenuous pursuit of power. Thereby, Kim Jong Il not only came to occupy the heart of North Korea’s power but also to place himself at the nodal point of systemic consolidation in the era of power transition. Kim Jong Il has been a political man who actively invests energy in the decision-making associated with various affairs; yet, he is convinced that his exertions have failed to bring about a satisfactory compensation. This leadership character typifies the active-negative model. It seems fortunate for Kim that he was born the eldest son of Kim Il

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Sung and had two decades of political training before the succession. He could thus discover a defense mechanism to dissolve the escalating and accumulating emotional pressures caused by the discrepancy between his invested efforts and the perceived rewards. This defense mechanism has been well reflected in Kim Jong Il’s emotional preoccupation with grandiosity, which is apparent in his “broad-minded politics” and his “generous politics.” In other words, the negative element of the leadership character has been dissipated by the defensive mechanism to a certain extent. Kim Jong Il’s political personality and his leadership character have some implications for systemic changes in North Korea. In domestic affairs, the political man Kim Jong Il must have (though unintentionally) virtually facilitated systemic transformation by helping to change the previous reference points of the DPRK’s identity. First of all, as soon as he engaged in party politics in the early 1970s, Kim stressed the WPK’s discipline instead of its role of policy transmission (see chapter 3). Ironically, this emphasis on discipline resulted in an erosion of the party’s power and legitimacy, as the famine-stricken economy in the mid-1990s made regular party-life criticism impossible. What emerged from the situation was the “military-first politics,” whereby Kim pressed the strategic choice of divide-and-rule on the military and the party (as seen in chapter 4). The party’s prevalence was relatively undermined and the military’s institutional autonomy, even if in a relative sense, became highlighted. Second, Kim’s strenuous efforts have brought about diverse interpretations of the Chuch’e idea during his thirty-year rule. They range from Kimilsungism to human-centeredness, to sociopolitical organism, to Socialism in Our Own Style, and to the Strong State. At the same time, Kim’s enthusiasm for information and knowledge, coupled with his energetic engagement in on-spot guidance tours, expanded his views on market economics as well as on socialist economic principles. He has recognized the sustainability of capitalism through interdependence between countries and through markets and multinational corporations, and he has exhibited an elastic conception of the opening-up process, which has been centered on geographically select areas (see chapter 5). Indeed, Kim officially accommodated unofficial spheres of the socialist economy into the 7-1 economic reform measures in 2002. The reform measures reflected economic realities by inaugurating wage and price increases, greater responsibility for management, and the introduction of general markets (chapter 6). In this way, ideological and economic subsystems have become more complex than before and have created a greater space of ambiguity

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and uncertainty wherein socialist principles coexist with commercial practices that await legalization. On the other hand, in external affairs, Kim has made multipurposive efforts to approach the United States, even though the North Korean propaganda machine has continued to reproduce anti-Americanism in the hearts of the people. Kim Jong Il’s vigorous and tireless character accounts for North Korea’s attempts to build a new diplomacy— which may be called “detour diplomacy”—for the purpose of its own survival in the short run and its access to its adversary, the United States, in the long run. The historic summit between the two Korean leaders in 2000 and South Korean president Kim Dae-jung’s engagement policy facilitated the detour diplomacy to a certain extent. Kim Jong Il’s detour diplomacy, by way of South Korea, Japan, and Western countries, represents changes in how North Korea preserves its systemic identity. But repeated failures of the diplomacy have made it difficult to reach any real progress in the relationship between the two adversaries, as seen in the second nuclear crisis that erupted in 2002 (see the concluding chapter).

3

The Party’s Strengthening Discipline and Weakening Efficiency After Kim Jong Il assumed the position of party secretary in charge of organization and propaganda affairs in September 1973, his involvement in party affairs enhanced their organizational strength and discipline. The Workers’ Party of Korea before and after Kim Jong Il’s emergence might have remained the same in that Kim Il Sung continued to exercise monolithic power. However, the WPK after 1973 was different from its previous incarnation in the sense that Kim Il Sung’s power was sustained by his son’s firm grasp of the party’s top-down hierarchy. With his elevated position in the party, Kim Jong Il rigidly implemented two policies: an enhancement of the role of full-time party cadres in local and administrative units and a strengthening of party-life criticism in every unit of the workplace, as well as in the party. This establishment of a strong disciplinary tradition in the party contributed to the maintenance of social control, to some extent, even during crises. It has become an important foundation for the persistence of the existing authority structure centered on the father and the son. Kim Jong Il’s rise to power and the simultaneous establishment of an unprecedented disciplinary tradition in the WPK were closely associated with the reproduction of two reference points of North Korea’s systemic identity (see chapter 1): one was anti-imperialism, including system competition with the South as well as animosity toward the United States, and the other was the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, which legitimized the monolithic power of Kim Il Sung and a handful of guerrilla comrades. At the particular juncture of Kim Jong Il’s elevation in the political arena, political development in the 57

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South reinforced the North’s systemic identity and then encouraged North Korea to consolidate its own path of political development. The emergence of Kim Jong Il and his grasp of power in the party paralleled the consolidation of authoritarianism led by Park Chung-hee in South Korea.1 While South Korea adopted the 1972 Yushin Constitution, which provided President Park Chung-hee with maximal emergency power, North Korea adopted the 1972 Socialist Constitution, which placed Kim Il Sung in the post of state president and his loyal bureaucrats in key positions of the various state apparatuses. A similar pattern, then, characterized the development of dictatorship in the two Koreas and heightened animosity between them, especially after they had tried but failed to peacefully resolve their hostile relations. In the midst of détente between the United States and China and between Japan and China, the two Koreas issued the July 4 Joint Declaration in 1972, a landmark agreement for both the closure of hostile relations and movement toward a peaceful unification. However, the declaration and the following dialogue were disrupted by an incident in which Kim Dae-jung, the prominent opposition competitor in the 1971 presidential election involving Park, was abducted in Tokyo by members of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) and forcefully repatriated to Seoul in August 1973. For Park, Kim Dae-jung’s stay in Japan and his advocacy there of democracy in South Korea was politically burdensome. But North Korea started to criticize the fact that Yi Hu-rak, the director of the KCIA and, as such, a South Korean representative for the July 4 Joint Declaration, was involved in the covert incident; shortly thereafter, North Korea declared a suspension of the inter-Korean dialogue. The North’s charges against the South immediately triggered a countercharge by the South, and mutual criticism finally led to the deadlock of the inter-Korean dialogue.2 Indeed, the animosity between the two Koreas became even more evident, as North Vietnam defeated its southern counterpart in 1975 and carried out a policy of military adventurism in Cambodia in 1978. As a consequence, the two Koreas not only were again estranged from each other but also legitimated their own paths leading to the consolidation of monolithic power. To understand the developmental path of North Korean politics, specifically the consolidation of the WPK’s power between the mid1970s and the mid-1980s, one should address the following questions: What did Kim Jong Il inherit from Kim Il Sung in the party’s organizational affairs? In particular, how did the party committee and the policy governing full-time cadres make the party’s organizational discipline under junior Kim’s purview different from that under his

The Party’s Strengthening Discipline and Weakening Efficiency

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father’s? And was the party with organizational discipline efficient enough to produce policies that would promote systemic viability? These questions are closely related to the discussions surrounding the transformation of party-military relations. Kim Il Sung’s Legacy: From a Mass Party to an Institutionalized Party What characterized the party at the time of Kim Jong Il’s initial rise to power in 1973? In order to explore this matter, let us start with a discussion of the institutionalization of the WPK under Kim Il Sung’s leadership. It is clear that Kim Il Sung’s authority prevailed throughout the society; however, it took him a long time to eradicate opposition and to institutionalize the party on the basis of his own personality and preferences. Envisioning a mass party Preparing to build the party-state, Kim Il Sung quoted Joseph Stalin’s statement that “cadres decide everything,” and thrust the cadre policy into the forefront of issues needing attention.3 The first problem was that trained workers were in extraordinarily short supply. Kim Il Sung himself realized the severity of this problem, saying in June 1946 that “if we have about five-hundred trained cadres, then we can dispatch one hundred to each of the five provinces to solve the shortage problem. But we do not have such trained cadres.”4 Accordingly, he started to establish schools for the educating of bureaucrats who would be appointed to the party, the military, and the cabinet. In February 1946, Pyongyang Institute opened its doors to students who would soon become relatively high-ranking military leaders, and three months later, the Training Institute for Security Officers and the Central Party School began schooling military officers and party cadres, respectively.5 In July of the same year, the Central School for High Ranking Cadre opened for the purpose of educating cabinet officials. It is notable that most students of these institutions were newly recruited not from farmers and working class laborers but from foreign or indigenous Communists. Their factional origins were so diverse that they ranged from Soviet-Koreans and Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla group to Yanan veterans and domestic Communists. From the viewpoint of Kim Il Sung and Soviet Red Army leaders at that juncture, it was not a serious matter what their background might be. The important objective of the education was to rearm these already hardened students with the

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single-hearted spirit of nation building, liquidating their old-group affiliations as much as possible. With the exception of that of the Soviet-Koreans, the knowledge level of these students was so low as to exclude comprehension of even the basic notions of Marxism-Leninism. For instance, these “trained” cadres could not understand the elementary implications of the proletariat and hegemony, as Kim Il Sung once noted.6 Moreover, most students, with the exception of the soldiers belonging to the Yanan faction, were unable to read Chinese characters. This was unusual for Koreans, who, regardless of family background, normally became literate in Chinese through their early-childhood study of classical Chinese literature. Because the returnees and underground Communists had participated, early on, in the resistance movement against Japanese colonialism, they found that they had been deprived of a chance to study Chinese characters. Given this situation, instructors were unable to teach them any theoretical content of Marxist-Leninist doctrines. Consequently, for the five years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Korean War, the most salient political task for Kim Il Sung and his associates was to build a mass party. Of course, the students of the early educational institutions were supposed to play a leading role in this party. It is, however, apparent that the difficult procedures leading to party membership interfered with the building of a mass party. Despite his advantageous political status, which derived in large part from the support of the Red Army, Kim Il Sung was not in full command of party affairs. As Lee Jong-suk has aptly noted, Kim Il Sung’s power before the Korean War “looked solid” but “remained unsolidified” in the party.7 At that time, the party’s organizational matters were in the hands of the Soviet-Koreans, most of whom were first- or second-generation Korean immigrants residing in the Russian Far East and later relocated to Central Asia. The Soviet-Koreans came from Russian territory, as did Kim’s partisan group, but the former political group was not so cohesive as the latter. The Soviet-Koreans consisted of experienced Soviet party cadres or rank-and-file officials; therefore, they were already familiar with the ins and outs of documentation and procedures, a skill that turned out to be a great advantage. At the same time, they had been conscripted by Soviet authorities and sent to Pyongyang, so there was no concrete collective identity among them. At any rate, since Kim’s partisan group and the Yanan faction consisted of veterans and guerrillas, the Soviet-Koreans alone had a relatively rich pool of Communists who were acquainted not only with Leninist party principles but also with the establishment of a party hierarchy and membership affairs.


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Among the Soviet-Koreans, HÆ Ka-i—Aleksei Ivanovich Hegai was his Russian name—was the most prominent leader and was actually responsible for the conscription and the discipline of the party members. Andrei Lankov, a Russian expert on North Korean affairs, described HÆ as a “forgotten founding father” of the WPK—“forgotten” because of his mysterious death in 1953, a presumable assassination by Kim’s faction. HÆ had survived poverty in childhood and adolescence and experienced the Soviets’ severe persecution of minority cadres during Stalin’s Great Purges before rising to the position of deputy party secretary at the construction works of the Farhad hydroelectric power station near Tashkent in 1943.8 After entering Pyongyang, the Red Army supported HÆ’s rapid promotion to first secretary, the party’s second-highest position, for the institutionalization of the newly forming party’s rules and regulations. Owing to his background and experiences, he immediately received the nickname “professor of party affairs,” which has two different connotations, one being a compliment to his encyclopedic knowledge and the other being a reference to stiffness in his management style. In fact, Kim Il Sung and HÆ Ka-i disagreed with each other on the degree of strictness that should characterize the acceptance process governing party membership. In order to expand the party, Kim maintained that, in the selecting of party members, preferential leniency should be granted to uneducated workers. However, following the established tradition in the Soviet Union’s party membership, HÆ threatened Kim’s optimistic embrace of a mass party and a united front by discriminating on the basis of social background, that is, by favoring the working class, and by following meticulous procedures for the identification of a candidate’s acquaintance with revolutionary theories and the candidate’s past careers. Such friction between Kim and HÆ finally developed into the former’s attack against the latter during the Korean War.9 Realization of a mass party In the political sphere, the Korean War turned the tide in favor of Kim Il Sung, who gained more power in the party than he had had before the war’s start. In 1951, HÆ Ka-i was accused by Kim of building an elitist party and was demoted from his prestigious position of first secretary of the central party to the position of deputy prime minister of the cabinet. Kim’s provocation of this serious assault centered on the “party ID cards controversy,” in which HÆ had maintained strict rules for the reentry into the party of those previous members who had lost their membership cards during the North Korean army’s

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retreat.10 Without doubt, his demotion counterbalanced the power in the party by providing Kim with more political weight. Moreover, Kim was able to achieve his objective of a mass party. From June 1950 to December 1952, some 450,000 members were newly recruited by the party. Given that the period witnessed an extraordinary number of human casualties, it is surprising that this massive recruitment effort yielded such an impressive total. And given the extraordinary number of new recruits, it should come as no surprise that the educational level of the new members was poor—indeed, half of these recruits were illiterate.11 At any rate, a generalized version of Kim Il Sung’s ideal of a mass party surfaced during the war, and a more refined version took root after the demotion of his rival, HÆ Ka-i. Kim’s assault against Communists of southern origin—who had no foreign supporter in the domestic political struggle—brought about a successful expansion of his power in the party. By attributing the failure of the war to the Communists of southern origin, Kim gradually, and successfully, phased out prominent figures of the Workers’ Party of South Korea. But the purge of HÆ, the head of the Soviet-Koreans, was a precious victory to Kim, because Kim could now look forward to the institutionalization of his own mass party. Institutionalization of the party committee Meanwhile, Kim Il Sung attempted to institutionalize the party organization in the military. Even before the war, there had existed a political organization in the armed forces, the so-called Cultural Bureau. In July 1950, a month after the war broke out, the Cultural Bureau was instructed to establish the Council of Party Members at the low level of military units. The bureau’s leadership intended to select and utilize the core party members of each unit for the swift implementation of military orders. Also, the bureau made a secret order that encouraged the bureau cadres at the level of combat units to recruit model soldiers into the party in order to stimulate morale during the war.12 However, it was Kim Il Sung’s concluding speech at the Political Committee meeting in October 1950 that generated momentum for the organizational shift in the military. Following his instructions, the Political Commission was established in the Defense Ministry, and a political division was installed in every unit. It is generally accepted that in the Leninist tradition, the military is led by the party, and it was in the war period that this tradition became established in North Korea.13


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It was only after the war that the party’s control over the military and workplaces was institutionalized. The institutionalization, publicly termed the “party’s guidance” in North Korea, was achieved by the establishment of a party committee in every party unit. This expression, “party’s guidance,” literally meant that a party unit, whether in the military or in the workplace, guides the overall direction of the affiliated organization’s operation. It is remarkable that the expression referred not to unilateral surveillance or supervision but to an active consultation and engagement with members of the organization.14 This method of guidance for the penetration into individuals occupying the lower social strata was implemented in the context of the “revolutionary mass line.” The party’s guidance needed an institutional mechanism, the party committee, as a nonstanding organization. The party committee emphasized a collective leadership in which not only party cadres or political officers but also managerial staff and top engineers at the production workplace or commanders in the military participated. For the purpose of collective leadership, the party committee was also required to include among its ranks enthusiastic model workers who had party membership. Despite the existence of the party committee in the previous period, Kim Il Sung, who was distressed by the war but politically successful because of it, set off on a new initiative to disseminate this institution throughout North Korean society, right after the Central Committee meeting held in March 1954. There were two reasons for his initiative. The first reason was the desire to avoid errors caused by managers’ monopolization of the decision-making function in factories and enterprises. Pointing out the problems arising from the rule-of-thumb estimates made by managers in production processes, the distribution of labor, and the design of work schedules, Kim Il Sung stressed the importance of collective efforts to correct routine mistakes. He was quoted as saying, “In the factories, mines, fisheries, and forests supervised by such managers, a finger-counting method still prevails in the production process. There are some cases in which [with the maldistribution of manpower] twenty workers cheer the completion of a certain task that took them four or five hours, a task that actually requires only one worker for one full day. Likewise, one hundred workers hurrah the completion of one task that took them one day, a task that can be finished by five to six workers in two or three days.”15 Owing to the seriousness of the war-torn economy and the persistence of labor shortages, the effective mobilization and exploitation of the labor force was one of the most significant tasks for the economic recovery, and to Kim, the

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party committee was a tool with which his leadership could avert managerial mistakes. The second reason was to clarify the party secretary’s responsibilities for daily production affairs through the institution of the party committee, where the manager and core staff would articulate constructive inputs in the decision-making process.16 After Kim Il Sung made on-spot guidance tours at Ch’Ængsan-ri Collective Farm and Daean Electrical Factory in 1960 and 1961, respectively, the institution of the party committee in workplaces spread widely. While emphasizing the importance of the revolutionary mass line, these workplaces became the model for the integration of party cadres, managerial officials, technicians, and workers through the party committee. The party’s guidance through the party committee was also applied to the Korean People’s Army. Special references were made to it in Kim Il Sung’s speech for the tenth anniversary of the KPA on February 8 and in his concluding speech at the Central Committee of the WPK on March 8, 1958.17 Not only the Defense Ministry but also every corps, division, and regiment came to have a party committee. As a result, commanders of the corps and divisions and political officers—who had participated in neither party meetings nor party-life criticism meetings—were now required to be present at the party committee meetings. The party committees in the military were designed for the incorporation of the commandership into the party’s organizational guidance and replaced the previously simple supervisory role of the party unit over the corresponding combat unit. But a significant reason for the introduction of the committee in the military during the late 1950s was to check the unleashed power of the Political Commission over the lower party units in the military, specifically Ch’oe Chong-hak’s personal influence. As head of the Political Commission, Ch’oe dominated the party organization in the KPA through a vertical line of instructions and reports, so that it appeared that the party in the military was partly independent from the WPK.18 Such a phenomenon was intolerable both to those who subscribed to the Leninist tradition of the party-military relationship and to Kim Il Sung himself. The institution of the party committee might have been the most effective solution to this problem, because the committee consisted of, from one end, political officers and, from the other, commanders and high-ranking military officers, all of whom could voice practical ideas, if not conflicting interests, within the boundaries of the central party’s policy guidelines. That is, the party committee blocked the concentration of hierarchical political power in the military by


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permitting vertical interactions, even if within a limited scope, between political officers and combat commanders. Kim Jong Il and Organizational Changes After assuming the position of party secretary in charge of organization and propaganda in 1973, Kim Jong Il prioritized the enhancing of organizational discipline, which he hoped would lead to organizational renovation and reinforced ideological indoctrination. Since 1974, organizational penetration into every aspect of society has become a tradition belonging to the WPK. As seen in a Nodong Sinmun article on August 5, 1974, instructions from the “party center”—meaning Kim Jong Il, at that time—had become guidelines for the organizational life of party members.19 Furthermore, the party committee, as a formal collective decision-making body, has functioned to integrate political and production affairs into workplaces. One of the most distinctive legacies passed down from Kim Il Sung might be the institutionalization of party committees, later strengthened by Kim Jong Il for various political considerations, especially for the leadership’s dissemination of his father’s ideas and for the deepening of the party’s social control. It is noteworthy that the task of strengthening the party’s organizational discipline came to be undertaken in the midst of the official establishment of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition in North Korean society. Since 1974, this tradition has been practiced faithfully and has constituted the most widespread work model in North Korea. The anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition has meant, especially in the workplace, that party cadres should patronize, as it were, the laypeople in order to stimulate their political awareness and to teach them revolutionary loyalty, while breaking old ritual and hierarchical norms. This newly emphasized work method was not so different from that of the Ch’Ængsan-ri Method, which originated from Kim Il Sung’s visit, in February 1960, to the collective farm located in KangsÆ County of South P’yÆngan Province. The Ch’Ængsan-ri Method is a work method that stresses the party cadres’ teaching of and learning from workers in the latter’s workplaces.20 But with the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, North Korean propaganda presented a more detailed scheme of the method. The Nodong Sinmun editorial on June 8, 1974, propagated the message that party cadres should practice the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition by working in a lower unit for “five days” and by preparing follow-up work at the office for “two days.” Another editorial, published on July 15, stated that there should be “no exception” to the

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practice of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, which was now interpreted as an instrument for the full implementation of Kim Il Sung’s instructions and the party’s guidance. Given that the guerrilla tradition was celebrated in the theater in terms of revolutionary musical operas by Kim Jong Il in the early 1970s, it makes sense that tradition became the model method that every workplace had to follow. Full-time party cadres The role of full-time party cadres became more important than ever before. A full-time party cadre is a professional career party bureaucrat who is appointed by either the headquarters in Pyongyang or provincial parties and who receives a salary from the party regardless of the organizational affiliation. Full-time party cadres are different from plain party members, who simply assist in party-related works and who carry out their occupational duties almost exclusively in their own workplace, which pays their salaries. The cadres are accountable to the headquarters, either of the central party or the provincial party, instead of to their workplace. (There is little reason to call the professional party cadres who work in the WPK headquarters full-time appointments. Their main job is obviously to deal with party affairs such as personnel, organization, propaganda, surveillance, and industrial policy. Therefore, in this context, the term full-time party cadres refers to career party bureaucrats who serve in local party units or in “nonparty workplaces”—the administrative, economic, and industrial sectors—where they act as a microcosm of the central party.) Whatever their affiliation may be, their full-time duties are confined to party affairs alone. Whatever their rank may be, full-time party cadres are involved in the organizing of party committee meetings and the disciplining of ordinary workers as well as of other regular and candidate party members in the workplace. In this respect, their status is very different from that of not only regular administrators, workers, and farmers but also of plain party members belonging to the same workplaces. Full-time party cadres existed even before Kim Jong Il’s political emergence. County party secretaries and elementary party secretaries were appointed only after careful investigation of their family backgrounds and career performances. These thorough investigations were necessary for the higher party organizations, because they were located at the nodal point from which the decisions made by top party leaders were transmitted to the real production levels of society— administrative units, collective farms, and state-owned enterprises and factories. While preserving this tradition of careful background exami-


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nations, Kim Jong Il reinforced the selection of all the full-time party cadres. Their family and ideological profiles were investigated by the Organization and Guidance Department and then reviewed by the Secretariat of the WPK.21 At any rate, the full-time party cadres became the core of the party unit, particularly in nonparty workplaces. They were loyal to the party and voiced their commitment to the official ideology of Chuch’e. They were disciplined and competent in comparison to old cadres. From the perspective of the authority structure of the partystate, the policy governing the hiring and managing of full-time party cadres brought about several tangible results. Above all, by fostering the formal role of party committees, the role of the cadres in these committees came to be central in the guiding and implementing of the central party’s policy line. Previously, there had existed frequent informalities characterizing the party secretary’s predominant influence over the workplace—informalities that were due to the status of party committees as nonstanding organizations. For instance, the party secretary had exercised arbitrary power over the managerial work of factories, despite formal divisions of labor between the party secretary and the manager. However, with the increasing participation of fulltime party cadres in the party affairs of workplaces since Kim Jong Il’s rise to power in the party, the formal role of the party committee as a collective body was also emphasized, although this did not give rise to a sensible change in the party’s prevalence of power over managerial offices. The full-time party cadres instigated a new trend in the organizational life of workers as well as of party members. In the old days, the weak party organization had encouraged flimsy distinctions between the roles of party cadres and those of administrative officials in the cabinet, commanders in the military, and managers in factories and enterprises. This situation had interfered with the party’s authority, particularly in disciplinary affairs. This was evident in the workplaces, where party-related tasks were assisted by managerial workers. Later, the implementation of the full-time party cadre policy created a clear distinction between party affairs and managerial affairs, and more importantly, party-life criticism meetings became a significant instrument for the disciplinary work in every workplace. Organizational renovation Kim Jong Il’s attempt to implement the full-time party cadre policy paralleled the organizational renovation in state apparatuses. The party

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unit belonging to the State Council (that is, the cabinet) underwent a change in mid-1974. Criticizing the ministers, vice-ministers, and highranking bureaucrats of the State Council for their neglect of disciplinary education, Kim gave the order that full-time party cadres who are sent from the central party should completely control the disciplinary training of the state bureaucrats. According to him, the State Council was not a production workplace but an institution centered on administrative work, so that the main job of the party unit residing there should concern not the guidance of policy issues but the supervision of high-ranking officials’ organizational life.22 This suggests that there was a special aspect of the party unit’s role in the State Council and, more generally, in state apparatuses. Beforehand, the major tasks of the party unit had been both the supervision of organizational affairs and the guided implementation of the central party’s policy principles in the institution to which the unit belonged.23 But Kim now placed greater emphasis on the party unit’s role in organizational affairs than on its role in policy issue guidance. At any rate, the party settled on strict disciplinary activity in the State Council. The disciplinary activity included weekly party-life criticism, Tuesday studies, Wednesday lectures, Friday work, Saturday studies, and two hours of daily study. Without doubt, the disciplinary activity has been conducted by the full-time party cadres. At the same time, Kim initiated the renovation of the party hierarchies corresponding to the administrative hierarchies of the State Council. In the past, a lower-level administration often had a party unit whose size and level paralleled the size and level of party units belonging to higher-level administrations. For instance, a committee or a ministry that had several bureaus retained an elementary party committee, whereas a bureau with a group of manual workers for dealing with resource materials had an elementary party committee of the same size. But now, the hierarchical inconsistency was corrected, and party units came to parallel administrative orders. Kim Jong Il’s adhesion to the party’s organizational renovation was tantamount to a life-and-death struggle, so he ordered the organization department of every party committee in the provinces, cities, and counties to initiate such organizational missions as party-life criticism and ideological education and to portray them as principal duties in the lives of party members. This measure had to be implemented “even if the heavens split open,” as Kim put it.24 Consequently, the organizational discipline of the party has indeed strengthened since the mid-1970s. The meetings for party-life criticism have become weekly events in every party cell. However, compared to the previous monthly


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practice, the new meeting is a burdensome responsibility for the bureaucrats and the workers who, having party membership, have been obliged to attend weekly party meetings.25 It is noteworthy that as the party’s disciplinary work has become the most significant element of party affairs, the power of the party’s full-time cadres has strengthened. This has also been true in the military, so that political officers have come to exercise more power than before. Kim Jong Il’s other initiative for the renovation of the party took place at the workplace level. Included in the composition of workplace-based party committees were model workers with party membership as well as full-time party cadres and managerial officials. This diversification of sorts was due to the belief that managerial officials should be aware of production processes and working conditions and should be trained for so-called revolutionizing and working-classization in the workplace. The movement of learning from model workers had started in the mid-1960s, but it has inspired renewed interest since the early 1970s. Because revolutionary fanaticism had apparently faded away in the wake of three decades of socialist consolidation, the party under Kim Jong Il’s influence called new attention to the brainwashing of high-ranking bureaucrats. This movement has required administrative officials to extol the virtues of the slogan “revolutionizing and working-classization” and to participate, either voluntarily or by force, in labor-intensive workplaces such as mines, steel mills, collective farms, and factories. The duration of an official’s residence at one of these camps ranges from one month to one year. And back in the workplace, model workers with party membership are now mobilized, as the full-time party cadres have been, to create a milieu of revolutionary fervor, especially targeting old party members. Innovations in the party in the early 1970s were aimed at an enhancement of organizational discipline and hierarchical principles that would revitalize socialist moral commitment among old party members and managerial officials. Party-Life Criticism as a Disciplinary Instrument In the preservation of North Korea’s existing party-state, party-life criticism has been the essential element. This regular organizational exercise has allowed the party to scrutinize its members’ every activity. As a practice, party-life criticism is not unique to North Korea but universal to all socialist systems. And yet, the practice in North Korea was distinctive in content and intensity. First, the content has included references not only to the socialist prioritization of public goods but

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also to the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition and anti-imperialism. At the end of the 1960s, the personality cult of Kim Il Sung became another significant part of the content. As a document, the “Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea” is the quintessential summary of this personality cult. When examining their own personal behavior and criticizing others’ wrongdoings and mistakes, all participants in party-life criticism should refer to these ten principles. The Nodong Sinmun editorial of February 18, 1974, noted that “the spirit of anti-Japanese guerrillas reveals that there is no right to die before the full completion of the Great Leader’s instructions,” so that it is clear that all activities related to party-life are founded on the personality cult of Kim Il Sung.26 Second, the organizational practice is intense in the sense that it starts with weekly meetings that follow strict rules. For instance, reports to higher units are mandatory, and violations of this rule result in severe penalties. The above distinctive features surfaced as Kim Jong Il began to amass power in the party in the early 1970s. The elementary party unit is a real front unit for the guidance of production, training, and education, as well as of the quarterly partylife criticism itself.27 An elementary party unit may be established in the administrative unit ri (subunit of the county), or battalion in the military, or a sizable state-owned enterprise that consists of more than thirty-one party members. A cautionary note should be sounded at the outset. Although the defense and foreign ministries occupy the same ministerial level, the party unit of the one is different from that of the other, both in size and in organizational structure. Above all, the military has more party members than does the diplomatic apparatus. All military officers are party members, since they are the elite in North Korean society in terms of their family background and social achievement. Also, a significant percentage of soldiers are either party members or candidates for membership. Furthermore, the Defense Ministry has its own party organization, the Political Commission, which has various departments and functions quite similar to the center of the WPK. While the daily affairs of the Political Commission receive their instructions from the Organization and Guidance Department of the WPK, the former deals with corresponding party works in the military: appointments, ideological education, party-life criticism, and so on. In North Korea, only a few institutions—the Defense Ministry, the Railroads Ministry, and the People’s Safety Ministry—feature political commissions, whereas other institutions and workplaces have no political commission system and, instead, host dispatched full-time party cadres. In any event, just as the party operates in relation to the political system as a whole, so the Political Commission


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operates in relation to the military as a whole. Likewise, just as the full-time party cadres operate in relation to administrative units and workplaces in society, so the political officers operate in relation to the administrative and combat units in the military. The case of the External Affairs Bureau of the Defense Ministry Every military-unit level—in the army, that means from the corps, infantry division, regiment, and battalion to the company—has a corresponding party unit. For example, a battalion has an elementary party unit, whereas a company has a party cell, the lowest and smallest party organization. The Political Commission of the Defense Ministry controls various levels of party units, and in turn, party units are in charge of the practical management of their corresponding party committees, a nonstanding formal organization for collective leadership. In the headquarters of the Defense Ministry, there are several bureaus, each of which has an elementary party unit. Each bureau with officers and soldiers working for administrative affairs contains an elementary party unit—the same level that affiliates with a combat battalion. Having no other command and administrative functions, the secretary and the deputy secretaries of each elementary party unit are political officers specializing solely in party affairs. In the External Affairs Bureau in the Defense Ministry, the elementary party unit consists of an elementary party secretary (colonel, political officer) and two deputy secretaries in charge of organization and propaganda, respectively (lieutenant colonel, political officers). With these political officers as core members, altogether thirteen members compose an elementary party committee. This means that in the elementary party committee, there are, in addition to political officers, commanding officers—the bureau commander (brigadier general), two deputy commanders of the bureau, and seven department chiefs (colonels). The elementary party committee is a formal organization that discusses all the administrative works related to the military’s overall external affairs and that superintends disciplinary affairs in the bureau itself. Because the elementary party committee cannot be frequently summoned, the elementary party executive committee deals with personnel matters and disciplinary punishment. The elementary party executive committee, whose operations are an abbreviated form of the operations typical of the elementary party committee, deals with issues requiring informality, secrecy, and concentration. In the case of the External Affairs Bureau, the elementary party executive committee includes the elementary party secretary, two deputy secretaries, a

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bureau commander, two deputy commanders of the bureau, and a few core department chiefs. There are three types of party-life criticism in the military in general: every other day, weekly, and quarterly types. (The yearly meeting is simply the fourth quarterly meeting.) The every other day party-life criticism is applied to the art-related party members—those belonging to military band units and to propaganda and agitation units—and is meant to prevent these units from being contaminated by ideological liberalism.28 The weekly party-life criticism is a feature of every party cell and is meant to promote the political education of party members at the company level. The quarterly party-life criticism takes place at the elementary party unit, and is associated with the combat battalion level. Let us examine the party-life criticism in the External Affairs Bureau that deals with military exchanges with other socialist countries.29 Party members of each department of the bureau compose a party cell that is usually led by the cell secretary, a position that is concurrently occupied by the deputy chief of a department in the bureau. This means that the secretary of the party cell is not a political officer. At the party cell’s weekly party-life criticism, each member should engage in self-criticism for a few minutes and is required to encourage mutual criticism among, and of, others. The party-life criticism takes place on Saturday mornings for less than twenty minutes. In proceeding with the self-criticism, each participant is expected to quote the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea and to criticize his or her own errors in front of others. The meeting ends with the cell secretary’s concluding remarks concerning these matters. From time to time, members of the elementary party’s executive committee come down to the party cell’s weekly criticism in order to supervise and guide it. Sometimes, political officers sent from the Political Commission of the Defense Ministry attend the weekly criticism meeting to scrutinize participants’ attitudes toward the criticism and to compile a report for the commission. The quarterly party-life criticism takes place in the general assembly of the elementary party committee at the External Affairs Bureau level. This quarterly criticism meeting is a formally arranged and carefully previewed event, in which seven or eight political officers prepare and read scripts concerning self-criticism and mutual criticism with others in advance. The elementary party secretary, as a political officer, prepares the procedure two weeks before the meeting. The party secretary reads all the documents and makes corrections; furthermore, he or she sometimes summons, well in


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advance of the quarterly criticism meeting, the elementary party executive committee for a discussion about the agenda and procedures. The quarterly party-life criticism takes three or four hours and is normally held on Sunday. The quarterly party-life criticism starts with the selection of a presiding committee for the meeting itself. The presiding committee is a temporary body that is different from the elementary party’s executive committee. The presiding committee consists of the party secretary, deputy party secretaries, the commander of the bureau, and an outside observer. The outside members are usually political officers of the Political Commission. For instance, in the quarterly party-life criticism, either the director (lieutenant general) or the assistant director (major general) of the Organization Department of the Political Commission in the Defense Ministry participates as an outside observer. After the selection of the presiding committee, the party-life criticism begins with the reading of both the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea and the party secretary’s report. The main content of the report consists of errors and problems regarding the party members themselves and the management of the party organization in the past quarter. In principle, officers are the main object of self-criticism and mutual criticism, but sometimes soldiers who have committed serious errors are involved. The officers or soldiers who engage in self-criticism do not have the right to criticize others, a procedure that differentiates the quarterly meeting from the weekly meeting. The elementary party secretary punishes offenders by handing out disciplinary penalties such as cautions, warnings, serious warnings, and expulsions from the party, depending on the severity of the error. Those who suffer disciplinary penalties or expulsion from the party may lose a chance at promotion and upward mobility and forfeit the privilege of business travel abroad. In the Defense Ministry, the political officers rarely engage in self-criticism in front of soldiers. At the corps and infantry division levels, the political department—that is, the party unit—has enough political officers in number to compose cells and an elementary party unit where they hold their own party-life criticism meetings. The political officers working at the regiment and battalion levels practice their party-life criticism at the elementary party committee meetings instead of at the regular party-life criticism meetings, which both officers and soldiers attend. This shows that the status of political officers is privileged and that their party-related responsibilities in the military are considered prestigious.

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The case of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs In the case of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, party organization is under the supervision of the central party but belongs to the party organization of an administrative unit, that is, the party committee of the Central District in Pyongyang. The party organization of the ministry, in size, is an elementary party unit, which does not have the function of party membership registration that both the district party unit and the county party unit have. In other words, the party organization of the Foreign Ministry is a lower party unit than either the district party in major cities or the county party. Following Kim Jong Il’s instructions that the central party should dispatch full-time party cadres to the party units above the elementary party level of the state apparatuses, the party unit in the Foreign Ministry has maintained one party secretary and at least two deputy party secretaries in charge of organization and propaganda affairs. In addition, the Foreign Ministry party unit has four or five low-ranking full-time party cadres in the organization and propaganda departments. The executive elementary party committee consists of the party secretary, two deputy party secretaries, the foreign minister, the first vice-minister, a few viceministers, a few core bureau directors, the head of the ministry unit of the Socialist Youth League (now the Kim Il Sung Youth League), and the head of the ministry unit of the Trade Union. The elementary party committee—which is more formal than the executive committee but nonstanding in its status—includes, in addition to members of the executive committee, other vice-ministers and bureau directors who are not members of the executive committee. Under the elementary party unit, there are several party cells, each of which is a party unit of each bureau of the ministry. The secretary of the party cell is selected from the bureau’s deputy directors and some core department chiefs, who are not full-time party cadres but career diplomats. The major task of the ministry’s party unit is to guide the partylife criticism meetings and to control the organizational activities of the diplomats and other employees, most of whom are party members owing to their privileged family background. As in the Defense Ministry, the party-life criticism meetings in the Foreign Ministry occur weekly, monthly, and quarterly (with the yearly concluding meeting replacing the fourth quarterly meeting). In the case of the Foreign Ministry, the weekly criticism meeting takes place on the first hour of the Monday workday. It begins with quotations from Kim Il Sung’s and Kim Jong Il’s instructions and then moves on to participants’ selfcriticism, which reflects on past organizational errors and personal


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mistakes and analyzes ideological deficiencies. The meeting concludes with resolutions. Because the meeting occurs at the bureau level, the mutual criticism among the bureau members, in reality, is not so serious, even though it is formally required. In contrast, the quarterly party-life criticism meeting, which occurs at the ministry’s elementary party level, generates a very strict and gloomy mood, according to HyÆn SÆng-il, a former North Korean diplomat who later found asylum in South Korea.30 The party secretary orchestrates the meeting by ordering cell party secretaries to scrutinize the scripted self-criticism and mutual criticism concerning violations of organizational norms and rules. Also, the party secretary treats harshly the accidents reported from other agencies, such as the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM) and the State Security Agency (SSA). At the self-criticism and mutual criticism sessions, participants and designated discussants are expected to point out faults and errors by following the principle that “Sharpness is a virtue, whereas mercy is a vice.” It is said that the latter principle is based on Kim Jong Il’s own remarks, as noted in the WPK’s theoretical journal, Ku˘lloja, in April 1974: “Party cadres should establish a strict tradition of criticism of organizational life, as the ‘party center’ [apparently meaning Kim Jong Il] presented, and should correct their wrongdoing and mistakes not in a peaceful atmosphere but through sharp mutual criticism and selfcriticism.”31 Because of the seriousness of the criticism, it is said that the quarterly party-life criticism meeting at the elementary party level often takes more than a day.32 The examples of the two ministries show that the central party’s control over state apparatuses—namely, the party’s guidance—operates not simply through a supervised implementation of the party’s guidelines but by permeating every unit and every rank. By leading party-life criticism, full-time party cadres incorporate officers, soldiers, diplomats, and other state employees into the party’s organizational leadership. This process differs from that of the 1960s, when leeway in party-life criticism was granted to high-ranking officials such as ministers, vice-ministers, commanders, division chiefs, and so on. The Declining Efficiency of the Party In the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, the party won discipline owing to organizational and disciplinary renovations. This achievement was well depicted in an article in Ku˘lloja in May 1985 entitled “Discipline Is the Life of the Party,” which states that “[t]he legitimacy and life of the ideological theory and policies of our

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party are already completely proved by the revolutionary practices of the 1970s and 1980s.” But it is an exaggeration to say that the strengthening of discipline has guaranteed the efficient operation of the socialist system. Discipline is not the same as efficiency. The emphasis on discipline has increased the degree of rigidness characterizing the interactions between party cadres and bureaucrats or workers. The discipline has fostered an atmosphere in which ritual phrases of the Chuch’e idea are aired in the auditorium during party-life criticism meetings. It is a difficult task to identify the degree to which party members have internalized the outward manifestations of discipline and have accepted as true the Chuch’e idea. No doubt the public and private suppression of both free speech and personal preferences have contributed to the disguising of people’s genuine wishes and inclinations. “Preference falsification”—to use Timur Kuran’s term—has probably prevailed.33 There is some evidence of the inefficient operation of disciplined party organizations in workplaces, and some of this evidence predates the plunge of party morale during the famine in the 1990s. A limitation revealed itself, for instance, with regard to the party committee’s formal role as a collective decision-making body charged with overseeing efficient administration and production as well as with leading party-life criticism meetings. The party committee meetings became huge ceremonial occasions that eventually combined full-time party cadres and top managerial officials with model party-member workers and leaders of the Socialist Youth League and the Trade Union. Because the daily affairs and party-life works were prepared by the full-time cadres, the collective body actually was nothing but a rubberstamp organization following the texts that they had been furnished with. This was faciliated by the fact that the party committee is a nonstanding body. Therefore, the role of the collective body became— and continues to be—a mere formality. The institution of the party committee blurred the rights and the duties of party cadres with those of administrative or managerial officials. On the one hand, the party leaders exercised maximum power in an informal way as well as at the formal meetings of party committees and executive party committees.34 In addition to supervising the implementation of the central party’s policy guidelines, the party leaders engaged in every single process and personal affair in the workplace. Through this informal mechanism, they subjugated the administrative and managerial officials who were officially responsible for the operation of state apparatuses, enterprises, and factories. That is, because party cadres could informally exercise their power in


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an organization, they often escaped the formal responsibilities of guiding and facilitating administrative and production affairs.35 On the other hand, administrative and managerial officials who were deprived of their role and power by party leaders came to surrender their formal rights and duties in the administrative and managerial processes. The less power they had in the party committees’ formal meetings, the more they were reluctant to present creative and adventurous ideas.36 For the officials, it was safe to repeatedly refer to the ideological doctrine, the Chuch’e idea. To adhere to its precepts signified loyalty to the party and to the existing system, even if neither was innovative or creative. In this way, both party cadres and administrative or managerial officials indeed conflated their rights and duties and, furthermore, attempted to avoid responsibility for a negative result, such as a failure to fulfill a production quota or an administrative duty. In this unclear system of responsibilities, the collective leadership of the party committee apparently yielded to moral hazard. Proof of the party organization’s inefficient operation has flowed from the work-team movement of the Three Great Revolutions, which was launched in the areas of thought, technology, and culture in 1974.37 The primary task of the work-team movement was to use organizational strength in order to enhance the personality cult of Kim Il Sung and to disseminate his ideas throughout the country. But, another important task was to eliminate the bureaucratic pathology plaguing the party. The launch of the work-team movement of the Three Great Revolutions immediately followed Kim Jong Il’s attempt to renovate party organization and to advance discipline. It seems that the embarkation of the work-team movement was a repercussion of various bureaucratic pathologies. The first was the structural problem of funneling effect, which means that central party’s intentions were filtered out in the form of instructions at the various levels of the party hierarchy and that, at the party’s lower levels, the implementation of these instructions resembled only slightly the original intentions. This pathology was not unique to North Korea but is a normal problem afflicting bureaucracies in general. Nevertheless, in North Korea, the bureaucratism, formalism, empiricism, and prudentialism of old party cadres were harshly criticized by the work teams of the Three Great Revolutions. The second bureaucratic pathology was the behavioral problem of bureaucratic deviance. Bureaucratic deviance has typically appeared as corruption, such as bribes and embezzlement. The third bureaucratic pathology, and the most important was the competency trap. As March and Olsen have noted, an institution that falls prey to the

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competency trap tends to follow the path to which it has become accustomed, even though a more efficient and effective path might be available.38 In their strict disciplinary atmosphere, North Korean bureaucrats have tended to be risk averse, passive, and inactive, following a concealed behavior rule, according to which “The Leftist error is safer than the rightist one.”39 Any person who commits a rightist error would likely be stigmatized as an opportunist, a traitor, a bourgeois element, and a defeatist, whereas a person who commits a leftist error would survive in a political sense.40 The central party and Kim Jong Il recognized these pathological problems, and immediately thereafter, the work teams began their surveillance of party cadres and state officials. The work teams were composed of young college graduates, college students, and party cadres and received their instructions chiefly from the Department of the Work Teams of the Three Great Revolutions, which was part of the WPK. In this respect, the work teams’ cure for bureaucratic pathology may fall into the “external remedial” category, as Harry Harding puts it.41 Just as their nicknames—“royal guards” and “commandos” of the party—indicate, the work teams resided in every workplace so as to send review reports to party headquarters through a separate reporting channel. The reports included assessments on both the wrongdoings and the accomplishments of party cadres. The party cadres were responsible for basic social control, and the work-team movement was a layer of the control mechanism for the targeted supervision of the party organization. The fact that the multilayered control mechanism was necessary for Kim Jong Il and the WPK in the 1970s indicates that even the most rigorous party discipline could not improve the overall efficiency of the operation of the party-state. The reach of the work teams’ power peaked in the second half of the 1970s. In a sense, their power came to exceed that of party cadres. After all, Kim Jong Il ordered workteam members to update him on their findings so that he could check the extent to which the party’s guidelines had penetrated the lower social strata.42 Notably, the control capacity of the work teams has significantly declined since the second half of the 1980s. Even though bureaucratic deviance grew so severe that it derailed the normal operations of the official economy, there is no evidence that the Three Great Revolutions’ work-team movement responded to the problem effectively. In fact, members of the work teams themselves were selfinterestedly participating in corrupt practices, frequently colluding with party cadres and ignoring strict moral codes of conduct. This phenomenon stands in stark contrast with the original intentions underlying


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the establishment of work teams. As a consequence, the party abolished the work teams in the mid-1990s, and this can be verified by the fact that the official propaganda has not mentioned the activities of the work teams since 1996. Kim Jong Il himself acknowledged publicly the problem of discipline per se in 1984, that is, a decade after he had launched the organizational renovation of the party. In a letter sent to cadres of the central party, Kim severely criticized bureaucrats of the State Council for cringing before higher officials and for seeking personal favors from the upper ranks. He noted that “this improper behavior comes from sectarianism that should be attributed to the lack of correct organizational viewpoints.”43 According to him, if the organizational principle were established in the State Council, bureaucrats should respond by following the principle but not by subordinating themselves to superiors. At any rate, from the assessment made by Kim himself, it seems that the original objective of the organizational discipline was not so satisfactory. Dual Implications Owing to strict party-life criticism meetings led by full-time party cadres, the party established a disciplinary tradition of unprecedented strength in the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. The failure of the first attempt to realize inter-Korean reconciliation in the early 1970s contributed to the consolidation of monolithic authority structures in both the North and the South. In North Korea, confrontations with and hostility toward the South encouraged the evolution of a unique party-state whereby Kim Il Sung and his Chuch’e idea were extolled. In this political situation, the party committee under Kim Jong Il’s rule was the most useful institutional mechanism for the idolization of Kim and the expansion of his power in party affairs. However, the disciplinary tradition was not accompanied by efficiency in the party-state’s general operations. Despite the enhanced organizational discipline created by party-life criticism meetings, the party was unable to play a guiding role in the improvement of administrative efficiency. Furthermore, despite the widespread appearance in the party organ Nodong Sinmun and in Ku˘lloja during the 1970s and the 1980s of intense propaganda campaigns and blunt slogans extolling the virtues of increased economic productivity, there is little evidence that the party and its corresponding institution, the party committee, successfully generated decisions and efforts that boosted productivity.44

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Afflicted by bureaucratic pathology, the party cadres moved in ways that the higher-ranking leaders had not originally intended. Responding to the strict discipline that permeated every facet of their occupations, the party cadres tended to calculate how long a new policy would survive and whether any risk-taking would be involved, particularly in terms of ideological commitment and loyalty to the system and to the leader Kim Jong Il. Instead of proposing a new and innovative idea, they frequently looked for a safe path; that is, they towed the socialist line in public, even though, in practice, they refrained from a total commitment to socialist legal provisions. Party cadres ritually mumbled the mottos, maxims, and slogans of the official ideology of Chuch’e. These behavior patterns disguised their actual view of the world. However, during the famine and its aftermath in the 1990s, both the general public and party cadres came to reveal their genuine views, which were individualistic and self-interested. But it is noteworthy that the strict, even if inefficient, organizational discipline protected the system during the national crisis between 1994 and 1998. Right after the death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994, there arose skepticism about the systemic viability of North Korea as a whole. With the founding father’s death, many analysts, especially Western observers, predicted that the system was doomed. A severe famine in the following years strengthened this belief in the unlikelihood of North Korea’s survival. It is true that North Korea suffered some of its most severe hardships in the mid-1990s, just as it declared the “Arduous March” for the integration of society. The discontinuation of food distribution contributed to the decline of the party’s legitimacy. The party began to lose the authority not only to force the people to commit to their formally assigned works but also to block profit-seeking activities, which meant the difference between life and death for the average people. But as mentioned, the famine did not result in a drastic breakdown of the WPK; with Kim Jong Il’s energetic efforts, the central party had been able to reinforce its organizational penetration into every corner of society. Despite the erosion of socialist morale in the WPK during this time of crisis, the institutionalized reporting channels of the party hierarchy contributed to the maintenance of its surveillance capacity.

4

Military-First Politics and Changes in Party-Military Relations One of the most distinctive internal differentiation processes that have been occurring in the political subsystem, the party-state, may be the “military-first politics.” The military-first politics purports that the Korean People’s Army is to be the state’s leading institution—it is to be placed at the forefront of all other party-state apparatuses. The military-first politics also maintains that the armed forces preserve the nation’s highest spirit and morale by maintaining the political subsystem, in particular, and the entire North Korean system, in general. However it is framed, the military-first politics indicates the military’s relative institutional autonomy from the party and the institutional differentiation between the party and the military. Also, the militaryfirst politics has brought about a significant change in one of the reference points of systemic identity: the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. As Wada Haruki has aptly noted, the military-first politics has replaced the morale and spirit of the guerrilla—whose armed resistance in Manchuria was symbolically venerated at the theater of revolutionary musical operas—with those of the regular army, the KPA.1 In light of the serious decline that has affected the efficiency of the party’s guidance over society, the notion of the military-first politics attracts special attention both within and outside North Korea. The military has remained in perfect order, even during the national crisis that was caused by the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994 and the famine from 1996 through 1998. This reality might constitute a model of loyalty for North Koreans. Accordingly, propaganda machines of the party have actively disseminated messages exalting military 81

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discipline and military morale since about 1995. The image of the military’s leading status in the post-Kim Il Sung era is such that scholars in the field need to extract from it the implicit meanings corresponding to the operation of the political system: that is, whether any significant change has occurred in the authority structure centered on the party-military relation. Because Kim Jong Il seems to exercise monolithic power continuously, it is not reasonable to assert that the military prevails in the political arena. Military power neither dominates the Workers’ Party of Korea nor replaces the latter’s unique role in societal surveillance at the lower levels. As previously mentioned, the party has maintained the capacity of social control, to a certain extent, and did so even during the period of severe starvation. But it is obvious that Kim Jong Il has not simply relied on the armed forces for the purposes of defense and national security but also expanded the roles played by the armed forces in the enhancement of the system’s viability as a whole, as Dae-Sook Suh has pointed out.2 Kim has strengthened the diverse images and functions of the KPA for both domestic and external purposes. Especially during the famine, the military visibly contributed to the national economy, including the construction of power plants and the managing of collective farms. It is interesting to note that North Korea seems to deliberately, but cautiously, use the military-first politics to create an image of the military as a hard-liner; and North Korea uses this image to strengthen its hand at negotiation talks concerning nuclear weapons development.3 For instance, at the third Six-Party Talks, a North Korean representative mentioned on June 24, 2004, that a “certain sector” of the society wanted to produce nuclear weapons and conduct a nuclear test, a statement suggesting to other participants that negotiations with Pyongyang would not be an easy task.4 Without doubt, the North Korean representative intended to deliver a message that the certain sector in question was the military and that the latter never strays from its uncompromising stance on nuclear weapons development. Whatever the military’s status in North Korean domestic politics may be, this diplomatic statement might have originated from Kim Jong Il’s desire to obtain additional concessions from the United States by transmitting his intention to continue the weapons development. In connection to North Korea’s military-first politics, it is necessary to delve into not only its institutional backgrounds but also its implications for the mode of reproduction pertaining to the systemwide identity and especially to the characteristic traits of party-military relations. Accordingly, this chapter will account for how party-military

Military-First Politics and Changes in Party-Military Relations

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relations have functioned in the clandestine society and what kinds of changes the military-first politics has brought about in an institutional sense. Power Dynamics and Party-Military Relations The military’s relative autonomy, 1945–57 At the stage of state-building, North Korea did not host a close institutional interconnectedness between the party and the military, a situation that contrasted with the Chinese and the Vietnamese cases. The Communist parties in these countries took over their own countries only after severe resistance—against Japanese imperial forces and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army in the Chinese case, and against French, American, and South Vietnamese forces in the Vietnamese case. During these Communist forces’ struggle to take control, the ideal of the party for an egalitarian society was compatible with a military strategy for defeating enemies. The party had to pursue two objectives: to expel the enemy and to establish an egalitarian society. Consequently, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 was both a military conquest of the entire mainland and a series of party-imposed nationwide land reforms. Likewise, the Vietnamese socialist unification in 1975 represented a victory of its unique military strategy and triumphantly paved a way for the Communist Party’s socialist transformation of the South. Owing to the interconnectedness of the two organizations’ goals, the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist parties’ networks penetrated into their respective armed forces, whether they were regular or guerrilla units, and neatly interwove with military organizations. It is noteworthy that in these countries, the leading forces supportive of nation-state building were those groups that exhibited relative cohesiveness and integrity in their ideological orientation and social background. In contrast, the independence of Korea from Japan and the two state-building projects in the divided Korea stemmed not from any political group that could lay claim to a decisive military victory but from the U.S.-led Allied Forces that defeated Japan. In the North, Kim Il Sung with his guerrilla comrades conducted anti-Japanese resistance in Manchuria, but they were not a political force possessing military influence that was sufficiently vital to dominate the political scene. In fact, North Korea’s state-building was completed by an alliance among various factions that represented diverse social backgrounds.5 Even though Kim’s Soviet-sponsored Manchurian guerrillas

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gained the upper hand in the party, the diversity in the composition of the party constrained, or delayed, Kim’s power concentration in the party, a situation that in turn limited Kim’s overall exercise of power in the political scene, including the military. In this regard, it is correct to say that the party’s control over the military as an institution was restricted in the period ranging from independence to the Korean War, that is, from August 1945 to June 1950.6 The party and the military developed their own approaches. The degree of institutional interconnectedness between the party and the military paralleled the degree of the Kim Il Sung faction’s power in the party. In other words, the party’s incorporation of the military, whatever the means and methods might have been, was linked to Kim’s control in the political arena. The war, by generating important momentum, provided Kim Il Sung and the Manchurian partisans with a chance to wield greater power in the party, as well as in the military. In the party, the domestic faction, centered on Pak HÆn-yÆng, was almost in a state of collapse, and the Soviet faction, led by HÆ Ka-i, was so weakened that Kim Il Sung had no prominent figure with whom to contend. More importantly, after Kim gained more power in the party, his followers and he initiated the establishment of party organizations in the military. The politicization of the military and the militarization of the party were common in Vietnam and China during their armed struggles, and the same process took hold in North Korea during the first year of the Korean War. In October 1950 Kim, at a Political Committee meeting, delivered a concluding speech about how to conduct party work in the military.7 Following Kim’s instruction, the Political Commission was established in the KPA, and a political division was installed in every army unit for party-based operations. These political units in the military became the leading organizations especially for political education that would generate a single-minded spirit, discipline, and morale among the soldiers, who were discouraged and in retreat because of the horrific and indiscriminate air bombings conducted by the United States Air Force. However, what should be noted is that as Kim’s power was somewhat constrained by other factions during the war and the postwar period in the 1950s, the party-military institutional connection had a limitation. The war was a total war in the sense that not only Kim’s partisan associates but also Soviet-Koreans, Yanan veterans, and even indigenous Communists conducted military operations in different fields. The Soviet-Koreans in the cabinet focused on logistics and staff affairs, Yanan veterans took part in the battlefields, and the


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domestic faction before the purge concentrated on the guerrilla warfare in the South.8 Inasmuch as the role was divided, the power was dispersed, to some extent, among the factions, even though Kim Il Sung maintained a privileged status. There is no real evidence that the institutional interconnectedness between the party and the KPA during the war had reached the level it did from the late 1950s to the years following Kim Jong Il’s grasp of party power in 1973. It was not until the August Incident in 1956 that factional strife provided Kim Il Sung with sufficient momentum for a major victory over the Yanan faction and the Soviet-Koreans. The incident began with the latter’s somewhat organized challenge to Kim Il Sung’s concentration of power and his industrial policy favoring only heavy industries. In the party, Kim led a counterattack and purged prominent leaders of the factions on the charge of “antiparty and antirevolution agitations.” The purged leaders were Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik, Yun Kong-h„m, SÆ Hwi, Yi P’il-gyu, and Kim Tu-bong of the Yanan faction and Pak Ch’ang-ok of the Soviet-Koreans. The purge in the party was followed by another round of purges that centered on the military. They targeted those generals who had had any kind of connection with the Yanan leaders. The head of the Political Commission in the Defense Ministry, Ch’oe Chong-hak, was removed in 1958 on charges that he had been expanding his political influence in the military. Also, a divisional commander, Chang P’yÆngsan, was eliminated on charges of plotting a coup d’état for the August Incident. Two generals from the War College, Kim Il-ch’Æng and Kim Il-gyu, were purged for having challenged the thesis that the KPA was an army of the party that had inherited Kim Il Sung’s glorious guerilla tradition. Related to this incident, the commandant of the War College, Pang Ho-san, and Vice Defense Minister Kim Ung were also removed from their positions.9 In retrospect, the purges of party leaders and army generals were proof that despite Kim’s gradual acquisition of power, an institutional penetration of the party into military units had yet to materialize. That is, for four to five years after the end of the war, the evolution of party power in the military was separate, to some extent, from the evolution of the WPK headquarters. The institutionalization of party-military relations, 1958–74 To Kim Il Sung, the installation of the party committee in the military was the first solution to the lack of a connection between the WPK and the party organization of the KPA. In March 1958, owing to Kim’s

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instructions for the establishment of party committees at all levels in the KPA (from headquarters to corps, division, regiment, battalion, and company levels), not only political officers but also commanders came to join the collective leadership under the principle of the socalled party’s guidance, and these interactions created both vertical and horizontal checks, as well as opportunities for the party to report on and to guide the military.10 As a result, the power of both the Political Commission of the KPA and the commission’s hierarchy in the field army units came to be leashed to a complex network centered around the party committees. The second solution was the establishment of the Military Committee in the WPK’s Central Committee, following the decision made by the fifth plenary session of the Fourth CC in 1962. The Military Committee, which developed into the Central Military Committee in 1982,11 was the organization in the party that supervised and guided overall military affairs. Kim Il Sung, with this organization, now achieved his goal—the party’s incorporation of the military—at least in an institutional sense. The party organizations came to be embodied in the military, and a military-related organization was installed in the WPK. The party’s institutionalized incorporation of the military was further concretized in 1969 by the introduction of the body of political commissars. Given the fact that political commissars were introduced right after the surge in militarism and the 1968 purge, it appears that this body was a response to these political events: namely, the military’s defiance relative to the party. This situation merits some explanation. In the midst of the confrontation between the North and the South, two North Korean militant leaders—Kim Ch’ang-bong, the defense minister, and HÆ Pong-hak, former head of the Political Commission in the KPA and then the director of the Department of South Korean Affairs in the WPK—gained a great deal of power and led a series of armed infiltrations targeting the presidential residence of the Blue House (in Seoul) and the Ulchin and Samch’Æk areas (on the east coast of the Korean peninsula). These operations were severely criticized as “military adventurism” by Kim Il Sung, and the two military leaders disappeared from the political scene in 1969. It is apparent that this purge, the political demise of Kim and HÆ, was closely related to party-military relations. The rise and fall of Kim Ch’ang-bong and his associates is comparable to the case of the former Soviet defense minister Marshal Georgi Zhukov. Zhukov saved Nikita Khrushchev from the carefully calibrated plan that Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich developed to oust Khrushchev in June 1957. Khrushchev, in danger, had Zhukov arrest the conspirators on charges that


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they had entered into an antiparty group. But in October of the same year, Zhukov was purged on the basis of several accusations, including that he had cultivated a personality cult in the army, that he exercised unlimited power comparable to Bonapartism, and that he had established a central school for special forces without acquiring CC approval. The Russian military expert Brian D. Taylor has noted that Zhukov’s purge was inspired by his commitment to his profession and, consequently, his neglect of party or political work in the military.12 Likewise, Kim Ch’ang-bong and HÆ Pong-hak supported Kim Il Sung’s military power until they were purged, at which point they had to face charges similar to those that toppled Zhukov. It is said that Kim Il Sung denounced the armed infiltration into the South at the Party Committee of the KPA, which was held from January 6 to 14, 1969. Kim and HÆ specifically were denounced by Kim Il Sung for their attempt to alienate the party from the military while instigating a military clique and antiparty heroism. In addition, they were charged with building—in defiance of the party’s four military guidelines— special forces numbering some two hundred thousand for infiltration operations into the South.13 Both the Soviet case and the North Korean case hinged, then, on the clash between military professionalism and the party’s engagement in the military. After the purge of Kim and HÆ, political commissars were nominated at the corps, division, and regiment levels, and political guiding officers were appointed at the battalion and company levels. The role of the political commissars was significant, because they were authorized to cosign on all military documents and thus came to share official military power with the commanders.14 It is noteworthy that afterward some high-ranking party officials, who had risen to these ranks through professional party careers, received appointments to political commissar positions and to political organizations in the military and later returned to WPK organizations. Of the many such officials, Kim SÆng-gap, Yi Tong-ch’un, and Yi Pong-wÆn exemplified the interorganizational appointment. Kim SÆnggap rose to the position of second party secretary of Pyongyang in 1969 because he was a younger brother of Kim SÆng-ae, Kim Il Sung’s second wife. He was appointed to be political commissar of Navy Command Headquarters in 1974 and later was appointed to be deputy director of the People’s Committee of South Hwanghae Province. Yi Tong-ch’un, formerly secretary of the North HamgyÆng Province Party, became political commissar of the Second Corps of the KPA in 1972. He went on to be secretary of Chagang Province Party and finally political commissar of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s bodyguard

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division. Similarly, Yi Pong-wÆn, who had learned from his experience as secretary of South Hwanghae Province Party and as a CC member of the WPK since 1974, was named deputy director of the Organization and Guidance Department of the WPK in 1980, and then he became the Political Commission’s deputy head in charge of organizational affairs in the KPA in 1986. After a decade of service in the military, he was transferred in 1997 to the position of chairman of the Inspection Committee in the WPK.15 The opposite has occurred, too. Some experienced professional political officers in the military transferred to the Organization and Guidance Department of the WPK. These transfers facilitated party affairs in the military, owing to the officers’ familiarity with military procedures and practices. In this way, the interorganizational appointments supported the realization of greater party control over the army. The complete incorporation of the military by the WPK, in terms of both institutional structures and personnel affairs, was followed by the emergence of the so-called guerrilla state, to use Wada Haruki’s term.16 Since 1974, North Korean propaganda has chanted the slogan of “the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Style in Production, Learning, and Life.” This rhetorical emphasis has reflected a shift in the party’s constellation of power. That is, after the military adventurism and the resulting purge at the end of the 1960s, core members of the Manchurian group— particularly Kim Il Sung’s close associates who had belonged to the First Route Army of the anti-Japanese resistance forces in the part of southern Manchuria bordering the Tumen River—declared a complete victory at the Fifth Congress of the WPK in November 1970.17 Kim and his Manchurian faction now came to reassert that the North Korean system originated from the “revolutionary” tradition of anti-Japanese guerrillas led by Kim himself. In this context, Kim Jong Il rose as the de facto successor to his father, not only with the Manchurian partisan leaders’ support but also with the widespread support generated by the junior Kim’s effective direction of several revolutionary operas that triggered powerful memories in the aging leaders. Three events coincided with one another in the late 1960s and the early 1970s: the completion of the party’s incorporation of the military, the consolidation of the core Manchurian faction’s power in the party, and the launch of a unique version of a militarist work ethic, characterized by the chant “Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Style.” (In this respect, it was natural that in 1978, North Korea changed the date of the anniversary of the KPA’s establishment from February 8 to April 25. The reasoning behind this change was that the origin of the KPA—actually established on February 8, 1948—could be traced back


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to the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrillas, established on April 25, 1932.)18 At any rate, taking advantage of this confluence of circumstances, Kim Jong Il rose to dominate the organizational affairs of the WPK. To bolster party-military relations, he developed clear job assignments for the various party organizations, elevating the power of the Organization and Guidance Department of the WPK. Kim Jong Il’s exercise of party power over the military, 1970s to 80s After 1973, Kim made a great effort to strengthen the party’s discipline, particularly the Organization and Guidance Department of the WPK, which augmented his control over the military, as well. This department is not a simple unit but a core part of the headquarters of the party. It deals with organizational affairs (such as the appointment and the dismissal of high-ranking party cadres, the development of guiding principles for ideological education, and the inspection of other departments of the party and state apparatuses), which of course includes those of the military. While there are many policy-related departments in the party headquarters, they are subordinated to the Organization and Guidance Department, and its organizational influence permeates the policy departments. For instance, the Machine Industry Department in the WPK, which guides and supervises the Machine Industry Ministry in the cabinet, is under the guidance of the Organization and Guidance Department, because the latter has exclusive rights over the appointment of appropriate professional cadres to key positions in the department and the ministry and over inspections related to these cadres’ performance and wrongdoings. Thus, the Organization and Guidance Department is called “the party in the party,” and Kim Jong Il remained the party secretary in charge of organization and propaganda affairs until he assumed the position of general secretary in 1997.19 Given that the secretarial position leads the Organization and Guidance Department and the Propaganda and Agitation Department, it is understandable that Kim remained a party secretary before occupying the position of general secretary. Two special organizations in the Organization and Guidance Department manifest the party’s institutional control over the military.20 On the one hand, the Thirteenth Division of Party-Life Guidance has been in charge of the Political Commission of the army. The Political Commission is the highest organization for party affairs in the military, whereas it should be guided by a division of the WPK headquarters. The duties of the Thirteenth Division are to supervise and instruct the Political Commission and to receive reports from it.

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Since disciplinary work became one of the most significant objectives of organizational affairs in the 1970s, the Thirteenth Division has distributed the guidelines of party-life to and for the highest commanders. Overseeing this project are several full-time party cadres who, dispatched from party headquarters, directly supervise party affairs in the Political Commission. On the other hand, the Fourth Division of Cadres has dealt with the personnel affairs of the army relating to anyone higher than commanders and political commissars of the regiment level. This division does not have final decision-making power over the appointment and dismissal of such officials, but it investigates subjects, documenting their professional profiles, examining their family backgrounds, and assessing their records. On the basis of these results, the Secretariat of the WPK’s Central Committee formally handles personnel issues, even though all the appointments, transfers, and dismissals are to be authorized by Kim Jong Il.21 Just like the Thirteenth Division of Party-Life Guidance, the Fourth Division of Cadres consists of those cadres who have had political commissar experience. This shows that the party has carefully managed to incorporate the army by using interorganizational appointments. In sum, it took the party a long time to successfully incorporate the KPA. The party and the military started as two different institutions in 1945, and the interconnectedness between them ended with the embodiment of each in the other, a situation that, by 1969, left the party in a position of dominance over the military. The turning points in the incorporation were (a) the establishment of political units in the military in 1950, that is, during the Korean War; (b) the installation of a party committee in 1958; and (c) both the introduction of a body of political commissars in 1969 and the interorganizational appointments afterward. Remarkably, the party’s complete incorporation of the military was in accordance with Kim Il Sung and the core Manchurian group’s control of all power in the political arena. During the Korean War, the party had experienced limitations in its influence over the army, not only because, early on during the war, power was dispersed among party factions, but also because all the factions contributed to the military effort in their own way, ranging from combat and logistics to political affairs and guerrilla warfare. Even after the war, the establishment of the party committee could not guarantee the party’s guidance of—that is, penetration into—the armed forces. It was successful in an institutional sense but not in a practical sense, because of the empowerment of a group devoted to “military adventurism” in the tense mood of the Cold War in the late 1960s. The complete incor-


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poration came about with the interorganizational personnel appointments between the party and the military, especially Kim Il Sung’s appointment of highly regarded professional party officials to political commissar positions in the KPA. Military-First Politics under Kim Jong Il In the socialist system where the single mass party traditionally dominates other institutions including the military, it may be an abnormal phenomenon for the military to be vehemently propagated as a safeguard of the entire system, as seen in the military-first politics. Thus, it is necessary to delve into the question of how and why North Korea came to articulate military-first politics in its public discourse. Process of propagation In North Korea, the military-first politics has become prevalent in public discourse, including in the media, since the mid-1990s, the years of systemic crisis caused by Kim Il Sung’s death in July 1994 and the extreme famine afterward. On January 1, 1995, the successor, Kim Jong Il, visited the 214th Army Unit as a symbolic gesture of his credibility and his interest in the military. It is reasonable to infer that during North Korea’s national funeral, as it were, he visited military barracks to incite their support. At the same time, the visit had a significant meaning that cannot be interpreted as a simple political gesture. The North Korean media depicted the 1995 visit to the military unit as the origin of the military-first politics.22 While every corner of the country was suffering from the severe famine, an editorial in the WPK’s daily newspaper, Nodong Sinmun, commemorated Kim Jong Il’s fifty-fifth birthday on February 16, 1997, and quoted the leader as stating, “Without the army, there exists no people, no state, and no party.” This statement accompanied an extensive initiation into Kim’s leadership style, according to which he has positioned the military at the forefront of social construction, both morally and economically, as well as of national defense. Indeed, the army played a significant economic role in farming, land regulation, and the construction of power plants in 1997. In accordance with its economic contributions, the so-called revolutionary spirit of the army became an important catchword in documents and slogans. A program of the Korean Central Broadcasting (KCB) in October 1997, aired on the eve of Kim Jong Il’s inauguration as general secretary of the WPK, disseminated his instructions that “the principle of ‘military


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first and workers later’ should be kept even if the economic situation severely deteriorates.”23 In the following year, an editorial on the KCB characterized Kim Jong Il’s ruling style as military-first politics and asserted that he managed the country by placing the military in the forefront during the difficult period.24 In June 1999, Nodong Sinmun and Ku˘lloja published “Our Party’s Military-First Politics Is Undefeatable,” a joint editorial that explicitly described the meaning of the notion. The editorial stated that military-first politics is a ruling style according to which the KPA is not only the central pillar for national defense but also the nation’s ideological vanguard, and the centrality of the military should be valued in all the activities of the party, the state, and the society.25 In short, it became clear that an essential component of the discourse centering on the military-first politics was that the KPA is not simply an institution for national security but a forerunner for socioeconomic rebuilding, as well. This discursive component manifested a prioritization of the military in the overall system. Background KIM’S

GRASP OF MILITARY POWER

What is the background of the promulgation of the military-first politics? Above all, Kim Jong Il’s private control of the military became the fundamental basis of the dissemination of the notion. Without Kim’s firm influence over the military, the propaganda could neither present the idea nor provide the military with a new image for the moral bulwark and the economic rebuilding needed during times of crisis. After the fall of Communist systems in Eastern Europe, Kim Jong Il assumed important posts related to the military commandership: in 1990, first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission; in 1991, supreme commander of the KPA; in 1992, marshal of the KPA; and in 1993, chairman of the NDC. In 1998, under the revised constitution, he took the seat of chairman of the NDC again. Kim, who has no army experience per se, utilized those posts for the promotion of his military commandership. For example, in the capacity of first vice chairman of the NDC, in April 1992, Kim promoted Defense Minister O Chin-u from vice marshal to marshal, and the chief of the general staff, Ch’oe Kwang, and seven others from general to vice marshal. Furthermore, the scale of the promotion was so big that 129 generals got one more star on their shoulders and that some five hundred colonels were promoted to brigadier generals.26


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Kim Jong Il’s grasp of military leadership, in particular, and power, in general, was accompanied by a significant change in the depiction of the status of the military. The party’s theoretical journal Ku˘lloja in April 1988 published an article, written by Yi Pong-wÆn, entitled “The KPA Is the Undefeatable Revolutionary Unit for Protecting the Party’s Achievements.” In the article, Yi, then deputy head of the Political Commission of the KPA, followed the traditional interpretation of the military as the WPK’s armed guard and as the Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s armed forces. However, in 1992, the military became the significant apparatus of Kim Jong Il’s power. The Nodong Sinmun editorial on February 16, 1992, entitled “For the Commemoration of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il’s 50th Birthday,” stated that the WPK, the Republic (that is, the state), the people, and the KPA trusted him absolutely. This unusual coverage of Kim Jong Il on the front page of the party organ indicated that he was in full command of the leadership positions in North Korea’s most powerful apparatuses. In other words, the status of the military changed from being the party’s bulwark to being Kim Jong Il’s safeguard. The military-first politics has become Kim Jong Il’s ruling method of choice, deviating from the previous practice of the WPK’s control over the military. The militaryfirst politics is closely related to Kim’s solid grasp of power in the military, as well as in the party. LOYALTY

VACUUM

The military-first politics was a deliberate response to a potential loyalty vacuum that occurred upon Kim Il Sung’s demise. Since he was considered the founding father of the DPRK, his death gave rise to a sense of free-floating obedience among the people despite his cautious preparation for the succession of his son. Kim Il Sung had received from the people an almost unquestionable acceptance of his authority. Such acceptance of a certain leader’s authority, in general, comes from the fulfillment of a mixture of conditions, such as legitimacy, fear, habit, and expediency, and the particular mixture varies from system to system and from time to time.27 In North Korea, the late Kim successfully captured popular conviction in his rule, a conviction that depended largely on the legitimacy originating from his anti-Japanese guerrilla experience, the fear caused by clandestine informant surveillance, the habit inculcated by organizational life, the “Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea,” and the expediency related to social mobility for the privileged class or personal security for

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the so-called wavering class. In contrast, Kim Jong Il had not, at the time of his father’s death, fully presented his own popular image as the leader of the country. In the eyes of the public, a crisis situation requires strong leadership characterized by extraordinary qualifications. Autocratic leaders use crisis situations for the creation of an image of leadership qualifications to draw support from the public. In such a case, popularity does not really matter.28 A quantitative study of the crisis level, which the author and others conducted right after Kim Il Sung’s death, shows that defectors from North Korea had dual views on the fatherto-son succession. The people generally accepted the prearranged political succession, whereas they showed, even though without much criticism, relatively low approval of Kim Jong Il’s qualifications for the leadership position. The study demonstrates that the people in times of crisis supported the succession in an institutional sense even though there was no succinct point generating among the people moral convictions of loyalty to the younger Kim.29 This was why North Korean propaganda instruments upheld the “accomplishment of the dying injunctions” of the late Kim for three years after his death, a scenario that mirrored the Confucian tradition for mourning periods. One might say that even after his death Kim Il Sung continued to rule for three years under the slogan of “Our beloved leader Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.” Given this situation, Kim Jong Il and his associates adopted a policy that, by placing the military in his hands, contributed to the maintenance of social order during a critical period. More importantly, by displaying the image of firm leadership over the military, Kim’s propaganda machine could transform the floating obedience of the public into stable support for the new leader, Kim Jong Il, and the socialist system as a whole. DECLINE

OF THE PARTY’S FUNCTION AND LEGITIMACY

The prioritization of the military reflects the relative decline in the WPK’s functions, caused in part by the continuous decline of party efficiency itself and in part by Kim’s personalized exercise of power. The functions of the party deteriorated to the point that top decisionmaking institutions could not effectively carry out their assigned tasks. The last CC meeting of the party was held in March 1993, and since then, there have been no such meetings. The malfunction of these decision-making and approval-rendering organizations does not necessarily mean that party work broke down completely; however, it does imply that the party no longer acts as a collective decision-making


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and approval-rendering body. Instead, Kim Jong Il’s personalized operation of the party and related behavior might originate from his distrust of others and from his inclination to extend his trust chiefly to those people whom he has personally selected for various highranking positions. The Secretariat, as an organization, and secretaries, as mediators, have simply carried out his instructions. The former secretary of international affairs of the WPK, Hwang Chang-yÆp, testified that the importance of the Secretariat, compared to that of the Politburo, has increased in accordance with Kim Jong Il’s tendency to nullify the collective bodies of the WPK.30 We should, however, keep in mind that the Secretariat and its secretaries neither have any latitude in policy-making nor act as a substitute for the functions of either the Politburo or the CC. They can make reports and proposals to Kim Jong Il and implement approved proposals, but their roles are so compartmentalized that they cannot realize overall policy coordination, which may be achieved in the collective decision-making body. The party’s malfunction should be attributed to the long process of declining efficiency (as discussed in chapter 3), particularly in the policy arena. This decline accelerated during the famine period. The morale of the party suddenly collapsed to such a degree that the party no longer served as an effective means by which the policy lines of top leaders could be transmitted. The situation amounted to an institutional emergency, according to Kim Jong Il’s assessment of the party, made in a speech delivered at the graduation ceremony at Kim Il Sung University in December 1996. He mentioned the grave situation surrounding the party’s dwindling efficacy, while praising the spirit of the army.31 At any rate, it was true that the famine and starvation contributed to the paralysis of the party’s policy functions. Schools and factories were closed, because the search for food was the most urgent survival issue for the people. At that time, an unusual floating population came into existence. Itinerant merchants who served as links between cities and the countryside worked often to equalize the food shortage situation. Since not only the absolute shortage of food but also the uneven distribution of food exacerbated the starvation, the travelers helped to lessen the further worsening of the situation.32 The merchants inherited neither specific skills nor useful connections from their parents. After the nationalization of commerce before the Korean War and the collectivization of agriculture after the war, merchants had no chance to hone their skills and ply their trade. But the famine drove North Koreans to embrace profit-seeking activities for survival. In light of this situation, the party’s role as policy-makers, particularly in relation to production, devolved into a series of pronouncements containing empty


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words. Also, the famine deteriorated the party’s organizational discipline. Indeed, no longer able to perform their required party-life criticism, party members had to decrease the frequency of these activities from once a week to once a month.33 Institutional Differentiation between the Party and the Military The party-military relation in the age of the military-first politics is a deviant form from traditional Leninist doctrine. In the Leninist tradition, the highest leading group participates in the collective decisionmaking body, such as the Politburo and the Military Committee in the WPK, in dealing with the affairs of military personnel, the defense industry, military strategy, and resource mobilization. In accordance with agreed-upon decisions, the Secretariat and the departments in the party plan details for policy implementation, maintaining close contact with party organizations in the military through institutionalized channels. Meanwhile, the party organizations of the military, in general, and political commissars and political officers, in particular, are supposed to transmit the party headquarters’ policy line to various ranks of the army units and supervise the implementation process. But the North Korean case of the military-first politics has derailed this procedure. The party organizations in the KPA are under the personal control of Kim Jong Il and are, in a strict sense, relatively autonomous from the party’s guidance. Therefore, instead of channeling decisions through institutional arrangements between the party and the military, Kim has preferred to give instructions to the military directly. In other words, Kim has made a strategic choice of divide-andrule in ruling both the party and the military, and this choice has been accompanied by media’s propagation of the leading role of the military. Divide-and-rule “Military-first politics” is not a simple slogan for prompting a social order based on relentless loyalty; rather, it reflects an institutional differentiation between the party and the military. Kim Jong Il has attempted to rule the party and the military separately. That is, Kim adopted the divide-and-rule strategy during a critical period, hoping it might enable him to avert or limit the coupling effect, particularly in a negative sense, between the two institutions.34 The coupling effect was well explained by Herbert A. Simon. When one assembles parts (for instance, the parts of a watch), a twostep procedure whereby one first aggregates the parts into groups and


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then assembles these groups is a more effective way to prevent interruptions from occurring in the environment than a one-step procedure whereby one assembles the parts one by one from the beginning.35 The post-Kim Il Sung period represented such a fluctuation in the environment: there were free–floating obedience, food shortages and starvation, and unexpected social mobility. Kim Jong Il, as the policymaker, attempted to prevent each institution from being exacerbated by another’s negative influences. Indeed, he was afraid that a substantial degradation of the party’s morale and efficiency might negatively affect the military. This fear was well founded, because the party, having been empowered since Kim Jong Il’s active engagement in its organizational affairs, institutionalized the army’s personnel affairs and political education affairs. However, as the party was now no longer in a position to lead the military, the best strategic choice for Kim was to separately dominate them and, thus, to avoid the coupling effect’s negative implications. This situation raises a theoretical issue: whether or not the divideand-rule strategy has brought about a significant shift in the partymilitary relation. The conclusion is this: Kim’s divide-and-rule strategy brought about a moderate change in the relation, but this change has not created any conflict of interest between the two institutions. In other words, whether or not to adopt the divide-and-rule strategy is a leader’s choice, not a consequence of either institutional conflicts or attempts by the military to intervene in politics. A theoretical division over the party-military relation centers on whether the military is autonomous from or contradictory to the values of the party. Among the many models of interinstitutional relations in socialist systems, three have attracted serious scholarly attention: Roman Kolkowicz’s conflict model, William E. Odom’s institutional congruence model, and Timothy J. Colton’s participatory model.36 An explanatory weakness common to all three models is that they do not pay enough attention to the diverse histories that, to a great extent, determine how the party-military relation evolves in a socialist system. A party-military relation is dynamic, and a rigorous model should identify the essential features, either formal or informal, of a transformation. In general, a rigorous model should differentiate a substantial element from secondary elements.37 Rather than settle for a dichotomous account of conflict or harmony, it should be presumed that the developmental process of the party-military relation is different from time to time and from system to system. The resistance against foreign forces or the opposition in a civil war, as seen in Vietnam and China, respectively, may—from the

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outset—contribute to the harmonious development of the two institutions. Also, a party’s gradual incorporation of the military, even without any external enemy, may also be conducive to the congruence between them. Whether or not the military has independent economic resources for either manipulating or influencing national politics can also significantly affect party-military relations. In North Korea, the KPA’s war experiences from 1950 to 1953 strengthened its connection to the party; and in later years, the gradual institutionalization of party committees and political commissars in the military deepened the partymilitary interconnectedness. Furthermore, military industries have been under the tight control of top leaders, including Kim’s family and ChÆn PyÆng-ho, the party secretary in charge of military industries. In this respect, there is no reason to say that the military developed interests or values that might be contradictory to those of the party. Such things as the continuous deterioration of the party’s efficiency, which began in the second half of 1980s, and Kim Jong Il’s assumption of the commandership and consequent expansion of power in the military, which began in the early 1990s, enhanced the utility of the divide-and-rule strategy in the post-Kim Il Sung period of national crisis. The leadership’s division of, and rule over, the two institutions may be traced back to the time when Kim Jong Il first occupied the position of supreme commander of the KPA in December 1991. In 1992, right after his appointment, he made a very symbolic political statement: “I read the Choso˘n Inmin’gun [the KPA’s daily newspaper] in the morning before reading Nodong Sinmun [the WPK’s daily newspaper].”38 His assumption of the commandership was followed by a shift in the practices of the party-military relation. Hwang Chang-yÆp, former secretary of the WPK, mentioned that the party’s departments lost direct contact with the army, particularly with the Political Commission of the KPA. According to him, the international department of the WPK had previously sent materials on intelligence analysis regarding foreign affairs to the Political Commission. About the time that Kim assumed the position of supreme commander, the party organization’s involvement in the military’s political affairs started to diminish gradually.39 The shift in the practices of North Korea’s interinstitutional relations was, in part, related to Kim Jong Il’s tendency to personalize power and to scrap formal institutional procedures, particularly those codified in party regulations and the constitution. For example, the appointment of Kim to the position of supreme commander of the KPA in 1991 violated the 1972 constitution, still effective at that time, which stated that the state chairman, Kim Il Sung, who represented


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the sovereignty of the nation-state, should assume the highest military commandership. Acknowledging this legal breach, the North Korean government revised the constitution in 1992 and justified Kim Jong Il’s assumption of the commandership. In this revised constitution, the previous arrangement of the state chairman’s concurrent positions of supreme commander and chairman of the National Defense Commission (Article 93 of the 1972 constitution) no longer existed. Also, the revised constitution prearranged junior Kim’s new appointment as chairman of the NDC in 1993. According to the 1992 constitution, the NDC oversaw overall defense and personnel affairs, which had previously belonged to the Central People’s Committee (Article 103 of the 1972 constitution). Another revision of the constitution was made in 1998. The newly revised constitution eliminated two previously existing organizations: the state president and the Central People’s Committee. As a consequence, the highest position for Kim Jong Il was that of chairman of the National Defense Commission. It is noteworthy that the 1998 constitution clearly identified the commission as “the highest military guidance organization of state sovereignty” (Article 100) and declared that the chairman’s role is to provide “leadership over all armed forces and guidance over all defense affairs” (Article 102). Evidence was presented that the chairman is de facto the highest post of the state. In 1998, Kim YÆng-nam—the formal state head as chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly—delivered his commemorating speech for Kim Jong Il’s reappointment to the position of NDC chairman. In the speech, the old associate of Kim Jong Il mentioned that the NDC chairman is “the highest state position that not only protects the socialist fatherland’s state system and the people’s fate through its leadership over all political, military, and economic affairs but also leads the tasks to solidify and develop national defense capability and overall national power.”40 In other words, the two constitutional revisions in 1992 and 1998 aimed both to rationalize a previous breach of the pre-revision constitution and to extend Kim’s military power. Kim Jong Il’s personalizing of power and his scrapping of institutional arrangements did not stop here. The appointment of Kim to the position of general secretary in 1997 was made not by selection at the CC but with a “recommendation” from the CC and the Central Military Committee of the WPK. This practice derailed the existing party bylaws, which had been effective since 1980. All these things have generated skepticism as to whether institutional arrangements effectively work in the political arena.

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In sum, the immediate objective of Kim Jong Il’s divide-and-rule strategy was to save the military from the desperate situation brought on by the party’s declining efficiency. Remarkably, the strategy was intended for an institutional differentiation between the party and the military, without an alteration in the party’s nominal guidance. As Hsiao-shih Cheng noted in a study of the Chinese military, this kind of phenomenon blurs the party’s guidance over the military.41 China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Cuba in the mid-1960s, Poland in the early 1980s, and the Soviet Union in the last years of Gorbachev’s rule had already exemplified a transition of the party-military relation without violating the formal principle of the party’s leading role. That is, the North Korean case is not the sole example of an expansion in a military’s relative autonomy in a party-military relation, even though variations of degree certainly exist from case to case. Myth and reality With regard to the institutional differentiation between the party and the military, there is speculation—reaching almost mythical proportions—that conflicts in North Korea’s decision-making process pit the hard-liners against the soft-liners and that the military has a monopoly on the hard-liners. This speculation derives from North Korean negotiators’ postures, according to which it is presumed that the military exerts every effort to articulate its independent interests in the decisionmaking arena. But this speculation cannot be true. Consider the North Korean nuclear issue and the return of an American helicopter pilot in 1994. In the rounds of talks between North Korea and the United States in 1994, Pyongyang negotiators maintained that there was an obstacle to the realization of an agreement wherein North Korea would accept both a freeze on its nuclear program and two light water reactors from the U.S. side. They stated that the obstacle was the hard-line military. Likewise, in December of the same year, a U.S. Army helicopter was shot down over the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone, and U.S. Representative Bill Richardson visited Pyongyang in order to negotiate the return of the survivor, Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall. At that time, North Korean Foreign Ministry officials told Richardson that the case was in the hands of the less sympathetic military command and that Hall’s return was being delayed because of the military’s hard-line stance, even though the Foreign Ministry wanted an immediate release. North Korea in the two cases certainly attempted to suggest that there are internal conflicts between different groups delineated along


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institutional lines. Furthermore, as Gordon Skilling has pointed out in regard to the former Soviet Union, the socialist system also may operate according to the dictates of group politics.42 From a group politics perspective, one may presume that differing interpretations have appeared in Pyongyang during the handling of specific issues. However, little compelling evidence has been detected that proves that the military opposed the negotiation processes of the two cases mentioned above: the Agreed Framework and the resolution of the helicopter incident. The military had no particular reason to adopt a hard-line posture over the building of new energy facilities. North Korean negotiators’ statements about an internal conflict were likely brought up as a bargaining chip that might win North Korea more concessions from the United States during the negotiation process of the Agreed Framework.43 In the same vein, the return of the American pilot took time not only because he first underwent interrogation in North Korean army barracks but also because of the time-consuming hierarchical procedures that make the resolution of substantial matters dependent on the decisions of the meticulously deliberate Kim.44 In dealing with such significant diplomatic issues as nuclear agreement and the return of an American pilot, the institutions cannot independently articulate contentious policy choices. In explaining the North Korean case, instead of Skilling’s proposition of conflict-oriented group politics, Jerry Hough’s assumption of pluralist standpoints “within a certain institutionalized framework” seems more plausible in the sense that the voices of two ministries might be processed through some technical means.45 If this is true, the military does not dominate North Korea nor advocate divisive voices in decision-making processes. Relevance to Kim Jong Il’s Management Style The military-first politics has had an enormous effect on the operation of the political system under Kim Jong Il. It involves a unique constellation of authorities among diverse state apparatuses. In particular, it involves the management style centered on Kim. Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George have presented three useful models on the management style: the formalistic model, the competitive model, and the collegial model.46 In the formalistic model, hierarchy is an important criterion for decision-making procedures and communications between institutions and bureaucrats. All information and ideas concentrate in the hands of the top leader, and at the same time, instructions and policies are up to the leader. A problem is that the leader might be

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overloaded with decision-making tasks. In the competitive model, the competition—instead of the hierarchy or relative expertise—between diverse institutions is a central concern for the leader. In terms of policy options, there is no clear distinction between institutions’ actual roles and their official roles, and this state of affairs enables the leader to select, without hindrance, preferred policy choices. In the collegial model, bureaucrats and staff participate in the decision-making process not as experts but as generalists who present their views and exchange ideas. The coordination and the adjustment of policies are the most distinctive features of this model. Kim Jong Il’s case does not exactly fit any of George and George’s models; rather, the case of the military-first politics corresponds, it seems, to a mixture of formalistic and competitive models. On the one hand, elements of the formalistic model correspond to the fact that Kim controls various institutions separately, depending on the hierarchical bureaucratic mechanism in question. He personally dominates the WPK, the KPA, the State Security Agency (the intelligence organization), and the People’s Safety Ministry (the public police agency), and he gathers information and intelligence from them. He provides them with organizational independence to some extent; however, he does not allow for free communication among themselves except on procedural matters. On the other hand, competitive elements are also embedded in the political system. Similar roles are frequently granted to different institutions in the process of idea development, policy option development, and their implementation. For example, the SSA, the PSM, and intelligence agency in the KPA may compete with one another for the opportunity to realize the same end. Kim may allow coordination among them if there exists a cross-institutional interest; however, such a process may be ignored in the case of a special mission. This practice often yields a violation of the official rule of division of labor among institutions. Paralleling the competitive elements is the fact that the actual hierarchy of the top-ranking officials is different from that of their official positions. It is remarkable that the power hierarchy, usually publicized in ceremonies, of the three top leaders of the military is an unusual sight in the eyes of outside observers. The head of the Political Commission of the KPA, Cho MyÆng-nok, and the chief of the general staff of the KPA, Kim YÆng-ch’un, are higher than the defense minister, Kim Il-ch’Æl, in the power hierarchy. This situation clearly differs from what it was in Kim Il Sung’s era, when the defense minister, O Chin-u, concurrently held the position of head of the Political Commission. Under Kim Jong Il’s rule, the tripartite relationship at


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the top of the military does not allow any of the three to enjoy a prominent status in military affairs. In addition, the younger Kim does not grant full authority to the formal heads of organizations involved in decision-making processes. He keeps in contact with the second and third levels of the organization’s hierarchy. A handy example is the relationship among First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, and the chairman of the Standing Committee of the SPA, Kim YÆng-nam. While Paek and Kim represent the ministry and the state head, respectively, they perform ritual roles such as meeting with foreign diplomats, attending international gatherings, and delivering ceremonial speeches. In contrast, even though his rank is low relative to the formal titles of Kim and Paek, Kang not only has close access to Kim Jong Il but also plays the role of Kim’s idea man. In line with the competitive model, Kim sends instructions about secret missions to different institutions. Many of these instructions concern the surveillance of suspected disloyal elements. Traditionally, the SSA has a clandestine mission of collecting information that might be related to potential antistate activities or to any collective actions that might destabilize the social order. Also, the PSM, formerly the Social Safety Ministry, belongs to the cabinet and has played diverse roles, ranging from law enforcement to prison management. However, one should note that with the military-first politics of the past decade, the Safety Commanding Headquarters (SCH) in the KPA has expanded its surveillance power not only in the military but throughout the general public, as well. For instance, according to the diplomats who defected to South Korea during their service in Third World countries, the SCH inspected North Korean embassies in those countries.47 Previously, the SCH of the military paralleled the SSA in society, and this fact suggests that, in terms of behavior space, the SCH’s scope was smaller than that of the SSA. The SCH started as a bureau in the Department of the Chief of the General Staff in the KPA. However, in 1997 the SCH separated from the latter to become an independent institution.48 It seems that the expanding behavior space of the SCH has triggered competition between the SSA and the SCH, especially when the latter is involved in social affairs, despite its formal status as an organization belonging to the KPA. Furthermore, the SCH’s expanding behavior space came into conflict, to some extent, with political departments in the military. Political officers and safety officers are assigned to every hierarchical level in military units. The political officers deal with party affairs openly, whereas the safety officers undertake covert activities by gathering

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information on and scrutinizing the actions of army officers. Even though political officers and safety officers are supposed to collaborate with each other, their roles overlap insofar as they concern the security of, and loyalty to, the existing system and Kim Jong Il. The object of the SCH’s surveillance is both combat officers and political officers, so that tension often develops between the SCH’s units and the Political Commission’s units.49 Since there are party units in SCH units, just as in other organizations, it would appear that the tension between these organizations is abnormal.

5

Chuch’e in Transformation The Chuch’e idea is the ideological subsystem that has sustained the existing political subsystem, a monolithic party-state. Even after the death of Kim Il Sung and in the age of Kim Jong Il, the Chuch’e idea continues to rationalize not only Kim Jong Il’s power—that is, his inherited power from his father—but also the economic hardships and the diplomatic isolation that North Korea now strives to overcome. Such rationalization originates from reference points that particularly mattered in the period of the formation of the North Korean system. In the Chuch’e idea, a unique application of socialist values to North Korean society was characterized by four principles of independence: in thought, politics and diplomacy, economics, and defense. By the Chuch’e idea, an enemy and troubling big brothers were projected onto an entire national population. Not only anti-imperialism, including North Koreans’ apparent phobia of the United States and their wariness of South Korea, but also an abhorrence of Chinese and Soviet intervention were well embedded in, and permeated, the Chuch’e idea. Furthermore, with Kim Il Sung and his Manchurian guerrillas’ complete control of the North’s political scene, the party institutionalized both its domination over the entire society and its new authority structure. These are the main features of the Chuch’e idea, and for this reason, observers of North Korea assert that the history of the Chuch’e idea constitutes a series of snapshots of this isolated country. In addition to the historical understanding of the instrumental role that the Chuch’e idea has played in the existing party-state, there is another reason for studying this theoretical construct. An examination of the idea can yield critical insights into the direction and scope of economic reform and openness, which are in part depicted in Kim 105

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Jong Il’s interpretation of the Chuch’e idea. As the North Korean system as a whole (the party-state, the military, the ideology, the economy, the intellectual, etc.) has evolved, internal differentiation in each subsystem has occurred. Both the internal differentiation of the economic subsystem—meaning the emergence of the unofficial sphere—and the party-state’s accommodation of the unofficial sphere, as seen in recent reforms and selective opening up, are the most visible and distinctive. In this connection, a couple of questions arise. What relation has the Chuch’e idea had with regard to such internal differentiation phenomena? More specifically, how did Kim Jong Il reinterpret MarxismLeninism and Kim Il Sung’s idea in dealing with the economic transition? It is essential to investigate Kim Jong Il’s idea in detail on these matters in order to avoid a possible macroscopic misconception (which, I admit, is true to a certain degree) that structural limitations in a nation parallel its political leader’s failure to grasp the necessity of reform and opening. We must reject such a conceptual bias that structural constraints—diplomatic isolation and socialist economic structures—have determined Kim Jong Il’s understanding of the North Korean economy. Furthermore, it is indispensable for us to identify a missing variable operating between, on the one hand, political scientists’ understanding of ideology and social control and, on the other, economists’ macroanalysis of the planned economy. Studies of ideology and of political dynamics in North Korea have tended to focus on the Kim family, the party’s dominant status, and the party’s ideological rationalization, whereas studies of the socialist economy have highlighted inefficiencies by referring to macroeconomic indicators alone. This disciplinary division of labor promotes a kind of blindness—a failure to notice that if we, as scholars of North Korea, are to be rigorous in our treatment of this society, then we must take into account a literature review on both Kim Jong Il’s economic standpoint and his political rationalizations. Chuch’e and Power Succession The origin of Chuch’e The origin of Chuch’e was a contentious issue for over two decades, but it is correct to say that this contention came to an end with the publication of Kim Il Sung’s autobiography in 1992. The contention centered on the year in which the term Chuch’e first surfaced. According to North Korean sources (such as Dictionary of Politics published in 1973 and Kim Jong Il’s article “On the Chuch’e idea,” written in April

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1982 for his father’s seventieth birthday), Kim Il Sung at the age of eighteen in June 1930 doubted the validity of the existing method of the anti-Japanese struggle—a method that had been honed by pretentious nationalists and Marxist-Leninists—and proposed the Chuch’e idea, in which he advocated a new Korean-style revolutionary struggle against Japanese forces. Literature critical of this “origin story” refuted the existence of the meeting at Karyun in Manchuria, where according to North Korean sources, Kim Il Sung first presented his Chuch’e idea to others. A Korean-Japanese scholar, HÆ Tong-ch’an, wrote that Kim Il Sung suffered from a psychological complex that can be traced back to the absence of a Communist education in his youth and that compelled him to fabricate this purported meeting, at which he exchanged views with other youths and persuaded them to follow his line of the Korean-style revolutionary struggle.1 In addition, South Korean scholars did not give any credence to the North Korean interpretation on the origin of Chuch’e, not only because of the mood of the Cold War confrontation between the two Koreas but also because of the conspicuous absence of both Kim’s speech and a historical report recording it. Kim Il Sung’s speech in December 1955,2 delivered to party cadres in ideological affairs, has been considered the first source for the idea of Chuch’e. In his 1992 autobiography, Kim Il Sung provided a clue that actually ended the contention regarding the origin of Chuch’e: That report became our revolutionary line and the guiding thought. The content that we [the participants at the Karyun meeting] described in the report was composed of the elements whose core is now embodied in the Chuch’e idea. . . . It was the period of postwar socialist construction, when we particularly stressed the task of the establishment of Chuch’e. In 1955, I made a speech on how to overcome dogmatism and formalism and how to instill Chuch’e in front of party cadres working on propaganda and agitation affairs. This speech was soon publicized as a document entitled “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Chuch’e in Ideological Work.”3 This statement in Kim Il Sung’s autobiography implies that his earlier thoughts included an element of Chuch’e, and this element was officially pronounced for the first time in the 1955 speech. Indeed, Kim did not refute that the term Chuch’e was first presented in the postwar period of socialist transformation.

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A notable point is that Chuch’e was neither an organized policy orientation nor a sophisticated set of official ideological propositions when it was presented by Kim in December 1955. In retrospect, however, Kim used the term in a timely fashion, inasmuch as his use of the term coincided with the growing diversification of international Communism. The hegemony of the Soviet Union in the international Communist movement actually ended with the death of Stalin in March 1953. In 1955, the Soviet Union effected a limited rapprochement with Yugoslavia, whose Communist party had been expelled from the Cominform in 1948 by Stalin. 4 Furthermore, as soon as Nikita Khrushchev embarked on a program of de-Stalinism in his secret speech at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, international Communism became polycentric. National Communism emerged in the East European countries, while an ideological conflict took hold between the Soviet Union and China. At first glance, these changes seemed to threaten the status of Kim Il Sung, who had faithfully followed Stalin’s model. But Kim made use of the changes to attack his opponents such as Pak Ch’ang-ok and Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik—leaders of the Soviet-Koreans and the Yanan veterans, respectively—during the so-called August Incident in 1956. As previously mentioned, Kim accused them of being antiparty elements influenced by international revisionist thought. In this process, Kim exploited the concept of Chuch’e, first devised in his speech in 1955. It was not until April 1965 that Chuch’e became a more organized ideological tenet. Kim Il Sung made a speech at the Ali Archam Social Science Academy in Indonesia on the occasion of his visit to the festivities of the tenth anniversary of the Bandung Conference, a nonalliance meeting held in the country. He officially pronounced the principles of independence and self-reliance in policy areas.5 Indeed, around this time, North Korea’s external and domestic affairs paralleled the principles. In external affairs, in the midst of the increasing Sino-Soviet conflict and the escalating Cold War represented by the Vietnam War, the principles of independence and self-reliance enhanced the individuality of the North Korean system. A manifestation of these principles was North Korea’s equidistant diplomacy regarding the Soviet Union and China. This diplomatic stunt was exemplified by the signing of treaties with Moscow and Beijing, respectively, in July 1961: the Korean-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance on July 6 and the DPRK-PRC Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance on July 11.6 In domestic affairs, by the end of the 1960s, Kim Il Sung had successfully built a kingdom of core Manchurian guerrillas after ousting from the political sphere a military circle with a provocative posture against the United States


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and South Korea.7 Referring to both his diplomatic stunt and his political dominance, Kim Il Sung remarked in the early 1970s that most domestic and foreign policies were based on the Chuch’e idea, and Yomiuri Shimbun reporters quoted him as stating, “Independence in politics, self-reliance in economics, and self-defense in the military are being realized in related policy areas.”8 That is, until the period right before Kim Jong Il’s emergence in the political arena, the Chuch’e idea worked as the main framework for domestic and external policies. Chuch’e amid the power succession A significant change in the status of the Chuch’e idea occurred in the 1970s. North Korea proclaimed at the Fifth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, held in November 1970, that the Chuch’e idea was the party’s basic thought. In line with this elevated official status, the Socialist Constitution, adopted in December 1972, included the premise that “the DPRK adopts the WPK’s Chuch’e idea as its guiding principle—the Chuch’e idea, which creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to the Korean situation” (Article 4). What should be pointed out is that this constitutional elevation of Chuch’e was accompanied by another change in the function of Chuch’e. The idea shifted from being a policy orientation to being a legitimating value not only for the authority structure centered on Kim Il Sung but for the generation-to-generation power succession, as well. At the council meeting of high-ranking leaders of the Socialist Youth League (SYL) held in February 1971, Kim Il Sung emphasized a generational shift, criticizing the fact that SYL cadres were typically in their forties. Kim suggested that county SYL leaders be no older than thirty-two and that headquarters cadres be no older than thirty-five.9 Considering the fact that Kim Jong Il was twenty-nine years old, Kim Il Sung’s statement seemed to support a transition of power to his son’s generation. In the same year, Kim Il Sung again referred to the “achievement of revolutionary tasks by a new generation” and the “generational shift of the revolution” at the Sixth Congress of the SYL.10 These statements were a more forthright articulation of his intention to see that power transition from him to his son. Indeed, the power transition to Kim Jong Il occurred, even if confidentially, at the seventh plenary session of the Fifth Central Committee, held in September 1973, when junior Kim was appointed to a secretary position of the WPK in charge of organization and propaganda and agitation affairs. Kim’s assumption of power became more apparent at the eighth plenary session, held in February 1974, when he was named to the prestigious position of a Political Committee member of the WPK.11

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Kim Jong Il’s assumption of power accompanied a transformation in the official ideology. Remarkably, just a week after his appointment as a Political Committee member, Kim gave a speech entitled “On Some Tasks That the Party’s Ideological Affairs Face for the Promotion of Kimilsungism throughout All Society” to party cadres involved in ideological affairs.12 This was an important moment in that Kim Il Sung’s idea officially became an ism, paralleling MarxismLeninism and Maoism.13 Right after the declaration on Kimilsungism, Kim Jong Il presented the “Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea”14 at a speech given in April of the same year.15 With these principles, the Chuch’e idea’s status reached its peak, because it came to have precedence over constitutional power. As previously mentioned, while establishing himself as the authoritative interpreter of his father’s thought and while leading the work-team movements of the Three Great Revolutions after 1974, Kim Jong Il increasingly mirrored the prospective successor to Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, who mobilized the army to uphold and propagate Mao’s thought during the culmination of the Cultural Revolution. The projection of the Chuch’e idea as an ism was the beginning of a significant change in the role of official ideology. Despite its continuous emphasis on the term revolution, the Chuch’e idea gradually strayed from its original identification with the socialist system. In the early 1980s, when Kim Jong Il was formally elevated to a position of power second only to that of his father, and particularly after the Sixth Congress of the WPK in October 1980, the Chuch’e idea became a systematic collection of propositions. The previous period had given rise to diverse and dispersed arguments and propositions about the Chuch’e idea, and there were only two exceptionally articulated propositions connected with it: one was the principle of independence and self-reliance, and the other was Kim Il Sung’s personality cult. Notably, the systematization of the Chuch’e idea in the 1980s coincided with deviation from not only traditional interpretations of Marxism-Leninism but also from some of Kim Il Sung’s presumptions. In the systematization of Chuch’e, Kim Jong Il did not openly reject Chuch’e’s application of Marxism-Leninism to the Korean situation, but he did emphasize Chuch’e’s own distinctiveness. The younger Kim’s intention was to show that Chuch’e is not a simple practical ideology that enables a society to reach an ideal of Marxism-Leninism but a value system that rationalizes the existing system. This distinctiveness has been summed up in a word: creativity. The breakdown of socialist systems in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union brought about a drastic change in North Korea—Chuch’e’s epistemological break from Marxism-Leninism. Eliminated from Article


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3 of the newly revised 1992 constitution was the official proclamation that Chuch’e was a creative application of Marxism-Leninism. The article now simply stated that “Chuch’e is a human-centered worldview and the revolutionary thought to realize the independence of the masses.” In other words, the systematic establishment of the Chuch’e idea paralleled the idea’s gradual separation from Marxism-Leninism, as shall be discussed later. In relation to the systematization of the Chuch’e idea, there arises a question: Why did Kim Jong Il perform the task in the particular period of the early 1980s? An answer can be found in the situation that North Korea faced at that time. Considering the changes that had occurred in neighboring China, it seems that North Korean leaders, including Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il themselves, felt compelled to draw a conclusion on the formalization of the succession issue and on the country’s future developmental path. North Korea observed that China after the death of Mao Zedong experienced intense power struggles among its elites, first, between Hua Guofeng and the Gang of Four and, later, between Hua and Deng Xiaoping. These struggles finally brought about a drastic shift in the path of national development. At the third plenary session of the Eleventh CC of the Chinese Communist Party in December 1978, Deng’s supporters gained control of the Politburo. At the fifth plenary session held in February 1980, Hua lost his support in the Politburo, whereas Hu Yaobang, Deng’s longtime protégé, was appointed to the position of general secretary of the CCP.16 The North Korean leadership also noted China’s embarkation on a new policy in domestic and external affairs. China not only proclaimed reform and an opening of its society in 1978 but also has launched normalized relations with the United States since 1979. These changes in China were striking for North Korea. The latter’s response was to fulfill two different objectives by a single means—to use a Korean saying, “Catch two birds with one stone”—even though the objectives themselves had little in common with the Chinese objectives. One bird was the prevention of an elite conflict in connection with North Korea’s power succession, and the other was a recursive, if not reactive, systemization of North Korea’s official ideology so that the nation could maintain its own socialism. The single stone was Kim Jong Il. At the Sixth Congress of the WPK, held in October 1980, Kim acquired a position in each of the following three crucial party organizations: the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Military Committee. Now Kim mobilized all the human resources at his disposal, especially those in the party’s propaganda apparatus, to systematize the previous propositions of Chuch’e.

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North Korea under Kim Jong Il Socialism in Historical Development

Dictatorship of the proletariat in socialism Kim Jong Il’s vision for the developmental phases of North Korea’s modes of production followed that of his father, Kim Il Sung. In terms of the transition phase of socialism, the younger Kim held a view similar to the one held by the elder Kim. But Kim Jong Il had a special usage of the term masses, which he used instead of the term working class. Of course, the younger Kim was not the first person to use the term masses. Kim Il Sung had referred to a party of the masses in the second half of the 1940s. In the period of state-building, Kim Il Sung’s intention was to draw wider support from the people, regardless of their social background, even though the policies of social transformation obviously excluded the interests of a specific social class, landlords. For Kim Jong Il, given the absence of class antagonism, the term masses comprises not only the working class in an orthodox Marxist sense but also farmers and “working intellectuals.” Considering the theory of historical development wherein the masses constitute the driving force, both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il drew conclusions that departed from the precepts of orthodox MarxismLeninism. According to Marx and Engels, socialism is a transitional phase in which antirevolutionary elements are eliminated and a new property structure is formed. They maintained that in the transitional phase, the dictatorship of the proletariat would end class division and the exploitation of people by other people. They concluded that the state withers away with the accomplishment of the classless society.17 Lenin deliberately elaborated on the concept of socialism more than his predecessors. Lenin emphasized two elements: the Communist Party’s role in the proletarian dictatorship and the socialist phase’s high productivity. Without a doubt, Lenin’s theorization of socialism stemmed from his keen recognition of the realities in Russia, where the backward peasant society of the old inefficient regime had to be destroyed and where the establishment of a strong revolutionary organization was needed to plan and oversee high levels of economic development. While following the basic conceptions of Lenin, Kim Il Sung extended the concept of the phase of socialism. Just like Lenin had, Kim stressed the significance of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the productive forces needed for economic development. But Kim divided socialism into three periods, as seen in his May 1967 speech, addressed to party cadres working at ideological affairs—later called the “5-25 Instruction” owing to its significance in ideological affairs. As shown in figure 5.1, socialism’s three periods, according to Kim, are institutional-


capitalism

socialism

revolution and transition period new institutionalization

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Communism

complete socialism

Figure 5.1. Development of Mode of Production: Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s Scheme

ization through socialist revolution, the transition period, and complete socialism.18 Kim declared that the socialist revolution eliminates exploitation between classes and lessens differences between workers and farmers and between cities and the countryside. In a speech delivered at the first plenary session of the Eighth Supreme People’s Assembly in 1986, he argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat should continue in order to eliminate these differences, because the establishment of formal state institutions does not, he maintained, guarantee the complete elimination of the remnants of class exploitation.19 “5-25 INSTRUCTION”

ON THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP

Kim Il Sung’s 5-25 Instruction, dealing with the issue of the proletarian dictatorship, was a maneuver intended to prevent any theoretical challenge to the party’s domination of society. According to the autobiography of Hwang Chang-yÆp, then the president of Kim Il Sung University, Kim Il Sung presented the 5-25 Instruction after Kim put Hwang under one year of party-life criticism. Kim’s instruction was a refutation of the ideologue Hwang’s article entitled “The Driving Force of Social Development,” written for the commemoration of the university’s twentieth anniversary. Hwang said that in his own article he had emphasized the role of intellectuals, as well as consolidation of the socialist institutions, in the completion of the transitional phase of socialism. It is worth citing a long passage from his statement, because it sheds some light on the background of Kim Il Sung’s 5-25 Instruction. If memory serves me right, the content of the article was as follows. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union concluded that as soon as socialist economic institutions are established, the transition from capitalism to socialism ends. From this point

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North Korea under Kim Jong Il on, the dictatorship of the proletariat starts to weaken and the state gradually withers away. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Party stated that the transitional period continues until the realization of the Communist ideal of a classless society. That is, the class struggle will continue, and thus the proletarian dictatorship will endure, pending the creation of a classless society. However, I thought that the end of the transitional phase requires not only the establishment of socialist economic institutions but also corresponding socialist forces of production that may fully evidence a superiority of the socialist institutions. I contended that in our country’s situation of division and confrontation, unification would bring an end to the transitional phase and that it is necessary to maintain the proletarian dictatorship until the unification. Also, I further contended that the role of intellectuals is important for social development and that they should be evaluated on the basis not of their social background but of their contribution to social development.20

Hwang’s references to intellectuals must have infuriated Kim Il Sung. Intellectuals were not defined as a social group in North Korean society at that time for two reasons. First, Kim’s confrontation with the Communists of southern origin during the Korean War reinforced his negative impression of intellectuals (a major portion of the southern Communists consisted of intellectuals). Second, the historical background of the formation of intellectuals—that is, the Japanese colonialism that Kim Il Sung himself fought against—prompted Kim to appraise the intellectuals, both positively and negatively: intellectuals had contributed to the resistance against the colonial occupation, but their family background was as landlords or rich peasants. In any case, Kim Il Sung refused to acknowledge that intellectuals should play an active role in the stage of socialism. In addition, the Cultural Revolution in China might have affected Kim’s negative impression of intellectuals. Witnessing his neighboring country’s heated political atmosphere, in which the Red Guards attacked intellectuals and destroyed their heritage in the name of safeguarding the interests of the working class, Kim and his associates became even more suspicious of intellectuals. Therefore, for Kim, Hwang’s thesis on intellectuals was unacceptable at that time. KIM JONG IL ON THE MASSES AND THE STATE, COMPARED TO THE “ALL-PEOPLE’S STATE” DEBATE IN THE SOVIET UNION Kim Il Sung’s conception of socialism was inherited by his son, Kim Jong Il. The younger Kim perceived socialism as a long transitional


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phase, in which many problems persisting even after the breakdown of exploitative relations of production needed to be resolved. For Kim Jong Il, such unresolved problems included the remaining differences between cities and the countryside and between workers and farmers. These differences would be cleared away by the Three Great Revolutions in ideology, technology, and culture. Kim maintained that the dictatorship of the proletariat during the transitional period should be maintained so that the remains of the old relations of production could be eliminated. He contended that the Three Great Revolutions should be continued “from generation to generation,” an injunction that was meant to rationalize the father-to-son power succession. In an article written in May 1983 for the memorial of the one hundredth year of Karl Marx’s death, Kim Jong Il accordingly made the following statement: With the establishment of socialist institutions, sources of exploitation and poverty would end. However, differences between the people in terms of material- and cultural-based living standards remain. In socialism, various forms of differences, centered on the class difference, come from the backwardness of ideology, technology, and culture. Socialist society is different from the higher stage, Communism, in that the former still hosts such differences in ideology, technology, and culture and is characterized as a transitional period. . . . In order to overcome transitional characteristics and to build a Communist society, the revolution to eradicate the backwardness in ideology, technology, and culture should be continued.21 It is remarkable that the Three Great Revolutions—aiming at the elimination of ideological, technological, and cultural backwardness among farmers and in the countryside—was first coded in the Socialist Constitution drafted in 1972 and continued to appear in the revised constitutions of 1992 and 1998. Kim Jong Il’s interpretation of the role that the masses and the state play in the transitional period of socialism differs from the MarxistLeninist interpretation. For Kim, in North Korea, the masses constitute the prime actor in history and in the socialist economy.22 It is notable that Kim’s notion of the masses is very broad. The masses, as a notion, concerns neither classes nor workers; rather, it refers to a collectivity composed of different classes and groups—indeed, it refers to all members of the society. The notion includes not only workers, farmers, and intellectuals but also youths and members of auxiliary organizations. Therefore, why did Kim consider the masses, instead of the workers, to be the prime mover of history and the economy? Did he

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mean that the dictatorship of the proletariat had already ended in North Korea? Or did he mean that all class differences had been resolved? Kim Jong Il’s notion of the masses is reminiscent of old debates on the All-People’s State in the former Soviet Union. In 1961, the Soviet ideologue A. P. Butenko and his associates presented the notion of the All-People’s State and asserted that according to this notion, all classes should have representation in the state, because there was no longer an exploitative class in the country. Butenko’s circle maintained that the All-People’s State is quite different from a proletarian dictatorship, which needs, at its core, a continuous struggle for the eradication of exploitation. According to them, in a society free of an exploitative class that is preventing social progress, the workers should not be the sole dominating class. They thought that the socialist base should be expanded to accommodate all social groups, that the role of the state should be transformed to foster transition toward Communism, that the state’s administrative role should be transferred to other public organizations, and that democratic rule should be expanded.23 However, a new interpretation emerged in the late 1960s. It maintained that the All-People’s State was a simple extension of the proletarian dictatorship. According to the new interpretation offered by D. I. Chesnokov in his article in Pravda early in 1967, the absence of an exploitative class does not diminish the significance of statehood. Furthermore, public organizations cannot replace the role of the state in confronting the immense task of socialist development and the building of Communism. Because public organizations have no stable leadership, the role of the state would become more demanding.24 The debates over the All-People’s State led to a consensus that the disappearance of class exploitation in Soviet society could not contrapose the active roles of the state, in general, and state apparatuses controlled by the party, in particular. Insofar as the Communist Party of the working class stands for the interests of different classes and groups, the proletarian dictatorship would remain effective, nullifying the meaning of the All-People’s State. The above-mentioned debate in the Soviet Union sheds light on Kim Jong Il’s understanding of the masses. Kim acknowledged the end of exploitation between classes and rejected the idea of society dominated by one class, that is, by workers alone. At the same time, he argued that not all classes and social groups may represent the state, whereas the working class is a chosen class that stands for the masses. Like the new interpretation of the All-People’s State in the late 1960s in Moscow, Kim’s interpretation maintained that the masses should receive the party’s guidance. Also, Kim argued that the lead-


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ership of the party-state should be strengthened for the consolidation of socialism and the transition to Communism. What is the relationship between the working class and the masses for Kim Jong Il? In line with the statement that “the party of the working class represents the interests of the masses,” there is no question that relative to the masses, the working class predominates. This is understandable from the point of view that the WPK, since the mid1960s, has implemented the policy for the class transformation of intellectuals into working intellectuals through the policy “Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Converting Them to the Working Class.” But Kim’s notion of the masses clarified, in no way, the issue of the proletarian dictatorship. It seems that Kim Jong Il, as a successor to power, wanted to extend the base of popular support for him by using such an inclusive notion. Transitional characteristics of socialism Kim Jong Il recognized that socialism is a transitional phase and that it therefore exhibits dual characteristics. For him, socialism is a lower stage of Communism in that class exploitation disappears through revolutionary social change, but “distribution by necessity” remains an unfulfilled goal as long as productivity remains stagnant. Guaranteed distributions based on necessity and on preestablished standards for the welfare of the people should accompany material incentives for hard work and for greater productivity. But an overemphasis on material incentives would give rise, once again, to a capitalist mentality, which privileges individualism and selfishness. This is the dilemma that the transitional phase of socialism confronts and that even the “complete victory of socialism” cannot solve.25 In the early 1990s, Kim accordingly stressed a mixture of opposites, saying that an “appropriate combination of material incentives prioritizing political and moral incentives” should be achieved.26 Kim Jong Il’s policy on the socialist economy has been in accordance with his interpretation of the dual characteristics of socialism. Kim in 1984 proposed the idea of a “Light Industry Revolution” to solve the problem of chronic shortages of daily necessities and initiated the so-called August 3 Production Drive. Kim’s intention was not to shift North Korea’s fundamental industrial policies from heavy industry to light industry but to meet people’s demands, which had changed and would continue to change throughout the development of socialism. He said in a speech to the CC of the WPK in February 1984 that “[if] the rice bowl of the masses is empty, they would not

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trust their ideological education to promote the superiority of socialist institutions and socialist patriotism.”27 Also, Kim’s emphasis on light industry came from his judgment that the people should be persuaded of socialism’s supremacy over capitalism, particularly in light of the severe competition at that time between North Korea and South Korea. He believed that an improvement of living standards would instill in the people greater confidence in the superiority of their own system and would sustain revolutionary sentiment among the masses. During the 1980s, Kim also emphasized the need to increase productivity through rational management. For him, rational management is not the same as economic rationality in a capitalist system. He felt that unitary prices are the basis of an economic value system. (This view was practically invalid even before July 2002, when reform measures governing prices, wages, and management were undertaken.) But his sometimes vague conception of rational management grew more and more explicit as he dealt with the issue of labor incentives. Indeed, during the second half of the 1980s Kim already regarded the contract system as a rational form of labor management in manufacturing industries and agriculture. As he said, In all fields of the people’s economy, including the manufacturing sector and the agriculture sector, we have to widely adopt the contract system so as to organize the labor in a rational way and to assess the labor correctly. In this way, we should enhance the degree of workers’ enthusiasm and sense of responsibility.28 The contract system is the most rational way to reward labor. All factories and enterprises should adopt the contract system. The workplaces that employ the current fixed-wage system should have a work quota and establish a principle to provide allowances that depend on the performance of the workers.29 The contract system originated from concern over weakening labor motivations caused by the fixed-wage system. This notion of a contract system was first used by Kim Il Sung in November 1949, so it was not something new.30 But it is remarkable that in the 1980s, Kim Jong Il proposed a differential-wage system based on productivity, while discouraging the fixed-wage system among manual workers. Also, he stated that artists and writers, if their productivity was to increase, must work according to an incentive method. In interviews with Ch’oe ≠n-h„i and Sin Sang-ok, famous South Korean movie stars


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abducted in Hong Kong in operations organized by Kim Jong Il, Kim pointed out the problems stemming from a general loss of enthusiasm for competition, as a result of the fixed-wage system. Furthermore, he acknowledged that such a situation is a contradiction that exists in the socialist system.31 Kim Jong Il has not hesitated, however, to prioritize politicalmoral incentives and to caution against the “material-for-material principle,” the “economy is everything” motto, and “right-wing leniency.” Although Kim inherited a negative view of materialistic work incentives from his father, this view of his became pronounced in the post–Cold War period. In early 1992, Kim attempted to demonstrate the dangers of materialistic preoccupations in explaining the causes of the collapse of socialist systems in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. Kim contended that they had failed to generate social integration through ideological education, placing an emphasis solely on economic relations.32 Kim criticized the obsession of these socialist systems with economic materialism—an obsession that centered on economic development and productivity, that intensified during the transitional period of socialism, and that led to widespread neglect of ideological affairs.33 That is, Kim believed that the collapse of these systems originated from their failure to induce political-moral incentives for the binding of the then-existing society. Kim Jong Il’s skepticism regarding materialistic work incentives continued after the death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994. In the midst of a national crisis, Kim Jong Il was more concerned about the penetration into North Korea of South Korean influences and capitalist modes of thinking and living. He considered any act that expresses leniency toward these influences to be a betrayal to socialism. This approach was clearly marked in Kim’s perception of the 1997 defection of Hwang Chang-yÆp—then a secretary of the WPK and the prominent ideologue in Pyongyang—to South Korea. In a closed speech delivered to WPK cadres of the CC right after the incident, Kim characterized the defection as an apt example of emerging defeatism in North Korea: “The betrayal of Hwang Chang-yÆp is not a big event by itself, but it reflects the sensitivity of the Korean peninsula and the intricacies of our revolution. We have to enhance our revolutionary consciousness against the enemy’s insurgency tactics and fortify our revolutionary trenches. Hwang Chang-yÆp issued a reactionary theory that submitted to the pressures of imperialists and reactionaries, and then he revealed his intention to follow their path of reform and opening. We will never follow the path of reform and opening, which imperialists and reactionaries expect us to follow.”34

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As mentioned above, Kim Jong Il recognized the transitional characteristics of socialism not only from a theoretical perspective but also from the context of system competition and national crisis, especially after the fall of the socialist systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. He stressed ideological education more than ever before, treating the material payoff as a complementary outcome. Until he adopted the reform measures of July 2002, Kim argued that rational economic management and productivity expand through material incentives only within the framework of socialist principles. Socialist economic management To further our understanding of Kim Jong Il’s views on socialist economic management, it is necessary to assess his positions on economic planning, fiscal expenditure and banking, property rights, and so on. Above all, Kim Jong Il maintained that the national economy should be managed through unitary state planning and implementation, particularly through the State Planning Committee’s guidance. Kim Jong Il, following his father, supported the idea of independent accounting centered on associated enterprises,35 and after the 7-1 reform measures, which were launched in 2002, this method gained more support than ever in the management of small- and medium-sized enterprises. But national planning has prevailed in the North Korean economy, both in individual state-owned enterprises and in associated enterprises. The independent accounting method has been a tool used for the activation of work motives in the manufacture of consumer products but has not overwhelmed the principle of economic planning.36 Kim Jong Il has strictly adhered to the basic principles of socialist fiscal and banking affairs. In socialism, the bank is a tool for the implementation of the planned economy; therefore, it plays only a supplemental role in the state’s fiscal policy. The state provides factories and enterprises with state subsidies for the production of goods and services; meanwhile, the state collects levies on profits, depreciation costs, and capital gains and then deposits them in the state banking system. The bank is a simple institution by which the state manages income and expenditure. And the bank is nothing but a state-owned institution, discouraging the establishment of commercial banks. Following this principle, the bank in North Korea has been subordinated to the state’s fiscal apparatus. Kim Jong Il maintained that the state should manage all financial issues under the principle of “the unitary management of finance.”37 He contended that the state should dominate the flow of capital, as well as control the principal means of production. There has


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been no indication that Kim Jong Il has adopted any other view on, or measure of, North Korea’s fiscal and banking affairs, even at the time when the reform measures were undertaken in July 2002. On ownership, Kim Jong Il entertained a slightly more flexible view, even before the embarkation on the 7-1 measures in 2002. This litheness was manifest in the newly revised 1998 constitution, which reflects Kim’s general leadership philosophy. The previous constitution classified owners into three types: the state, collective organizations, and individuals. In contrast, the new constitution classifies them into the state, social and collective organizations, and individuals (Articles 20 and 24). The term collective organization in the previous constitution is split into social and collective organizations. This change implies that ownership exists not only in collective organizations, such as cooperative farms and small-scale collective local enterprises, but also in social organizations, such as unions and women’s organizations. Furthermore, the newly revised constitution states that “an individual can own the income that he or she gains through rational management” (Article 24). The state thereby acknowledges private ownership of the income obtained through legally defined profitseeking activities. This constitutional change reflects the reality that the informal sector of the economy prevailed during the mid-1990s, the period of the famine. The change regarding ownership in the newly revised constitution does not, however, cover official ownership transitions of state-owned enterprises. Estrangement from Marxism-Leninism The Chuch’e idea has preserved its essential elements owing to the continuity of North Korea’s leadership, which itself is due to hereditary succession. However, the propositions associated with Chuch’e either changed or gained new elements in accordance with situational changes. A notable shift was from the so-called creative application of Marxism-Leninism to the discontinuity that highlighted North Korea’s own style of socialism. This discontinuity was remarked in the constitution as revised in 1992, which for the first time replaced “the Chuch’e idea of the Workers’ Party of Korea, a creative application of MarxismLeninism to the conditions of our country” (Article 4 of the 1972 constitution) with “the Chuch’e idea, a human-centered worldview and revolutionary thought for the realization of the independence of the masses” (Article 3 in the 1992 constitution). This section will discuss three postulates that represent a departure from orthodox Marxism-Leninism.

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Human-centered view In commemorating Kim Il Sung’s seventieth birthday in 1982, Kim Jong Il presented an article in which he upheld a human-centered worldview, or human determinism, which is contradictory to orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Since then, the human-centered worldview has become a significant proposition in the Chuch’e idea. According to the view, human beings are the masters of all creatures and decide everything. The human-centered view was first mentioned by Kim Il Sung in September 1972 in his responses to the questions raised by Mainichi Shimbun reporters.38 The elder Kim’s comment was elaborated in an article of the party’s monthly journal, Ku˘lloja, in December of the same year: it was entitled “That the Human Being Is the Master of Everything and Decides Everything Is the Basis of the Chuch’e Idea.”39 Building on his father’s view, Kim Jong Il declared in March 1982 that a human being survives and develops by understanding the world and by making it subordinate to his or her own self. The human being’s supremacy stems from three original abilities: independence, creativity, and consciousness. According to Kim, the ability to be independent helps a human being to overcome constraints deriving from nature and renders all other creatures subservient to humans.40 Following Kim’s logic, North Korean ideologues claimed that the ability to be creative transforms the old into the new, and through this process, human beings can change their fate. Also, the ability to be conscious provides human beings with a self-regulatory capacity for goal achievement.41 The usage of the terms regarding the three abilities was not new in the official ideology. It was inherited from Kim Il Sung’s interpretation of many hardships encountered since founding of North Korea. The term independence originated from a conception of self-reliance in thought, which Kim Il Sung raised in December 1955. The term became more evident during the Sino-Soviet conflict in the 1960s and developed into a basis for foreign policy direction that can be characterized by the word isolation. In 1974, Kim Il Sung differentiated a human being from other animals by noting that the former is a social being with the ability to be independent. Since the mid-1970s, textbooks in North Korea have relied extensively on the terms independence and consciousness. At that stage, however, the term independence was not treated, in an orderly manner, as signifying a human being’s ability.42 Kim Jong Il employed the notion of independence in his systematization of the Chuch’e idea in 1982, and ideologues in North Korea elaborated this notion as a natural property of the human being, a property that emerges in the social relations among people.43


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The term creativity originated from Kim Il Sung’s treatment of Chuch’e as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism. Here, Kim Jong Il adopted the notion of creativity and applied it to the abilities of a human being. On creativity, Kim Jong Il made the following comment: The revolutionary movement proceeds in the real world, which undergoes continuous change. The revolutionary movement rejects schema and dogma and opposes the old view that mechanically duplicates other views. A schematic view and a dogmatic orientation prohibit both creativity and a correct recognition of diverse phenomena, and then they impede the discovery of the scientific path of revolution and construction. Only when we maintain the standpoint from which we see the world with creativity, based on concrete reality, can we find a right way to renovate nature and society and to realize them in an efficient way. The creative standpoint is the method that enables us to get rid of dogmatic attitudes but to vividly capture reality with independent thinking.44 In projecting this idea of creativity, Kim Jong Il emphasized that one’s understanding of phenomena should be predicated on a reality-based view, and he rejected the dogmatic interpretation of phenomena. Furthermore, Kim stated that both people’s demands and historical conditions are far more important than consistency with previous theories and propositions.45 Kim’s advocacy of a realistic view of the world departed from the materialist view of the world found in orthodox Marxism-Leninism. The term consciousness can be traced back to the Socialist Constitution drafted in 1972, which advocated a revolutionary change in thought. The constitution promoted the idea that there needed to be a revolution in thought if there were to be a “revolutionizing and working-classization” of the society. Education and training were singled out as optimal fields in which a change in consciousness could be effected. Kim Jong Il extensively used this idea in his development of propositions related to the Chuch’e idea. The fact that Kim Jong Il treated consciousness, along with independence and creativity, has a special meaning in the development of North Korean ideology. It is of particular interest that Kim departed from Marxist interpretations of consciousness. According to Marx, class consciousness is a product of a contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production, and it may, through a revolution, contribute to changes in the mode of production. A close examination of Marx’s German Ideology, which

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deals with consciousness, will uncover the following three propositions: (a) consciousness is determined by actual life processes; (b) consciousness forms its corresponding ideologies; and (c) new ideologies come into conflict with existing relations of production when the relations of production come into conflict with the forces of production.46 For Marx, consciousness is a reflection of a contradiction in an economy. Even though consciousness finally develops into revolutionary activities, it is not a product of human intelligence but a result determined by circumstances. Unlike Marx, Kim Jong Il posited that consciousness is not a simple product of the environment but an entity that undergoes changes through continuous education, and that consciousness would finally dominate the environment. Furthermore, Kim asserted that changes in consciousness can be obtained through an artificial molding of man: “In order to build socialism and Communism, we should not only develop forces of production and transform social relations but also remold the people into Communist men. High degrees of forces of production and great material wealth do not guarantee the achievement of a Communist society unless the people are changed into Communist men. . . . Molding people is basically a shaping of consciousness. Because the consciousness decides both the value and the dignity of the people, a molding of consciousness is the most crucial point for the transformation of people.”47 In this way, Kim Jong Il systematized the Chuch’e idea in an attempt to justify the party-state’s attempt to remold the people into Communist men. He extolled an image of the masses armed with the Chuch’e idea as a driving force for historical development. In this process, the Chuch’e idea deviated from Marxism-Leninism. Kim’s understanding of the human-centered view was no longer compatible with the orthodox interpretation of dialectical materialism. It is interesting that Kim did not want to reveal his ideological departure from the ideas of his predecessors. He supported the continuity of the idea’s ideological development rather than an abrupt break from orthodox ideas, and he did so by dubiously asserting that the human-centered idea actually fits the basic principles of materialism and dialectics. Underlying Kim’s authoritative interpretation of the Chuch’e idea, then, was his unwavering acknowledgment of an unfragmented debt to Marxism-Leninism. Sociopolitical organism One of the most important features in Kim Jong Il’s systemization of the Chuch’e idea was his description in 1986 of the relationship be-


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tween the leader, the party, and the masses in terms of the sociopolitical organism. The notion had already appeared in Ku˘lloja in August 1973.48 In the previous years, Kim Il Sung’s Chuch’e idea had been based on four principles of independence: in thought, politics and diplomacy, economy, and defense. In the 1960s, these propositions became the backbone of North Korea’s isolationist foreign policies and legitimated the mass mobilization of the people in domestic politics. After the late 1960s, the propositions also became a tool for the personality cult of Kim Il Sung, as the Manchurian guerrillas dominated the political scene. Kim Jong Il, who rose to be his father’s successor, now began to theorize authority relations between the leader, the party, and the masses. The sociopolitical organism was the product. How does Kim Jong Il’s sociopolitical organism define authority relations between the leader, the party, and the masses? Kim’s answer, in short, would be thus: the leader is the errorless brain of the living body, the masses are the living body that is able to maintain its life only through loyalty to the leader, and the party is the nervous system that organizationally links the masses to the leader. The texts of Kim Jong Il’s description of the sociopolitical organism are depicted in figure 5.2. Figure 5.2-A shows Kim Jong Il’s emphasis on the unity of the organism, according to which parts cannot survive apart from the whole. The configuration is very similar to the Trinity in Christianity. The three parts are integrated in a similar pattern that appears in the

[A]

[B]

leader

leader

masses party leader

party

masses

Figure 5.2. Authority Relations in the Sociopolitical Organism

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doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as the Father represents the Trinity, so the leader represents the unitary body of the integrated organism.49 In a speech delivered in July 1986 to cadres working in the CC, Kim discussed the significance of integrity among the three parts: The leader, the party, and the masses have to integrate into the unified body in order to become a viable sociopolitical organism, so they should be neither separated from nor contradictory with each other. The masses, without the leader and the party’s guidance, cannot independently become a driving force in history, whereas the leader and the party, if disconnected from the masses, cannot devote their lives to the practice of political leadership in history. The leader that is separated from the masses is a simple individual, whereas the party that is separated from the masses is not a party but a simple group of people. For this reason, I always emphasize that the leader, the party, and the masses should not be separated from one another.50 At the same time, Kim stressed that the leader is the core of the life of both the party and the masses, and then maintained that an individual’s loyalty to both the party and the masses can be “expressed as the loyalty to the leader.”51 In this respect, the sociopolitical organism, just like the Trinity, is an integrated unity in which the leader occupies the most privileged position.52 However, Kim also described the sociopolitical organism as being hierarchical. As seen in figure 5.2-B, in the sociopolitical organism the leader is the core surrounded by the party and again encircled by the masses. In this scheme, the hierarchical order among the parts is more important than the unity of the organism. This scheme reflects the real authority relations in North Korea and rationalizes the personality cult of Kim Il Sung. The authority relations between the three parts portrayed in this scheme are as follows. The essence of life resides in the leader, a term that refers to the specific person of Kim Il Sung, and not to Kim Jong Il or to the both of them. Kim Jong Il was frequently called “party center” in the early 1970s. But no person other than Kim Il Sung was the leader of, and the nucleus of, the sociopolitical organism in the 1980s, whereas the party—either the headquarters or the rank and file—and the state apparatus are organizations that embody Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary ideas.


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The party inspires the loyalty of the masses to the leader Kim Il Sung. The party binds and mobilizes them through mass line, such as the Ch’Ængsan-ri Spirit, the Ch’Ængsan-ri Method, the Daean Management Method, and the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Style.53 The mass line is implemented by various auxiliary organizations of the party—such as youth leagues, occupational leagues, and women’s leagues. The auxiliary organizations not only train the masses but also indoctrinate them so that they prioritize both loyalty to the leader and revolutionary sentiment; accordingly, they are called the “party’s trustworthy supporters” or the “party’s periphery organizations.” There are two ways through which auxiliary organizations are controlled by the party: one is horizontal, and the other is vertical. Horizontally, a party unit at each level institutionally penetrates into parallel auxiliary organizations through party committees. A party committee in each organization guides the implementation of the WPK’s policies on a corresponding organizational and societal level. Vertically, dual memberships in the CC of the WPK and in auxiliary organizations—that is, CC members’ occupation of high-ranking positions in auxiliary organizations—contribute to the party’s control over these organizations. The representation of high-ranking officials in the headquarters of the party contributes to the direct implementation of the party line through organizational hierarchies.54 Insofar as the party remains a network mechanism, it performs its function best not as a collectivity for action but as an organization that forges links between the leader and the masses. This is different from Lenin’s party theory. In Leninism, the Communist Party plays a role as a vanguard organization in which the most advanced and conscious workers gather together and direct the people in the revolutionary struggle. Therefore, in following the principle of socialist revolution, the party as a collectivity of revolutionaries displays independent and purposeful leadership qualities. In contrast, the sociopolitical organism views Kim Il Sung, a particular person, as the leader, and the party as a networking organization through which the leader and the masses approach each other. Kim Jong Il accordingly stated that views on the party should be called the “organizational viewpoint” instead of the party viewpoint. In other words, the party brings organizational training to the masses in order simultaneously to extract from them their greatest loyalty and to direct it exclusively onto the leader. In order to play a role in the binding of the sociopolitical organism, the party requires its cadres to undergo an ideological education and organizational discipline. The party inculcates the Chuch’e idea

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into all party cadres and prohibits other forms of political expression and opinion. According to Kim Jong Il, without the Chuch’e idea as its unifying ideology, the party would fail to guarantee its unity and would provide reactionaries with opportunities to revive their antirevolutionary actions.55 For Kim, therefore, the party has to adopt the organizational principle of democratic centralism, a concept first adopted by Lenin. The term democratic is intended to induce rank-andfile cadres to voluntarily participate in party works, whereas the term centralism refers to a strict and compulsory organizational principle. What should be noted is that the term democratic is a rhetorical one and always subordinate to the term centralism. By following the principle of democratic centralism in party works, the party is supposed to establish a strict discipline in accordance with which all cadres are to conduct themselves under the guidance of the leader and are to implement the party’s decisions unconditionally.56 In the sociopolitical organism, the focus is on the leader, so that the significance of the individual is ignored. According to Kim Jong Il, the comradeship among individual revolutionaries is meaningful only when the leader, as the source of life, represents the collectivity of these individuals. He maintained that loyalty to, and comradeship with, the leader, Kim Il Sung, is therefore absolute and unconditional and that it overrides the significance even of brotherhood or of other family bonds.57 Kim Jong Il thereby systematized the already established idea of the so-called Revolutionary Supreme Leadership of Kim Il Sung and came to contrast the temporary nature of people’s everyday life with the eternal nature of political life embedded in the sociopolitical organism and the Revolutionary Supreme Leadership. This comes close to being a kind of religion that everybody has to believe in if he or she wishes to survive in North Korea. “Socialism in Our Own Style” The nationalist element—which is embedded in the reference points of state-building, especially anti-imperialism and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition—has been considered a distinctive aspect of Chuch’e.58 For this reason, it is not unusual that the basic nationalistic context appeared again in the “Socialism in Our Own Style,” which was newly presented by Kim Jong Il in May 1991. Witnessing the collapse of socialist systems in Eastern European countries and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, North Korea faced questions of how to interpret these changes and how to prevent ideological restlessness. The answer, which revealed the mixed intentions of nation-


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alism and of support from the masses, was Kim Jong Il’s “Socialism in Our Own Style,”59 whose postulate was elaborated in a speech given to senior cadres of the CC of the WPK on January 3, 1992.60 The timing of the speech coincided with the fall of the big brother, the Soviet Union, and it focused on the reasons for the socialist breakdown. He pointed out that the collapsing systems had not put the main emphasis on a strengthening of the core motive force behind the construction of socialism and that they had, instead, sought economic achievement alone; they had failed to differentiate socialism from capitalism and had adopted liberalism as a mode of political interaction; and they had neglected to strengthen solidarity based on independence and self-determination in international relations. According to Kim Jong Il, by adhering principally to economic growth, those countries failed to carry out a continuous revolution, in general, and ideological and cultural revolutions, in particular. Underlying the successful consolidation of socialism, he said, is an all-out remolding of the masses into the main defenders of socialism: “The socialist economic system cannot be maintained or made to conform to its nature if it is apart from the socialist state, whereas the socialist state can neither maintain its existence nor play its function in keeping with its nature if it is separated from the people with the socialist idea. In light of this, it is clear that the popular masses, armed with the socialist idea, are always a decisive factor in the development of socialist society and its destiny.”61 Kim maintained that the penetration of liberal ideas into the collapsing socialist systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had compromised the unity and cohesion of the society and had finally demolished social foundations. He contrasted the collectivism in socialism with the liberalism in capitalism and prioritized the former. Finally, just as his father had done, Kim Jong Il refused to admit any difference between the center and the periphery in the international Communist movement, while saying that “there can be neither higher nor lower parties nor leading nor led parties.” According to Kim, by preserving self-determinism and banning the penetration of so-called reforms or restructuring, the socialist system in line with the North Korean style could be maintained. Kim Jong Il has made several references to the intellectuals and the bureaucrats that constitute the actors behind the disintegration of socialism. He has called them “internal enemies.”62 Indeed, in Eastern European countries, bureaucrats contributed to the erosion of the public sphere by pursuing only private gains through illicit profit-seeking activities. These countries’ intellectuals constituted a social group that

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created a counterideology for the realization of human rights and that attempted to expand a space for themselves outside the party-state’s control. The intellectuals promoted either a revival or an emergence of civil society, and either case brought a serious blow to the maintenance of socialist systems. Considering the role of these internal enemies closely, Kim Jong Il concluded that the North Korean system, which was confronting changes in various environments, had been— and would be—able to persist by illuminating the uniqueness, or its own style, of socialism. Also, being keenly aware of the deviant behavior of bureaucrats, Kim instructed that the slogan “working for the people” be disseminated throughout society.63 It was intended that this slogan would, at least, alleviate any potential confrontation between ruling bureaucrats and the people and, at most, generate popular support during a perceived crisis.64 This overall response was apparently defensive and clearly different from the previous muchtrumpeted pride in Chuch’e. On Capitalism and Opening Up Compared to his views on the domestic economic system, Kim’s views on opening up have been more elastic. Some flexibility had appeared long before the 1990s’ famine, when North Korea began to open its doors to the rest of the world in order to accept humanitarian assistance. Kim had recognized the necessity of foreign resources if North Korea was to resurrect the viability of both its crippled economy and the system as a whole. In 1982, Kim noted that national development and international economic cooperation were compatible. By 1987, he had already presented an idea of how capitalist society is able to persist rather than decay. Realistic views on capitalism: A post-Marxist interpretation? Kim Jong Il presented his own views on capitalism in the second half of the 1980s, views that differ from the Leninist interpretation of imperialism. Whereas Lenin focused on the contradictions inherent in capitalism, Kim paid attention to the logic of capitalism’s persistence. In his work Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1917, Lenin stated that imperialism is capitalism’s most developed stage—a stage of monopolistic capitalism. Imperialism, as characterized by Lenin, would yield the following dangers: first, the stage of imperialism would be characterized by monopolies, that is, by a concentration of production and capital; second, a small number of capi-


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talist financiers would gain control of vast amounts of industrial capital and form a financial oligarchy; third, exports of capital, as well as exports of products, would be unique traits of imperialism; and finally, a few extraordinarily powerful capitalists would eventually divide among themselves the territories of the world. According to Lenin, capitalism in the stage of imperialism reinforces wealthy capitalist countries’ colonial domination of poor countries not simply through the exploitation of natural resources and markets but also through networks of capital infiltration. Such a capitalist strategy would bring about uneven development in the world, he said, and he warned that the colonization of poor countries would result in severe competition among capitalist countries.65 In a speech delivered at the CC of the WPK in 1987, Kim Jong Il described characteristics of capitalism that differed quite significantly from those identified by Lenin.66 Kim said that contemporary capitalism had been built on interdependent relationships between advanced countries, relationships that were mediated by multinational corporations. The following passages reveal Kim’s exact thoughts on the matter: A new change is occurring in the relationship between capitalist countries because of rapid internationalization through multinational corporations. Before World War II, capitalist countries competed so severely for markets and hegemony that destructive military confrontations and wars broke out. Both World War I and World War II were considered to be symptomatic of the contradictions and confrontations among capitalist countries. However, after World War II, internationalization contributed to economic and technological interdependence and cooperation among those capitalist countries. In arguing that rich capitalists, especially American capitalists who made fortunes in times of military-based industrial expansion, came to cooperate with each other economically and technologically, Kim Jong Il’s analysis differs significantly from Lenin’s prediction that capitalism would collapse. Kim offered this apt observation: “Capitalism, which was close to collapse because of severe competition among capitalists, is reviving now owing to a shift toward more cooperative relations.” Kim went on to state that advanced capitalist countries have attempted to rule developing countries through the “new colonialism” that appeared after World War II. The new colonialism allows exploited countries to possess national sovereignty and even provides them with economic assistance. At the same time, the new

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colonialism, taking advantage of a benevolent image, subjugates poor countries to capitalist countries, which proceed to exploit the poor countries’ markets and natural resources. This situation has resulted in productivity increases and technological innovations benefiting the capitalist countries alone. It should not be overlooked that Kim Jong Il remarked on the transformation of class structure in his analysis of contemporary capitalism—the emergence of white-collar workers due to technological development and productivity increases. The transformation of class structures has made practically impossible the proletarian revolution that Marx suggested more than a century earlier. Indeed, Kim argued that the number of manual workers around the world had decreased significantly because of technological development, whereas the number of technicians and service providers had increased dramatically. Such changes in class structure have been followed by an intellectualization of nonmanual workers through so-called enhancements in their cultural life. Kim stated that this change has consequently diminished the possibility of a proletarian revolution of the classical type. “With the growing number of intellectuals, petty-bourgeois ideas have become entrenched in workers’ mentalities. In particular, it is an inescapable fact that intellectuals under the capitalist educational system, in which revolutionary education is impossible, are contaminated by bourgeois or petty-bourgeois ideas. This is why to bring these workers over to the revolutionary side is a thorny task.”67 Kim summed up his analysis on capitalism by concluding that “capitalism will never collapse by itself.”68 This analysis deviates truly from the Marxist-Leninist understanding of capitalism. Suzuki Masayuki, an insightful North Korea analyst, has referred to Kim’s new interpretation of capitalism in the 1980s as a kind of “new thinking” that aimed at selective reform and a gradual opening.69 In terms of analyses of contemporary capitalism, there exists a striking similarity between Kim Jong Il’s analyses and post-Marxist analyses, particularly those of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In the 1980s, these post-Marxist scholars have maintained that there is a diversification of the trends of social contradictions and global problems, and they have refuted the orthodox Marxist interpretation of class conflict as the result of the bourgeoisie’s exploitation of workers.70 According to Laclau and Mouffe, with the empowerment of whitecollar workers, social contradictions have developed not only in the relations of production but also in the services related to cultural, environmental, and regional domains. While they have acknowledged the importance of economic factors, these post-Marxists have paid


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special attention to the multiplicity of centralities, or an “unfixity” of centrality, in contradictions.71 The class conflict then becomes one of many contradictions. Such contemporary problems as the arms race, ecological destruction, environmental contamination, and uneven regional development exemplify the unfixity of centrality, in which the sources of a problem cannot be attributed simply to a contradiction in economic relations.72 For post-Marxists, the shift in the class composite in contemporary capitalism and the resulting unfixity of centrality in social contradictions have lessened the feasibility of a worker-led revolution; furthermore, these changes break away from class-based political constellations. It is difficult to find any direct intellectual linkage between Kim Jong Il’s analysis of capitalism and post-Marxist understandings of capitalism. But it is presumable that Kim—as well as those North Korean ideologues who have contributed to his writings—has attempted to understand the incessant growth of surrounding countries’ market economies in the 1980s, such as Japan’s and those of the Four Little Dragons in East Asia, including South Korea. Furthermore, Kim and his associates grew keenly aware of the parallel between political changes that favored democracy and the record-breaking economic expansion in that period. Given this correlation, they developed a new interpretation of contemporary capitalism in their efforts to enhance— or at least maintain—systemic viability. Elastic views on foreign economic relations Kim Jong Il’s views on foreign economic relations seem to be progressive to some extent. These views contrast with his adherence to the socialist principle of control and planning in domestic economic affairs. His relative openness regarding foreign economic relations must be closely related to his understanding of capitalism’s perpetuation, which the following quote sheds some light on: “Our goal for the building of an independent national economy, an economy based on self-reliance, does not necessitate our support of a closed economic buildup. The independent economy opposes economic domination and subjugation by other nations, and it does not reject international economic cooperation. In particular, in the fields of economics and technology, cooperation between socialist countries and newly emerging countries will be essential for guarantees on their economic independence and for a consolidation of their economic power.”73 Indeed, Kim Jong Il’s views on the need for international cooperation were not really new. His father, Kim Il Sung, had already expressed

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a very similar point of view when he stated in April 1965 that “[i]n building our socialism, we want neither to oppose economic cooperation nor to close our country. The thing that we fight against is a hegemony that attempts to block other countries’ economic independence and development in the name of economic cooperation and an international division of labor.”74 Insofar as he made such statements in the era of growing international nonalliance movements and the Sino-Soviet conflict, it seems that Kim Il Sung intended to open up a possibility of cooperation on only one condition: that the cooperation not impede equal relations among countries. In other words, Kim Il Sung aimed to maintain self-reliant foreign relations with superpowers including China and the Soviet Union and, at the same time, to pursue economic survival through a limited range of cooperation with other countries. But, Kim Jong Il’s standpoint on international cooperation has gone beyond the scope of his father’s. In a private interview in 1984 with Ch’oe ≠n-h„i and Sin Sang-ok, the former South Korean actress and actor mentioned above,75 Kim expressed strong interest in the profitability of the tourist industry. He stated that Hu Yaobang, then the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, had suggested to him during an unofficial visit to China in 1983 that he (Kim) promote North Korea’s nascent tourist industry. In the interview with Ch’oe and Sin, Kim calculated the possibility of an influx of foreign currency, particularly U.S. dollars, into North Korea through the tourist industry that would not require any large initial investment. In the talk with Ch’oe and Sin, Kim Jong Il seemed to envision a limited opening in a geographical sense. He intended to open up some specific regional areas, that is, to create some special economic zones. Pointing out the difference in territorial size between China and North Korea, he outlined a plan for the opening of a few spots, such as Ch’Ængjin City and KangwÆn Province. Kim was quoted as saying that unlike the Chinese case, the North Korean territory was so small that it could be easily “contaminated” by outside influences. This idea of a limited opening also stemmed from his concern about South Korean influence, which Kim considered threatening owing to the half-century’s national division, military confrontation, and regime competition between the North and the South. It is noteworthy that his recognition of the profitability of the tourist industry preceded his first discussion, in 1989, with a South Korean partner, Chung Ju-young, the chairman of Hyundai, who visited the North to inquiry into the feasibility of tourism at Mt. K„mgang. Later, in 1998, Kim Jong Il successfully netted some of Chung’s business when South Korea under the newly launched Kim Dae-jung


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administration adopted the so-called Sunshine Policy in relation to North Korea. The opening of limited areas, special economic zones, was first formalized with the establishment of the Najin-SÆnbong Free Economic and Trade Zone in 1991 and then with the adoption of the Foreign Investment Law in 1992. Tangible success was achieved with the establishment of the KaesÆng industrial complex, where Hyundai and Korea Land Corporation collaborated on the construction of infrastructure and where South Korean small- and middle-range manufacturing companies started to produce products at the end of 2004. Reflections on Chuch’e: With Special Reference to Systemic Identity At least since Kim Jong Il’s involvement in party work in early 1973, the Chuch’e idea has extended the appearance of legitimacy to the Kim family’s existing authority structure. As the idea has become transformed, as seen in the human-centered view and the sociopolitical organism, the Chuch’e idea has grown estranged from the tenets of orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Furthermore, Kim Jong Il’s interpretation of capitalism, similar to the post-Marxist version, has represented an acknowledgment that market economies are sustainable in the age of decaying socialism. But however its role has changed over time, Chuch’e has reflected in varying degrees the three reference points of the North Korean system discussed in chapter 1. The socialist principles, the first reference point of the system, by and large remain at the official level of the Chuch’e idea but minimally persist in the daily life of the general public. This discrepancy represents the systemic dissonance that has produced mounting pressures for greater reform, even after the 7-1 measures in 2002. Anti-imperialism, the second reference point, remains an active working element in Chuch’e as long as the American economic sanctions on the North and the American military presence in the South continue. What should be noted is that North Korea’s dealings with the United States seem to differ substantially from North Korea’s dealings with South Korea. As part of the “detour diplomacy” for the resolution of imminent economic difficulties and, finally, for the normalizing of relations with the prime enemy, the United States, North Korea has selectively opened its doors to the South. For Kim Jong Il, South Korea seems to be the partner that might best generate not only economic benefits in North Korea but also security for the North Korean system owing to the South’s role of soother in the relationship between the two adversaries.

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The anti-Japanese revolutionary tradition, the third reference point, has now ceded primacy to the military-first politics. This change implies a certain sense of breakage in the identity of the system. The anti-Japanese revolutionary tradition rationalized the monolithic power centered on Kim Il Sung and his core guerrilla comrades in the WPK, and it completely excluded the existence of any other potential political group. For this reason, Kim Il Sung felt entitled to carry out an extensive revision of the constitution in 1972 and then appointed his nonpartisan associates, loyal to him, to various state apparatuses. Of the many related exemplary figures, Yang HyÆng-sÆp, Kim YÆng-nam, and Kang SÆng-san belonged to this group. At any rate, the anti-Japanese revolutionary tradition presupposed stable control of the state by a party that was dominated by Kim Il Sung and his guerilla comrades. In contrast, the military-first politics has reflected the institutional crisis of the party, as seen in the previous chapter.

6

The Fluctuation of Economic Institutions and the Emergence of Entrepreneurship North Korea, the last stronghold of centralized economic planning, has nevertheless gone ahead with significant marketization after adopting the 7-1 economic measures in 2002.1 It is obvious that the economic measures were a reform meant to officially accommodate previously existing elements prevalent in unofficial spheres. The economic measures not only raised the salary and price of goods at an unprecedented level but also introduced a responsibility method in kind in the production and service sectors. But the economic measures seem not to have ended the differentiation of the economy. They have produced greater diversification of unofficial spheres, not to mention hyperinflation, and expanded a gray zone to which the state’s binary moral code cannot be applied. In this chapter, I will examine the dislocation of North Korea’s economic institutions and its related problems and then investigate the resultant outcome of the dislocation: unofficial transition of property rights that took place before the 7-1 economic measures. The transition represented the core aspect of disclaiming the reference point for the socialist prioritization of public goods. By dislocation, I mean the serious erosion of socialist institutional principles that had been endorsed by the party-state. The institutional dislocation brought about an internal differentiation especially between the official public sphere and the unofficial private sphere. Underlying the examination of the institutional dislocation is my belief that the direction of any change 137

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or transition is not decided by chance but a preferential correlation with traditions. The notion of preferential correlation posits that no change can be explained either uniquely by the necessity of mechanical determinism or uniquely by pure randomness. This notion of preferential correlation parallels new institutionalism’s historical dependence or path dependence, although unlike the latter, the former gives weight to the implied indeterminacy of a change’s direction.2 A series of events has brought about incremental dislocation of the economic institutions since perhaps as early as the 1970s but certainly no later than the mid-1980s. It is noteworthy that the production drive for consumer goods, initiated in 1984 by the incumbent leader, Kim Jong Il, fostered profit-bearing activities within the range of the planned economy and contributed to the expansion of the second economy. With the production drive, private entrepreneurial activities emerged to enhance the function of markets.3 Despite the absence of statistical figures that might facilitate a comparison between the output values of public enterprises—either state-owned or collectively owned—and those of private entrepreneurial activities, it seems that the latter replaced some significant functions of the former. For instance, most consumer goods have been produced and provided by the private sector. In a sense, the private sector has taken advantage of the public sector’s weakened institutions. The famine in the mid-1990s had a fatal effect on the already weakened institutions either to collapse or come close to doing so. It created mass mobility for all people searching for food; a temporary stoppage in public education and health care; erosion of the party-state’s social control, particularly over labor mobilization; an increase in bureaucratic deviance; a sharp decline in the number and length of stateowned enterprises’ workdays; and an expansion of illicit private entrepreneurs and their black marketeering activities. The adoption of the 7-1 economic measures by the party-state was not a surprise in this context of devastated socialist institutions. Institutions of Economic Management: Traditions and Their Dislocation Until recently, North Korea was attempting to maintain dual objectives in the management of enterprises. One objective was to keep enterprises within the scope of central planning, and the other was to grant a limited sense of autonomy to administrative units and workplaces. During the period of socialist consolidation, the party-state intended to achieve limited local autonomy through institutional arrangements such as regional self-reliance entrenched in local enter-

The Fluctuation of Economic Institutions

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prises, independent accounting methods, and collective decision-making in party committees. These institutions of limited autonomy have changed in their content, and in various ways the institutions’ formal norms dislocated by the cadres’ informal practices. Regional self-reliance Regional self-reliance, even if in a limited sense, was established after June 1958, when Kim Il Sung ordered the building of more than one local enterprise in each county and each city.4 Each local unit was supposed to maintain economic self-sufficiency even during moments of crisis. With this in mind, the state not only divided state-owned enterprises and dispersed them to provinces and counties but also urged county governments to establish local enterprises that would supply their jurisdictions with consumer goods. Regional self-reliance in North Korea was different from the decentralization in China’s transition economy after 1978. Unlike China’s granting of power to local governments (a policy meant to initiate discrete measures in trade and investment as well as in budget, finance, and tax affairs), North Korea’s regional self-reliance did not sanction any initiative by local governments that might derail the fundamentals of central planning. Regional self-reliance in North Korea was more similar to that in Mao’s China, which aimed to disperse, for security reasons, industrial centers and to support rural industrial needs.5 Why was regional self-reliance promoted at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s? Two explanations are possible. One is related to the consolidation during the mid-1950s of Kim Il Sung’s monolithic power in the party, which was now able to provide local governments with a limited degree of autonomy and responsibility in economic affairs. Since the vertical party hierarchy was strong enough to penetrate into the lower echelons of society, each level of a party unit could intervene in that level’s paralleling administrative and economic units. So it is probably no coincidence that the adoption of regional self-reliance took place soon after Kim’s monopolization of party power, particularly after the purge of Yanan leaders and Soviet-Koreans during the August Incident in 1956. The other explanation is linked to North Korea’s security strategy.6 Regional self-reliance was further emphasized in the midst of the East-West conflict in the early 1960s: the Cuban missile crisis and American engagement in Vietnam. Both the success of Major General Park Chung-hee’s coup in South Korea and American support for Park’s military regime afterward should also be noted. North Korea now felt that its security was threatened,

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and thus it undertook a new policy known as “Parallel Development of the Economy and National Defense” at the fifth plenary session of the Fourth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in December 1962. This development policy reinforced the drive for the establishment of small- and medium-scale enterprises at the county level. In other words, regional self-reliance based on local enterprises was intended to meet North Korea’s security goals. In the institutionalization of regional self-reliance, the magnitude of geographical and administrative units mattered. Kim Il Sung and his eldest son, Kim Jong Il, the successor to power later on, regarded the county as a unit possessing the optimal size for self-reliance. For them, a province was too big, while a ri—a county’s subunit, comparable to a commune in Mao’s China—was too small for self-sufficiency.7 In terms of the number of units, the county might also be the most appropriate unit that the central state could deal with. The nine provinces were too few in number, whereas the number of ri was more than one thousand. The number of counties, 209, was optimal not only for the reflection of regional characteristics but also for the central party-state’s management. The county and its party committee have hence been considered the self-sufficient frontline that implements the central party’s economic policies.8 Here, county level means not only counties in rural areas but also most average urban cities and the districts of major cities such as Pyongyang and Namp’o. The county as a self-sufficient unit was emphasized by the younger Kim. In his college graduation thesis of 1964, entitled “The Status and Role of the County in the Building of Socialism,” he asserted that the county is a strategic nodal point that serves as a connection between urban and rural areas as well as between economic and military goals relative to the ongoing North Korea–South Korea conflict.9 It is of interest that Kim’s thesis was widely publicized in the mid-1980s, when some important economic adjustment measures were taken: the production drive for consumer goods, adoption of independent accounting methods in enterprises, and establishment of associated enterprises. The establishment of the local budget in 1973 has consolidated the institution of regional self-reliance on the basis of local enterprises. Local governments, which had relied solely on state subsidies, now had to plan their own local budgets with the revenues from local enterprises. In the North Korean perspective, the local budget is a fiscal system whereby a local government maintains its own economy, particularly in the affairs of “local characteristics” under state supervision. The income derives from a sales tax, income tax, land-use tax, profits, and special contributions from local enterprises and ad hoc


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incomes. It is spent for local governments’ maintenance fees, local commerce, and agricultural management and also for the building and maintaining of child care centers, kindergartens, libraries, health clinics, and so on.10 It is evident that the local budget system was intended to lessen the state’s fiscal burden.11 The role of local enterprises was significant. Local residents both in urban areas and in the countryside depended on them for products ranging from soy sauce, textiles, and footwear to furniture, school supplies, and machinery. Many small enterprises also hired residents as part-time workers. The role of local enterprises entered into a new phase in the mid-1980s, however, with the introduction of the August 3 Production Drive for Consumer Goods in 1984. The production drive, whose launch appears to have been more political than the launch of the local enterprises, overwhelmed the local enterprises in the production and the supply of consumer goods.12 North Korean officials believed that by using the discarded and surplus materials of nearby manufacturing enterprises, the production drive could increase the production of consumer goods. This plan was first made public in Kim Jong Il’s speech on the so-called Light Industry Revolution, which was delivered to the CC members of the WPK in February 1984. While Kim did not propose a shift in industrial policy from heavy industry to light industry, he mentioned that the people’s demands had changed during the long period of development in socialism.13 That is, Kim’s idea to launch the production drive lay in the maintenance or security of the existing socialist system. In any case, the production drive was carried out under the presumption that consumer goods should be manufactured and consumed within a local administrative unit, essentially at the county level. The inverse fates between the local enterprises and the August 3 Production Drive can be seen from their numbers at different times. Local enterprises mushroomed at the end of the 1950s: some 2,000 local enterprises were established in 1958 and 1959 alone. The number increased to about 3,600 in 1980.14 The expansion then slowed down, and by 1994 there were only about 4,000 local enterprises. In contrast, the work teams created in 1984 by the August 3 Production Drive dramatically expanded and soon far outnumbered the local enterprises. The number of work teams reached 46,500 in the ten years extending from 1984 to 1994, and output increased by 3.5 times during the same period.15 It was not a mere coincidence that the shift paralleled the deteriorating official economy and the growing second economy that had arisen in the mid-1980s. The shift reflected the fact that the profitbearing—or, for local residents at least, the welfare-oriented—small

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work teams of the August 3 Production Drive gradually replaced the public-oriented and local enterprises. As a result, the production drive came to supply most of the consumer goods in the disarray of the official economy in the 1990s. However, despite the shift in the source of consumer goods, the basic norm of regional self-reliance remained mostly intact. And this persistence of regional self-reliance was a significant factor for the direction of ongoing change in economic affairs. Empty independent accounting It is well known that in North Korea, as in former Communist systems, the State Planning Committee is the locus of central planning in practice, although the party dominates and guides the national development strategy. The committee’s working principle is the “unified and detailed planning” policy, whose implementation was emphasized by Kim Il Sung in 1964. While the Daean Management Method (or Daean Model), as will be discussed later, represented the institution of collective decision-making at the enterprise level, the unified and detailed planning was an economic-planning rule that mapped out all the flows of essential resources not only between the state and state-owned enterprises but also among state-owned enterprises. On the one hand, the unified planning meant that the State Planning Committee and its regional committees were to have the responsibility of drafting the production quota that each enterprise should fulfill. On the other hand, detailed planning implied that the State Planning Committee would intervene in the detailed items of the planning procedure. The unified and detailed planning in North Korea was intended to realize an equilibrium between supply and demand and an effective mobilization of resources, and to exclude any unbalance brought about by the concentrated production of certain goods. However, this planning could arrive at neither equilibrium nor efficacy. It was impossible for the state to weave all the flows of resources, which could number more than one hundred thousand items, as in the mid1960s.16 Furthermore, chronic behavior patterns of bureaucrats, such as false reports on production capacity and outputs and improper storing of raw materials, impeded a proper implementation of the unified and detailed tabulation of the state’s economic planning. In fact, the North Korean version of centralized planning—that is, its unified and detailed planning—was a failure. It could not achieve the original objective, the state’s thorough control of the economy. Moreover, it failed to encourage productivity increases in state-owned enterprises. North Korea extensively institutionalized the independent accounting method in state-owned enterprises in the mid-1980s in order


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to provide them with a certain degree of financial discretion and to increase productivity through material incentives to workers and managers. At an extended meeting of the Political Committee held in February 1973, Kim Il Sung hailed the introduction of the independent accounting method as a component of economic management.17 But it was not actually institutionalized until December 1984, when the WPK adopted a new regulation at a party meeting, stressing a nationwide dissemination of the so-called managerial revolution.18 The implementation of the independent accounting method was accompanied by the establishment of associated enterprises, that is, conglomerates of several similar or complementary enterprises. Associated enterprises, which had already been mentioned in the mid1970s, spread rapidly throughout the country after Kim Il Sung delivered a speech at the State Council in November 1984.19 Both the nationwide adoption of the independent accounting method and the establishment of associated enterprises were not a coincidence in the sense that the relative independence of economic units was a necessary condition for the activation of a certain managerial discretion. Regardless of the degree of its effectiveness, the independent accounting method prevailed in the associated enterprises, whose managing offices could provide their client enterprises with raw materials through either direct-contract purchases from other associated enterprises or procurement from the state. The independent accounting method yielded unimpressive results owing to a number of factors. First, the institutional autonomy of associated enterprises was severely limited under the socialist economic formula, which was governed generally by centralism and specifically by the unified and detailed planning.20 In reality, the independent accounting method was not independent. The accounting was permitted only within the range of compatibility with the State Planning Committee’s guidelines and, more importantly, was allowed only within the boundary of instructions laid out by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. For instance, a contract purchase of raw materials from other associated enterprises rarely attained the level needed to fulfill the actual demand, because the contract itself was circumscribed according to the principles of unified and detailed planning. Second, being forced to achieve elevated production goals, the enterprises neglected the substantive promotion of productivity. They paid attention neither to the qualitative improvement of their products nor to the reduction of costs. Furthermore, the enterprises frequently concealed their potential and underestimated their production capacity in order to reduce the amount of work that future goal-setting would require of them. Third, such incentives as bonuses, prizes, and grants as a way

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to generate enthusiasm for hard work often could not be used because of a scarcity of inputs. With a shortage of energy and a curtailed supply of raw materials, it was unthinkable for the managerial officials to promise various incentives to the workers.21 As a result, the mere adoption of an independent accounting method did not pay off, insofar as it remained unaccompanied by associated enterprises’ acquisition of real fiscal and managerial autonomy. In short, the institutional arrangement whereby the independent accounting method was to increase productivity distorted the intended objective. In theory, managerial officials in the associated enterprises should have had a way to create the motivation for hard work. In practice, most of the enterprises remained state-owned, so that the independent accounting method was employed only within the restrictions of unified and detailed planning. In other words, the adoption of the independent accounting method had nothing to do with a reform measure accompanying the transformation of the bureaucratic control mechanism, which is one of the important features of reform in socialist systems.22 Furthermore, it was not workable in an economy plagued by shortages. The party’s dominance without responsibility The institutional foundation of decision-making in the enterprise has been the party committee based on the Daean Model, which was named after the Daean Electrical Factory, where Kim Il Sung conducted an on-spot guidance visit in December 1961. While the Ch’Ængsan-ri Method, which was launched in February 1960, has represented the management of collective farms, the Daean Model has exemplified the collective management of factories and enterprises in other industrial sectors. The Daean Model emphasizes the role that each enterprise’s party committee plays in planning and production processes. Included in the party committee, which acts as a collective decision-making body, are not only the manager and the party secretary but the chief technician and other workers, as well. It is officially said that the establishment of the Daean Model was intended for the realization of a revolutionary mass line in economic management. According to Kim Il Sung, the model was designed to capitalize on workers’ wisdom and creativity through these workers’ broad participation in managerial affairs.23 However, the Daean Model, centered on the party committee, came from top leaders’ recognition of the limitations affecting the previous management model—that is, the manager responsibility model—in the new industrial environment. In the early 1960s, the manager responsibility model


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was no longer effective in the rapidly growing industrial environment, in which a greater diversity of management techniques and skills were needed than before.24 The previous manager-centered model had worked in the early stages of North Korea’s socialism, particularly in the post-Korean War period of rehabilitation and industrialization, when the swift implementation of central planning was needed. That is, the manager responsibility model had worked efficiently in the consistent push for rapid growth in heavy industry.25 With the deepening of industrialization, however, North Korea now needed a stable management model, and the answer was a model of management based on both collectivism and the party committee. More importantly, there was a political reason for the establishment of the Daean Model in the early 1960s. Inasmuch as the model employed the institution that granted the party the predominant role in society, there was a close relationship between the prestige of the WPK and the adoption of the Daean Model’s party committee. As soon as severe factional strife among elites was terminated by the purge of many party seniors in the August Incident in 1956, Kim Il Sung dominated the party. Because the party was the space from which power emanated and in which policies were formulated, his victory against opponents in the power struggle made him the unchallengeable leader in North Korea. He could exercise power in personnel affairs and actualize his policy preferences throughout the state’s heavy industries.26 Furthermore, having the party’s confidence in his leadership, Kim successfully consolidated various levels of the party hierarchy, from the center to the provinces, to cities and counties, and to cells. Furthermore, he arranged the horizontal web of party organization, especially through party committees at every level of political and social units. Once its vertical and horizontal network was established, the party had the capacity to control every aspect of society. Kim Il Sung now came to institutionalize the party committee in every unit, consolidating “the party’s guidance,” to use North Korea’s official term. For instance, the institution of the party committee was introduced to the military as soon as Kim Il Sung, in 1958, raised the issue of the party’s political status in the North Korean armed forces, as seen in chapter 4. Likewise, it was natural that the Daean Model’s outline of the party committee was adopted to enhance the party’s supervision of both economic management and production processes, while prohibiting any individual, either manager or party secretary, from exercising arbitrary power. The party committee’s role in the enterprise encountered a problem from the outset. The party committee’s collective decision-making function was unable to promote the active participation of managerial

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staff and workers. The rule of collectivity in the party committee, in principle, implied that every member of the committee should equally participate in and be collectively responsible for the planning, production, and daily operation of his or her enterprise. In reality, however, the party’s guidance overrode the rule of collectivity. The party secretary and cadres prevailed in the decision-making process.27 Because of their privileged status as overseers of personnel affairs and ideological education, they assumed more power than others, while divesting themselves of comparable levels of responsibility. In this respect, the rule of collectivity in the Daean Model blurred the line of responsibilities regarding the operation of enterprises and provided the party cadres only with privileges.28 For example, nobody in specific was blamed for a failure to fulfill a certain state-assigned production quota. In practice, it was impossible for the party committee to handle various types of meetings effectively. For instance, in the associated enterprises with a party committee containing between thirty and forty people, it is hardly imaginable that the party committee could agree on any rational conclusion, even through a thorough discussion. Given this situation, the party committee meeting frequently ends up a mere ritual. Otherwise, it deals with organizational issues that are necessarily accompanied by criticism and self-criticism, situating all the participants in a completely different atmosphere.29 For the daily management of an enterprise, there existed an executive party committee as a downsized form of the party committee. Even though this institution provided high-ranking managerial officials with chances to engage in the details of the enterprise’s affairs, the party secretary maintained a prestigious position in decision-making processes. This power concentration without responsibility exemplifies the atmosphere of North Korean society, which has been controlled by the party hierarchy. In sum, the collective decision-making function of the Daean Model’s party committee enhanced the party’s dominance over workplaces, while leaving the locus of responsibility vague. As the party secretary and cadres prevailed in most affairs associated with enterprises, the institution for the collective decision-making function tended to hamper the efficient operation of the enterprises. It lowered the productivity of enterprises by fusing political and organizational affairs with economic affairs. Consequently, as the authority of the party’s guidance on the economy significantly weakened in the 1990s, the party secretary and the cadres, all acting within the framework of a strict hierarchy, came to function simply for social control and order.


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Increased Local Latitude In the midst of the economic crisis and the famine in the mid-1990s, the dislocation of institutions of economic management contributed to an increase in the degree of local latitude—that is, the relatively autonomous role of local governments and their officials; in turn, this change contributed to the spread of private entrepreneurs. First, the meaning of regional self-reliance based on local enterprises changed; it now meant that each county had to survive with independently mobilized resources. Second, an independent accounting method (in the genuine sense) began to emerge, as each enterprise had to continue at least the welfare function for the workers by promoting their profit-seeking activities. Third, the party committees of enterprises and, more specifically, the party secretary and cadres exercised power only for social control, as the party’s authority over economic affairs eroded severely. Owing to this situation, the latitude of local authorities significantly increased, even though it was not supplemented by legal power. The local authorities came to authorize private entrepreneurial activities, believing that the latter might contribute to the food security and other welfare requirements of the residents. The emergence of entrepreneurs who maneuvered in the institutional dislocation hence cannot be explained in terms of bureaucratic corruption alone, even though it is true that illicit bureaucratic behavior has increased since the second half of the 1980s. Bureaucratic corruption took place within the domain of the centrally planned economy, gradually eroding the capacity of the socialist economy. In contrast, the proliferation of private entrepreneurs challenged the institutional fundamentals of the socialist economy. As entrepreneurial activities came to be tacitly approved by governmental officials and regarded as noncriminal, they become closely associated with the spirit of the market economy, such as productivity, competition, and efficiency, which generally produces mounting pressure for changes in central economic planning. How can the spread of private entrepreneurs be explained? The answer lies in the increased local latitude that favored them in the 1990s. Here local latitude refers to the stipulation that the county should remain responsible for sustaining the daily living of local residents. Basically, this stipulation follows the basic institutional norms of regional self-reliance but allows greater leeway for decisions about economic affairs. This was true even before natural disasters led to three consecutive years of famine, from 1996 through 1998. It is remarkable

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that the increase in local latitude was justified in Kim Jong Il’s speech delivered to the CC members of the WPK in October 1994: It is very important to foster the creative role of local governments and to mobilize raw materials and other local resources in order to solve the problems associated with basic living standards—a solution that parallels the full implementation of the party’s revolutionary economic strategy. In particular, it is necessary to enhance the role of the county in order to improve people’s daily life, and this can be accomplished by following the principle of self-reliance. The county is a local nodal point in the building of socialism, and it is an administrative unit taking charge of 1/200 of the entire country. . . . When the status of the county is enhanced and when local resources are well explored, development of the country— indeed, even rapid socialist development—can be achieved.30 This statement was more than a simple reiteration of regional selfreliance at the county level. Given that the distribution mechanism for consumer goods was in disarray, the county government had to embark on a desperate journey toward a jurisdiction-based self-sufficiency of the people. The latitude of local governments significantly increased in the mid-1990s, when the severe economic deterioration, chiefly the food crisis and the famine, forced Kim Jong Il and his associates to consider regional self-sufficiency a prima facie economic principle for survival. At that time, the increased local latitude in North Korea did not have the same meaning as decentralization in China, but it did indicate a peripheral entrance into a primitive phase of transition toward decentralization. The institutional base of economic reform in China has provided its local government officials and the party secretary and cadres with the power to act as members of the board of directors in a large corporation. In the reforming Chinese case, the county has played the role of a corporation’s headquarters, as Jean C. Oi has written.31 In North Korea in the 1990s, the county as a well-defined self-reliant unit was authorized to search for independent survival strategies. With this new latitude, a county’s local party secretary and its governmental officials authorized profit-seeking entrepreneurial activities for the basic subsistence of the local units and their people. The increased local latitude of the 1990s meant something more than the regional self-reliance directives previously imposed by the party-state;


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the 1990s phenomenon implied more relative autonomy than the previously honored principle of local self-reliance. The increased local latitude had the following implications. First, the regional self-reliance that was adopted at the end of the 1950s came to have unexpected results four decades later: the development of interdependent relationships between private entrepreneurs and local authorities in times of economic deterioration.32 To be sure, local government officials and the party secretary and cadres were reluctant to fully and openly recognize what had been, relative to the principle of unified and detailed central planning, considered “deviance” stemming from entrepreneurial activities. But both the private entrepreneurs and the local authorities in North Korea were in the same boat practically, as the private entrepreneurs’ profit-seeking motive came to be compatible with local officials’ concern for self-sufficiency in their jurisdiction. Therefore, the latter became a type of guardian of the former; and in a sense, the former was the functionary of the latter. Second, the increased local latitude was in accordance with a de facto independent budget system at the county level. Each county as an independent unit was supposed to pursue commercial activities and to decide the wages of people involved in these activities. Furthermore, in the midst of the food crisis, each county was charged with developing its own export-oriented products that would earn foreign currency,33 and for this charge, the right of trade was granted to local governments to a certain degree. The county governments established their own budgets so as to facilitate the import of grain products from China and Russia. For example, counties were allowed to trade North Korean copper and wood for foreign wheat flour.34 This economic transaction shows that the North Korean county as a self-sufficient unit seemed like a corporation forged under the pressures of hard budget constraints. Third, as the party’s authority over economic affairs significantly waned, the relationship between the party center and the regional party unit underwent change. The party committees of both local enterprises and counties no longer functioned as the means for transmitting the central party’s economic policy; instead, their exercise of power constituted, uniquely, a bid for social control. Likewise, the local government, counties in particular, became more independent of the central state than before, as the central state’s extractive power and redistribution capacity decreased. The loosening of the center-region tie helped bring about a “forced” local autonomy in the sense that it was initiated not by the top leaders but by inescapable circumstances.35

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One question that can be raised here is whether or not the forced local autonomy led to a type of collusion between local governmental officials and party cadres that reflected the interests of the local people alone, bypassing the imperatives of the central party-state. If such collusion between local officials and party cadres took place in diverse regions, it would have brought about an “institutionalized pluralism,” to use Jerry Hough’s term, which would, in turn, empower local characteristics and sometimes generate conflict between national goals and local self-interest—a series of events that unfolded in the former Soviet Union under Brezhnev’s rule.36 In North Korea, it is presumed that such a collusive pattern at the local level partly appeared but did not reach the point to produce a national-local conflict. In the fluid circumstances surrounding the acute lack of stable institutional arrangements, as seen above, the number of private entrepreneurs multiplied. Their activities and practices were not institutionalized because of the absence of legalizing provisions, but their entrepreneurial activities were permitted to some extent by the county governments, even before the adoption of the 7-1 economic measures. The county government officials and party secretary and cadres became supportive, even if only implicitly, of the private entrepreneurs’ venturous activities, because they believed that to advance the interests of the private entrepreneurs was to contribute to the counties’ wellbeing. As they saw, the entrepreneurial spirit can create employment and tax revenue, which are favorable for the rehabilitation of local economies. Furthermore, workers in the workplace often considered successful entrepreneurs to be social welfare workers who were able to provide workers, at large, with daily necessities and consumer goods. The Emergence of Private Entrepreneurs The identification of entrepreneurs The number of people who were involved in North Korea’s private entrepreneurial activities was estimated, by a South Korean scholar, to be seven to eight hundred thousand at the end of the 1990s, meaning that approximately one out of every thirty people was a private entrepreneur.37 General trends in North Korea were that the scale of entrepreneurial activities was growing, illegal and illicit activities were receiving tacit approval from local governments, the types of products were becoming more diverse than before, and the activities themselves ranged from simple trade-and-exchange arrangements to production involving the use of private as well as public resources.


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What was the background of the private entrepreneurs? Where did they come from? It is obvious that they had developed business skills before the economic crisis. The origin of North Korea’s private entrepreneurs might reach back to the mid-1980s, when North Korea launched the August 3 Production Drive. Most manufacturing and distributive activities of the production drive were supervised by local governments, whereas profit-seeking practices started booming in the distribution sector. The greater frequency of farmers’ markets encouraged the expansion of entrepreneurial practices. Recognizing not only their right to residuals but also the markets’ high profitability, some workers even quit their full-time jobs and adopted the persona of entrepreneurs moving around farmers’ markets. The strict ideological tendency at that time prompted official North Korea to denounce both individualism and the profit-seeking motive, and the entrepreneurial activities retained their vulnerability to criticism from neighbors. However, the example of China, which was reforming itself, encouraged the gradual spread of entrepreneurship in North Korea. Contemplating the maturing fruits of the reform policies, waves of Chinese peddlers of Korean origin began to cross the North Korean border on the pretext that they were visiting relatives who had remained on the peninsula. These businesspeople traded Chinese consumer goods such as shoes, clothes, and foods for North Korean indigenous fishery or agricultural products. From these exchanges, North Korean entrepreneurs enjoyed profits that were twice—or sometimes ten to twenty times—the value of their initial investment.38 It is true that the KoreanChinese peddlers brought, in addition to their products, China’s growing profit-seeking entrepreneurial spirit, which they infused into the mind-set of a clandestine society. The extreme economic hardship in the 1990s, which peaked with the food crisis between 1996 and 1998, contributed to the burgeoning of private entrepreneurship in North Korea. Those who cultivated profit-seeking practices in the second half of the 1980s plied their entrepreneurial skills during the economic crisis in the 1990s. This is particularly true of those people who were involved more in trade affairs than in productive activities. Many of the production-side entrepreneurs apparently came from local enterprises that manufactured consumer goods. Because most small and medium-sized local enterprises stopped their operations just as large state-owned enterprises did, innovative workers who were employed at local enterprises encountered numerous occasions on which they could improperly use the facilities and materials owned by their workplace. They could easily extract labor, technology, facilities,

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and materials from their enterprises to produce such items as shoes, furniture, and liquor and, thus, to obtain greater market profits at the expense of officially assigned products.39 It is presumable that in their transformation of the productive capacities into profit-maximizing ones, those in the small-scale local collective enterprises, in particular, had more advantages than the national- or provincial-level large-scale stateowned enterprises. While playing the role of welfare providers for their fellow workers, innovative workers at local enterprises easily received consent from managerial officials and other workers to mobilize the enterprises’ resources. They could become private entrepreneurs in terms of their incomes as well as their motives, even though there was no general rule for profit sharing between their enterprises and themselves. Experienced, skilled, and innovative workers were not the only people engaged in the profit-seeking activities. In the famine-stricken society of the mid-1990s, average workers, housewives, and even children became traders. As many public enterprises had neither a selfsustaining operational capacity nor a budget covering employees’ full salaries, owing to the paucity of state subsidies as well as to energy shortages and resource deficits, all segments of the population were driven to go out to amass private earnings. Also, the end of food rations—particularly in urban areas—during the food crisis forced North Koreans to be involved in commercial activities that would give households access to food. This food-seeking travel prompted an increase in population mobility among the regions.40 Before the food crisis and the famine that followed, North Korean authorities had managed to limit such movement through residential restrictions. However, because of the food crisis, authorities soon permitted local residents to travel around in search of food and other daily necessities. Many visitors to North Korea at that time noted that public transportation, especially the train system, was brimming with passengers who were traveling in search of food; some of them were perched on the roofs of trains or precariously hung out the train windows.41 This population mobility fostered the empowerment of private entrepreneurial spirits, nullifying the official slogans (so often chanted in the collective consciousness) like “one for all and all for one.” While most travelers were looking for food for their own families, some others were simply engaging in profit seeking. Since the second half of the 1990s, the entrepreneurial activities dealing with grain products and consumer goods have, both in their legal and illegal forms, grown in number. Some entrepreneurs came to run their businesses in the market by utilizing either legal titles illicitly taken from workplaces or nominal affiliations with powerful organi-


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zations; other entrepreneurs engaged in profit-seeking activities without first taking care of legal procedural steps. One outstanding difference between legal and illegal activities was that the profit margins of legal operations would be smaller than the profit margins of illegal operations. This was so not only because entrepreneurs with legal titles had to pay more in nominal fees, taxes, and shares to the affiliated organizations than their black-market counterparts had to pay in kickbacks to the party secretary and cadres or local government officials, but also because there was no guarantee that the entrepreneurs could reinvest the profits stemming from commercial practices in order to amass wealth. Higher risk comes with a higher premium, and the illegal entrepreneurial activities were high-risk business ventures. Regardless of the legality or lack thereof, however, both types of private entrepreneurs were able to survive under the auspices of the party and the local government.42 Without their sponsorship, private entrepreneurs would not have turned a profit, whether small or large. One distinctive recent trend from this period was that some entrepreneurs gradually came to run their own enterprises by using their own resources. In producing products and services, entrepreneurs in the 1980s and the early 1990s had heavily relied on the resources of their affiliated workplace. In contrast, the illicit private enterprises in the second half of the 1990s used actual owners’ fixed assets, even though they nominally belonged to state apparatuses or local governments. This type of private enterprise seems very similar to small private enterprises in China that typically employ eight to ten workers.43 Exemplary entrepreneurs The following unofficial entrepreneurs have been identified according to the type of their practices. In practice, of course, a given entrepreneur might be involved in two or more different functions. For example, a “funding squad” could be involved in foreign-currency earning activities and could be classified as either a funding squad or a “foreign-currency earner,” depending on which function was playing a more pivotal role in his or her livelihood. LOAN

SHARKS

The loan-shark business has been regarded as illegal in North Korea. During the second half of the 1940s, when North Korea was nationalizing major businesses and industries, loan-sharking was labeled a

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typical “social evil of exploitation” left over from capitalist society. As unofficial entrepreneurial activities have spread, the loan-shark business has made a comeback. It has flourished as a way to meet the sharply rising demands for unofficial loans or capital. In North Korea, where capital fluidity has been extremely controlled, the loan-shark business has performed an important loan function for illicit economic activities. Evidence of the extremely restricted state of capital fluidity is reflected in the issuance of public bonds in 2003. The sixth plenary session of the Tenth Supreme People’s Assembly in March 2003 decided to issue the bonds and then from May started to advertise them with diverse nominal values to the general public, resorting to their patriotism to help the crippled national economy. The main objective of this measure was to alleviate the pressures of the fiscal deficit in the short run. And yet, ironically, the issuance of public bonds proved the poor savings rate in North Korea. There was obviously popular distrust of the state-bank system and the weak convertibility of North Korean currency. Other evidence of the low capital fluidity is the high interest rates of loan sharks. The loan sharks usually charge the exorbitant rate of 30 percent interest per month.44 Such high interest rates are unimaginable in a market economy, where savings and loans smoothly take place through commercial banks. But illicitly operating entrepreneurs have recourse only to loan sharks’ money and the corresponding high interest rates. FOREIGN-CURRENCY

EARNERS

The activities of foreign-currency earners have involved illegal transactions of products that are restricted, prohibited, or regarded as vital national or international resources. Exemplary products include cultural artifacts, historical remains, and natural resources such as iron ore, gold, mercury, zinc, and copper. In addition, agricultural and fishery products such as prized mushrooms, farm tractor tires, Alaska pollack, sea urchins, squid, and sea cucumbers have been traded by lawful or unlawful means. The reason for the popularity of illicitly trafficked items is its great profit margin in spite of—or perhaps due to—the high risks stemming from domestic supervision and international sanctions. The foreign-currency earners, at a private level, have been those who, at some point, accumulate wealth through prohibited economic activities and who can subsequently pursue a more organized profitbearing business by hiring several employees. These business-minded people often have had overlapping roles as “funding squads,” and the


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two are difficult to distinguish from each other. Both sometimes register their own assets with powerful party-state organizations such as the military, the party, and the People’s Safety Ministry and then use these organizational titles in their vocational activities. It is clear that the scale of these entrepreneurs’ businesses has been much larger than that attributable to ordinary people’s profit-seeking activities operating in marketplaces. Foreign-currency earners have not been content with the simple advantages of declining institutional control in the socialist economy. They have been audacious entrepreneurs who risk expanding unofficial spheres and undermining socialist-based economic principles. Alongside the expansion of illicit foreign-currency earners, there have developed officially approved agencies, as inter-Korean exchange and cooperation have increased to include the production of clothing and leather goods. These agencies’ income has become more a part of the gross product of their workplace or organization than either the personal income of high-ranking workplace managers or simple kickbacks discreetly handed to some official. In order to win outside contracts, the officially approved foreign-currency earners have sometimes engaged in sharp competition with other outfits or agencies, competition that, by itself, has generated market elements in the approved operations of official economic sectors. These agencies’ activities must be regarded as official rather than unofficial, but even the officially approved foreign-currency earners occupy a vaguely defined space. Their roles frequently overlap with those of illicit entrepreneurs seeking to amass personal wealth through high-risk ventures. FUNDING

SQUAD

Since the second half of the 1990s, the funding squad has been the most actively operating actor to occupy a space somewhere between the official and the unofficial economies. To establish freer scope over their activities, funding squads have usually been under a certain contract with “patrons.” The patrons are either normally strong partystate apparatuses—such as military units, state security agencies, and party units—or the enterprises that belong to these apparatuses. Even though their activities have not been in line with the basic principles of a socialist economy, funding squads have been allowed to pursue profits during the contract period and under the protection of powerful apparatuses. They have worked for their patrons—that is, nominally affiliated apparatuses—in various ways. If the patrons suffer from a shortage of raw materials, the funding squads supply them. Their major function has been to provide the patrons with unofficial

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but necessary funds. For instance, they often contribute to the securing of funds necessary for the so-called heartfelt gifts in celebration of Kim Jong Il’s birthday, gifts that are normally assigned from the top to each productive or administrative unit, regardless of the original function of the unit. Some funding squads have, for example, operated fisheries to secure the additional funds needed to run their patron enterprises. Others have played important roles in the securing of workers’ daily meals, such as the operating of enterprises’ mess rooms. Funding squads have also assisted officials of the patron organization, officials who are themselves looking to make a profit. In this sense, the patron’s officials are simultaneously contracting partners and beneficiaries of the contract. The officials receive benefits in contracting out certain projects of the patron organization. For example, if both highest-ranking officials in the central party are impressed by the heartfelt gifts to Kim Jong Il on his birthday, the officials of the patron organization will benefit from special considerations concerning such matters as promotion and commendation. It is interesting to note that the family background of funding squad members typically is that of the “basic masses,” who occupy an average position on the social scale according to North Korea’s class standards: very few of these entrepreneurs have come from the privileged classes in society. Some of them have gained entrance into the party by showing loyalty to, and by meeting the material demands of, an influential patron, but their modest family backgrounds have usually prevented funding squad members from acquiring party membership. It seems that as discussed earlier, their emergence was closely related to the stagnation of the North Korean economy, especially the decline of institutional constraints on economic management. The funding squads likely first developed their skills during the burgeoning August 3 Production Drive, and they further strengthened their expertise in the period characterized by a declining economy and the increasing self-reliance of local governments and enterprises.45 Accordingly, the higher party-state authorities have recognized the dual aspects of these funding squads. The authorities use their expertise only in the short run and do not bestow on them a privileged status. In the same vein, because they have had access to information and knowledge about foreign countries, few funding squads have believed that the existing socialist system can be sustainable. For this reason, the funding squads have steeled themselves for any sociopolitical disturbance by accumulating convertible foreign currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, the Japanese yen, and the Euro. Furthermore, funding squads have never considered North Korea’s state bank to be a safe repository for savings and have therefore stored this money in their own


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houses and in secret places. As Bruce J. Dickson has noted, the distrust of entrepreneurs by the authorities (and vice versa) reflects the dilemma surrounding the latter’s co-optation by the former in times of economic transition either at official or unofficial levels.46 Informal Transition of Property Rights In North Korea, the emergence of entrepreneurship has brought about changes in property rights.47 In socialist systems, and especially in North Korea’s, public ownership, either state owned or collectively owned, has been the principal institution that defines production relations. The domain of personal (not private) property or ownership has been extremely limited, because the notion of property or ownership has largely been related to the means of production—such as land, buildings, major productive tools, livestock, transportation vehicles, technology, and capital—all of which are owned by the state or social organizations.48 Personal property, or ownership, has referred to the things that people “receive as socialist distributions based on their labor and additional social benefits” but that “cannot be utilized for the exploitation of others and cannot be converted into capital.”49 In Article 24 of the newly revised 1998 constitution, the domain of personal ownership expanded to a certain extent to include “income earned through legal management activities.” Indeed, because of the burgeoning activities attributable to the private entrepreneurs discussed above, property rights in North Korea are now undergoing a significant transition regardless of the legality of the changes. The emerging entrepreneurs not only have come to own various means of production as de facto private property and to operate them for the accumulation and the reproduction of wealth; they have also come to establish unofficial contracts with such partners as powerful state and party apparatuses. Their practices have been illegal but have contributed to the informal transition of economic institutions. Indeed, the practices have contributed to the informal differentiation of institutions, which the party-state has been unable to strictly control and in which the party-state itself has remained partly involved. The differentiation processes have produced a strain that would have forced the party-state to finally accept the practices in legal terms. Contract relations Take the example of contract relations between funding squads and their patrons, contract relations that have given rise to informal transitions in property rights, a taboo in socialist systems. Because the

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contract has, heretofore, been an unofficial business deal, there has been no preset format. But sometimes the contract has taken the form of a format document, including seals for contract partners and for expiration dates. Whatever the format may be, the contract in general has included the use of the patron organization’s formal titles, the specification of available assistance from the patron organization, and the ratio of sharing of income. The funding squads have engaged in profit-making activities in the name of patron organizations, and for this, the squads’ members have received travel certificates from the patron organizations as a privilege for becoming employees. They have been appointed to some nominal positions, such as manager, deputy manager, general director, and others. They also have registered their assets to the enterprise and have operated them as though they were public assets. To date, North Korea has not allowed private ownership of real estate such as land and buildings; of important modes of transportation such as automobiles, ships, and tractors; and of various means of production such as fishing equipment, honeycomb boxes, and vehicle repair kits. Funding squads should register their equipment with the patron enterprise. Since most patron organizations that host the funding squads are powerful party-state apparatuses, the funding squads could also freely expand the scope of their profit-making activities in the name of their patron organizations. The funding squads have received various types of assistance from patron organizations, whereas the patron organizations have demanded their fair share of the profits. In this respect, funding squads and patron organizations have been in a “symbiotic relationship,” as seen in Dorothy J. Solinger’s analysis of the relationship between the enterprise and the state in China.50 North Korea has differed from China in keeping such mutually supportive relationships unofficial, but the symbiotic relationship has occurred in both countries. The patrons’ support has guaranteed the stable supply of fuel and resource materials in North Korea and has tacitly approved illicit activities. For example, patrons have allowed funding squads to freely hire their own people and to offer them wages. The workers working under the funding squads have been paid relatively higher wages and have been entitled to better welfare benefits than the workers in official spheres. There has been a certain ratio of income sharing between the funding squad and the patron, a ratio often described in the written contract form. For the ratio for the sharing of income, the general rule has been 3:7 between the patron and the squad, and the sharing takes place every month. Of the total, then, 30 percent of the income goes


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to the patron organization as its compensation for the squad’s use of its name and of its guaranteeing of assistance. A major amount of the remaining 70 percent of the income is allocated to the squad’s operating fund to cover wages, vehicle maintenance, the procurement costs of source materials, rental fees, and so on. The residual is the net income or profit for the squad. Because there is no clear distinction between the operating funds and the profits, the funding squad has enjoyed free access to the operating funds. As for the contract period, most contracting parties prefer a threeyear term, because a longer contract period may cause friction between the two. The unfulfilled expectations of both parties tend to grow into distrust as time passes. For example, as a squad, using the name of its patron, watches its income soar, the patron begins to think that it deserves greater profits, whereas the squad believes that its greater earnings are the result of its members’ hard work and, hence, constitute no more than the just profit-sharing ratio. Insofar as socialist economic principles make no legal room for the contract and its related activities, there have been only rare occasions for adjustments between contrasting interests and calculations. The illegality of the contract has affected not only the funding squad but the patron organization, as well. They have been unable to resort to a third party when an intervention is required to resolve a contradiction, and in turn, this situation can sabotage the relationship. Therefore, short-term contracts are the order of the day. There is another reason underlying the limits on contract periods: unclear statements of rights and duties and the limitations of mandatory power run rampant. Even if the contract has a written format, the contracting parties cannot list all the requisite details, because such a contract and its related activities run counter to North Korea’s socialist values and institutions. For example, in connection with the duties of the funding squad, the contract may mention the ratio for the sharing of income but not the specific amount of the total production quota. Because there is no specified amount assigned to the mandatory production, the funding squad—even if it fails to fulfill its expected mission—cannot be held responsible for the compensation. That is, the contract has lacked the power of mandatory control, at least from the patron’s perspective. If the patron organization concludes that the squad’s operations lack a relative advantage over contracting with another squad, then the contract relationship will likely be discontinued. The contract relationship between the patron and the funding squad continues only if both parties judge the contract to be beneficial.

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As just mentioned, limitations of clarification and mandatory power, institutional constraints on the operation of funding squads, partners’ overexpectations, and interest conflict can break a contract relationship even before the end of its term. Once the contract breaks down, each partner sets off to find a new partner. The end of a contract relationship might accompany the sad fate of a funding squad. Especially when there occurs a legal problem on the funding squad side, it is difficult for the latter to obtain legal protection. There is an example of a funding squad that, while running a honey-harvesting business, was sacrificed in a legal dispute. The funding squad was affiliated to a regional railroad station that received regular inspections by the Ministry of Railroads as well as by the central party. Once an inspection team came to the railroad station and found that the station had apparently operated a honey collection squad. A team member approached the squad and asked for a jar of honey as a gift, but his request was rejected by the squad members, who made up the excuse that they had collected the honey to prepare “heartfelt gifts” for Kim Jong Il’s birthday. But when a party inspection team, on a similar mission of supervision, came to the station, the squad provided them with a jar of honey. The Ministry of Railroads inspection team, informed of such discriminative treatment by a lowerranking station’s funding squad, considered it a humiliation and brought the unofficial operation of the funding squad to the attention of the law enforcement organization. Even though the funding squad had acted under the protection and assistance of the regional railroad station, the latter lost its rationale to defend the squad’s activities and to protect the squad members from their related illegality, which was now under investigation. Why? Because as the funding squad’s accumulated wealth, particularly the source of this wealth, became a legal issue, the railroad station officials could not stand in defense of its client squad. As a consequence, the squad not only lost its illicitly accumulated wealth to the state but also suffered probation for the legal infraction. This example illustrates the limitations of North Korea’s contract relationship, especially before the 7-1 reform measures in 2002. There can be little doubt that similar failures have been common to North Korea’s experiments in adventurous entrepreneurship. Special features of property rights Property rights, in general, are divided into three parts: use and control, income, and transfer. In the socialist system, property rights are not differentiated, and thus all their criteria are dominated by


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the party-state. However, in the transition economy moving toward the market, divisions arise between use and control, income, and transfer. With the division between the management and the ownership title in the transition economy, the significance of use and control, income, and transfer increases. In a transition economy, privatization is an extreme form—and the last phase—of changes in property rights. There are some intermediate types of development between a socialist planned economy and privatization. In order to appraise the informally transforming North Korean economy, it is necessary to briefly review types of property rights transitions. Andrew G. Walder and Jean C. Oi identified them in their study on China.51 In table 6.1, the first three types—from type (a) to type (c)—describe well the incremental changes toward greater leeway between contracting parties. First, the contract of incentive includes a minor endorsement from the state regarding use and control rights and income rights. In this contract, the contractor (usually the manager of an enterprise) is encouraged by the expanded rights to strive for higher productivity. The contractor feels entitled to a share of the profits and gradually comes to adjust and administer the rule for profit sharing. Second, the contract of public assets carries with it more control and income rights for the contractors than does the contract of incentive, in which the state still appoints the contractors, whose performance is evaluated by government officials. In contracts having scope over public assets, there exists a “partnership” between the contracting parties in the sense that they should maintain joint responsibility for the risk that follows a business failure. Third, the lease of public assets is a more advanced transitional type in which the leaseholder assumes most of both the use and control rights and the income rights in exchange for a fixed rental payment to the state. This lease often becomes a means of privatization that involves an activation of transfer rights. Table 6.1. Types of Property Rights Transitions (d) independent (c) lease of contract (funding public assets squad case)

(a) contract of incentive

(b) contract of public assets

Use and control

*

**

***

**

Income

*

**

***

**

*

**

Transfer


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The North Korean case of the funding squad’s contracting practice, which may be called the independent contract type, includes a few elements of type (b) and type (c), from one perspective, and contains a greater power of transfer, from another perspective. As they have for the contract of public assets, funding squads have received a great deal of assistance for the accumulation and management of the assets that they pretend are public but are, in reality, their own. Thus, the squads get their patrons to enter into a kind of collective responsibility for the increase and the decrease of income. Just as in the lease of public assets, funding squads have assumed the rights of transfer with regard to their assets titled to the patron organization. In other words, North Korea’s practice of contracting, centered on the funding squad, has had ample space for the independent management of assets, while containing some traits of the ideal types of property rights transitions. This has been a remarkable aspect of the informal differentiation of economic institutions in North Korea, even before the 2002 economic reform measures. CONTROL

AND USE RIGHTS

Funding squads have been allowed to use and control—for the purpose of maximizing profits—the assets that they actually possess. Included in these assets would most certainly be domestic and foreign currencies, automobiles, and means of production. Funding squads have not acquired land and buildings yet and have, therefore, had to enter into unofficial contracts with the patron organization for the use of such real estate. These contracts have been normally honored by both of the contract partners; consequently, funding squads have been able to exercise their rights of control and use over their assets and the real estate, and to make every effort to increase income and profits for the advantage of both of the contract partners. INCOME

RIGHTS

It is clear that unlike the use and control rights, the income rights have been generally manifested in the North Korean contract. Regardless of the success or the failure of the output, the ratio of the income share has normally remained intact. This situation mirrors the contract of public assets, not a typical lease of public assets in which the leaseholder takes responsibility for a business failure, as well as for the extensive rights pertaining to the property. In this way, the patron and the funding squad can maintain a sort of partnership and symbiotic


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relationship for the duration of the contract, which usually runs about three years. TRANSFER

RIGHTS

The contract that funding squads have pursued has two meanings of transfer rights. They have had the right to dispose of various means of production that they actually possess. One notable thing is that with the termination of the contract period, there has often occurred a dispute over the means of production. Because of socialist principles, individuals cannot possess any means of production. Therefore, even if the funding squads developed or crafted new machines and tools on their own, a dispute might erupt if the patron claimed property rights to these assets. If the dispute developed into a legal case, the squad would have to surrender its rights over them. In short, the unofficial exercise of property rights has been quite commonplace in unofficial economic relationships between patrons and funding squads. Not only has funding squads’ exercise of property rights been expanded, but also the rights to manage and operate public assets, especially the rights concerning use and control, have been informally institutionalized. And even though they have made no legal claim to it, funding squads have exercised extensive use and control rights over the last strongholds of state-owned means of production, like land and buildings. If any significant change occurred to legally guarantee the funding squad’s practice over property rights, its impact on the system as a whole would be indeed tremendous. Implications for Systemic Dissonance Even before 2002, North Korea underwent unofficial changes. These changes reflected the internal differentiation occurring in the economic subsystem and consequently brought about disassociation, in part, from the systemic identity, which had been extolled in the reference points such as socialist principles, anti-imperialism, and monolithic power (in the name of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition). As private entrepreneurs have partly fulfilled the public demand for daily necessities, the socialist principle of public ownership has gradually eroded. As the unofficial institutions of property rights have overwhelmed daily life, the anti-imperialistic denunciation of the capitalist path has lost its legitimacy. And as the unofficial sphere has flourished, the monolithic party’s legitimacy in the society has declined in a significant sense. In July 2002, this dissonance forced the leadership centered

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on Kim Jong Il to accommodate an insertion of the private sphere into the official sphere, and today, this accommodation is called the 7-1 reform measures. In sum, the economic changes were the most evident starting point for widespread repudiation of the previously existing systemic identity.

7

The Changing Roles of Intellectuals The role of intellectuals as an agent of the drastic system breakdown in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has garnered special scholarly attention. Indeed, in Central European countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, they had been especially influential in the expansion of the private sphere vis-à-vis the public sphere dominated by the party-state. For the North Korean case, an appropriate question is not whether intellectuals play such a dramatic role in a system breakdown but how their status has changed and what kind of role has been expected from them in times of systemic dissonance. Looking at the emblem of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which is composed of a hammer, a sickle, and a writing brush, one might assume that North Korean intellectuals form one of the three pillars of the existing system. But a close examination of the historical experience of North Korean intellectuals reveals that the emblem merely symbolizes their status of being co-opted into the system. The distressing fate of North Korean intellectuals began with two historical events that occurred right after the liberation from Japanese colonial rule: national division in 1945 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. These events brought misery to old intellectuals in the form of the purge that took place during the domestic struggle between political factions with different backgrounds. In particular, many of those who moved to the North from the South, either to avoid the South’s repression of the Left or to voluntarily join in the North’s state-building project, were soon thereafter purged. Then, the part of Kim Il Sung’s class policy that focused on the transformation 165

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of intellectuals into members of the working class brought about not only a decline of their social status and morale but also backwardness of knowledge in science and technology. After the breakdown of socialism in Eastern Europe, the leadership of Kim Jong Il considered North Korean intellectuals an instrument of the state, suspiciously perceiving their potential for being co-opted by the enemy, that is, by “imperialists.” As a result, during the famine, intellectuals became the most disadvantaged social group owing to their poor survival skills. North Korean policy toward the country’s intellectuals has had an enormous effect on the entire system. And yet, experts on North Korea have paid little attention to the analysis of intellectuals there. This chapter delves into the changes that have characterized the fate and the role of the main actor in the intellectual-cultural subsystem. It focuses on the legacy that Kim Il Sung left behind for his son, Kim Jong Il. Kim Il Sung’s legacy paralleled the recursive self-reproduction of the North Korean system’s reference points, particularly antiimperialism and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, in the sense that the Japanese colonial rule and the inter-Korean conflict facilitated the North Korean version of policy toward intellectuals. Socialist Transformation and Persecution of Intellectuals Dual policy on intellectuals during state-building When Kim Il Sung and his guerrillas, with support from the Red Army, were preparing for a separate state-building in the North, intellectuals who might contribute to this work were too scarce. In the fields of science and technology, the scarcity of intellectuals was especially serious. According to Kim’s estimate, they numbered only fifteen hundred, which must have been far below the number needed to operate the facilities formerly run by the Japanese colonists.1 Recognizing the shortage of intellectuals, Kim Il Sung implemented a dual policy toward them. On the one hand, Kim attempted to co-opt intellectuals who had been educated under colonial rule. Immediately after the Korean liberation, he urged these established intellectuals—along with national capitalists, small traders, craftsmen, farmers, workers, and religious people—to participate in the so-called anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, and democratic revolution, a transitional step leading to full-scale socialism.2 Kim was quite aggressive in recruiting established intellectuals, and many examples of his efforts shed light on this policy. When Hong MyÆng-h„i, a famous novelist, visited North Korea, Kim successfully persuaded Hong to reside per-

The Changing Roles of Intellectuals

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manently in the North and finally named him vice premier of the cabinet.3 It is important to note that such an aggressive policy for the accommodation of established intellectuals attracted leftists residing in the South—who were then being oppressed in the South’s antiCommunist atmosphere—to join the North. Indeed, during the period between liberation in 1945 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, a large number of scientists (represented by ChÆng Chun-t’aek4 and Yi S„ng-gi5), writers (led by Yim Hwa,6 Han SÆl-ya, Yi Ki-yÆng, Kim Nam-ch’Æn, and Yi T’ae-jun), artists (such as Ch’oe S„ng-h„i, An Mak, and Mun Ye-bong), social scientists (headed by Paek Nam-un and ChÆng Chin-sÆk), and medical scientists (like Yi PyÆng-nam) crossed the border to go to the North. Literary intellectuals with leftist orientations went to the North in three waves. The first wave took place just after Korea’s independence from Japanese rule, when the leadership in literary circles underwent an important reshuffling. As soon as the Central Council for the Construction of Korean Literature merged with the Alliance for Proletarian Literature in late 1945 and early 1946, those who lost their leadership positions—Yi Ki-yÆng, Han SÆl-ya, Song YÆng, Yi Tonggyu, Yun Ki-chÆng, and Pak Se-yÆng—crossed the 38th parallel. The second wave to the North took place as Communist leaders in the South endured harsh repression there. When the American occupation authorities attempted in 1947 and 1948 to arrest Communist leaders of the Workers’ Party of South Korea, led by Pak HÆn-yÆng, writers such as Yim Hwa, Yi T’ae-jun, Kim Nam-ch’Æn, and Yi WÆn-jo followed the harassed Communist leaders and fled to the North.7 The third wave occurred during the Korean War. With the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the South in August 1948, a number of leftist writers who remained in the South had to disguise their ideological positions in order to survive the repression. Then, during the Korean War, these intellectuals went to the North either voluntarily or by abduction. Included in this group were ChÆng Chi-yong, SÆl ChÆngsik, and Yi Kwang-su.8 In North Korea, the early policy on intellectuals had focused on bringing up a new breed of intellectuals. In 1946, with the catchphrase “the training of national leaders,” North Korea began to establish various educational institutions: Pyongyang Institute (February 23) for the education of military and political cadre, the Central Party School (June 3) for the education of party cadre, the Central School for High Ranking Cadre (July 1) for the education of administrative and economic elite, and Kim Il Sung University (September 15) as the first university in the North. The most serious goal in establishing these

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educational institutions was to recruit instructors, and the only means available to the North was to co-opt old intellectuals. In particular, Kim Il Sung wanted to attract intellectuals from the South for the establishment of Kim Il Sung University, saying that “first of all, we have to gather all scholars in the North, and if that is not sufficient, we have to invite advanced scholars from the South in order to solve the problem underlying the recruitment of those educators needed for the establishment of our university.”9 An exemplary case was Kim’s attempts to integrate, through invitation, Yi S„ng-gi, a renowned chemist in Seoul, into the process of the establishment of Kim Il Sung University, even though the actual invitation was proffered during the North Korean army’s occupation of Seoul in 1950. Owing to Kim Il Sung’s resolute attempts to bring up a new breed of intellectuals, Kim Il Sung University, which had consisted of seven schools and 1,500 undergraduate students at the time of its opening in 1946, expanded to house eight schools and 3,813 undergraduate students in 1947 and then fourteen schools and its first graduating class in 1949.10 The policy was successful in technological fields as well. Technical schools in the North trained about 4,000 new prospective technicians in 1949. This was a considerable achievement, insofar as there had been only 1,500 technicians in the North at the time of the peninsula’s liberation. Furthermore, North Korea began to send students to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in order to equip itself with high-quality human resources: 80 and 100 students were sent abroad in 1948 and 1949, respectively.11 Purges during the Korean War The Korean War gave rise to another stage in the serious shortage of young intellectuals, as college students were recruited to the battlefront. After General MacArthur and his forces landed in Incheon in September 1950, it became clear that North Korea could not win the war. Therefore, despite the continued propaganda for ultimate victory, political leaders in Pyongyang were indeed concerned about the postwar rehabilitation. As soon as the cease-fire talks began, North Korea called college students back to their campuses so as to form them, through education, into engineers and technicians for the postwar economic recovery.12 Prioritizing the natural sciences and engineering, North Korea implemented an education policy wherein students majoring in these fields would constitute more than 70 percent of the student population. As seen in Kim Il Sung’s report to the sixth plenary session of the CC of the WPK in August 1953, this edu-


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cation policy of emphasizing the natural sciences and engineering served as a foundation for North Korea’s Stalinist-type development strategy, called “Emphasis on Heavy Industry; Simultaneous Development of Light Industries and Agriculture.”13 The education policy for the formation of new intellectuals instigated anxiety among established intellectuals, who worried that the resulting changes would, in the near future, replace the “old” with the “new.” In order to assuage such worries, Kim Il Sung made the following statements to enunciate the principle of the policy toward intellectuals in the concluding remarks at the fourth plenary session of the CC of the WPK in November 1951: Some intellectuals say, “Because we are transitional people, we are going to be replaced by new intellectuals.” Such thinking is incorrect. Regardless of who they are, the people who do not develop themselves will be replaced. It is a law of development that things that are old and do not develop are replaced by new things.14 That new intellectuals are growing in number does not mean that we can underestimate the contribution of old intellectuals. Because we have a serious shortage of professionals, it is especially important to foster cooperation between old and new intellectuals.15 Despite Kim’s statements of appeasement, the established intellectuals felt a threat and rightly so. This sense of foreboding was particularly strong among writers and artists whose writings and performances were, by and large, politically oriented. In fact, they had been under attack since 1951, when Kim Il Sung had denounced wartime writers and artists for failing to arouse the North Korean people’s hatred of, and determination to fight against, American and South Korean forces. Also, they had been criticized by Kim for depicting only domestic political struggles in the South.16 Because the intellectuals of southern origin, mostly affiliated with the former Workers’ Party of South Korea, were the most prominent members of literary and artistic circles in North Korea by the early period of the Korean War, it is necessary to analyze the history of the government’s purges and suppression of them. Only through such an analysis can one rigorously grasp the transformed status of “old” intellectuals, in particular, and intellectuals, in general. In December 1950, serious strife between the Soviet-Koreans and Kim Il Sung’s

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guerrilla faction became apparent at the third plenary session of the CC of the WPK held at PyÆro-ri, Kanggye. The setback that befell the Soviet-Koreans in this power struggle spelled doom for the writers and artists of southern origin. In January 1951, the leader of the SovietKoreans, HÆ Ka-i, was demoted to the position of vice premier of the cabinet from the prestigious post of first secretary of the party. Similarly, Kim YÆl was removed from his powerful post as head of the Organization Department in the WPK. Their demotions constituted a serious blow to the fragile position of the Soviet-Koreans, who now had to prepare a means for survival under Kim Il Sung’s repression. For the Soviet-Koreans, the Communists of the former Workers’ Party of South Korea were a good potential ally, because these domestic Communists boasted a large number of writers and artists who had skills needed to engage in ideological affairs.17 As for the Communists of southern origin, there was no other alternative but to cooperate with the SovietKoreans, because Kim Il Sung was already determined to exclude the domestic Communists by stigmatizing the leading figure, Pak HÆn-yÆng, as an American espionage agent and by rendering Pak’s associates scapegoats for North Korea’s defeat in the early stage of the war. The formation of a kind of tactical collaboration between the Soviet-Koreans and the Communists of southern origin was visible, as the Soviet-Koreans appointed the intellectuals from the South to important positions related to ideological warfare. Such collaboration was possible because the Soviet-Koreans still maintained some important posts related to propaganda and cultural affairs in both the party and the cabinet, even after the ousting of HÆ Ka-i. For instance, Pak ChÆng-ae was vice chairman of the Central Committee of the WPK, Pak Ch’ang-ok was head of the WPK’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, ChÆng Yul (original name: ChÆng Sang-jin) was head of the WPK’s Arts Department, Pak YÆng-bin was head of the WPK’s Organization Department, and Ki SÆk-bok was vice minister of culture and propaganda. With the exception of Kim Il Sung’s mouthpiece Han SÆl-ya, a writer of southern origin who now headed the Federation of Literary and Artistic Intellectuals, all the leading writers from the South came to serve the propaganda and cultural affairs under the direction of the Soviet-Koreans. But this collaboration had to face a counterattack from the writers’ circle under Kim Il Sung.18 The first fight surfaced regarding the ˘m literary model of the works written by those of southern origin: O Ho-sÆk, a protégé of Han SÆl-ya in Kim Il Sung’s circle, attacked Kim Nam-ch’Æn, a novelist of southern origin, and in turn, Ki SÆk-bok, a Soviet-Korean army general and Marxist-Leninist aesthetician, defended


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Kim.19 Kim Nam-ch’Æn, who was secretary general of the Federation of Literary and Artistic Intellectuals, published a short novel entitled Honey to strengthen the North Korean army’s morale during the war period. In the work, the hero of the novel is a reconnaissance soldier who is injured in combat and is later nursed by an elderly woman in a remote mountainous area. Thanks to the honey given by the woman, he recovers his health and returns to the battlefield. The part of this work that Kim Nam-ch’Æn’s rival later denounced was the scene in which the soldier, during his stay in the woman’s cottage, confronts an internal contradiction between his moral obligation to return to the battlefield, on the one hand, and his instinct for survival and his longing for his hometown family, on the other hand. In the last part of the novel, Kim Nam-ch’Æn, as a committed socialist writer, resolved the contradiction: the soldier is finally freed from his torment and decides to fight for the WPK. ˘ m Ho-sÆk, in his critical essay entitled “On Some Issues ConO cerning Literary Patterns” published in Nodong Sinmun in spring 1952, attacked Kim Nam-ch’Æn on the grounds that the work revealed sentimentalist and defeatist aspects of the North Korean soldier. Accord˘ m’s criticism, Kim’s novel betrayed the principle of socialist ing to O literary writing, socialist realism. Ki SÆk-bok then took a stance in defense of Kim’s novel by writing an article entitled “On Some Problems in Our Literary Criticism.” According to Ki, Kim’s description of the soldier’s internal conflict was based on the battlefield situation, and thus Kim’s work was a genuine expression of socialist realism and a heartfelt commendation of the North Korean army’s undefeatable spirit. Such literary sparring became quite common during the war period. Yim Hwa’s poem Are You Where You Are Supposed to Be? and Yi T’ae-jun’s novel Noble People, like other works written by writers of southern origin, were attacked by the Kim Il Sung faction’s literary circle. As usual, Ki SÆk-bok assumed a defensive posture in shielding these writers from the incessant criticism. This round of literary debate ended with theoretical victories for Ki SÆk-bok. But the victories were a real triumph for neither the writers of southern origin nor the Soviet-Koreans. In the end, the writers from the South, such as Kim Nam-ch’Æn, Yi T’ae-jun, and Yim Hwa, had to stop writing in order to avoid further complications and political suppression.20 As the war was nearing an end, the political leaders and intellectuals affiliated with the former Workers’ Party of South Korea were subject to even harsher suppressive measures. In the fifth plenary session of the CC of the WPK held in December 1952, Kim Il Sung— obviously implicating those from the South—reported the continued

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presence of factionalism.21 Following this report, the ideological review meetings began in late March 1953 to strip away the influence of Pak HÆn-yÆng and Yi S„ng-yÆp. As a result, most intellectuals of southern origin were subject to suppression because of their direct or indirect connections to either of the political figures. During the review meetings of the Federation of Literary and Artistic Intellectuals, Yim Hwa and Kim Nam-ch’Æn came under severe criticism and were finally executed, and others who had been close to them were forced to “confess” their misdeeds and then purged.22 Furthermore, following the purge of the leaders affiliated with the former Workers’ Party of South Korea, which occurred immediately after the ceasefire in July 1953,23 the WPK issued a decree whereby it confiscated and burned the essays, articles, and works written by some forty writers of southern origin.24 In sum, the power struggle that had emerged during the Korean War resulted in the repression of established intellectuals, especially those of southern origin. In this respect, it is fair to say that the war intensified not only the conflict between the North and the South but also the internal contradiction within North Korea. Even after the war, established intellectuals in North Korea appeared to be destined to a cruel fate. If they did not adapt themselves to the new atmosphere, they could not survive. As time passed, established intellectuals of northern origin were subjected to a similar fate, as we shall see in the following section. In this way, Kim Il Sung was able to create an atmosphere in which docile intellectuals alone could survive, and their role was to serve as an instrument for the building of his version of socialism. Reeducation during socialist development In the postwar period, owing to a lack of engineers and technicians in factories that hampered productivity, Kim Il Sung introduced a policy for the registration of engineers and technicians and transferred these skilled workers to on-site production lines. Immediately after the armistice, the Ministry of Heavy Industries tried to set an example by sending between 130 and 140 technical staff members to factories in the countryside. Kim Il Sung urged other organizations, including the WPK and the cabinet ministries, to follow this example.25 However, it should be remarked that in North Korea, the construction of socialism meant something more than simple industrialization, in that the industrialization was to be supported by a full-scale reeducation of technology-oriented intellectuals. Since their functional specialties were meant to be mobilized for the building of socialism, most engineers and technicians, unlike writers and artists, had been


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free from the conflicts swirling in political circles. This situation changed in a significant sense in 1958, when the “Flying Horse Movement” was launched. The movement was intended to maximize labor productivity through an ideological campaign. According to Kim Il Sung, poor productivity was associated with the passive and conservative attitudes of technicians and engineers. Kim warned that technicians and engineers were still prisoners of passivity and conservatism and that their consciousness was far behind that of manual workers and farmers. He argued that socialist industrialization needs proper cooperation between workers, on the one hand, and engineers and technicians, on the other. He noted that the obsolete thinking of engineers and technicians made them ignore the creativity of the workers. Criticizing the engineers and technicians for their passivity and conservatism, Kim said, First of all, they are followers of mysticism. Conservatives think that industry, science, technology, and machines are mysterious. To consider everything as mysterious means that ultimately only the ghosts know. Common people cannot know, and only the conservatives know what science, industry, and technology are, as if they were ghosts. Some people in the Academy of Sciences say that science cannot be learned in just one or two years and argue that it has to be studied at least ten to twenty years. Such people are notoriously unproductive; they do not produce anything they can be proud of even when they are given ten years for research. They themselves are prisoners of mysticism. . . . Next, these conservatives are still subject to remnants of Japanese imperialism and its ideology. These people say, “I attended a college in Japan. In your case, is there anything you know?” They thus boast of their exploitation during the Japanese occupation and try to denigrate other people. They try to interpret our reality with their old technological standards and ideology. We have to crush such ideological tendencies.26 To fight against these old ideological tendencies that allegedly remained among technicians and engineers, Kim Il Sung emphasized the reeducation campaign and placed it under party guidelines. One of the campaign’s remarkable methods was to send engineers and technicians to local factories and mines and make them live and work together with workers, so that the former could learn revolutionary attitudes from the latter.27 From this reeducation campaign of intellectuals, writers and artists were not exempt; rather, they became a serious target. They

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were charged with falling prey to dogmatism and formalism and with producing few works that both remained faithful to socialist realism and treated the collectivization of agriculture, which had been implemented in the mid-1950s. Also, the writers and artists were criticized for their familism, which meant that they tended to take care of the people whom they knew personally. Here familism referred particularly to the sympathy shown by the intellectuals when the writers of southern origin such as Kim Nam-ch’Æn, Yim Hwa, and Yi T’ae-jun were suppressed.28 The reeducation campaign was followed by another round of repression of intellectuals, as the so-called “Central Party’s Concentrated Guidance” was launched in fall 1958.29 Many once-established intellectuals were forced to unveil their unknown crimes, that is, their previous association with domestic Communists especially of southern origin, led by Pak HÆn-yÆng, and often their acquaintance with ousted Soviet-Koreans headed by Pak Ch’ang-ok and with Yanan veterans represented by Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik. In particular, the intellectuals from the South, who had barely survived previous acts of repression during and right after the war, were now forced again to criticize themselves—to admit to dubious practices of Communism during their former stay in the South, between independence in 1945 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. They had to describe again their family backgrounds—that is, their capitalist origins—and any ideological connection to Pak HÆn-yÆng’s flawed line, if there had been no direct association with Pak. Many of them were unable to cope with the psychological pressure and killed themselves; then, the guidance authorities propagated the suicide as proof of the accused people’s alleged antirevolutionary crimes. This repression of established intellectuals in the second half of the 1950s was in accordance with the purges of the leaders of Soviet-Koreans and Yanan veterans, as seen in chapter 4. Socialist Mobilization and Changes in the Class Status of Intellectuals Victimized intellectuals during the North-South competition In the 1960s, North Korean leaders found a use for the last remaining intellectuals of southern origin—that is, proven Communists, including some of those who had joined the KPA as volunteers during the Korean War. They were to construct a clandestine network of underground operations in the South. Except for scientists, engineers, and technicians,


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many intellectuals were sent to special Communist education programs and then dispatched to the South for the underground missions. It is unquestionable that the clandestine dispatch of the intellectuals to the South was closely related to the hostile North-South relations and the escalating tensions in the international environment. In South Korea, the military regime—a widespread type of polity in the Third World at that time—was born in 1961. Then, at the international level during the mid-1960s, the Cold War intensified alongside the escalation of the Vietnam War. The North responded to this tense diplomatic front by adopting a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the Korean issue. The strategy was the “Strengthening of the Three Revolutionary Potentials,” which was adopted as an official party policy at the sixth plenary session of the Fourth CC of the WPK held in February 1964. The three revolutionary potentials included (a) the consolidation of socialism in the North, (b) the construction of a socialist base in South Korea, and (c) the building of conditions that at the international level would favor Communist-based Korean unification. This strategy paved the way for North Korea’s dispatching of the intellectuals of southern origin to the South, where they would perform missions for the construction of an underground network. For the purpose of the dispatch, some special training institutions were established. Of these, the Songdo College of Political Economy30 came to have the highest reputation for the training of the intellectuals for the underground missions in the South.31 The college housed three types of students of southern origin: those who had been affiliated with the former Workers’ Party of South Korea and had come to the North before the Korean War; those who had joined the KPA during the KPA’s occupation of southern regions; and those who had crossed the border during the war and had later served in the party, government, and economic sectors in North Korea.32 As Kim Il Sung noted, with regard to the unification of the two Koreas, graduates of the college were supposed to assume high-ranking positions in administrative and party affairs in the South.33 Therefore, in accordance with the Strengthening of the Three Revolutionary Potentials, the graduates of the college were sent to South Korea.34 In this way, the remaining intellectuals of southern origin became victims of the inter-Korean competition. Not all the remaining intellectuals from the South were handled in the above-mentioned way. The North Korean authorities had recourse to the purge, as well. Han SÆl-ya, a writer of southern origin, exemplifies this case. Han had served as a mouthpiece for Kim Il Sung and had ordered his followers to attack other writers of southern origin

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during the literary debates. But Han was demoted in 1962 from his prestigious position as chairman of the Federation of Literary and Artistic Intellectuals on the charges that his works had taken a reactionary turn and had violated the party’s guidance rules for writing.35 From March 1963, his followers also were purged after they had submitted to severe rounds of criticism, the so-called Meetings for the Scrutinizing of Thoughts. In the end, the works of Han and his associates were ordered to be burned.36 Class status changes under Kim Il Sung’s monolithic rule Along with the dispatch of intellectuals of southern origin for clandestine missions in the South, another significant initiative to incorporate intellectuals into the socialist working class was carried out. Under the policy called “Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Converting Them to the Working Class,” North Korean leaders tried to negate the existence of intellectuals as a separate social group and then reorganize the class structure. As early as 1960, a basic outline of this policy had already appeared in one of Kim Il Sung’s statements.37 But the full rationale behind this policy was detailed in his speech delivered in June 1968 to the intellectuals of North HamgyÆng Province.38 Kim maintained that “old” intellectuals had been unable to form an independent class because they originated from heterogeneous groups belonging to the propertied class—small-scale merchants and manufacturers, or middle-class farmers, or rich farmers. Because of their social background, he continued, the intellectuals had exhibited two conflicting attributes under the Japanese occupation. On the one hand, they had worked for Japanese imperialism and capitalism, which needed their talents, and on the other, they were endowed with revolutionary potential owing to their sufferings that stemmed from suppression and discrimination during colonial rule. Because of the latter attribute, the intellectuals had participated in movements of independence and in Communism. He concluded, therefore, that it would be possible to revolutionize them so that they would serve the cause of the people and the working class. With the passage of time, the Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Converting Them to the Working Class became a general policy to be applied not only to established intellectuals but also to new intellectuals, as well. For Kim Il Sung, there was almost no difference between the “old” and “new” intellectuals, because twenty years had already passed since the educating of new intellectuals had gotten underway.39 The reason for the application of the policy to new intel-


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lectuals lay in the particular fact that they had experienced neither the suppression of Japanese colonialism nor the hardship of the early years of socialist construction.40 Then who was subject to the Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Converting Them to the Working Class policy? The first target was again writers and artists. While denouncing their inability to produce works that extolled the working class and their struggle for the victory of socialism, Kim Il Sung attributed this inability to their lifestyle, which had grown remote from that of the working class. A solution that would enhance the quality of literary works on the working class was a firsthand experience of manual labor.41 The second target was college professors. To their complaints about heavy teaching loads— approximately one thousand hours per year—and low salaries, Kim Il Sung responded that such grumbling was incompatible with North Korea’s desperate need for technological advancement and was rooted in egotism and in a lack of fervor underlying their study of socialist realities.42 The third target was college students. To Kim Il Sung, the young people also had to be revolutionized if they were to become true supporters of the victory of the socialist revolution. According to Kim’s observation, bright students who directly entered universities from high schools, bypassing military service or real-world experiences, were likely to become “crippled intellectuals” or “yangban [the ruling class in the ChosÆn dynasty] intellectuals.”43 In theory, the “revolutionizing of intellectuals” and the “converting them to the working class” are complementary processes for the complete victory of socialism. In North Korea, the notion of revolutionizing has emphasized ideological reeducation in order to remove the remnants of petty bourgeois habits, whereas converting intellectuals to members of the working class has gone far to eliminate the social identity of people whose work is largely intellectual. An important point in both of these notions is that intellectuals must be revolutionized to become working intellectuals.44 For this, two kinds of methods have been applied to North Korean intellectuals. One has been to promote participation in either party-life criticism meetings or other education schedules so as to enhance the ability of intellectuals to engage in mutual criticism and self-criticism, and the other has been to encourage them to learn from workers—the “furnace” of the revolution.45 Not only intellectuals but also high-ranking party cadres and cabinet officials have been subject to these methods. In practice, however, from the late 1960s on, the revolutionizing of intellectuals came to be understood as a process of arming the intellectuals with Kim Il Sung’s central idea, the Chuch’e idea. In other

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words, the policy came to strengthen Kim Il Sung’s personality cult. In some extreme cases, intellectuals who have been considered functionally unfit for the personality cult have been sent to concentration camps. For instance, Yi Na-yÆng, a historian, author of The History of the Liberation of the Korean People, was purged in 1967 on the charge that he had neglected Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese struggle, and was sent to a concentration camp.46 That the rhetoric of “revolutionizing” came to serve the personality cult is thinkable in that the period marked the completion of Kim’s absolute control over the WPK, which occurred in conjunction with the phasing out of some potential powerwielders—such as Pak K„m-ch’Æl and Yi Hyo-sun in the party and Kim Ch’ang-bong, HÆ Pong-hak, and Ch’oe Kwang in the military. Kim Jong Il’s Rise and His Mobilization of Intellectuals In the late 1960s, Kim Il Sung’s monolithic power was firmly in place, and the personality cult supported by the theory of his revolutionary leadership was reaching its apogee. Kim Il Sung’s Chuch’e idea became the monolithic ideology of the WPK. In these circumstances, it was not a surprise that anti-Japanese guerilla comrades who had accompanied Kim Il Sung during his rise to power dominated the Political Committee and the CC of the WPK at the Fifth Congress of the party held in November 1970. The Socialist Constitution adopted in December 1972 stipulated that Kim Il Sung would concurrently hold the posts of supreme commander and state president. Thus, Kim Il Sung’s complete control over the party, the state, and the military was officially recognized. On the top of the North Korean agenda was the succession issue. In September 1973, the seventh plenary session of the Fifth CC of the WPK named Kim Jong Il secretary in charge of organization and propaganda. In February 1974, he was named a member of the Political Committee at the eighth plenary session of the CC, and thus a significant stage in the preparatory work to transfer Kim Il Sung’s power to Kim Jong Il was completed. Kim Jong Il’s rise had, in general, two different meanings for North Korean intellectuals: One was an enhancement of the status of artists, and the other was a stagnation of knowledge. Enhancement of the status of artists Kim Jong Il first attempted to reveal his talent in the field of film and art by presenting his own theory on that very subject. In 1973, the year of his appointment to the position of party secretary in charge of


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organization and propaganda, Kim published a book entitled On Film and Art, in which he presented a guideline for writing, the “theory of the seed.” According to him, the seed is the core concept of writing in the sense that the concept synthetically unifies subject matter and idea.47 The seed defines the content and the form of a given work, providing the work with soul and life. Kim argued that the concept of surplus value, for instance, was the seed of Karl Marx’s On Capital. According to Kim, it was on the basis of surplus value as a concept that Marx could explore the main problems of capitalist society, that is, unequal relations of production and the resulting exploitation in social relations. Kim went on to state that lofty art can be achieved only by the realist creation of a good seed.48 For him, there exist the good seed and the useless seed; and thus for writers, the effort to select a good seed is, in the first stage of writing, an essential requirement for the author of a good work. Kim Jong Il’s discussion on the good seed made clear that the ideological and political traits of the subject matter are most significant criterion in the production of film and other works of art. The seed theory was not much different from the established principle of socialist realism. But the publication of Kim’s theory helped to expand the scope of the party’s intervention in the choice of subject matter, particularly for film scripts. This was true especially because Kim exercised absolute control over the affairs of film and art.49 Furthermore, it appears that the seed theory symbolized the revolutionary struggle of Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese guerrillas in Manchuria, which would be the culmination of the personality cult. The establishment of Kim’s authority on film and art was followed by improvement in the status of artists, who had spent a gloomy and miserable time under repeated purges and acts of repression. Indeed, artists played an important role behind the curtain of Kim Jong Il’s rise to power. They helped Kim perform splendid talent as an organizer of revolutionary musical operas—operas that extolled Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla comrades for their anti-Japanese resistance (see chapter 2). As a consequence, those artists who had survived the harsh controls were now treated better than ever before. Exemplary artists who had devoted themselves to revolutionary operas or films and who later had risen politically included the musician and educator Yi MyÆn-sang, the fine opera stage artist Hwang Yong-su, the illumination engineer of the stage Mun Yun-p’il, and the ˘ m Kil-sÆn. Yi composed the music that famous actor and director O was performed in Tell, Oh Forest!—one of the five revolutionary operas—and rose to become a CC member of the party in 1970. Hwang

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helped decorate the stage of the most famous revolutionary opera, P’ibada, which means the “sea of blood,” symbolizing the arduous struggle. In recognition, in 1979, Hwang was awarded the appellation “People’s Artist,” the highest honor that an artist may receive from the state. Personally selected by Kim Jong Il, Mun was the stage artist who served ˘ m became famous as the as producer of several revolutionary operas. O hero who appeared in the revolutionary film Five Brothers of the Guerrilla, and he was awarded the appellation “People’s Actor” in 1969.50 The enhancement of the status of intellectuals was not limited to the above-mentioned artists, each of whom was chosen by Kim Jong Il, but was shared by some writers who had been purged or severely criticized in the past. Owing to their literary talent and prospective contributions to the power succession, some writers received grace from Kim Il Sung—supposedly after appeals made by Kim Jong Il— and were able to return to their original workplaces. A handy example is that of Ch’Æn Se-bong. Ch’Æn was purged in 1967 by Kim Il Sung because his novel, entitled The New Hillside with Flowing Fog, was labeled revisionist and bourgeois. But with the rise of Kim Jong Il, Ch’Æn was given a chance to extol the anti-Japanese guerrilla resistance.51 Ch’Æn successfully completed this mission by writing a two-volume novel, Daybreak of the Revolution, in 1973.52 Whether they were newly promoted artists or rehabilitated writers, all of those mentioned here were intellectuals who, under the younger Kim’s guidance, participated in the theatrical symbolization of his father’s armed anti-Japanese struggle, which indirectly legitimized the elder guerrilla leaders’ monopoly of party power. Continuous revolution and stagnation of knowledge The new slogan “continuous revolution by the new generation” appeared in the early 1970s and was meant to strengthen Kim Il Sung’s cult and, what is more important, to consolidate the de facto successor Kim Jong Il’s power base. Concurrently, full-scale operations of the work-team movements for the Three Great Revolutions—in ideology, technology, and culture—had began in 1974. The work teams, as mentioned, consisted of college graduates as well as party cadres and government officials, and they were sent to factories, enterprises, schools, and universities.53 In the military, separate work teams of the Three Great Revolutions were established in the units higher than the battalion through the utilization of a new generation. In other words, the new breed of promising youths was now mobilized to maintain the personality cult and the father-to-son power succession.


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Remarkably, the work-team movement, which was instigated for political purposes, caused the deterioration of North Korea’s science and technology sectors and impeded the production and acquisition of new knowledge. Many university graduates were deprived, for two or three years after graduation, of the chance to apply their knowledge in the workplace. A majority of the graduates vied for workteam experience, because, along with military service, the experience was a ladder of success leading to party membership and appointment to a party cadre.54 They were engaged in the work-team movement activities that were unrelated to their majors. Their tasks were to rectify the old cadres’ conservatism, their overreliance on experience, their organizational egotism, and their bureaucratization.55 Insofar as the development of science and technology largely depends on university education, the meddling of the work teams, dispatched from the party, also had negative effects on knowledge in general. The work teams prohibited autonomous administration and independent research at universities and had no interest in activities related to either technological advancement or improvements in facilities. Instead, they concentrated their efforts on the ideological and cultural affairs of campuses.56 University authorities had no choice but to go along with a work team’s supervision, even though they recognized that the upshot of this supervision was deterioration in the quality of education. The work-team movement, admittedly, was not the only cause of decay in knowledge production, particularly in science and technology. In North Korea, there were also structural constraints behind the decline.57 Inasmuch as the Chuch’e idea was the official unitary ideology, it was almost impossible for scientists and engineers, as well as social scientists and historians, to adopt any foreign scientific theories that might be incompatible with the idea. Furthermore, they were even reluctant to create knowledge through their own efforts because of their aversion to even the possibility of political trouble. Alienated from the scientific theories of foreign countries for decades, North Korean intellectuals engaged in the sterile reproduction of knowledge without either stimulation or verification from the outside world. Even for purely academic activities, North Korean authorities often refused to provide native scholars with a chance to travel outside the country. And if an academic trip were approved, the intellectuals had to be accompanied by supervisors. In addition, the intellectuals, unable to enjoy free access to foreign publications, relied on a scanty body of academic resources. This impeded the development of academics, in general, and the introduction of new theories, as well as scientific and technological findings. The backwardness of academics, due to

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this lack of exposure to the outside, could be seen in the poor quality of papers presented by North Korean scholars participating in international academic conferences. North Korean leaders were well aware of their country’s scientific and technological backwardness. A Nodong Sinmun article in 1974 reported on a party committee meeting at Kim Ch’aek University, which was one of the most privileged schools in North Korea in the fields of science and engineering.58 The article covered the meeting’s unusual denunciation of problems related not only to the qualifications of professors but also to the professors’ academic negligence. For example, it pointed out that some professors did not pursue the writing of their doctoral dissertations, which was considered to be a scholarly indication of efforts to improve one’s academic qualifications. As early as 1976, Kim Il Sung critically pointed out that North Korea was devoid of the kind of scientific and technological base necessary for the construction of socialism, although intellectuals had expanded to become a body numbering one million and the newly trained intellectuals were in their forties and fifties. In particular, Kim Il Sung severely rebuked the inadequate techniques and skills of college graduates who were being assigned to workplaces. He took an example of the inadequacy that the graduates of agricultural schools were so poorly educated that they could not even manage farming and had no familiarity with either the composition of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals or the biological characteristics of fertilizers.59 Of the many proposed solutions to the country’s scientific and technological backwardness, two that were based on education stand out: the teaching of foreign languages and the introduction of new knowledge by way of translations of foreign books. In 1980, Kim Il Sung instructed schools to teach about a thousand Chinese characters that appeared in the texts of South Korean high schools, and he suggested that one million North Korean intellectuals translate a million works of foreign literature housed in the Grand People’s Study Hall in Pyongyang.60 Also, Kim pointed to a reliable ally, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Zainichi Chosenjin Sorengokai), as a source of foreign technology. Kim called on the association to devote itself to the advancement of science and technology in the fatherland.61 Kim’s exhortation reflected the fact that North Korea needed to introduce technology in the industries of precision machinery, electronics, and so on in the process of its implementation of the Second Seven-Year Plan (1978–84). The fact that North Korean knowledge was seriously backward was behind the new policy adopted at the Sixth Congress of the WPK


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held in October 1980: “Revolutionizing and Intellectualizing the Whole of Society and Converting All People to the Working Class.” This new policy was an extension of Kim Il Sung’s previous policy of the 1960s, Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Convert Them to the Working Class. North Korea was now calling for the intellectualization of the entire society. The new policy was intended to enhance the overall knowledge standards characterizing all North Korean people, up to the “college graduate level,” for their transformation into Communist men and women.62 Kim Il Sung claimed that improvements in the standards of science and technology were the most immediate task of the era: “Communist society is not only a society in which all people dress and live well but also a society where all people work less and produce more material wealth. In our society, there still exist differences between heavy and light labor and between physical and mental labor. To remove all such differences and to make people work less, we have to improve productivity and automate production. For this, we need a dramatic improvement in people’s standards for technological knowledge. In other words, the whole of society has to be intellectualized.”63 To generate an eventual increase in productivity, the authorities established, in addition to regular universities, more on-site technical colleges—such as factory colleges, farm colleges, and fishery colleges— where workers and farmers could be reeducated. In sum, the Kim Jong Il era began with the rehabilitation of the status of artists, who, since the war period, had held their breath throughout the persecutions and purges. The primary role of new intellectuals continued to be to serve the consolidation of the existing party-state centered on Kim’s family. Meanwhile, young intellectuals were mobilized to reinforce the ideological authority of the Chuch’e idea, and this caused a continuous decay in knowledge, particularly in science and technology. In response, North Korean leaders determined to improve the intellectual level of the general public, but the policy measures were not enough to overcome the intellectual backwardness. The Perceived “Internal Enemy” in Times of Decaying Socialism The collapse of the East European socialist bloc in 1989 came as a shock to the political leaders in North Korea. Although they had continuously promoted the ultimate triumph of socialism, as time passed they had to acknowledge that the decline of socialism was an irreversible reality. Not only did they come to explore ways to justify the existing system, but also they tried to closely analyze the causes that led to the decay of socialist systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet

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Union. Kim Jong Il devised just such an explanation: frustration with socialism, created by an internal enemy. The collapse of socialism was the outcome of a series of factors: conspiracy by imperialists and antirevolutionary forces, ideological and cultural infiltration by imperialists, and rightist opportunism. The betrayers’ plot in the socialist system was a decisive factor that caused the breakdown. While taking direct and resolute actions such as invasion, oppression, containment, engagement, and other destructive acts to suffocate socialists, the imperialists have also used the backsliders and the turncoats of revolution as a tool. The betrayers appeared at the upper and lower levels of Communist and labor movements. Throughout the history of international Communism, ideological frustrations and vicissitudes that occurred in the socialist movement were all closely related to the emergence of betrayers at the upper levels of revolution.64 According to Kim, the existence of disloyal actors—the so-called internal enemy—was responsible for the system’s collapse. It is notable that the internal enemy emerged from two groups: bureaucrats and intellectuals. Underlying Kim Jong Il’s view on intellectuals as a potential threat to the socialist system was his closely related perception that “intellectuals are easily affected by the current thought of imperialists” and that “their free minds can have serious negative effects on the continuance of revolution.”65 There is a striking similarity between Kim Jong Il’s and Western scholars’ analyses of the role of social groups in the process of the breakdown of socialist systems.66 Both Kim and Westerners saw that bureaucrats, by employing illegal means to accomplish legal goals dictated by the party-state, had committed “crimes” encroaching on the public sector. For example, in order to meet production quotas, managers of factories and companies had bribed party cadres for the necessary raw materials and facilities. Also, both Kim and Western analysts concluded that, in the later stages of socialist totalitarianism, the intellectuals had begun to disseminate universal values through unofficial means. By forming independent forums to expand civil rights, the intellectuals had insisted that the state eliminate its intervention in the private sphere. Their activities eventually had a critical influence on the revival or formation of civil society. In particular, those intellectuals who were not coaxed into the state-building process in some Eastern European countries—especially in Poland, Hungary, and


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Czechoslovakia—became a social group that resisted totalitarian rule. At any rate, it is true that in Eastern Europe, betrayal by the bureaucrats and intellectuals had a lethal effect on the fate of socialism. On the basis of this observation, Kim Jong Il and his associates in North Korea devised a measure to tighten the control of intellectuals. In a statement delivered to the members of the CC of the WPK in September 1990, Kim Jong Il expressed his opinion on the measures that should be undertaken toward intellectuals in the age of decaying socialism.67 Kim reiterated the party’s guidance of intellectuals. The rationale of his policy was that because they were originally made up of diverse groups and had no firm class consciousness, the intellectuals failed to form an independent class of their own: Since intellectuals do not form an independent class of their own, they also do not possess a class-based demand and ideology reflecting their interests, which the working and capitalist classes normally keep. If the intellectuals armed themselves with the revolutionary ideology of the working class, they would struggle for the latter, standing by the side of revolution. If they equipped themselves with bourgeois ideology, they would struggle only on behalf of the capitalists, the exploitative class. Under the guidance of the party, the intellectuals should accept the revolutionary ideology of the working class and march forward to accomplish workers’ liberation and independence.68 This argument differed slightly from Kim Il Sung’s policy toward intellectuals proposed in 1968. While Kim Il Sung’s policy was intended as a warning mainly against the vestiges of old intellectuals and their influences, Kim Jong Il’s policy was an effort to caution all intellectuals, who had been characterized as being potentially duplicitous, although a generational shift between the “old” and the “new” intellectuals had already concluded. In order to leash the intellectuals to the party’s guidance, Kim Jong Il presented three different methods, depending on the developmental stages of socialism: (a) inducing intellectuals’ support during the phase of the party’s struggle for power; (b) education of intellectuals by the working class after the party’s takeover; and (c) elimination of the group identity of intellectuals in the socialist state.69 Kim Jong Il has indicated that the current policy toward intellectuals in North Korea corresponds to the final stage. Because of the decay of socialism in Eastern Europe, the liquidation of intellectuals’ identity

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has become a particularly important matter for him. After the fall of socialist systems there, the content of education for intellectuals, mapped out by Kim Jong Il, came to include faith in socialism, collectivist ideas, nationalism, loyalty to the party, and loyalty to the leader.70 Another target for party control was the student body studying abroad. Kim Jong Il not only summoned the students back to North Korea immediately after the collapse of the Eastern socialist bloc but also labeled them “people who have studied abroad” and inscribed this label in their official registration documents.71 Such harsh measures stemmed from the assumption that these students were able to compare the European lifestyle with that of North Korea. Similarly, North Korea has tightly controlled the professional overseas trips of intellectuals compared to those of other social groups. One of the most noteworthy measures taken by Kim Jong Il was to hold North Korea’s first nationwide meeting of intellectuals in December 1992. This meeting was intended to impose new academic duties on the intellectuals so that North Korea’s domestic and overseas crises could be overcome or averted. Participating in the meeting hosted by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il were high-ranking government officials and party cadres and about six thousand intellectuals from the sciences, literature, and the arts. During the meeting, the discussion focused uniquely on the role played by intellectuals in the safeguarding of the system—a system whose heart was the WPK. Since the death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994, propaganda has characterized intellectuals’ loyalty to Kim Jong Il as a duty, one that was promulgated in the 1992 nationwide meeting of intellectuals. Following this theme, an editorial in Nodong Sinmun on June 17, 1995, stated that “the most important thing for the intellectuals, if they are to become loyal revolutionaries endlessly carrying out the great achievements of the party, is that they have absolute faith in Kim Jong Il.” Facilitation of the “Skip-Over Strategy” The test launch of the intercontinental missile Taep’odong 1 in August 1998, which North Korea claimed was a satellite booster, had significant effects on both diplomatic fronts and domestic politics. On the one hand, the missile launch infuriated Japan and alarmed the United States. Its trajectory crossed over Japanese territory and revealed Tokyo’s security vulnerability to the missile system of North Korea, whose nuclear program remained precarious despite its control under the effect of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework. Furthermore, even though there was no evidence that North Korea had placed a satellite


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into orbit, the missile test surprised the American intelligence community by successfully demonstrating North Korea’s mastery of a threestage missile. Also, considering the fact that the missile requires the assembly of about eighty thousand parts, the United States acknowledged the advanced standard of North Korea’s military technology. As a result, the missile test became an impetus for both the strengthening, as well as the legitimating, of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the two countries’ collaboration on a missile defense system to be deployed in the years to come. North Korean media propagated the missile launch as a victorious demonstration of its national po wer. North Korea announced that a satellite, named KwangmyÆng-sÆng 1 (A Bright Star), had reached orbit and was sending messages in Morse code to the earthbound command center.72 On the domestic front, the missile launch provided the North Korean people, whose morale had been depressed in the midst of the famine, with a sense of pride in the science and technology that had developed under the guiding principle of Chuch’e. In accordance with the recovered national pride, the newly revised constitution, adopted in September of the same year, 1998, stipulated that the technological revolution was the “key link” for socialist economic development (Article 27). In the midst of this celebration of its own technology, North Korea started to promulgate a new development strategy for its faminestricken society. The development strategy may be called the “skipover strategy”: the idea was to bypass the long modernization period based on manufacturing industries and to directly jump into a hightech industrial stage. This development strategy has focused on the information technology industry, in general, and the software industry, in particular. One thing that made this strategy so attractive was that most of North Korea’s industrial facilities were outmoded and unattended, and the cost of either fixing them or replacing them with new facilities was, according to political leaders, prohibitively high. South Korea, too, has occasionally skimmed over a certain stage of development. For example, Hyundai Motor Company, the largest automobile producer in South Korea, came to develop fuel injection engines, skipping a few stages in the development of the combustion engine. Likewise, the skip-over strategy in North Korea was intended to follow the pattern of the late runner’s advantage. North Korea’s new attention to science and technology dated back to May 1984, when Kim Il Sung returned from his visit to Eastern European countries—the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania. It is said that

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during his stay with the old allies, Kim was impressed by children he met whose dream was to become scientists. In North Korea, by contrast, children dreamed of becoming artists or military officers or party cadres, reflecting the social realities of authoritarianism and the prioritization of theatrical symbolism by means of performing arts. At the end of 1985, Kim Il Sung instructed that scientists be rewarded for their contributions, which had long been underestimated in comparison to those of artists.73 Kim’s instructions generated important momentum for a more favorable policy on intellectuals in the field of science and technology. Indeed, North Korea has continued since the mid-1980s to educate and train computer engineers and technicians by establishing related institutions. In 1983, Kim Ch’aek University and the Academy of Sciences became forerunners in the development of training centers related to computer science. There followed the Pyongyang College of Computer Science in 1985, the Computer Center at Kim Il Sung University in 1986, the Pyongyang Information Center in 1986, the Korea Computer Center in 1990, Silver Star Laboratories in 1995, and the School of Computer Science at Kim Il Sung University in 1999.74 North Korea established the Bureau of Program Education in the Ministry of Education in January 2000 for systematic state-level management of the training and educating of computer specialists. Furthermore, North Korea has held a yearly nationwide festival of science and technology since 1985 and a nationwide computer program contest since 1990.75 Similar nationwide contests have extended to events for college students and even for middle and high school students in 2000. It is unclear exactly when Kim Jong Il started to be deeply involved in the development of computer science and the information technology industry, but it is presumable that such engagement coincided with his domination of leadership in the military, as well as in the party. The focus on information technology probably surfaced at the beginning of the 1990s, at the earliest, or in the late 1990s, at the latest. I say that because in the early 1990s, the military commandership presumably facilitated the younger Kim’s efforts to expedite the development of ballistic missiles that are known in the West as the Taep’odong 1 and Taep’odong 2.76 Insofar as the missile development was geared toward advancing North Korea’s military capacity, Kim Jong Il, in charge of the military leadership, must have played a leading role in pushing forward the related fields of technology based on computer science. In the late 1990s, the success of the test of the Taep’odong 1 showed the fruit of Kim’s efforts, and this success might have further encouraged him to guide the direction of North Korea’s


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commercial-oriented and military-oriented information technology industry according to a skip-over strategy. The embarkation of Kim Jong Il’s skip-over strategy per se was articulated in 1999. On January 1 of that year, the joint New Year’s editorial of Nodong Sinmun (the party organ), Choso˘n Inmin’gun (the army’s daily newspaper), and Ch’o˘ngnyo˘n Cho˘nwi (the youth league’s daily newspaper) stressed the “spirit of the valuing of the sciences” and declared the “year of the sciences.” In accordance with this media propaganda, Kim Jong Il selected the Academy of Sciences on January 11 for his first on-spot guidance visit of the year. It is unquestionable that this visit was more than a symbolic gesture. It was not until Kim Jong Il’s visit to China and the inter-Korean summit in 2000 that the skip-over strategy prioritizing the information technology industry became a public policy. Kim Jong Il’s May visit to China came seventeen years after his first visit there in June 1983. While attending to the diplomatic goal of strengthening North Korea’s friendship with Beijing, Kim apparently surveyed China’s reforms and information technology industry, gauging their feasibility for his own country. On the occasion of his stay in China, Kim exhibited a keen interest in the computer technology complex located in Beijing. In addition, the inter-Korean summit must have inspired Kim to consider how South Korea supported small- and medium-scale information technology businesses through both financial means and policy choices. (In a sense, the two Koreas were fellow sufferers, in that South Korea was barely overcoming its financial crisis while North Korea was contending with its famine.) Reflecting Kim Jong Il’s attempt to implement the skip-over strategy, a joint article in Nodong Sinmun and Ku˘lloja on July 4, 2000, entitled “Let Us Uphold the Spirit of Valuing the Sciences and Build the Strong State,” delivered the message that science and technology, in addition to ideology and military power, were an important impetus for the construction of the Strong State. The article also noted Kim Jong Il’s involvement in computer science by declaring that “the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il has mastered the field of computer science and has suggested the development of software programs.” Kim Jong Il’s follow-up visit to China, in January 2001, affirmed the explicit remarks in North Korean media concerning the skip-over strategy, remarks that made use of phrases like “leap once and for all” (tanbÆn toyak). Among the places he visited in Shanghai and Pudong New Area were Shanghai GM Automobile Company, Shanghai Huahong NEC Electronic Company, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Zhangjiang High-Tech Park. The dramatic development of these areas eighteen years after the 1983 trip impressed Kim so much that

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he termed the change “a creation of earth and heaven,” meaning a cataclysmic change in the period.77 In the early part of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the achievements in North Korea’s information technology industry, particularly software programming, became evident. The Pyongyang media in January 2001 reported that the network operating program KwangmyÆng established a successful nationwide connection between cabinet ministries, provincial offices, scientific institutions, and universities. The number of local units linking the networks in 2001 increased 1.7 times over that in 2000 and 4.6 times over that in 1999.78 It is noteworthy that advances in software programming came to be more diverse as time passed. North Korea had already demonstrated its high standard, especially in the fingerprint and voice recognition fields and in Korean word processing packages. Also, in order to alleviate North Korea’s desperate need for foreign currency, the authorities have made every effort to produce competitive products in the fields of simulation games and animation. There was an important reason for North Korea’s decision to prioritize software programming over hardware development. International sanctions have limited what North Korea can import, including parts and facilities necessary for the development of computer hardware. Since the end of the Cold War, sanctions have been imposed not simply by the domestic laws and acts of the United States but also by multilateral regulations. For instance, the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, which was named for the Dutch town near the Hague, has been a multilateral device since July 1996 to address the arms trade and military applications of high technology.79 South Korea and Japan, as signatories to the arrangement, have been partners in the sanctions against North Korea. Even in the process of interKorean cooperation after the 2000 summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong Il, South Koreans have had to follow this particular international provision, which prohibits the transfer of dual-use and sensitive technology to North Korea. Likewise, the Korean-Japanese community, the major unofficial source of most of North Korea’s recent technology from Japan, became subject to the multilateral controls. Given this situation, North Korea has apparently emphasized software development over everything else. For North Korea’s leaders, software development seems to have many economic and political advantages. North Korea under these strict economic conditions could, without much investment, find a niche for itself in the software industry. In particular, North Korea


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could afford to train and educate small numbers of “genius” engineers and their assisting technicians.80 With its efforts to train and educate computer engineers and technicians spanning over a couple of decades, North Korea has attempted to make the dream of the software industry come true. With the encouragement of programming contests at the state level, bright youths, even students of middle and high schools, have become prospective participants in the national strategy. It is said that by the early 2000s, North Korea could, in approximate figures, boast of having one hundred thousand trained technicians, one thousand highly educated engineers, and sixty internationally competitive scientists in this field.81 Furthermore, North Korea has made efforts to adopt South Korean expertise by opening lecture courses at universities in Pyongyang and has solicited, through diplomatic channels, the accommodation by advanced countries of North Korean engineers for extended training purposes.82 In sum, the intellectuals in North Korea have had no chance to empower themselves as a social force and, therefore, no chance to promote social change. But intellectuals have one thing in common. Unlike other social groups, they possess the ability to think critically and creatively. Knowing this fact, Kim Il Sung transformed the class status of intellectuals in the 1960s, and Kim Jong Il came to perceive them as a potential enemy in times of decaying socialism. The expression of complaints among less-educated workers about the malpractices of party cadres would be tolerated because of their status as the basic class in the system. In contrast, explicit discontent among intellectuals would be considered a threat to the system because of their critical and creative capacity and their uncertain social status. There is little space in which their hearts’ discontent might transform itself into effective criticism of the existing socialist system.83 Maybe with the skip-over strategy based particularly on the software industry, young intellectuals and prospective intellectuals have been able to find a cathartic release for their critical and creative capacity.


8

Conclusion Dilemmas of Opening Up

This book has covered the transition that the identity of the North Korean system has undergone during the period of Kim Jong Il’s rule, which may be traced back to 1973. The three decades between 1973 and 2002 represent a systemic change. The original identity had been embedded in North Korea’s three reference points: socialist principles, anti-imperialism, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. The internal differentiation in each subsystem, as discussed in the previous chapters, contributed to the degradation of the original meanings of the reference points, finally producing dilemmas, such as the eruption of the second nuclear crisis in 2002 at the juncture of both economic reform measures and the diplomatic approach to Japan. Special Features of Systemic Dissonance The North Korean system under Kim Jong Il had long depreciated internal differentiation, but such official depreciation had been unable to constrain the differentiation process at the unofficial level. Generally speaking, a system operates in a recursive way to maintain the unity and integrity of the system. At the same time, a system enhances multiplicity through internal differentiation in either official or unofficial spheres. The entire blockage of the internal differentiation at the unofficial level will suffocate the system as a whole. In this respect, a system maintains a unitas multiplex, to use Niklas Luhmann’s expression.1 The North Korean system is not an exception. 193

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The party-state had emphasized uniformity under the unique reference points since the rise of Kim Jong Il—socialist principles, antiimperialism, and the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition—much more than any other socialist system had. Previously, the Chuch’e idea not only had maintained tensions with the South and antagonism toward the United States but also had rationalized homogeneity and conformity in the system. However, the North Korean system could neither entirely ignore internal differentiation nor completely close itself off from the environment. The system partly adapted to the development of internal differentiation by permitting some unofficial spheres or transforming official standpoints. Noticeable examples of the adaptation are, in the political aspect, the decline of the party’s efficiency and the enhancing of the military’s relative autonomy; in the ideological aspect, estrangement from socialist doctrine, particularly orthodox Marxism-Leninism, and the emphasis on socialism in its own style; in the economic aspect, the erosion of socialist economic institutions, and state authorization of both local latitude and entrepreneurial practices; and in the intellectualcultural aspect, the degradation of intellectuals’ role and the use of them for the “skip-over strategy.” At any rate, the internal differentiation in each subsystem produced a certain behavior space deemed illicit by the party-state’s binary moral code, which is described in detail in the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea. The illicit behavior was checked and criticized by the party-life criticism meetings in the case of party members and by regular ideological education for people who had no party membership. Despite the control of illicit behavior, the internal differentiation, particularly at the unofficial level, continued to produce dissonance at the system level. Systemic dissonance refers to an emergence of systemwide asymmetry or discrepancy between official and unofficial spheres, because of the dual operation of each subsystem. More importantly, systemic dissonance refers to a fluctuation affecting the original identity that has rendered the system distinctive externally and cohesive internally. As shown in table 8.1, North Korea’s systemic dissonance appeared, at the latest, in the midst of the 1990s famine and weakened the DPRK’s original identity, which had been embedded in unique reference points. Decaying socialist principles The socialist principles were most distinctively dislocated in economic affairs. With the famine (more strictly speaking, the “slow-motion

왍 North-South national cooperation in external affairs; 왍 recognition of interdependence in capitalism and of the necessity of opening 왍 selective economic opening to the South 왍 intellectuals as a potential “internal enemy”

왍 estrangement from Marxism-Leninism; 쐍 spread of materialism, individualism, and familism

쐍 spread of entrepreneurship; 쐍 informal transition of property rights 왍 intellectuals as an instrument of skipover strategy of development

Ideological Subsystem

Economic Subsystem IntellectualCultural Subsystem

왍 military’s increased economic role, especially during the famine

왍 replacement of the guerilla tradition with the military-first politics; 왍 emphasis on the spirit and morale of the military

왍 enhanced status of National Defense Commission in the 1998 constitution

The Anti-Japanese Guerilla Tradition (monopoly of power in the party)

Note: Italics indicate the newly emerging elements that partly disclaim the values of the reference points. The black square ( 쐍 ) indicates the unofficial changes, whereas the empty square ( 왍 ) designates the officially pronounced changes.

Subsystem Level

왍 detour diplomacy to access the United States (through South Korea and Western states)

왍 military’s leading role in socialism; 쐍 decline of the party’s legitimacy and guiding role in economic affairs

Anti-imperialism (antagonism with the United States and South Korea)

Reference Points

Political Subsystem

Socialist Principles (giving priority to public goods)

Table 8.1. Degradation of Systemic Identity

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famine” in the sense that the food shortage had surfaced before the starvation between 1996 and 1998),2 socialist state-planning almost collapsed, and the distribution mechanism completely collapsed. As a result, local governments came to exercise more latitude over the securing of foods and other daily necessities for the people under their jurisdiction. Moreover, the original reference point of the socialist principles was shaken both in the ideological sense and in the institutional sense. The burgeoning of commercial practices heaped shame on the slogan “one for all and all for one.” In the heart of the general public, materialism, individualism, and familism had already replaced the collectivist ideal of socialism. Also, newly emerging unofficial practices and rules came to substitute for the shaken economic institutions. It was no longer a secret in North Korea in the late 1990s that such means of production as buildings, transportation vehicles, and capital—which had been exclusively owned by the state—were being traded between entrepreneurs. Contract relations prevailed in the unofficial economic sphere, replacing the existing institution of property rights. It is notable that before the undertaking of the 7-1 reform measures in 2002, the North Korean authorities started to accommodate the unofficial changes, fusing them with the socialist principles of economic management. The newly revised constitution, adopted in September 1998, reflected those unofficial but visible realities. New elements were an extension of the scope of private ownership through an approval of income from legally defined economic activities (Article 24); an emphasis on the employment of independent accounting methods and an introduction of new notions of cost, price, and profit (Article 33); and the permitting of collective units as independent units of foreign trade (Article 36). Right after the revision of the constitution, North Korea adopted the Law of National Economic Planning in April 1999, through which the state revealed its intention to restore the central economic controls that had been devastated by the increased local latitude in the midst of the economic crisis and the famine.3 One bewildering aspect of the 1999 law has been its stated policy that local governments may exercise power to some extent in economic planning (Articles 21-24). Apparently the state expected that regional self-reliance could make a positive contribution to output growth and the promotion of trade. Here the significance of local governments (that is, the Provincial People’s Committee and the County People’s Committee) in economic planning became legally stipulated.4 The 1998 constitution and the 1999 economic law reflected, with a certain time lag, the reality of the party’s declined guiding role in economic affairs. As a consequence,

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both of the legal frames must have facilitated unofficial spheres and the gray zone in which both bureaucrats and the general public could be relatively safe in their economic activities. Approaching the United States Some of North Korea’s external policies practically disclaimed antiimperialism, even though the media continued to denounce the United States and its ally, South Korea, in order to maintain domestic political integration. The external policies were a reflection of North Korea’s modified view on imperialism, and this modified view started to appear in the second half of the 1980s. Above all, North Korea, as shown in Kim Jong Il’s writings, acknowledged reasons for the sustainability of capitalism: One is the transformation of class structure and the shrunken role of the working class, and the other is new colonialism, with its interconnected webs of cooperation and exploitation.5 The Gulf War in 1991 further convinced North Korean authorities that the power of American imperialism, in particular, had been dominating international relations after the breakdown of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. On top of this modified view, North Korean authorities in the 1990s expressed a remarkably tolerant attitude toward the American military presence on the Korean peninsula. During Jimmy Carter’s visit to Pyongyang in the midst of the first nuclear crisis, Kim Il Sung told him that North Korea was more interested in a reduction of the U.S. military presence in South Korea than in a complete withdrawal. In the same vein, First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju surprised his American counterpart, the ambassador Robert Gallucci, during talks over the nuclear crisis by taking a tolerant stand on the American military issue.6 Furthermore, at the inter-Korean summit, Kim Jong Il accepted Kim Dae-jung’s views on the necessity of a U.S. military presence for the regional balance of power.7 The perceived change in the world and the changed attitude toward the military presence of the United States was accompanied by North Korea’s adoption of “detour diplomacy.” Inasmuch as the key enemy had been the United States, the goal of detour diplomacy centered on resolving the long-standing animosity and on securing from the enemy a guarantee for the security of the existing system. At the same time, the detour diplomacy was intended to take alternative routes, one through South Korea (the Basic Agreement between the North and the South in 1991 and the inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in 2000) and the other through Western countries (diplomatic ties in 2000 and 2001), whenever such diplomacy became necessary.8 The

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detour diplomacy tactically aimed, at the very least, at sidelining South Korea and, at the very most, at inducing South Korean leniency toward the North in the latter’s approach to the United States. This tactic has been reflected in North Korea’s insistence on the complete implementation of the June 15 Joint Declaration, signed by Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae-jung in 2000. It may be summarized in the slogan, surfacing after the 2000 summit, of “national cooperation” between the North and the South. Notably, the tactical practices of the detour diplomacy, particularly in economic affairs, brought about an apparently meaningful change in North Korean people’s perceptions of the South. A handy example is that of the late Chung Ju-young, the honorary chairman of the Hyundai Corporation, whom North Koreans nicknamed “Grandfather Chung.” The internal propaganda of antiimperialism and the external policies of detour diplomacy together must have produced a certain degree of contradiction in North Korea’s original identity. Military-first politics in the forefront The military-first politics came to replace the reference point of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition. The reference point had long legitimated Kim Il Sung’s monolithic power and had excluded any possibility of the emergence of competing elements in the political arena. During the father-to-son power transfer in the 1970s, the “theatrical symbolization” of the anti-Japanese struggle—that is, the rationalization of monolithic power through the performing of revolutionary musical operas in the theater—successfully generated the support of the elder Kim’s guerrilla comrades for a hereditary succession of power to the younger Kim.9 But the efficacy of this theatrical symbolization started to diminish for two reasons: the rapid decline of the party’s legitimacy, especially after the party’s famine-era loss of control over resources, and the deaths of the aging guerrillas formerly headed by Kim Il Sung, including Minister of Defense O Chin-u in 1995, O’s successor Ch’oe Kwang, and First Vice Minister of Defense Kim Kwangchin in 1997. The military-first politics was the younger Kim’s decision to create an institutional differentiation between the party and the military. It was meant to cut off the declining WPK’s negative impact on the military’s organizational discipline and morale. Of the three reference points, the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition represented the most seriously deteriorated aspect of North Korea’s systemic dissonance. And yet, it should be noted that at least the

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deterioration of the anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition was followed by a replacement of this tradition with another, the military-first politics. The proclamation of the military-first politics could become a central new reference point according to which the North Korean system could operate. Instead of the working class or the party, the military is the spearhead for a transformation of North Korea’s systemic identity. The emergence of North Korea’s military-first politics makes its system significantly different from that of the military authoritarian systems in the Third World in the 1960s and 1970s, including that in South Korea under the ex-general Park. However, North Korea appears to follow a policy pattern of national integration similar to these systems, especially in the ways of resorting to “development” based on “national security.” The overall change is an adaptive process. In this regard, journalistic predictions of a “collapse” of the entire North Korean system do not make sense, because the form of the system has already started to undergo a transformation, not drastically but gradually. Defiance in 2002 How was the systemic dissonance in North Korea related to the events in 2002 on both the domestic front and the diplomatic front? It is unquestionable that North Korea required both improvements in domestic economic efficiency and a progress in the relationship with Japan and the United States, countries that possess major economic resources and even veto power in international financial institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the ADB.10 Following this line, North Korea undertook reform measures in July 2002, held summit talks with Japan in September, and accepted the visit of the American envoy James Kelly in October for the discussion of the United StatesNorth Korea relations.11 But the last two diplomatic efforts backfired. Pyongyang’s admission that North Korean agents had abducted thirteen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and the 1980s and that North Korea had recently developed an uranium enrichment program have further damaged relations with Japan and the United States, respectively. Pyongyang’s admission of the abduction fueled public anger in Japan against North Korea, exacerbating the feeling that had arisen since the North Korean missile launch over Japanese territory in 1998.12 Pyongyang’s admission of an uranium enrichment program was a seemingly frank but provocative action against the international community, which has funded the construction of two light-water reactors in accordance with the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework.

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De facto declaration of being a nuclear state North Korea’s external actions undertaken in 2002, taken together, appear to be a blend of a hard-line and pragmatism in foreign policy.13 Kim Jong Il’s admission, at the summit between Koizumi and Kim Jong Il, that North Korea had abducted Japanese must be understood as an action intended to normalize diplomatic relations with Tokyo and to obtain compensation for past Japanese colonial rule. In contrast, the admission by North Korea that it had an uranium enrichment program has bewildered specialists in North Korean affairs as to the underlying circumstances or intentions. Also, it was difficult to determine, with precision, the degree to which North Korea’s uranium enrichment program had advanced. How should observers of North Korea interpret this admission? The nature of the second nuclear crisis is different from that of the first crisis. The previous nuclear crisis erupted upon North Korea’s exit from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in March 1993 and died down when bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea resulted in the adoption of the Geneva Agreed Framework in October 1994 (see appendix). According to the Agreed Framework, the United States would organize a consortium, later named the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors; in return, North Korea would freeze its nuclear program. At that time, North Korea had insisted that the purpose of its nuclear development was the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In a sense, the spirit of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework lay in a realistic accommodation of North Korea’s insistence on the peaceful use, meaning electricity, even if there was little evidence that the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon had been built for the purpose of electrical power per se. From the standpoint of the Clinton administration and the United States Congress, the agreement in 1994 was based not on trust in North Korea’s claim but on a realistic view that the United States had to deal with the system in place.14 That is, the United States made an agreement with North Korea but left aside the task of unraveling the reason for the construction of nuclear facilities. North Korea’s admission to James Kelly, in October 2002, of its development of the uranium enrichment program was an intended act of defiance in that it ran counter to the spirit of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework as well as the 1992 North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. What should be noted is that the admission was the country’s first de facto declaration of a “nuclear state” status, meaning that the basis of its nuclear develop-

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ment program centered on weaponry purposes that had not been proclaimed ever before. In April 2003, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang claimed as much when it repeatedly reported that North Korea was reprocessing its 8,000 spent fuel rods in order to extract plutonium, a key ingredient in atomic weapons, and thus to erect a tangible deterrent against hostile action of the United States.15 Nodong Sinmun and the KCNA also publicized this in the midst of the American invasion of Iraq in March and April 2003, an invasion that might have compounded North Korean leaders’ fears of hi-tech American military power and then have strengthened their determination to materialize their deterrent capacity against the United States.16 From the news reports, one should take careful note that the de facto declaration of the nuclear state in October 2002 occurred years before the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s official declaration on February 10, 2005, that North Korea is a nuclear state. The second nuclear crisis, caused by the admitting of the development of an uranium enrichment program, surfaced at a time when the Bush administration of the United States, the partner of the 1994 Agreed Framework, was not treating the issue with urgency. Failure in openness The above explanation may not be the whole story about the diplomatic approach taken by North Korea under systemic dissonance in regard to its position as a nuclear state. There were constraints structuring the scope of the diplomatic behavior. The main constraint was a failure in openness, which was caused by the poorly explored interactive capacity of the system and the limits of detour diplomacy in diplomatic approaches to the United States. In other words, the second nuclear crisis, which dates back to October 2002, has resulted from dilemmas of the failure of opening up within a situation of systemic dissonance. LACK

OF INTERACTIVE CAPACITY

North Korean authorities’ prolonged disregard of the changes in unofficial spheres calcified the system and, furthermore, retarded the growth of the system’s interactive capacity, which is a requisite for safe handling of the process of opening up. Even when an opening was necessary, both the underlying animosity against imperialism and the related ideological propaganda praising loyalty to the Kim family had retarded the shift to a diversification of policy discussions in the

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leading policy groups. The resulting low interactive capacity of the bureaucrats has been reflected both on the security front and on the economic front. According to the memoirs of the former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Kim Jong Il mentioned, on the occasion of her official visit to Pyongyang in October 2000, that there was a split within the military on whether or not to improve relations with Washington and that there were people in the Foreign Ministry who had opposed even his decision to approve her visit.17 Kim’s statement on the domestic situation has a twofold meaning. It might reveal some difference in views in the two ministries. And yet, it would never mean that there was a real challenge to Kim’s decision on that matter. A statement of a South Korean businessman who met Kim Jong Il indicates Kim’s absolute authority in the decision-making process. At an evening reception, in front of this businessman, Kim raised a question to the participants—composed of top party and military leaders— about whether or not the opening of North Korea to South Korean business advance was necessary. Being aware of Kim’s general attitude toward this issue, all the participants showed their respect to him by answering yes. As the businessman correctly noted, through such formal question-and-answer sessions, Kim simply intended the decision to be regarded as a reflection of collectivity. Military officers and foreign ministry bureaucrats of the policy group should be loyal to, and benefit from, the existing system, and any views different from his were not incompatible with their fidelity to Kim Jong Il. Needless to say, this kind of authority relations must have interfered with the development of more diversified tactics in diplomatic affairs. The low degree of interactive capacity was also serious among those people working in economic affairs. Those in economic affairs had not responded in a timely manner to the urgent issue of the introduction of outside resources. For instance, high-ranking bureaucrats were not ready to face even humanitarian aid workers, who wanted to monitor the distribution of these resources both in Pyongyang and in the countryside. The behavior space of aid workers was extremely constrained by their North Korean partners through constant surveillance and attempts to guide the visitors. Furthermore, the bureaucrats lacked negotiation skills in their talks for the aid. They had no give-and-take skills to induce more favors from the partner, so they simply requested tremendous amounts of aid or supplies without taking into account the partner’s capability. Also, the interest that central government bureaucrats had in the aid was not as great as that evinced by local government bureaucrats, who were concerned with the self-sufficiency of their own administrative units. This discrepancy

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in the interest shown was due not only to a lack of immediate local interest—particularly among bureaucrats at the center—in the transmission of aid to the countryside but also to these bureaucrats’ overriding concern for their own job security or political safety.18 Such bureaucratic behavior giving a priority to political considerations was reflection of the competency trap that Kim Jong Il himself had complained about in the speech delivered at Kim Il Sung University at the end of 1996, in which he claimed that he had worked alone and that party cadres had not followed his lead. In this respect, the human factor must be important, particularly on the economic front. The continuous desperate need for energy, foreign currency, and food forced Kim Jong Il to resort to a selective opening, which he embraced under the auspices of the Sunshine Policy of the Kim Dae-jung administration in the South. But the meekness of the North Korean bureaucrats’ interactive capacity was one of many reasons for the delay of expanding the opening’s scope. A flood of literature on North Korea has stressed the significance of the country’s lack of infrastructure and the high degree of business risk caused by the system’s clandestine and uncertain nature. It does so rightly. But it is also true that the bureaucrats had no chance to develop an interactive capacity that would attract foreign partners, including South Korean businesses as well as international aid organizations. In addition to the American sanctions imposed on the North after the Korean War, the recursive systemic references to anti-imperialism and to Chuch’e had lowered the chances for the development of even a marginal interactive capacity among party-state bureaucrats. In other words, the mind-set of the bureaucrats, in particular, and the human capacity, in general, were not mature enough to properly handle the related issues for opening up, even when Kim Jong Il apparently began to perceive the outside world differently. Ironically, this was the system that Kim’s own active-negative character had made, as seen in chapter 2. LIMITS

OF DETOUR DIPLOMACY

Pyongyang’s detour diplomacy, by way of South Korea and non-U.S. Western countries, exhibited limitations in inducing the United States to engage actively with North Korea. Above all, the North’s approach to the South—which was meant to ameliorate the existing competitive atmosphere—did not effect an improvement in inter-Korean relations, at least until the 2000 summit. For North Korea, before the summit, the Basic Agreement between the North and the South, adopted in

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late 1991, had not brought about any leniency on the part of the South toward the North’s approach to the old enemy, the United States. The Kim Young-sam administration in the South from 1993 to 1998 continued to operate according to an old view of the North. Especially after the failed attempt for a summit between Kim Young-sam and Kim Il Sung in 1994 because of the latter’s sudden death, inter-Korean relations tensed up. The Kim administration in the South was displeased with the improved relationship between Pyongyang and Washington after the 1994 Agreed Framework. And the inter-Korean tension came to deepen as the following events occurred: North Korea’s holding of a South Korean vessel carrying rice and the allegation of the crew’s espionage activities in June 1995; an armed North Korean espionage squad’s infiltration into the South in September 1996; and the defection of North Korea’s top ideologue, Hwang Chang-yÆp, to the South in February 1997. Furthermore, North Korea’s Taep’odong missile launch over Japanese territory in August 1998 not only infuriated Tokyo but also embarrassed Seoul. Given the situation of tense inter-Korean relations, it came as no surprise that Pyongyang’s diplomatic efforts to approach Washington proved unsuccessful. What is notable is that in the second half of the 1990s, North Korea expected the implementation of Clause 2 of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which stipulates that “the two sides will move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.” This clause had been left unattended because of the neglectful attitude of the Clinton administration, opposition by the Republican-dominated Congress, tense inter-Korean relations, and Japanese anger.19 Not until October 2000 did another high-level contact between the United States and North Korea occur. For negotiations over the development and export of North Korean missiles, Vice Marshal Cho MyÆng-nok visited Washington, DC and Secretary of State Albright made a visit to Pyongyang. But it was too late to produce a concrete agreement. Kim Jong Il hurriedly tried to reach an agreement with the United States, whereas Clinton did not have enough time to scrutinize all the related issues and to harmonize the U.S. position with its important ally, Japan, which had a different view on how to resolve the missile issue.20 Even after the 2000 inter-Korean summit, North Korea’s endeavor to approach the United States did not bear fruit. Kim Jong Il selectively opened part of the territory—Mt. K„mgang and later the KaesÆng area—to the South under the Kim Dae-jung administration and established, with the support of the South, diplomatic ties with Western countries. But this detour diplomacy as an approach to the United States could not but disappoint North Korea again. Stigmatizing North Korea as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002, the newly launched Bush

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administration disregarded the Agreed Framework and the former administration’s policy toward North Korea. Right after the eruption of the second nuclear crisis in the same year, the Bush administration initiated the stoppage of heavy-oil shipments to North Korea, the type of oil that had been labeled a provisional energy source for use before the completion of the light-water nuclear reactors in the Shinpo area. The consortium partners of the KEDO, such as South Korea, Japan, and the European Union, could not resist the American suggestion that these shipments end. Furthermore, economic cooperation with the South had its own limitations. For instance, when the South and the North launched the construction of the KaesÆng industrial complex, which is North Korea’s most adventurous industrial zone meant to attract South Korean business, the United States was gravely concerned about whether South Korean businesses would introduce sensitive and dual-use goods into the industrial complex. The movement of sensitive and dual-use goods has been subject to denial by the Commerce Control List, in conjunction with the Trading with the Enemy Act, which has been applied by the United States to North Korea since 1953. Also, the transfer of those products that are applicable to military use has been subject to the Wassenaar Arrangement through South Korea’s membership in this international agreement. In sum, North Korea’s defiance in 2002, which was provoked particularly by the country’s admission of its development of the uranium enrichment program, has reflected systemic dissonance and external dilemmas plaguing a system that was on the verge of adaptation—of opening up in its own way. On the one hand, the internal differentiation has yielded unofficial spheres and resulted in dissonance in the operation of the system as a whole. In the situation of systemic dissonance, Kim Jong Il made desperate efforts to mend the ever-crippled economy, efforts that were capped by the adoption of the reform measures in July 2002. On the other hand, the intended opening up, which was designed to make a diplomatic breakthrough in external relations, seemed to work out at the summit between Kim Jong Il and Koizumi Junichiro in September but came to an abrupt stop after the North Korea’s admission of the uranium enrichment program in the following month. With the detour diplomacy to approach the United States being abortive, North Korea has engaged in the nuclear game since then. In this respect, North Korea’s provocative policy was, to use Victor D. Cha’s term,21 an existential deterrence that originated from its response to perceived losses in the diplomatic game. Psychological analyses of rational choice have shown that such perceived losses compel the actor to settle on a risk-taking choice instead of a risk-averse one.22

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Likewise, the perception of apparent failure in the adaptive process, which occurred in the midst of systemwide dissonance, led North Korea to resort to a kind of risk-taking policy. At the same time, considering Kim Jong Il’s leadership character—that is, his meticulous concern with every aspect of domestic and external policies—it must be true that nuclear game was his policy choice. Again, to analogize a politician’s leadership to a computer operator is necessary. Kim, as the prime decision-maker, is an operator of computer programs (meaning policy choices), whose availability for him depends on both the hardware and undetected operations occurring in the deeper background (meaning the three reference points of the national identity). An ironical point is that for decades, Kim has exerted his personal influence to effect a transformation in the hardware and the deeper background, but this transformation would now lead changes in the programs and then surface to limit the accessible choices.

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Appendix Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK, Geneva, October 21, 1994 Delegations of the governments of the United States of America (U.S.) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held talks in Geneva from September 23 to October 21, 1994, to negotiate an overall resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula. Both sides reaffirmed the importance of attaining the objectives contained in the August 12, 1994 Agreed Statement between the U.S. and the DPRK and upholding the principles of the June 11, 1993 Joint Statement of the U.S. and the DPRK to achieve peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. The U.S. and the DPRK decided to take the following actions for the resolution of the nuclear issue: I. Both sides will cooperate to replace the DPRK’s graphite-moderated reactors and related facilities with light-water reactor (LWR) power plants. (1) In accordance with the October 20, 1994 letter of assurance from the U.S. President, the U.S. will undertake to make arrangements for the provision to the DPRK of a LWR project with a total generating capacity of approximately 2,000 MW(e) by a target date of 2003. — The U.S. will organize under its leadership an international consortium to finance and supply the LWR project to be provided to the DPRK. The U.S., representing the international consortium, will serve as the principal point of contact with the DPRK for the LWR project. — The U.S., representing the consortium, will make best efforts to secure the conclusion of a supply contract with the DPRK within six months of the date of this Document for the provision of the LWR project. Contract talks will begin as soon as possible after the date of this Document. 207

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Appendix — As necessary, the U.S. and the DPRK will conclude a bilateral agreement for cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

(2) In accordance with the October 20, 1994 letter of assurance from the U.S. President, the U.S., representing the consortium, will make arrangements to offset the energy foregone due to the freeze of the DPRK’s graphite-moderated reactors and related facilities, pending completion of the first LWR unit. — Alternative energy will be provided in the form of heavy oil for heating and electricity production. — Deliveries of heavy oil will begin within three months of the date of this Document and will reach a rate of 500,000 tons annually, in accordance with an agreed schedule of deliveries. (3) Upon receipt of U.S. assurances for the provision of LWR’s and for arrangements for interim energy alternatives, the DPRK will freeze its graphite-moderated reactors and related facilities and will eventually dismantle these reactors and related facilities. — The freeze on the DPRK’s graphite-moderated reactors and related facilities will be fully implemented within one month of the date of this Document. During this one-month period, and throughout the freeze, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be allowed to monitor this freeze, and the DPRK will provide full cooperation to the IAEA for this purpose. — Dismantlement of the DPRK’s graphite-moderated reactors and related facilities will be completed when the LWR project is completed. — The U.S. and the DPRK will cooperate in finding a method to store safely the spent fuel from the 5 MW(e) experimental reactor during the construction of the LWR project, and to dispose of the fuel in a safe manner that does not involve reprocessing in the DPRK. (4) As soon as possible after the date of this document U.S. and DPRK experts will hold two sets of experts talks. — At one set of talks, experts will discuss issues related to alternative energy and the replacement of the graphitemoderated reactor program with the LWR project. — At the other set of talks, experts will discuss specific arrangements for spent fuel storage and ultimate disposition.

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II. The two sides will move toward full normalization of political and economic relations. (1) Within three months of the date of this Document, both sides will reduce barriers to trade and investment, including restrictions on telecommunications services and financial transactions. (2) Each side will open a liaison office in the other’s capital following resolution of consular and other technical issues through expert level discussions. (3) As progress is made on issues of concern to each side, the U.S. and the DPRK will upgrade bilateral relations to the Ambassadorial level. III. Both sides will work together for peace and security on a nuclearfree Korean peninsula. (1) The U.S. will provide formal assurances to the DPRK, against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. (2) The DPRK will consistently take steps to implement the NorthSouth Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. (3) The DPRK will engage in North-South dialogue, as this Agreed Framework will help create an atmosphere that promotes such dialogue. IV. Both sides will work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. (1) The DPRK will remain a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and will allow implementation of its safeguards agreement under the Treaty. (2) Upon conclusion of the supply contract for the provision of the LWR project, ad hoc and routine inspections will resume under the DPRK’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA with respect to the facilities not subject to the freeze. Pending conclusion of the supply contract, inspections required by the IAEA for the continuity of safeguards will continue at the facilities not subject to the freeze. (3) When a significant portion of the LWR project is completed, but before delivery of key nuclear components, the DPRK will come into full compliance with its safeguards agreement with the IAEA (INFCIRC/403), including taking all steps that may be deemed

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Appendix necessary by the IAEA, following consultations with the Agency with regard to verifying the accuracy and completeness of the DPRK’s initial report on all nuclear material in the DPRK.

Robert L. Gallucci Kang Sok Ju Head of Delegation of the U.S., Head of the Delegation of the DPRK, Ambassador at Large of the U.S. First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK

Notes Chapter 1. Introduction: A Conceptual Frame for Systemic Changes 1. The domestic-international linkage should be a universal phenomenon, but the prevalence of the North American neorealist tradition stressing the balance of power and anarchy in international relations has given rise to limited understandings—and unlimited misunderstandings—of the domestic sources of a country’s external behavior. Scholars mentored by James N. Rosenau have attempted to illustrate the decision-making that links domestic processes to international relations. After a long hiatus, Robert Putnam and others have revived the significance of domestic politics. For the works by these scholars, see James N. Rosenau, “Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” in Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, ed. R. B. Ferrell (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 27–92; Graham Allison, The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); Alexander L. George, “The Case for Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy,” American Political Science Review 66, no. 4 (1972): 751–85; and Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32, no. 4 (1978): 881–912. Also, for the revival of the importance of domestic sources, see Robert Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–59; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post–Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Helen V. Milner, Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 2. The definitional clarification is related to the development of systems theory. Ever since Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s groundbreaking contributions in the 1950s and the 1960s, followers of systems theory have discovered various aspects of systems: relations between a system, either in a constructive or empirical sense, and its environment; vertical and horizontal relations in systemic hierarchy; the process of converting inputs into outputs; feedback as

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a linkage recasting results of the output into the system; and structural constraints either in the system or given by its environment. Moreover, recent developments in the theory have highlighted the dynamism of systems: systemic differentiation through autopoiesis; coupling effects and coevolution between a system and its environment; and the bifurcation of systemic transformation, as either evolution or decay. For a survey of the development of systems theory, see Kenneth D. Bailey, Sociology and the New Systems Theory: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); and Debora Hammond, The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2003). 3. The term environment as used in systems theory is not the same as the natural environment studied in ecology and environmental science. 4. Kenneth D. Bailey, “Noncontiguous Social-Systems Analysis: Vertical and Horizontal Links in Intra- and Inter-Societal Relations,” proceedings of the forth-sixth annual conference of the International Society for System Sciences, Shanghai, China, August 2–6, 2002, 8. 5. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 82. 6. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory: Essays on Its Foundation and Development, rev. ed. (New York: George Braziller, 1968). 7. In political science, David Easton was the founder of systems theory, in general, and open systems theory, in particular. See his A Framework for Political Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 8. Of course, there have been discussions on the utility of the notion of autopoiesis in the social sciences. The polemic issue lies in the difference between social and biological worlds. The social theory of autopoiesis first uses the biological notion as a foundation on which to build and then utilizes communication or roles or actions as units of analysis. For details of the discussion, refer to Bailey, Sociology and the New Systems Theory, 309–17. 9. Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (London: D. Reidel, 1980), 78–84. 10. Niklas Luhmann, Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 139. 11. John Mingers, Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Applications of Autopoiesis (New York: Plenum Press, 1995), 33. 12. For details, see Niklas Luhmann’s works, Social Systems (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995) and Ecological Communication (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). 13. For an extensive utilization of the notion of complexity in the social sciences, see Todd R. La Porte, ed., Organized Social Complexity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); William C. Schieve and Peter M. Allen, eds., Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures: Applications in the Physical and Social Sciences (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Gerard Roland, “Complexity, Bounded Rationality, and Equilibrium: The Soviet-type Case,” Journal of Comparative Economics 14, no. 3 (1990): 401–24; Rebecca M. Hendrick and David Nachmias, “The Policy Sciences: The Challenge of Complexity,” Policy Studies


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Review 11, nos. 3–4 (1992): 310–28; John H. Holland, “Complex Adaptive Systems,” Dædalus 121, no. 1 (1992): 17–30; Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, eds., Coping with Complexity in the International System (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); Robert Jervis, Systems Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and David Byrne, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1998). 14. For details of the comparison effect, see Byoung-Lo Philo Kim, Two Koreas in Development: A Comparative Study of Principles and Strategies of Capitalist and Communist Third World Development (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992). 15. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 229–34. 16. In persuading the political leaders in Washington, Rhee Syngman maintained that to delay the establishment of the separate state in the South would be disadvantageous to the national interest of the United States. See Yong-Pyo Hong, State Security and Regime Security (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 21–22. 17. For the concept of self-reproduction, see Maturana and Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition, 100–102; and Luhmann, Ecological Communication, 12. 18. In the same vein, Samuel S. Kim uses the term primary parameters, following James Rosenau. According to Kim, “[T]he system’s parameters define the possible and the permissible within which component subsystems interact with each other.” See his “Introduction: A Systems Approach,” in The North Korean System in the Post-Cold War Era, ed. Samuel S. Kim (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 11. 19. For a particular effect of the war on system identity, see Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (New York: New Press, 2004), 1–42. 20. The economic sanctions on North Korea have been based on the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), which is applied through the Foreign Assets Control Regulations. The regulations have been modified several times; the broadest range of modification occurred in June 2000 under the Clinton administration. But the Commerce Control List that includes sensitive and dual-use goods in fact denies the export of consumer goods to North Korea. In addition, there remain various economic sanctions against the country. North Korea has been denied (a) the status of “beneficiary developing country” under the U.S. Generalized System of Preference, (b) assistance from Peace Corps programs, (c) approval for application to investment risk insurance programs in the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, (d) a grant from U.S. agricultural commodities to developing and least-developed countries, (e) any loans or credit facilities from international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, and (f) most-favored-nation status. At the same time, the multilateral mechanism, the Wassenaar Arrangement, prohibits the introduction of dual-use goods into North Korea. The agreement, which replaced in July 1996 the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom), blocks the introduction of advanced technology from potential source countries like South Korea and Japan, because of these two

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countries’ membership. See Pilho Park, “A Review of Major Legal Issues along the Foreign Investment Road to North Korea,” paper presented at the symposium “North Korea’s Engagement with the Global Economy: Prospects and Challenges,” sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Korean Economic Institute, Washington, DC, April 12–13, 2002, 3–4. 21. A handy example of such exaggeration was the elimination of Chinese commandership in the guerrilla resistance and the description of Kim’s activities as being completely independent of this foreign leadership. Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 28–29. 22. Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 154. 23. Wada Haruki investigated proportional changes of the Manchurian guerrillas in the party’s elite composition and concluded that the power struggle had ended up with dominance of the party by “core” guerrilla members who had belonged to the same unit as Kim Il Sung—particularly, the Sixth Division of the First Route Army. See Wada Haruki, Kim Il Sung kwa Manju hangil ch†njaeng [Kim Il Sung and the Anti-Japanese War in Manchuria], trans. Lee Jong-suk (Seoul: Ch’angjak kwa Bip’yÆngsa, 1992), 294–319. 24. O Chin-u, “Hangil mujang t’ujaeng „n Chuch’e sasang e „ihayÆ yÆngdo doen yÆnggwangs„rÆun hyÆngmyÆng chÆnjaeng” [The Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle Was the Revolutionary War Led by the Chuch’e Idea] , Ku˘lloja [Workers], April 1973, 18–25. 25. For Wada Haruki, Kim Jong Il’s military-first politics reflects a transformation of the characteristic trait of the North Korean state from the “guerrilla state” to the “regular army state.” For more details, see his book Chosen yuzi o nozomunoka [Expecting an Emergency in the Korean Peninsula?] (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2002), 167–200. 26. Recall that David Easton preferred to describe himself as a pragmatic holist and a theoretical methodological individualist. For him, the social sciences deal with actors, and an empirical explanation requires an examination of activities and their empirically traceable connections with one another. In this respect, he is a theoretical individualist. At the same time, he acknowledges that the technical means by which social scientists inquire into the complexity of connections among parts and activities suffer from shortcomings, and these shortcomings, in turn, prompt social scientists to adopt holism. These complex political relationships may be accessible only if dealt with at the collective level. In this regard, Easton is a pragmatic holist. See David Easton, The Analysis of Political Structure (New York: Routledge, 1990), 256–57. 27. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Cumings, Origins of the Korean War: Roaring of the Cataract. On the theory of internal war, see also John Merrill, Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989).


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28. On the theory of international war, see George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967); Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); and William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); and Kim Young-ho, Han’guk Ch†njaeng u˘i kiw†n kwa ch†n’gae kwaj†ng [The Origins and Development of the Korean War] (Seoul: Ture, 1998). 29. In the same vein, Paik Hak-soon has characterized the Korean War as a war for state-building. According to Paik, the political leaders in the North and the South did not intend to establish separate states in their parts but attempted—each side on its own—to build a single state by militarily defeating the other side. However, North Koreans in particular contend that the aftereffects of the “failed war” brought about a continuous and competitive struggle between the two Koreas. See Kukka hy†ngs†ng ch†njaeng u˘ros†u˘i Hangguk Ch†njaeng [The Korean War as a State-Building War], Research Monograph, 99-15 (Seoul: Sejong Institute, 1999), 19–41. 30. David Easton, The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 129–41. 31. Special Task Force Team of Joong-Ang Ilbo, Chos†n Minju Chuu˘i Inmin Konghwaguk [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] (Seoul: Joong-Ang Ilbo, 1992), 148–55. 32. Samuel S. Kim, “Introduction,” 7. 33. This categorization originated from the scheme presented by Nicos Poulantzas, a structural Marxist and a “closet systems theorist.” See Easton, Analysis of Political Structure, 162–77. 34. T. H. Rigby, “Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-Organizational Systems,” in Political Legitimation in Communist States, eds. T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 12–16. 35. See the preface of the Bylaw of the Workers’ Party of Korea, revised at the Sixth Party Congress on October 13, 1980. 36. North Korea had a record-breaking growth rate between 1953 and 1960, 22.1 percent a year on average. See Byoung-Lo Philo Kim, Two Koreas in Development, 67. 37. According to Janos Kornai, one of three conditions should be met for the implementation of reform policies: an alteration of authority structures and official ideology, a change in public ownership, or a decrease in bureaucratic control over the economy. It is noticeable that the conditions consist of significant elements of the three subsystems—the political, ideological, and economic subsystems. Also, it should be noted that to meet one of the conditions is to erode the characteristic traits of the whole socialist system, to a certain degree. See Janos Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 383–95. 38. Sung Chull Kim, “Is North Korea Following the Chinese Model of Reform and Opening?” Institute Report (East Asian Institute, Columbia University), December 1994, 9–11.

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39. In contrast, in Central Europe (e.g., Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia), compulsory education multiplied the number of intellectuals, and in turn, the intellectuals became critical to their systems and contributed to the region’s rapid industrialization. Intellectuals of these systems built a relatively autonomous sphere owing to their historically prestigious status and to their contacts with Western intellectuals—contacts that were made after the Helsinki Accords in 1975. For the Eastern European case, see Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: Free Press, 1992), 117–18. 40. Harry Eckstein, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 232–41. 41. Yong Pil Rhee was one of the first systems theorists who demonstrated that the system is dynamic and experiences changes. See his book The Breakdown of Authority Structure in Korea in 1960 (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1982). 42. John Brocklesby and John Mingers, “The Use of the Concept Autopoiesis in the Theory of Viable Systems,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 22, no. 1 (2005): 6–7. 43. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Democratic Governance (New York: Free Press, 1995), 70. 44. For the growing inequality in the former Soviet Union, see David Lane, The End of Social Inequality? Class, Status and Power under State Socialism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), 54–103. 45. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 133. 46. For the notion of coevolution, see Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980). 47. On the concepts, see James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), 56, 159; and Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 93–94. 48. March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions, 168. 49. Richard Lowenthal, “Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy,” in Change in Communist Systems, ed. Chalmers Johnson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970), 47–49. 50. For a classical discussion on this dissonance, see Gunnar Myrdal, “Corruption: Its Causes and Effects,” in Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis, ed. Arnold J. Heidenheimer (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1978). Also, for empirical cases on the former Soviet Union and China, refer to David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House, 1993), 180–97; Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 270–72; and Alan P. L. Liu, “The Politics of Corruption in the People’s Republic of China,” American Political Science Review 77, no. 3 (1983): 618. 51. Sung Chull Kim, “Development of Systemic Dissonance in North Korea,” Korean Journal of National Unification 5 (1996): 83–109.


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52. Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1999), 61–65. 53. Lee Suk, 1994–2000 ny†n Pukhan kigu˘n: Palsaeng, ch’unggy†k ku˘rigo t’u˘kching [North Korean Famine, 1994–2000: Origin, Impact, and Characteristics] (Seoul: KINU, 2003), 177. 54. The urban population consisted of 59.6 percent of the total population as of 1987. See Nicholas Eberstadt and Judith Banister, The Population of North Korea (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1992), 21. 55. Eberstadt, End of North Korea, 67–69. 56. While the transition implies an overall change caused by both official policies and unofficial factors, a reform means changes that occurred as a result of official policies. Here, unofficial transition refers to changes that occur as a result of unofficial factors, like the second economy. See Adam Fforde, “From Plan to Market: The Economic Transitions in Vietnam and China Compared,” in Transforming Asian Socialism: China and Vietnam Compared, eds. Anita Chan, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, and Jonathan Unger (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 44. 57. Such identity change took place as reform proceeded in socialist systems. In China, the party-state depicted its new identity as a “market economy with planning” in 1984, an “elementary socialist stage” in 1987, and then a “socialist market economy” in 1992. Likewise, Vietnam introduced the term “market principle” in 1991 and then “multisector market economy” in 1996. 58. Kenneth D. Bailey, “The Autopoiesis of Social Systems: Assessing Luhmann’s Theory of Self-Reference,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 14, no. 2 (1997): 89. 59. Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 175–84. 60. Tang Tsou, The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms: A Historical Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 191–93. 61. Tran Thi Que, Vietnam’s Agriculture: The Challenges and Achievements (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1998), 28–45. 62. For the original usage of the notion of competency trap, see James G. March, “Footnotes to Organizational Change,” Administrative Science Quarterly 26 (1981): 563–77; and March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions, 63. Also, for an elaboration of the notion, see Sung Chull Kim, “Nested Institutions and the Retardation of the Adaptive Process,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 22, no. 6 (2005): 483–95. 63. Susan L. Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 106; and Wang Lixin and Joseph Fewsmith, “Bulwark of the Planned Economy: The Structure and Role of the State Planning Commission,” in Decision-making in Deng’s China: Perspectives from Insiders, eds. Carol Lee Hamrin and Suisheng Zhao (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 59. 64. Shirk, Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, 103. 65. Dorothy J. Solinger, China’s Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms, 1980–1990 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 66.

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Notes to Chapter Two

66. For a general discussion on complexity and system-environment relations, see Luhmann, Ecological Communication, 11–12. 67. The incorporation of auxiliary organizations under state control is a feature not unique to socialist systems. Developing and authoritarian systems incorporate parapolitical organizations—such as trade unions, youth leagues, and cooperative societies—into the state apparatus for the sake of development projects. See Robert H. Bates, “Input Structures, Output Functions, and Systems Capacity: A Study of the Mineworkers’ Union of Zambia,” Journal of Politics 32, no. 4 (1970): 898–928; Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); and Jang Jip Choi, Labor and the Authoritarian State: Labor Unions in South Korean Manufacturing Industries, 1961–1980 (Seoul: Korea University Press, 1989). 68. Bradley Babson, “Potential Future Role for the International Financial Institutions in the DPRK,” paper delivered at the symposium “North Korea’s Engagement with the Global Economy: Prospects and Challenges,” sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and by the Korean Economic Institute, Washington, DC, April 12–13, 2002. 69. See Scott Snyder, “Lessons of the NGO Experience in North Korea,” in Paved with Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea, eds. L. Gordon Flake and Scott Snyder (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 119–22.

Chapter 2. Kim Jong Il: The Political Man and His Leadership Character 1. Betty Glad, “Political Leadership: Some Methodological Considerations,” in Political Leadership for the New Century: Personality and Behavior among American Leaders, eds. Linda O. Valenty and Ofer Feldman (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 9. 2. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 395–420. 3. Craig Dietrich, People’s China: A Brief History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 25. 4. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 78–79. 5. Of the many resources available, some of the most helpful include Harold D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Alexander L. George, “Power as a Compensatory Value for Political Leaders,” Journal of Social Studies 24, no. 3 (July 1968): 29–50; and Fred I. Greenstein, Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1969). 6. Glenn D. Paige, The Scientific Study of Political Leadership (New York: Free Press, 1977), 106. 7. It is also remarkable that the study of political psychology has been neglected for a long period of time. The multidisciplinary study of rational choice, the realist tradition of valuing rational behavior, and the cognitive


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understanding of information processing have contributed to the neglect of political psychology. See Betty Glad, “Political Psychology: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?” in Political Behavior, vol. 3 of Political Science: Looking to the Future, ed. William Crotty (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 153–91. 8. David G. Winter, “Personality and Political Behavior,” in Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, eds. David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 112. 9. Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 51; Pak Kyu-sik, Kim Jong Il p’y†ngj†n [A Critical Biography of Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: Yangmun’gak, 1992), 17; Dae-Sook Suh, “New Political Leadership,” in The North Korean System in the Post–Cold War Era, ed. Samuel S. Kim (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 67. 10. ChÆng Ch’ang-hyÆn, Ky†tes† pon Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il Seen from Nearby] (Seoul: T’oji, 1999), 12–13. 11. T’ak Chin, Kim Kang-il, and Pak Hong-je, Kim Jong Il chidoja [Leader Kim Jong Il] (Tokyo: Tongbangsa, 1984), 5. 12. Kim Il Sung wrote that “Kim Jong Il was born in the barracks of Mt. Paektu at dawn on February 16, 1942.” See Segi wa t†bur† [Living with a Century], vol. 8 (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1998), 298. 13. Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 5, 47. 14. ChÆng Ch’ang-hyÆn, Ky†tes† pon Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il Seen from Nearby], 17. 15. Ibid., 32. 16. Yim K†k-ch†ng is a novel whose title comes from the name of the main character, a chivalrous robber. This novel characterizes Yim’s resistance against the corrupt and arrogant upper class in the period of the ChosÆn dynasty in Korea. 17. As a consequence, the informality obscured the status of Kim SÆngae. She was either a legal wife or a concubine, a situation that later legitimated Kim Jong Il’s alienation of the stepmother’s children from Kim Il Sung and the check against their appointment to prestigious positions. Interview with Kang In-duck (former minister of unification of South Korea), July 20, 2005. 18. According to another story about Kim’s circumstances after his mother’s death, Kim Ok-sun, wife of Ch’oe Kwang, who later became chief of staff of the KPA, looked after Kim Jong Il and his sister. But it is presumable that there were more than two or three people who paid attention to the children of the deceased comrade. Lee Jong-suk, Hy†ndae Pukhan u˘i ihae [An Understanding of Modern North Korea] (Seoul: Yoksabipyongsa, 1995), 286. 19. Interview with Lim Gae-won (psychiatrist) on December 2, 1999. 20. ChÆng Ch’ang-hyÆn, Ky†tes† pon Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il Seen from Nearby], 38–39. 21. Cho Yong-hwan, Maeu t’u˘kpy†rhan in’gan Kim Jong Il [A Very Special Person, Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: Chisikkongjaksa, 1996), 221. 22. Hwang Chang-yÆp, Na nu˘n y†ksa u˘i chilli ru˘l poatta. [I Saw the Truth of History] (Seoul: Hanul, 1999), 125–27.

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23. T’ak Chin, Kim Kang-il, and Pak Hong-je, Kim Jong Il chidoja [Leader Kim Jong Il], 58. The authors of this book state that the background of Kim’s intention to study at Kim Il Sung University was as follows: “His decision to continue his studies at Kim Il Sung University is the expression of his thoroughgoing Chuch’e consciousness and the reflection of his academic desire, which was based on national circumstances: the full blossom of the Chuch’e idea and its influence on party policy.” 24. For this view, see Shin Il-chol, “Kim Jong Il ch’eje kwalli kyÆngyÆng kwa k„ yÆnmyÆngsul” [Kim Jong Il’s Management of the System and Survival Strategy], paper presented at the International Conference for Commemorating the Establishment of the Institute for North Korea Studies, October 15, 1999, 12. 25. ChÆng Ch’ang-hyÆn, Ky†tes† pon Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il Seen from Nearby], 44–45. 26. T’ak Chin, Kim Kang-il, and Pak Hong-je, Kim Jong Il chidoja [Leader Kim Jong Il], 113–16. 27. Yonhap News, January 13, 2003. 28. Suzuki Masauki, Kitachosen: Shakaishugi to tento no kyomei [North Korea: Resonance between Socialism and Tradition] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992), 84. 29. Kim Yong-kyu, Sihyo ingan [A Man of Limited Life] (Seoul: Nara, 1978), 238, 246. 30. For the discussion on informal politics in North Korea, see Samuel S. Kim, “North Korean Informal Politics,” in Informal Politics in East Asia, eds. Lowell Dittmer, Haruhiro Fukui, and Peter N. S. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 238–42. 31. For the CC’s function for the election of party positions, refer to Article 24 of the WPK’s Bylaws adopted in November 1970, in Dae-Sook Suh, Korean Communism, 1945–1980: A Reference Guide to the Political System (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1981), 535. 32. Hwang Chang-yÆp, Na nu˘n y†ksa u˘i chilli ru˘l poatta [I Saw the Truth of History], 172–73. 33. Suh Dae-sook, Hy†ndae Pukhan u˘i chidoja: Kim Il Sung kwa Kim Jong Il [Contemporary North Korean Leaders: Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: ≠ryu Munhwasa, 2000), 182–86. 34. ChÆng Ch’ang-hyÆn, Ky†tes† pon Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il Seen from Nearby], 19. 35. Institute for North Korea Studies, ed., Pukhan ch’ongnam [General Survey of North Korea] (Seoul: INKS, 1983), 168. 36. “ChÆndang „l yuil sasanghwa han„n gÆs„n on sahoe r„l SuryÆngnim „i hyÆngmyÆng sasang „ro ilsaekhwa hagi wihan sÆn’gyÆl chogÆn” [To Arm the Party with a Monolithic Ideology Is a Precondition for the Dissemination of the Great Leader’s Revolutionary Idea in the Whole of Society], Ku˘lloja, December 1974, 16–21. 37. Kim Jong Il, “Kimilsung chu„i t’okch’angjosÆng „l olke insik hal te taehayÆ” [On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimilsungism, October 2, 1976], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il] 5 (1995): 324.


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38. Lin Biao planned to create the post of head of state at the second plenary session of the Ninth CC (which convened on August 23, 1970) in order to place himself above Zhou Enlai’s rank. However, Mao—remembering Liu Shaoqi’s mishandling of the post and sensing the dangerous concentration of power around Lin—rejected Lin’s plan even before the plenum. For details, see John Gardner, Chinese Politics and the Succession to Mao (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 44. 39. James D. Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 8–11, 535–36. 40. Kim Jong Il, “To Respect Revolutionary Predecessors Is the Lofty and Moral Obligation of Revolutionaries,” Korean Central Broadcasting, December 25, 1995. 41. Kim Jong Il, “Speech Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Establishment of Kim Il Sung University in December 1996,” W†lgan Chos†n [Monthly ChosÆn], April 1997, 316. 42. Kim Il Sung, “Sahoe Chu„i Nongch’on Thesis „i kich’i nop’i nongch’on munje „i chonggukchÆk haegyÆl „l wihayÆ” [The Ultimate Solution to Agricultural Issues through a Commitment to the Socialist Agriculture Thesis, February 24, 1994], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1979–96), 44:301–28. 43. HÆ Tam, Kim Jong Il shoki no ningenzo [The Human Features of Secretary Kim Jong Il] (Tokyo: Yuzankaku Shuppan, 1997), 137–38. 44. It is said that in dealing with daily affairs, Kim Jong Il does not grant authority to the heads of individual institutions. Therefore, Kim bears a burden that manifests itself in his handling of voluminous official documents. He reads, comments on, and signs all important papers issued from party, military, and intelligence agencies, as well as the cabinet. He never turns over even a part of these documents to his subordinates for their assistance. Interview with Ko YÆng-hwan (former North Korean diplomat), June 15, 1999. 45. Interview with Rhee Kun-hoo (South Korean psychiatrist), May 8, 2000. 46. Interview with Ko YÆng-hwan (former North Korean diplomat), June 15, 1999. 47. Suh Dae-sook, Hy†ndae Pukhan u˘i chidoja [Contemporary North Korean Leaders], 221–27. 48. Interview with HyÆn SÆng-il (former North Korean diplomat), May 10, 2004. 49. Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Presidential Personality and Performance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 147. 50. Ch’oe ≠n-h„i and Sin Sang-ok, Kim Jong Il wangguk [The Kingdom of Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: Dong-A Ilbosa, 1988), 2:72. 51. For a theoretical discussion of the difference between positive and negative leadership, refer to Gary Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2002), 250. 52. Cho Yong-hwan, Maeu t’u˘kpy†rhan in’gan Kim Jong Il [A Very Special Person, Kim Jong Il], 140.

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Notes to Chapter Three Chapter 3. The Party’s Strengthening Discipline and Weakening Efficiency

1. For the two Koreas’ divergent development paths, see Byoung-Lo Philo Kim, Two Koreas in Development: A Comparative Study of Principles and Strategies of Capitalist and Communist Third World Development (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992), 123–24. 2. In addition to the Kim Dae-jung incident, there existed an uncompromisable agenda between the two Koreas. Whereas the North proposed arms control, including American forces in the South, and military spending reductions as a precondition for inter-Korean reconciliation, the South gave priority to economic cooperation and sociocultural exchanges for the easing of the long confrontation. See Kim Sung Chull, Ky†ul, pom, ky†ul u˘i paradox: Che 4 Konghwaguk ch†ngch’i py†ndong u˘i ch’egyeronj†k ch†pgu˘n [Paradox of Winter, Spring, and Winter: Systems Analysis of Political Change in the Fourth Republic of South Korea] (Seoul: Sinyu, 1999), 63–64. 3. By declaring “Cadres decide everything” in 1935 on the eve of the Great Purges, Stalin intended to institute a new cadre group that would contrast with old cadres and that would lead the country. For the new cadre group, he had initiated an education program in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, when some 150,000 workers from Communist factories and state apparatuses were sent to advanced technical schools. Before the purges, they were appointed to demanding administrative and specialist positions, a move that challenged the elder specialists. In this context, Stalin replaced the old slogan “Technology decides everything” with “Cadres decide everything.” See Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, N Y: Cornell University Press, 1992), 149–82. 4. Kim Il Sung, “Chungangdang Hakkyo n„n dang kanbu r„l k’iun„n kongsan taehak ida” [The Central Party School Is a Communist University for the Educating of Party Cadres, June 3, 1946], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1979–96), 2:244. 5. Yun Chong-hyÆn, “Kim Il Sung „i kunsa sasang” [Kim Il Sung’s Military Thought], in Pukhan kunsaron [On the North Korean Military], ed. Institute for North Korean Studies (Seoul: INKS, 1978), 223. 6. Kim Il Sung, “Minjok kanbu n„n sae ChosÆn kÆnsÆl „i kidung ida” [National Cadres Are Pillars of the New Korea, July 1, 1946], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 2:290. 7. Lee Jong-suk, Chos†n Nodongdang y†n’gu [A Study on the Workers’ Party of Korea] (Seoul: Yoksabipyongsa, 1995), 257. 8. Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945–1960 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 136–43. 9. Because the party had hierarchical organizations in Pyongyang but not in local areas where indigenous Communists prevailed, Kim Il Sung’s desire for a mass party must have been a dream before the Korean War. In

Notes to Chapter Three

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addition to the difficult procedures for the granting of party membership, the central party’s mild penetration into local areas hampered any massive acceptance of members. The local indigenous Communists were represented by HyÆn Chun-hyÆk and Kim Yong-bÆm in South P’yÆngan Province, Paek Yongku and Kim Chae-gap in North P’yÆngan Province, O Ki-sÆp, Chu YÆng-ha, Yi Chu-ha in South HamgyÆng Province, Chang Sun-myÆng and Kang ChingÆn in North HamgyÆng Province, and Kim ≠ng-ki and Kim TÆk-yÆng in Hwanghae Province. During the Korean War, most of the leaders and their functionaries were purged on the pretext that they were “regionalists” and “sectarianists.” Pae Hang-dal, Pukhan kw†lly†k t’ujaengnon [On Power Strife in North Korea] (Seoul: Hakmunsa, 1990), 149. 10. Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, 148. 11. Kim Il Sung, “Nodongdang „i chojikchÆk sasangjÆk kanghwa n„n uri s„ngni „i kich’o” [Organizational and Ideological Strengthening of the Party Is the Basis of Our Victory, December 15, 1952], in Kim Il Sung s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1949–53), 4:296–98. 12. Suh Dong-man, “Kitajosen ni okeru shakaishugitaisei no seiritsu, 1945–61” [Formation of the Socialist Regime in North Korea, 1945–61] (PhD dissertation, University of Tokyo, 1995), 237–38. 13. For a discussion of Kim’s initiation of the installation of the party organization in the military and his assessment after the move, see Kim Il Sung, “Inmin kundae nae e chosÆn nodongdang tanch’e r„l chojik hal te taehayÆ” [On the Effort to Establish Party Organizations in the Korean People’s Army, October 21, 1950], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 6:145; Kim Il Sung, “Inmin Kundae nae tang saÆp „i chungsim kwaje” [Central Tasks of Party Affairs in the Korean People’s Army, March 6, 1951], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 6:317; Kim Il Sung, “Inmin kundae e tang chÆngch’i saÆp „l kanghwa hagi wihan myÆtkaji kwaÆp e taehayÆ” [On Some Tasks for the Strengthening of Party Affairs in the Korean People’s Army, July 7, 1952], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 7:308, 313. For a historical analysis of the party-military relations, see Yu Yong-ku, “Pukhan „i chÆngch’i-kunsa kwan’gye „i pyÆnch’Æn kwa kun nae „i chÆngch’i chojikchÆk unyÆng e kwanhan yÆn’gu” [A Study on the Changes in Politico-Military Relations and the Management of the North Korean Military’s Political Organizations], paper presented at the conference “Analysis of the North Korean Military: Historical Change under Kim Jong Il,” sponsored by the Korea Institute for Strategic Studies, Seoul, February 26, 1997, 8. 14. For the meanings of the party’s guidance, see ChÆng Pong-hak, “Changak kwa t’ongje n„n tangjÆk chido sirhyÆn „i kipon hyÆngsik” [Command and Control Is the Basic Form of the Party’s Guidance], Ku˘lloja, August 1985, 80–81. 15. Kim Il Sung, “SanÆp unsu pubun esÆ nat’anan kyÆrhamd„l kwa k„gÆs„l koch’il taech’aek e taehayÆ” [Problems Appearing in the Industry and

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Transportation Sectors and Solutions to Correct Them, March 21, 1954), in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 8:305. 16. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Nodongdang chungang wiwÆnhoe samwÆl chÆnwÆn hoe„i esÆ han kyÆllon” [The Conclusion of the March Central Committee Meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea, March 21, 1954], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 8:348. 17. Kim Il Sung “ChosÆn Inmin’gun „n hangil t’ujaeng „i kyes„ngja ida” [The Korean People’s Army Is the Successor of the Anti-Japanese Struggle, February 8, 1958], in Kim Il Sung s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Il Sung] 5:345– 46; Kim Il Sung, “Inmin Kundae nae tang chÆngch’i saÆp „l kaesÆn kanghwa hagi wihan kwaÆp” [Tasks for the Improvement and Strengthening of Political Affairs in the Korean People’s Army, March 8, 1958], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 12:166–67. 18. Jeung Young-tai, Kim Jong Il ch’eje ha u˘i kunbu y†khal [The Role of the Military under the Kim Jong Il Regime] (Seoul: KINU, 1995), 33. 19. North Korean media used the term “party center” after the younger Kim’s appointment as a party secretary in September 1973 and a Political Committee member in February 1974 in order to suggest his prospective leading role in North Korea. 20. Yi Kwan-p’il, “Uri tang i chesihan pangbÆmnon e kwanhan sasang „n tang saÆp esÆ hyÆngmyÆngjÆk chÆnhwan „i kir„l palk’yÆ chun widaehan pangch’im” [The Idea of the Methodology that Our Party Presented Is the Greatest Policy Line for Enlightening the Path of a Revolutionary Transformation], Ku˘lloja, February 1976, 29–33; and Ch’oe Ch’ang-ho, “ChÆnggwÆn kigwan ilggund„l „n kunjung sok e d„lÆ kaya handa” [The Officials of the State Should Enter into the Masses], Ku˘lloja, March 1978, 22–26. 21. HyÆn SÆng-il, “Pukhan sahoe e taehan nodongdang „i t’ongje ch’egye” [The WPK’s Mechanism for Control over North Korean Society], Pukhan chosa y†n’gu [Journal of North Korean Studies] 1, no. 1 (1997): 33–34. 22. For a detailed description of the changes in the document of Kim Jong Il’s speech, see Kim Jong Il, “ChÆngmuwÆn, wiwÆnhoe „i tang chojik taeyÆl „i saÆp „l kaesÆn kanghwa hal te taehayÆ” [On the Improvement and Solidification of the Party’s Organizational Affairs in the State Council’s Ministries and Committees, June 10, 1974], in Chuch’e hy†ngmy†ng wi†p u˘i wans†ng u˘l wihay† [For the Accomplishment of Chuch’e Revolutionary Tasks] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1987–88), 3:140–59. 23. Interview with HyÆn SÆng-il (former North Korean diplomat), May 10, 2004. 24. Kim Jong Il, “Tang saÆp „l k„nbonjÆk „ro kaesÆn kanghwa hayÆ on sahoe „i Kimilsung chu„ihwa r„l himitke tag„ch’ija” [Let Us Vigorously Pursue Fundamental Improvements in Party Affairs and in the Dissemination of Kimilsungism throughout Society, August 2, 1974], in Chuch’e hy†ngmy†ng wi†p u˘i wans†ng u˘l wihay† [For the Accomplishment of Chuch’e Revolutionary Tasks], 3:186. 25. Interview with Kim Sang-t’ae (former representative of a jointventure company in North Korea), August 31, 2004.


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26. The strong tone to the personality cult of Kim Il Sung made itself felt in both the party organ and the party’s theoretical journal, right after Kim Jong Il celebrated his father’s idea as Kimilsungism. See Nodong Sinmun editorial, May 20, 1974; Nodong Sinmun editorial, May 25, 1974; and Ku˘lloja, September 1974, 2–7. 27. Pak Pong-ju, “Tang chÆngch’aek kwanch’Æl kwa ch’og„p tang chojik „i yÆkhal” [Implementation of the Party Policies and the Role of the Elementary Party], Ku˘lloja, March 1980, 27. 28. Interview with Kang In-jung (former representative of a trading company, affiliated with the KPA), September 2, 2004. 29. This part is based mostly on an interview with Ch’oe Chu-hwal (former North Korean army lieutenant colonel), November 5, 1997. 30. Interview with HyÆn SÆng-il, May 10, 2004. 31. “Pip’an kwa chagi pip’an „n ilggund„l „l hyÆngmyÆnghwa han„n wiryÆkhan mugi” [Criticism and Self-Criticism Are Powerful Instruments for the Revolutionizing of Cadres], Ku˘lloja, April 1974, 64. 32. HyÆn SÆng-il, “Pukhan sahoe e taehan nodongdang „i t’ongje ch’egye” [The WPK’s Mechanism for Control over North Korean Society], 22. 33. Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44, no. 1 (1991): 7–48; and Kuran, “The Inevitability of Future Revolutionary Surprises,” American Journal of Sociology 100, no. 6 (1995): 1528–51. 34. For a general discussion on the informal aspect of the North Korean system, see Samuel S. Kim, “North Korean Informal Politics,” in Informal Politics in East Asia, eds. Lowell Dittmer, Haruhiro Fukui, and Peter N. S. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 238–68. 35. Interview with Kim JÆng-min (former representative of the Daeyang Trading Company, affiliated with the party), September 18, 1997. 36. Kim Tae-il, Pukhan kuky†ng ki†psou˘i kwalli uny†ng ch’egye [The Management System of State-Owned Enterprises in North Korea] (Seoul: KINU, 1993), 39. 37. The Three Great Revolutions was not a new notion for the North Koreans at that time. Since right after the end of the Korean War, Kim Il Sung had referred here and there to the desirability of improvements in the standards for thought, technology, and culture. Finally, the notions of these revolutions were codified in the Socialist Constitution proclaimed in 1972. According to the constitution, “The state defends the socialist system against the subversive activities of hostile elements at home and abroad and revolutionizes and ‘working-classicizes’ the whole society by intensifying the ideological revolution (Article 11). . . . The state accelerates the technological revolution to eliminate the distinctions between heavy and light labor and between agricultural and industrial labor, free the working people from arduous labor and gradually narrow the difference between physical and mental labor (Article 25). . . . The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, by thoroughly carrying out the cultural revolution, trains all the working people to be builders of socialism and communism who are equipped with a profound knowledge of

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nature and society and a high level of culture and technology (Article 36).” Dae-Sook Suh, Korean Communism, 1945–1980: A Reference Guide to the Political System (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1981), 503–7. 38. For the competency trap, refer to James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), 63. 39. Interview with Kim Kwang-il (former county government official in North Korea), July 9, 1996. 40. The bureaucratic pathologies discussed here might be similar to the agency problem. One major difference is that in addition to the problematic aspect of the delegation of authority, the North Korean case shows its own uniqueness attributable to the reference point of anti-imperialism or national division. The latter has interfered with the articulation of market-oriented or creative ideas among the bureaucrats. For the application of agency theory in socialist China, see Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). 41. Harry Harding, Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949– 1976 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1981), 16. 42. Kim Jong Il, “Nongch’on kyÆngni pumun e taehan tangjÆk chido r„l kanghwa hayÆ olhae nongÆp saengsan esÆ saeroun angyang „l ir„k’ija” [Let Us Exalt the Agricultural Production through a Strengthening of the Party’s Guidance on Agricultural Management, February 6, 1976], in Chuch’e hy†ngmy†ng wi†p u˘i wans†ng u˘l wihay† [For the Accomplishment of Chuch’e Revolutionary Tasks], 3:451; and confirmed by an interview with HyÆn SÆngil, May 10, 2004. 43. Kim Jong Il, “Chungang kigwan tang chojikd„l „i yÆkhal „l tÆuk nop’il te taehayÆ” [On the Improvement of the Role of Party Units in the Central State Institutions, July 15, 1984], in Chuch’e hy†ngmy†ng wi†p u˘i wans†ng u˘l wihay† [For the Accomplishment of Chuch’e Revolutionary Tasks], 5:160–61. 44. The party propaganda machines stressed that one of the most important party works is to achieve results in socialist economic development. For a related discussion, see HyÆn Sun-kwÆn, “Tang saÆp kwa kyÆngje saÆp „l milch’ak sik’in„n kÆs„n tang hwaltong „i k„nbon yogu” [To Forge a Link between Party Work and Economic Affairs is the Fundamental Task of the Party], Ku˘lloja, February 1978, 15; and Kim T’ae-bok, “Saeroun hyÆngmyÆngjÆk taegojo r„l wihan tang wiwÆnhoe „i chÆngch’ijÆk saÆp” [The Political and Organizational Affairs of the Party Committee for the Further Enhancement of the New Revolution], Ku˘lloja, October 1982, 33.

Chapter 4. Military-First Politics and Changes in Party-Military Relations 1. For a discussion of the transition from the “guerrilla state,” which has been based on the theater symbolization, to the “regular army state,” see Wada Haruki, Chosen yuzi o nozomunoka [Expecting an Emergency in the Korean


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Peninsula?] (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2002), 191. Here Wada pointed out also that the death of Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla comrades in the 1990s dissipated the meaning of the guerrilla state. 2. Dae-Sook Suh, “Military-First Politics of Kim Jong Il,” Asian Perspective 26, no. 3 (2002): 145–67. 3. On the discussion of the diplomatic utility of the military-first politics, see Choi Jin-wook, “Pukhan sÆn’gun chÆngch’i „i chÆngch’ijÆk ham„i” [Political Implications of the Military-First Politics in North Korea], Hy†ndae pukhan y†n’gu [Contemporary North Korea Studies] 4, no. 2 (2001): 13–14. 4. Asahi Shimbun, June 25, 2004, and Washington Post, June 25, 2004. 5. Factionalism in Korean Communism first surfaced in its organizational activities in the early 1920s. For discussions on this issue, see Dae-Sook Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918–1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), chaps. 1–4; Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea: The Movement, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), chaps. 1–2; and Adrian Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in North Korea (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 6–7. 6. Suh Dong-man, Pukchos†n sahoejui ch’eje s†ngnipsa, 1945–1961 [History of Socialist Regime Building in North Korea, 1945–1961] (Seoul: Sunin, 2005), 275. 7. Kim Il Sung, “Inmin Kundae nae chosÆn nodongdang danch’e r„l chojik hal te taehayÆ” [On the Establishment of Party Organization in the Korean People’s Army, October 21, 1950], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1979– 96), 6:145–52. 8. Kim Yong-hyun, “Pukhan esÆ„i chÆnsi tang-kun kwan’gye wa sahoe pyÆnhwa” [The Party-Military Relation and Social Change in North Korea during the War], Journal of Social Science (Seoul) 10, no. 1 (2003): 102. 9. See Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 497–98. 10. The momentum for the establishment of the party committee derived from Kim Il Sung’s concluding speech delivered to the CC meeting of the WPK in March 1958. See “Inmin Kundae nae tang chÆngch’i saÆp „l kaesÆn kanghwa hagi wihan kwaÆp” [The Task for Improving and Strengthening the Party and Political Affairs in the Korean People’s Army, March 8, 1958], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 12:159–79. 11. The exact time of the development is not known yet, but it was likely between July and November 1982, and perhaps at the end of August, when the CC confidentially dealt with an organizational matter. One thing that had puzzled us was that the 1989 and 1990 editions of Chos†n chungang y†n’gam [North Korean Yearbook] refer to the organization as the Military Committee of the CC but that the 1991, 1992, and 1993 editions refer to it as the Central Military Committee. Since then, the yearbook has not introduced organizational figures. Here two examples are noticeable. The appointment of Kim Jong Il to the position of general secretary in 1997 was made with a recommendation from the CC and the Central Military Committee of the party.

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Furthermore, Kim Jong Il used the title of chairman of the Central Military Committee of the WPK in issuing the “Detailed Wartime Guidelines” on April 7, 2004. In this respect, one can reasonably presume that the Central Military Committee of the WPK has become again the official name since 1991. For Kim Jong Il’s “Detailed Wartime Guideline,” see Ky†nghyang Sinmun, January 5, 2005. 12. For the Zhukov affair, see Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 186–88. 13. Interview with Kim JÆng-min (former representative of a trading company affiliated with the WPK), December 28, 1995. 14. Lee Dae-geun, “ChosÆn inmin’gun „i chÆngch’ijÆk yÆkhal gwa han’gye” [The Role and Limitation of the Korean People’s Army] (PhD dissertation, Korea University, 2000), 59. 15. Interview with Ch’oe Chu-hwal (former lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army), November 5, 1997; and Kim Sung Chull, Pukhan kanbu ch†ngch’aek u˘i chisok kwa py†nhwa [Continuity and Change of Cadre Policy in North Korea] (Seoul: KINU, 1997), 69. 16. Wada Haruki, Kitachosen: yugekidai kokkano genzai [North Korea: The Present Stage of the Guerrilla State] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998), 122–27. 17. Wada Haruki, Kim Il Sung kwa Manju hangil ch†njaeng [Kim Il Sung and the Anti-Japanese War in Manchuria], trans. Lee Jong-suk (Seoul: Ch’angjak kwa Bip’yÆngsa, 1992), 314–19. 18. In a transitional move, North Korea celebrated the anniversary of the KPA twice per year in 1976 and 1977. See Lee Dae-geun, “ChosÆn Inmin’gun „i chÆngch’ijÆk yÆkhal gwa han’gye” [Role and Limitation of the Korean People’s Army], 63. 19. Choi Jin-wook, Hy†ndae Pukhan haengj†ngnon [On Contemporary North Korean Administration] (Seoul: Ingansarang, 2002), 54. 20. For the details of the control organizations, see Lee Dae-geun, “ChosÆn Inmin’gun „i chÆngch’ijÆk yÆkhal gwa han’gye” [Role and Limitation of the Korean People’s Army], 149–52. 21. Kim JÆng-min, “Pukhan „i tang haeksim ellit’„ yÆn’gu” [A Study of North Korea’s Power Elite in the Party] (MA thesis, Kyungnam University, 1995), 114–15. 22. Co-editorial of Nodong Sinmun (party organ), Chos†n Inmin’gun (military organ), and Ch’†ngny†n Ch†nwi (youth league organ), January 1, 2005. The editorial states that the year 2005 is the sixtieth anniversary of independence, the sixtieth birthday of the WPK, the tenth anniversary of the militaryfirst politics, and the fifth commemorating year of the North-South summit. 23. Korean Central Broadcasting, October 7, 1997. 24. Korean Central Broadcasting, October 20, 1998. 25. Nodong Sinmun, June 16, 1999. 26. Son Kwang-ju, Kim Jong Il report [Report on Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: Pada Ch’ulp’ansa, 2003), 241. 27. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 278–310.


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28. Edwin P. Hollander, Leadership Dynamics: A Practical Guide to Effective Relationships (New York: Free Press, 1978), 120–21. 29. Sung Chull Kim et al., North Korea in Crisis: An Assessment of Regime Sustainability (Seoul: KINU, 1997), 35–38. 30. Interview with Hwang Chang-yÆp (former secretary of the WPK in North Korea), March 3, 1999. 31. Kim Jong Il, “Speech Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Establishment of Kim Il Sung University in December 1996,” W†lgan Chos†n [Monthly ChosÆn], April 1997, 317. 32. Philo Kim, “The Social Impact of the Food Crisis in North Korea,” Food Problems in North Korea: Current Situations and Possible Solutions, eds. Gillchin Lim and Namsoo Chang (Seoul: Oruem Publishing House, 2003), 154–56. 33. Interview with Kim Sang-t’ae (former representative of a North Korean trading company), August 31, 2004. 34. Kim Sung Chull, Pukhan kanbu ch†ngch’aek u˘i chisok kwa py†nhwa [Continuity and Change of Cadre Policy in North Korea], 60. 35. Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), 200–202. 36. Kolkowicz stresses the contradiction that exists between the egalitarian ideology of the party and the nation-centered interests of the military, whereas Odom contends that the two institutions interact harmoniously insofar as they both embrace the ideals underlying the construction of a socialist system. Colton attempts to outline a comprehensive spectrum ranging from conflict to congruence. See Roman Kolkowicz, The Soviet Military and the Communist Party (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); William E. Odom, “The Party-Military Connection: A Critique,” in Civil-Military Relations in Communist Systems, eds. Dale R. Herspring and Ivan Volgyes (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978); and Timothy Colton, Commissars, Commanders and Civilian Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). 37. William E. Odom, “Soviet Politics and After: Old and New Concepts,” World Politics 45, no. 1 (1992): 68–69. 38. Kim Jong Il, “Inmin Kundae r„l kanghwa hamyÆ kunsa r„l chungsi han„n sahoejÆk kip’ung „l seul te taehayÆ” [On the Consolidation of the Korean People’s Army and the Social Spirit Upholding Military Affairs, February 4, 1992], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1992–2000), 13:8. 39. Interview with Hwang Chang-yÆp, March 3, 1999. 40. Nodong Sinmun, September 6, 1998. 41. Hsiao-shih Cheng, Party-Military Relations in the PRC and Taiwan: Paradoxes of Control (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), 150–51. 42. H. Gordon Skilling, “Interest Groups and Communist Politics Revisited,” World Politics 36, no. 1 (1983): 9. 43. Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 359. 44. Scott Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999), 73–74.

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45. Jerry Hough, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 528–29; and Jerry Hough, “Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Soviet Union,” in Pluralism in the Soviet Union, ed. Susan Solomon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 52. 46. Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Presidential Personality and Performance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 161. 47. Kim Sung Chull, Kim Jong Il u˘i personality, charisma, and t’ongch’i style [Personality, Charisma, and the Management Style of Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: KINU, 1999), 78–79. 48. At the time of independence, many SCH officers were recruited from among political officers because of the shortage of qualified personnel. For instance, some 80 percent of the corps’s SCH officers were former professional political officers. Interview with Ch’oe Chu-hwal, November 5, 1997. 49. Lee Dae-geun, “ChosÆn Inmin’gun „i chÆngch’ijÆk yÆkhal gwa han’gye” [Role and Limitation of the Korean People’s Army], 237–38.

Chapter 5. Chuch’e in Transformation 1. HÆ Tong-ch’an, Kim Il Sung Chuch’e sasang u˘i olbaru˘n ihae [The Correct Understanding of Kim Il Sung’s Chuch’e Idea] (Seoul: WÆnilchÆngbo, 1989), 23–24. 2. The document that first used the notion of Chuch’e is attributed to Kim Il Sung: “Sasang saÆp esÆ„i kyojo chu„i wa hyÆngsik chu„i r„l t’oech’i hago Chuch’e r„l hwangnip hal te taehayÆ” [On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Chuch’e in Ideological Work, December 28, 1955], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1979–96), 9:467–77. 3. Kim Il Sung, Segi wa t†bur† [Along with the Century] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1992), 2:52–53. 4. Robin Alison Remington, “Yugoslavia,” in Communism in Eastern Europe, ed. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 271. 5. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Minju Chu„i Inmin Konghwaguk esÆ„i sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl kwa NamchosÆn hyÆngmyÆng e taehayÆ” [On the Socialist Construction in the DPRK and Our Revolution in South Korea, April 14, 1965], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 19:305. 6. Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea: The Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), vol. 1. 584–85. 7. Both the armed infiltration targeting the Blue House (the South Korean presidential office) and the abduction of the crew from the U.S. spy ship Pueblo in January 1968 represented the militant postures taken by the military circle. 8. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Minju Chu„i Inmin Konghwaguk „i tangmyÆn han chÆngch’i, kyÆngje chÆngch’aekd„l kwa myÆtkaji kukche munje e taehayÆ” [On the Questions Regarding the Politics, Economic Policy, and International


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Relations that the DPRK Faces, January 10, 1972), in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 27:28. 9. Kim Il Sung, “Ch’ÆngnyÆnd„l „i t’„ksÆng e matke saroch’Æng saÆp „l tÆuk chÆkk„khwa hal te taehayÆ” [On the Further Infusion of the Characteristics of Youth in the Socialist Youth League, February 3, 1971], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 26:15–17. 10. Kim Il Sung, “Ch’ÆngnyÆnd„l „n tae r„l iÆ hyÆngmyÆng „l kyesok hayÆya handa” [The Youth Should Continue the Revolution from Generation to Generation, June 24], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 26:204. 11. The Workers’ Party of Korea, Chos†n Nodongdang y†ksa [History of the WPK] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1991), 473. 12. T’ak Chin, Kim Kang-il, and Pak Hong-je, Kim Jong Il chidoja [Leader Kim Jong Il], (Tokyo: Tongbangsa, 1984), 2:12. In this book, the authors noted that Kim Il Sung had already proposed the necessity of the transformation of his own idea into Kimilsungism during a conversation with a party leader in May 1970. 13. Despite the proclamation on Kimilsungism, there is no actual difference between the Chuch’e idea and Kimilsungism. It is said that Kim Jong Il made this official interpretation: “Kimilsungism is, in a word, a system of Chuch’e’s thought, theory, and method. In other words, it is a monolithic system of theory and method about revolution and construction that are enlightened by the Chuch’e idea. A distinctive characteristic of Kimilsungism, compared to previous revolutionary theory and its leading method, lies in the fact that Kimilsungism is based on the essence of the great Chuch’e idea, which was discovered for the first time in world history.” See T’ak Chin, Kim Kang-il, and Pak Hong-je, Kim Jong Il chidoja [Leader Kim Jong Il], 16. 14. The principles stress loyalty to Kim Il Sung and his authority, unconditionality in the implementation of his instructions, Kim Il Sung–centered organizational discipline, and continuous revolution through generations. 15. The Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Tang u˘i yuil sasang ch’egye u˘i siptae w†nch’ik [The Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1974). 16. John Gardner, Chinese Politics and the Succession to Mao (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 138–83. 17. Friedrich Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” in Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), 713. 18. Kim Il Sung, “Chabon chu„i robutÆ sahoe chu„i ro„i kwadogi wa proletariat tokche munje e taehayÆ” [On the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism and the Question of the Proletarian Dictatorship, May 25, 1967], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 21:259–76. 19. In 1986, Kim Il Sung described complete socialism, or the complete victory of socialism, as a separate subject. He argued that North Korea at that time had almost reached the point of complete victory. See Kim Il Sung,

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“Sahoe chu„i „i wanjÆn s„ngni r„l wihayÆ” [For the Complete Victory of Socialism, December 30, 1986], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 40:215. 20. Hwang Chang-yÆp, Na nu˘n y†ksa u˘i chilli ru˘l poatta [I Saw the Truth of History], (Seoul: Hanul, 1999), 146–47. 21. Kim Jong Il, “Marx-Lenin chu„i wa Chuch’e sasang „i kich’i r„l nop’i d„lgo naagaja” [Let Us March Forward, Upholding the Banner of Marxism-Leninism and the Chuch’e Idea, May 3, 1983], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1992), 91–92. 22. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang e taehayÆ” [On the Chuch’e Idea, March 21, 1982], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 22. 23. Roger E. Kanet, “The Rise and Fall of the ‘All-People’s State’: Recent Changes in the Soviet Theory of the State,” in Communist Systems in Comparative Perspective, eds. Lenard J. Cohen and Jane P. Shapiro (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1974), 147–49. 24. Ibid., 153–54, 157. 25. The complete victory of socialism is the stage wherein any possibility of capitalism’s restoration disappears but remnants of capitalism remain, so that it is necessary to continue the process of the transformation of man, society, and nature. See “Sahoe chu„i wanjÆn s„ngni n„n kwadogi „i chÆnryakchÆk mokp’yo” [The Complete Victory of Socialism Is the Strategic Goal of the Transitional Period], Ku˘lloja, May 1987, 5–6. 26. Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i kyÆngje iron „ro t’„nt’„nhi mujang haja” [Let Us Arm Ourselves with Socialist Economic Theory, July 1, 1991], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il], 11:345; Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i e taehan hwebang „n yongnap hal su Æpta” [Interference with Socialism Cannot Be Allowed, March 1, 1993], Korean Central Broadcasting, March 4, 1993. 27. Kim Jong Il, “Inmin saenghwal „l tÆuk nop’il te taehayÆ” [On the Enhancement of People’s Living Standards, February 16, 1984], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il] 8:4. 28. Kim Jong Il, “Tang kwa hyÆngmyÆngdaeo „i kanghwa palchÆn kwa kyÆngje kÆnsÆl „i saeroun angyang „l wihayÆ” [For the Consolidation of the Party and the Revolutionary Rally and the Development of Socialist Economic Buildup, January 3, 1986], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il] 8:351. 29. Kim Jong Il, “Nodong haengjÆng saÆp „l tÆuk kaesÆn kanghwa hal te taehayÆ” [On the Improvement and Consolidation of Labor’s Administrative Affairs, November 27, 1989], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il], 9:436. 30. See Kim Il Sung, “Sae hwan’gyÆng kwa sae chogÆn „n saeroun saÆp t’aedo r„l yogu handa” [New Circumstances and New Conditions Require a New Working Attitude, November 19, 1949], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 5:302–18.


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31. Ch’oe ≠n-h„i and Sin Sang-ok, Kim Jong Il wangguk [The Kingdom of Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: Dong-A Ilbosa, 1988), 2:142. 32. Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl „i yÆksajÆk kyohun kwa uri tang „i ch’ongnosÆn” [Historical Lessons of the Building of Socialism and Our Party Line, January 3, 1992], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 430–31. 33. Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i n„n kwahak ida” [Socialism Is a Science, November 1, 1994], Nodong Sinmun, November 1, 1994; and “Sasang saÆp „l apseun„n kÆsÆn sahoe ju„i wiÆp suhaeng „i p’ilsujÆk yogu ida” [To Bring the Ideological Affair to the Forefront Is the Condition for the Realization of Socialist Tasks, June 19, 1995], Korean Central Broadcasting, June 21, 1995. 34. Kim Jong Il, “HyÆngmyÆngjÆk sinnyÆm kwa yangsim „n hyÆngmyÆngga wa paesinja r„l kar„n„n kibon jingp’yo ida” [Revolutionary Conviction and Consciousness Are Basic Indicators for Distinguishing Revolutionaries from Traitors, February 17 and March 5, 1997], unpublished document. 35. See the following two articles by Kim Jong Il: “Tang kwa hyÆngmyÆngdaeo „i kanghwa palchÆn kwa kyÆngje kÆnsÆl „i saeroun angyang „l wihayÆ” [For the Consolidation of the Party and the Revolutionary Rally and the Development of Socialist Economic Buildup, January 3, 1986], 348–49; and “ChaejÆng „nhaeng saÆp ul kaesÆn kanghwa hal te taehayÆ” [On the Improvement and Consolidation of Fiscal and Banking Affairs, September 13, 1990], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il], 10:176. 36. Park Hyeong-jung and Lim Kang-taek, “KyÆngje” [Economy], in Pukhan ihae u˘i kilchabi [An Understanding of North Korea], Kim Sung Chull et al. (Seoul: PakyÆngsa, 1999), 213. 37. Kim Jong Il, “ChaejÆng „nhaeng saÆp ul kaesÆn kanghwa hal te taehayÆ” [On the Improvement and Consolidation of Fiscal and Banking Affairs, September 13, 1990], 165–66. 38. Kim Il Sung, “Uri tang „i Chuch’e sasang kwa konghwaguk chÆngbu „i taenaeoe chÆngch’aek „i myÆtkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On Some Questions Regarding Our Party’s Chuch’e Idea and Our Government’s Domestic and Foreign Policies, September 17, 1972], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 27:390. 39. Ku˘lloja (December 1972): 14–20. 40. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang e taehayÆ” [On the Chuch’e Idea, March 31, 1982], 16–17. 41. Pak S„ng-dÆk, “Chuch’e „i ch’ÆlhakchÆk segyegwan „i ponjilchÆk t’„kching” [The Nature of the Philosophical Worldview of Chuch’e], Ku˘lloja, April 1988, 57. 42. Philosophy Division of Kim-Ch’aek Engineering University, Py†nju˘ngb†pch†k yumullon [Dialectical Materialism] (Pyongyang: Higher Education Books Press, 1977), 28–37. 43. Kwak YÆng-ch’an, “ChajusÆng „n saram „i sahoe chÆngch’ijÆk saengmyÆng” [Independence Is the Sociopolitical Life of the Human Being], Ku˘lloja, July 1982, 26.

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44. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang e taehayÆ” [On the Chuch’e Idea, March 31, 1982], 33. 45. Ibid., 59. 46. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 42–51. 47. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang e taehayÆ” [On the Chuch’e Idea, March 31, 1982], 61–62. 48. “HyÆkmyÆng hanun saram ege issÆsÆ kajang kogwihan kÆs„n sahoe chÆngch’ijÆk saengmyÆng ida” [The Most Precious Thing for the Revolutionaries Is the Sociopolitical Life] Ku˘lloja, August 1973, 2–12. 49. Han S. Park, North Korea: The Politics of Unconventional Wisdom (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 36–37. 50. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang kyoyang esÆ chegi doen„n myotkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On the Problems Raised in the Teaching of the Chuch’e Idea, July 15, 1986], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 163. 51. Ibid., 164. 52. Kim Chae-song, “SuryÆng, tang, taejung „i t’ongilch’e n„n yÆksa „i chajujÆk Chuch’e” [The Unity of the Leader, the Party, and the Masses is the Independent Actor in History], Ku˘lloja, July 1987, 32–35. 53. Kim Jong Il, “ChosÆn Nodongdang „n yÆnggwangs„rÆun t’ado cheguk chu„i tongmaeng „i chÆnt’ong „l kyes„nghan Chuch’ehyÆng „i hyÆngmyÆngjÆk tang ida” [The Workers’ Party of Korea Is the Revolutionary Party that Has Inherited the Honorable Tradition of Down-with-imperialism, October 17, 1982], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il], 7:267–76. 54. Chong-Wook Chung, “Mass Organizations and Campaigns in North Korea,” in North Korea Today: Strategic and Domestic Issues, eds. Robert A. Scalapino and Jun Yop Kim (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1983), 89. 55. Kim Jong Il, “ChosÆn Nodongdang „n uri inmin „i mod„n s„ngni „i chojikcha imyÆ hyangdoja ida” [The Workers’ Party of Korea Is the Organizer and the Guide for the Victory of Our People, October 3, 1990], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 322–23. 56. Yi Sang-gÆl, Chuch’e u˘i sasang, iron, pangb†p u˘i simhwa palch†n [Deepening and Developing of Chuch’e’s Idea, Theory, and Method] (Pyongyang: Sahoe Kwahak Ch’ulp’ansa, 1984), 167–68. 57. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang kyoyang esÆ chegi doen„n myotkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On the Problems Raised in the Teaching of the Chuch’e Idea, July 15, 1986], 163. 58. Han S. Park, “The Nature and Evolution of Juche Ideology,” in North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, ed. Han S. Park (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 9–18, 59. Kim Jong Il, “Inmin taejung chungsim „i urisik sahoe chu„i n„n p’ils„ungbulp’ae ida” [Socialism in Our Own Style and Centered around the


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Mass of People is Certainly Victorious, May 5, 1991], in Chinaehanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munho˘njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 336–76. 60. Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl „i yÆksajÆk kyohun kwa uri tang „i ch’ongnosÆn” [Historical Lesson in the Building of Socialism and the General Line of Our Party, January 3, 1992], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 426–61. 61. Ibid., 431. 62. Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i e taehan hwebang „n hÆyong toel su Æpta” [Interference with Socialism Cannot Be Allowed, March 1, 1993], Korean Central Broadcasting, March 1, 1993. 63. Hong Si-hak, “Inmin „l wihayÆ pongmuham, igÆs„n uri ilggund„l i ilgwan hage kuhyÆn haeya hal hyÆngmyÆngjÆk kuho” [Working for the People Is a Revolutionary Slogan that Our Cadres Should Consistently Implement], Ku˘lloja, July 1990, 10. 64. “Tang „i kuho inmin „l wihayÆ pongmuham „l kwanch’Æl han„n tesÆ Æd„n kun tang wiwÆnhoe „i kyÆnghÆm” [A County Party Committee’s Experience in the Process of the Implementation of the Party’s Slogan, Working for the People], Ku˘lloja, December 1991, 70–74. 65. Henry M. Christman, ed., Essential Works of Lenin (New York: Dover, 1966), 177–270. 66. Kim Jong Il, “Panje t’ujaeng „i kich’i r„l tÆuk nop’i d„lgo sahoe chu„i kongsan chu„i killo himch’age naagaja” [Let Us Uphold the Antiimperialist Banner and Move to a Socialist and Communist Road, September 25, 1987], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il], 172–81. 67. Ibid., 181. 68. Ibid., 180. 69. Suzuki Masayuki, Kitachosen: Shakaishugi to tento no kyomei [North Korea: Resonance between Socialism and Tradition] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992), 219–28. 70. Chantal Mouffe, “Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London: Macmillan Education, 1988), 90. 71. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985), 153–54. 72. Mouffe, “Hegemony and New Political Subjects,” 91. 73. Kim Jong Il, “Chuch’e sasang e taehayÆ” [On the Chuch’e Idea, March 31, 1982], 50. 74. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Minju Chu„i Inmin Konghwaguk esÆ„i sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl kwa NamchosÆn hyÆngmyÆng e taehayÆ” [On the Socialist Construction in the DPRK and Revolution in South Korea, April 14, 1965], 310. 75. Ch’oe ≠n-h„i and Sin Sang-ok, Kim Jong Il wangguk [The Kingdom of Kim Jong Il], 244–45.

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Notes to Chapter Six Chapter 6. The Fluctuation of Economic Institutions and the Emergence of Entrepreneurship

1. In July 2002, North Korea took unprecedented economic measures that reflected the realities of the unofficial economic situation: wages increased by 18–25 times depending on occupation types, whereas prices experienced a 30-fold increase, on average. Remarkably, the price of rice experienced approximately a 550-fold increase. Joong-Ang Ilbo, July 19, 2002; Korea Herald, July 23, 2002. 2. For theoretical discussions on such concepts as preferential correlation and path dependence in explanations of change, see Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989); and Ervin Laszlo, The Age of Bifurcation: Understanding the Changing World (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991). 3. The sector of private entrepreneurial activities is, by definition, not the same as the second economy. The second economy is an inclusive concept, since it comprises not only improper activities that take place within the planned economy but also those private activities that derail the fundamental principle of central planning. 4. Nodong Sinmun, June 7, 1974. 5. John Wong and Mu Yang, “The Making of the TVE Miracle: An Overview of Case Studies,” in China’s Rural Entrepreneurs, eds. John Wong, Rong Ma, and Mu Yang (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1995), 33. 6. For an explanation of regional self-reliance that frames the issue in terms of security reasons, see Kim Philo, Pukhan u˘i chiy†k charip ch’eje [The Regional Self-reliance System of North Korea] (Seoul: KINU, 1999), 25–29. 7. Unlike in South Korea, there is no myon, a middle-range unit between county and ri, in North Korea. During the Korean War, North Korea conducted administrative reforms to eliminate myon, extending the size of ri. This strategy was meant to facilitate the establishment—through a lessening of hierarchical steps—of an effective transmission and an effective penetration of state policies. 8. For this reason, the county and its party committee are called the “political staff” of the central party. See Nodong Sinmun, February 3, 1974. 9. Kim Jong Il’s college graduation thesis appeared in the WPK’s theoretical journal, Ku˘lloja, March 1985, 3–27. 10. Social Science Press, Ky†ngje saj†n [Dictionary of the Economy] (Pyongyang: Sahoe Kwahak Ch’ulp’ansa, 1985), 1:215, 2:443. 11. However, it should be noted that the local budget comprises a part of local governments’ annual income and expenditures. For instance, the salaries of both local government officials and teachers are paid by the state, and educational expenditures and major construction works are subsidized by the state. More importantly, the budgets for the large state-owned enterprises,

Notes to Chapter Six

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mostly energy and heavy and chemical industries, are completely and directly subsidized by the state. Furthermore, the fact that the ratio between the state budget and the local budget was 85:15 exemplifies North Korea’s relatively low reliance on the locally managed economy. This is a natural stance for North Korea, which has adopted a centrally planned economic system. See Kim Philo, Pukhan u˘i chiy†k charip ch’eje [The Regional Self-Reliance System of North Korea], 65. 12. Kim H„i-t’aek, “Ilggund„l „n nop’„n inminsÆng „l chinyÆya handa” [The Cadres Should Preserve the Spirit of the Masses], Ku˘lloja, June 1987, 23. 13. Kim Jong Il, “Inmin saenghwal „l tÆuk nop’il te taehayÆ” [On the Enhancement of People’s Living Standards, February 16, 1984], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1992–2000), 8:4–5. 14. With the introduction of the local budget system, the local enterprise mushroomed in the early 1970s. For instance, it is said that one thousand local enterprises were built in several months in 1974. See Nodong Sinmun, June 7, 1974. 15. Lee Suk-gi, Pukhan u˘i chibang kong†p hy†nhwang kwa palj†n ch†nmang [Local Enterprise in North Korea: Present and Future] (Seoul: KIET, 1998), 11, 53–54. 16. Choi Shin-lim and Lee Suk-gi, Pukhan u˘i san†p kwalli ch’egye wa ki†p kwalli chedo [Industrial Management and Enterprise Management in North Korea] (Seoul: KIET, 1998), 25. 17. Kim Il Sung, “Sahoe ju„i kyÆngje kwalli r„l kaesÆn hagi wihan myÆtkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On Some Problems that Relate to the Improvement of Socialist Economic Management, February 1, 1973], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1979–96), 28:125. 18. Sung Chull Kim, “Is North Korea Following the Chinese Model of Reform and Opening?” Institute Report of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University, December 1994, 8. 19. Kim Il Sung, “Tongnip ch’esanje r„l paro silsi han„n tesÆ naon„n myÆtkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On Some Problems that Relate to the Implementation of the Independent Accounting Method, November 13, 1984], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 38:346–62. 20. Kim Tae-il, Pukhan kuky†ng ki†pso u˘i kwalli uny†ng ch’egye [The Management System of State-Owned Enterprises in North Korea] (Seoul: KINU, 1993), 48–51. 21. Institute for Peace Studies, Tongbuga wa Nambukhan, 1988 [Northeast Asia and South and North Korea, 1988] (Seoul: IPS, 1989), 182–86. 22. For a discussion of the important structural features of reform in socialist systems, see János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 360–65, 387–92. 23. Kim Il Sung, “Chido ilggund„l „i tangsÆng, kyeg„psÆng, inminsÆng „l nop’imyÆ inmin kyÆngje „i kwalli unyÆng saÆp „l kaesÆn hal te taehayÆ”

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[On the Improvement of the Management of the People’s Economy through the Enhancement of Leading Cadres’ Loyalty to the Party, the Working Class, and the Masses, December 19, 1964], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 18:505. 24. For Kim Il Sung’s criticism of managerial arbitrariness, see his speech at the Central Committee of the WPK in March 1954. Kim Il Sung, “SanÆp unsu pubun esÆ natanan kyÆrhamd„l kwa k„gÆs„l koch’il taech’aek e taehayÆ” [On the Problems and Solutions Related to the Areas of Industry and Transportation, March 21, 1954], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 8:305. 25. Kim Tae-il, Pukhan kuky†ng ki†pso u˘i kwalli uny†ng ch’egye [The Management System of State-Owned Enterprises in North Korea], 26. 26. Considering the special conditions of the post–Korean War period, Kim’s opponents preferred a development strategy whereby more weight would be granted to agriculture and light industry than to heavy industry. The factions’ clash over economic policy as well as over power relations was so intense at the Third Congress of the WPK in April 1956 that the policy priority of the First Five-Year Economic Plan (1957–61) was not fixed on schedule. 27. Sung Chull Kim et al., North Korea in Crisis: An Assessment of Regime Sustainability (Seoul: KINU, 1997), 57. 28. Keun Lee, New East Asian Economic Development: Interacting Capitalism and Socialism (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 86. 29. On the party committee meetings, see Kim Sung Chull, Pukhan kanbu ch†ngch’aek u˘i chisok kwa py†nhwa [Cadre Policy in North Korea: Continuity and Change], (Seoul: KINU, 1997), 42–49. 30. Kim Jong Il, “Kun „i yÆkhal „l nop’yÆ inmin saenghwal esÆ chÆnhwan „l ir„k’ija” [Let Us Transform the Living Standard of the Masses by Improving the Role of the County, October 20, 1994], in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il], 13:440–41. 31. Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 95–138. 32. For a case study of such mutual dependency between urban entrepreneurs and the state, see Dorothy J. Solinger, China’s Transition from Socialism (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 261. 33. Kim Jong Il himself has reiterated the importance of earning foreign currency for the introduction of raw materials, particularly crude oil, and for the import of grains. For example, in April 1996, in a speech delivered to the cadres working at the CC of the WPK, Kim suggested that farmers substitute medicinal plants for food in regions where the soil is unsuited for grain production. See Kim Jong Il, “KyÆngje saÆb „l kaesÆn han„n tesÆ naon„n myÆtkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On Some Problems that Arise in the Process of the Improvement of Economic Affairs, April 22, 1996), in Kim Jong Il s†njip [Selected Works of Kim Jong Il], 14:162. 34. Hankyoreh Sinmun, September 15, 1996.


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35. Jeong Sei-jin, Tongasia kukche kwangye wa Hanbando [International Relations in East Asia and on the Korean Peninsula] (Seoul: Hanul, 2002), 236. 36. Jerry Hough, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 528–29. 37. Jeong Sei-jin, Kyehoeg es† sijang u˘ro: Pukhan ch’eje py†ndong u˘i ch†ngch’i ky†ngje [From Planning to Market: The Political Economy of Transition in the North Korean System] (Seoul: Hanul, 2000), 189. 38. Yim K„m-suk, “Pukhan chayÆngÆb „i t„kching kwa palchÆn panghyang” [North Korean Private Entrepreneurs: Characteristics and Prospects], T’ongil ky†ngje [Unification Economy], March–April, 2002, 58. 39. Ko Ch’Æng-song (former North Korean office worker), unpublished KINU interview data, 1997. 40. Andrew S. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 99. 41. Ibid., 78–80. 42. Chosun Ilbo, August 21, 2001. 43. Yim K„m-suk, “Pukhan chayÆngÆb „i t„kching kwa palchÆn panghyang” [North Korean Private Entrepreneurs: Characteristics and Prospects], 61. 44. Loan sharks usually operate with the backing of officials from powerful organizations, such as the WPK, the KPA, and the PSM. For this reason, loan sharks never fail to collect their principal and interest. 45. According to North Korean defectors, the August 3 Production Drive started to decline ten years after its launch and has stagnated, in a practical sense, since 1997. This failure has been due to the general public’s engagement in private profit-bearing activities during the uncontrollable economic situation that coincided with the famine. 46. Bruce J. Dickson, Red Capitalist in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 90–91. 47. The greater part of this section is based on interviews with Kim ChÆng-kil (former North Korean factory worker) and Sin Tong-hyÆk (former North Korean mine worker), August 12–13, 2003. 48. In North Korea, the terms private property and ownership have not been allowed, because they imply materials used for exploitation between people. In a legal sense, only the term personal property has been permitted for the designation of distributed commodities, foods, and other items. 49. Institute of Economy at the Social Science Academy of the DPRK, Ky†ngje saj†n [Dictionary of Economy] (Pyongyang: Sahoe KwahagwÆn Ch’ulp’ansa, 1970), 2:594; and Social Science Press, Ky†ngje saj†n [Dictionary of Economy], 2:70. 50. This symbiotic relationship between patron organizations and funding squads is reminscent of the mutually dependent relationship between the state and entrepreneurs in the Chinese reform process. Although there are differences between the Chinese and North Korean cases in terms of the official

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Notes to Chapter Seven

and the unofficial, the nature of symbiosis in times of transition is quite similar. For the Chinese case, see Solinger, China’s Transition from Socialism, 261–64. 51. Andrew G. Walder and Jean C. Oi, “Property Rights in the Chinese Economy: Contours of the Process of Change,” in Property Rights and Economic Reform in China, eds. Jean C. Oi and Andrew G. Walder (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 7–9.

Chapter 7. The Changing Role of Intellectuals 1. Kim Il Sung, “Minju kÆnsÆl „i hyÆn tan’gye wa munhwain „i immu” [Current Stage in the Construction of Democracy and the Tasks of Cultured People, September 28, 1946], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1979–96), 2:459. 2. Kim Il Sung, “ChinbojÆk minju chu„i e taehayÆ” [On Progressive Democracy, October 3, 1945], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 1:290. 3. Kim Il Sung, “Hong MyÆng-h„i wa han tamhwa” [Talks with Hong MyÆng-h„i, May 6, 1948], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 4:313–14. 4. ChÆng Chun-t’aek was born in KyÆnggi Province in 1902. He went to the North immediately after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. He initially worked as a technical chief and manager of Ch’Ængjin Steel Mill. He was later named chairman of the State Planning Committee (September 1948), member of the CC of the WPK (April 1956), and vice premier of the State Council (December 1972). ChÆng was one of the successful intellectuals of southern origin in North Korea’s policy for the integrating of established intellectuals. 5. Yi S„ng-gi was a prominent chemist who was born in Tamyang in South ChÆlla Province in 1905. Following suggestions of Yi Chong-ok, who later became premier of the State Council, Kim Il Sung made an attempt to persuade Yi S„ng-gi to relocate in the North before the Korean War. During the war, Kim Il Sung’s efforts came to fruition. Yi followed the North Korean army when it retreated to the North in late 1950. There Yi contributed to the building up of the North Korean chemical industry, particularly through the discovery of vinalon, which brought a revolution in cloth-making to North Korea. Owing to this contribution, he later received the appellation “Father of the Chemical Industry of the Republic.” Lim Jong-hyok, ed., Gendai Chosen no kagakusha tachi [Scientists of Modern North Korea] (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 1997), 12–13. 6. Yim Hwa, originally from the South, was one of leading figures in North Korean literary circles. His prominence made him a target of Kim Il Sung’s faction. In December 1926, along with Yi Ki-yÆng and Han SÆl-ya, Yim joined the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation (KAPF), which had first been organized by the Korean Communist Party and was thereafter engaged in literary movements for the proletariat. In 1932, Yim became secretary of the KAPF. The Japanese authorities outlawed the KAPF in 1936; nevertheless, he


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continued to publish works along with his fellow writers. On August 18, 1945, with Yi T’ae-jun, he organized and chaired the Central Council for the Construction of Korean Literature. In 1948, he followed Pak HÆn-yÆng to the North. In the North, he became a member of the Federation of Literary and Artistic Intellectuals. He was also named president of the Korea-Soviet Press and vice chairman of the Korea-Soviet Cultural Association. These appointments accentuated his connection to the Soviet-Koreans. He supported other writers from the South including Yi T’ae-jun and Kim Nam-ch’Æn during literary debates. 7. Kwon Yong-min, “WÆlbuk munin „l ÆddÆke polgÆsin’ga” [How to See the Writers Who Went to the North], in W†lbuk munin y†n’gu [A Study on the Writers Who Went to the North], ed. Kwon Yong-min (Seoul: Munhaksasangsa, 1989), 18–19. 8. Jon Yong-son, Pukhan u˘l umjik inu˘n munhak yesurindu˘l [The Writers and Artists Who Have Influenced North Korea] (Seoul: YÆngnak, 2004), 23. 9. Kim Il Sung, “Chonghap taehak „l seul te taehayÆ” [On Building a University, November 3, 1945], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 1:384. 10. Kim Il Sung, “Sae ChosÆn „i usuhan minjok kanbu ka toegi wihayÆ paeugo tto paewÆya handa” [To Become an Excellent National Cadre of the New Korea Requires Hard Work, October 1, 1947], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 3:457; Kim Il Sung, “SÆnjin kwahak kisul kwa aeguk sasang „ro mujanghan minjok kanbu ka doera” [You Must Become National Cadres Armed with Advanced Science and Technology and Patriotic Ideology, December 28, 1849], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 5:344–51. 11. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Minju Chu„i Inmin Konghwaguk ch’angnip iljunyÆn” [The First Anniversary of the Founding of the DPRK, September 9, 1949], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 5:242–65. 12. Kim Il Sung, “Yun„nghan kisul injae r„l dÆmani yangsÆng haja” [Let Us Educate More Talented Technological Personnel, June, 1952], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 7:218. 13. Kim Il Sung said, “[I]n constructing our postwar economy, we must emphasize the recovery and the development of heavy industries while we also work on the simultaneous development of light industries and agriculture. This will enable us to strengthen the foundation of our economy and to rapidly improve the living conditions of our people.” Kim Il Sung, “Mod„n kÆs„l chÆnhu inmin kyÆngje pokku palchÆn „l wihayÆ” [Everything Must Be Devoted to the Recovery and Development of the People’s Post War Economy, August 5, 1953], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 8:18. 14. Kim Il Sung, “Tang chojik saÆb „l kaesÆn halt e taehayÆ” [On Improving Organization of the Party, November 2, 1951], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 6:508. 15. Kim Il Sung, “Uri nara kwahak „l palchÆn sik’igi wihayÆ” [For the Development of Science in Our Country, April 27, 1952], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 7:186.

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16. Kim Il Sung, “Uri munhak yesul „i myÆtkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On Some Problems With Our Literature and Art, June 30, 1951], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 6:401–3. 17. The Soviet-Koreans led by HÆ Ka-i were known to be quite favorable to Pak HÆn-yÆng and his Workers’ Party of South Korea members. For instance, when the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the Workers’ Party of South Korea were merged in 1949, HÆ pushed to accept all the previous members of the southern party’s members through a brief procedure. Kim Il Sung was dissatisfied with the Soviet faction’s lenient attitude toward the southern party’s members (see chapter 3 also). Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea: The Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), chap. 6. 18. For the discussion about the Soviet-Koreans’ protection of literary men of southern origin, see ChÆng Sang-jin, Amur man es† burunu˘n baekcho u˘i norae [A Swan Song Sung in the Amur River] (Seoul: ChisiksanÆpsa, 2005). 19. Yi Ch’Æl-chu, Puk u˘i yesurin [Artists in the North] (Seoul: Kyemongsa, 1966), 90–95. 20. Ibid., 117. 21. Kim Il Sung, “Tang „i chojikchÆk sasangjÆk kanghwa n„n uri s„ngni „i kich’o” [Organizational and Ideological Strengthening of the Party is the Foundation of Our Victory, December 15, 1952], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 7:386–430. 22. Yi Ch’Æl-chu, Puk u˘i yesurin [Artists in the North Korea], 142–44. 23. In the trial for the purges of the Communist leaders of southern origin, Yi S„ng-yÆp, Cho Il-myÆng, Yim Hwa, Pak S„ng-wÆn, Yi WÆn-jo, Yi Kang-guk, Pae Ch’Æl, Yun Sun-dal, Paek HyÆng-bok, Cho YÆng-bok, Maeng Chong-ho, and SÆl ChÆng-sik were found guilty of alleged espionage activities for the United States. Pak HÆn-yÆng’s trial was held separately in December 1955. On the trial’s records, see Kim Nam-sik, Namnodang y†n’gu [A Study of the Workers’ Party of South Korea] (Seoul: Tolbaegae, 1984), 480–511. 24. The second decree to burn books was ordered in 1958 along with “Central Party’s Concentrated Guidance.” Because of their defeat amid the factional strife of August 1956, the Soviet and Yanan factions disappeared from the North Korean political scene. Among the books ordered to be burned were Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik’s Chos†n minjok haebangsa [History of Liberation of the Korean People] and works by Pak Ch’ang-ok and Kim Tu-bong. It is said that the burned books amounted to about one third of all North Korea publications. Works by 140 authors were subject to this book-burning. Kim ChÆnggi, Milp’a [Secret Dispatch] (Seoul: TaeyÆngsa, 1967), 237–40. 25. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Nodongdang chungang wiwÆnhoe samwÆl chÆnwon hoe„i esÆ han kyÆllon” [Concluding Remarks at the March Plenary Session of the CC of the WPK, March 21, 1954], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 8:346–47. 26. Kim Il Sung, “Sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl esÆ sog„ksÆng kwa posuchu„i r„l pandae hayÆ” [Against Passivity and Conservatism in the Building of Socialism, September 16, 1958], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 12:521–22.


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27. Kim Il Sung, “Sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl „i saeroun angyang „l wihayÆ naon„n myÆtkaji munje” [Some Problems Concerning another Leap Forward for the Construction of Socialism, September 25, 1958], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 12:548–49. 28. Kim Il Sung, “Chakka, yesurind„l sogesÆ nalg„n sasang chanje r„l pandae han„n t’ujaeng „l himitke bÆril te taehayÆ” [On Leading a Struggle against Old Ideological Remnant among the Writers and Artists, October 14, 19580, in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 12: 551–59. 29. Kim ChÆng-gi, Milp’a [Secret Dispatch], 281–91. 30. The North Korean authorities treated the students of the Songdo College of Political Economy well. The students received salaries and rationing equivalent to those from their previous posts. Each entering class was composed of from 200 to 250 students who were divided into small study and work groups of 5 to 6 students and who lived under a strict organizational discipline. The students included those who were well educated as well as those who had not received regular education in the South. Just as in the training centers of the WPK, strict party discipline was imposed on the students while they poured over textbooks that were used in the Central Party School. See ibid., 252–57. 31. The Songdo College of Political Economy was built upon the tradition of the previous schools: One was Seoul Political School, established in Hwangju, Hwanghae Province, in 1950, and the other was K„mgang Academy, built in SÆh„ng County, Hwanghae Province, in October 1952. Seoul Political School was established to train spies who would enter the field during the war. As the war lasted longer than expected and as reoccupation of Seoul was unlikely, Seoul Political School was renamed K„mgang Academy. But K„mgang Academy soon ceased to exist, as many leaders of the southern faction were jailed or executed and as students were sent to ChÆnma Mine in North P’yongan Province. Ibid., 243. 32. Ibid., 245. 33. Kim Il Sung, “Songdo ChÆngch’i KyÆngje Taehak che ilhoe chorÆpsik esÆ han yÆnsÆl” [Speech Delivered at the First Graduation Ceremony of the Songdo College of Political Economy, August, 1957], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 11:264–77. 34. To enhance revolutionary potential in South Korea, Kim Il Sung urged North Korean literary and artistic intellectuals to articulate the themes of democratic struggle in South Korea such as the Student Revolution of April 19. Kim Il Sung, “HyÆngmyÆngjÆk munhak yesul „l ch’angjak hal te taehayÆ” [On Creating Revolutionary Literary and Artistic Works, November 7, 1964], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 18:436–53. 35. Jon Yong-son, Pukhan u˘l umjik inu˘n munhak yesurindu˘l [Writers and Artists Who Have Influenced North Korea], 23. 36. Yi Hang-gu, Pukhan u˘i hy†nsil [North Korean Reality] (Seoul: Sint’aeyangsa, 1988), 474–80. 37. Kim Il Sung, “Tang saÆp kwa kyÆngje saÆp esÆ naon„n myÆtkaji munje e taehayÆ” [On Some Problems that Appear in Party Affairs and Economic

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Affairs, October 19, 1960], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 14:422. 38. Kim Il Sung, “Uri tang „i int’elli chÆngch’aek „l chÆnghwakhi kwanch’Æl halte taehayÆ” [On the Precise Implementation of Our Party’s Policy on Intellectuals, June 14, 1968], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 22:356–92. 39. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Nodongdang chungang wiwÆnhoe che sagi sibilch’a chÆnwÆn hoe„i esÆ han kyÆllon” [Concluding Remarks at the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Fourth CC of the WPK, July 1, 1965], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 19:388. 40. Kim Il Sung, “Uri „i int’ellid„l „n tang kwa nodong kyeg„p kwa inmin ege ch’ungsirhan hyÆngmyÆngga ka toeÆya handa [Our Intellectuals Must Become Loyal Revolutionaries for the Party, the Working Class, and the People, June 19, 1967], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 21:310. 41. Kim Il Sung, “Uri „i munhak yesur„l han kyedan dÆ nop’i palchÆn sik’ija” [Let Us Develop Our Literature and Art One Further Step, October 29, 1963], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 17:480–81. 42. Kim Il Sung, “Kod„ng kyoyuk saÆp „l kaesÆn halt te taehayÆ” [On Improving Higher Education, February 23, 1965], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 19:193–96, 219. 43. Kim Il Sung, “Sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl „i saeroun yogu e matke kisul injae yangsÆng saÆp „l kanghwa haja” [Let Us Strengthen Our Education Works for Technical Personnel in Accordance with New Demands of Socialist Construction, October 2, 1968], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 23:8–10. 44. On the necessity of revolutionizing regardless of class background, Kim Il Sung said, “Revolutionizing is for all members of society. The working class also must be revolutionized. A member of the working class is not automatically a revolutionary. Those who work in factories are not necessarily armed with a revolutionary consciousness. They are not necessarily armed with Marxism-Leninism and the principles and policies of our party.” Kim Il Sung, “Uri tang „i int’elli chÆngchaek „l chÆnghwakhi kwanch’Æl halt e taehayÆ” [On the Precise Implementation of Our Party’s Policy on Intellectuals, June 14, 1968], 369. 45. Kim Il Sung, “ChosÆn Nodongdang chungang wiwÆnhoe che sagi sibilch’a chÆnwÆn hoe„i esÆ han kyÆllon” [Concluding Remarks at the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Fourth CC of the WPK, July 1, 1965], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 19:396–98. 46. Ch’oe ≠n-h„i and Sin Sang-ok, Kim Jong Il wangguk [The Kingdom of Kim Jong Il] (Seoul: Dong-A Ilbosa, 1988), 2:34–36. 47. Kim Jong Il, “YÆnghwa yesullon” [On Film and Art], in Chuch’e hy†ngmy†ng wi†p u˘i wans†ng u˘l wihay† [For the Accomplishment of the Chuch’e Revolutionary Tasks] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1987– 88), 2:114.


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48. Kim Jong Il, Ningen no akashi [Man’s Certificate: On Film and Art], trans. Byon Je-su (Tokyo: Dohosha, 2000), 51–56. 49. Lee Woo-young, Nambukhan munhwa ch†ngch’aek pigyo y†n’gu [A Comparative Study of the Cultural Policies of North and South Koreas] (Seoul: KINU, 1994), 77. 50. Jon Yong-son, Pukhan u˘l umjik inu˘n munhak yesurindu˘l [Writers and Artists Who Have Influenced North Korea], 204, 383, 393, 414. 51. Kim Jae-yong, Pukhan Munhak u˘i Y†ksaj†k Ihae [The Historical Understanding of North Korean Literature] (Seoul: Munhak kwa ChisÆngsa, 1994), 160–62. 52. Jon Yong-son, Pukhan u˘l umjik inu˘n munhak yesurindu˘l [Writers and Artists Who Have Influenced North Korea], 47. 53. The young intellectuals, represented by college students, accounted for about 90 percent of total work-team members. The percentage was equivalent to about 60–70 percent of college graduates. See Kim Nam-sik, “Samdae HyÆngmyÆng sojo undong „i punsÆk” [An Analysis of the Work-Team Movement of the Three Great Revolutions], Pukhan [North Korea], February 1977, 119. 54. Interview with Kim Kwang-uk (former member of the work-team movement of the Three Great Revolutions in North Korea), April 13, 1995. 55. Kim Il Sung, “Samdae HyÆngmyÆng „l himitke pÆryÆ sahoe chu„i kÆnsÆl „l tÆuk tag„ch’ija” [Let Us Hasten the Construction of Socialism by Working Harder for the Three Great Revolutions, March 3, 1975], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 30:105. 56. Kim Il Sung, “Kyoyuk pumun e Samdae HyÆngmyÆng sojo r„l p’agyÆn hal te taehayÆ” [On Sending Work-Teams of the Three Great Revolutions to the Field of Education, December 11, 1973], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 28:611. 57. Interview with Kim JÆng-min (former president of the Daeyang Trading Company affiliated to the WPK), May 17, 1995; interview with Yim Chin-ho (vice dean, School of Physical Science of Yanbian University), May 31, 1995. 58. Nodong Sinmun, April 29, 1974. 59. Kim Il Sung, “Minjok kanbu yangsÆng saÆp „l tÆuk kaesÆn kanghwa hal te taehayÆ” [On Further Improving the Education of the National Cadre, November 28, 1976], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 31:462–66. 60. Kim Il Sung, “Kyoyuk pumun ch’aegim ilggun hyÆb„ihoe esÆ han yÆnsÆl” [Speech Given to the Workers Responsible for Educational Affairs, April 9, 1980], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 35:116, 118; Kim Il Sung, “Kwahak yÆn’gu saÆp esÆ saeroun chÆnhwan „l ir„k’il te taehayÆ” [On Making a New Transition in Scientific Research Works, March 23, 1983], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 37:409. 61. Kim Il Sung, “Uri nara kwahak kisul „l palchÆn sik’igi wihan chae ilbon chsÆnin kwahakcha kisulchad„l „i kwaÆp e taehayÆ” [On the Tasks of

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Korean Scientists and Engineers Residing in Japan for the Development of Science and Technology in Our Country, April 13, 1979], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 34:164. 62. Pak Su-yÆng, “Sahoe „i mod„n sÆngwÆnd„l „l hyÆngmyÆnghwa, nodong kyeg„phwa, int’erihwa han„n kÆs„n on sahoe „i Chuch’e sasanghwa r„l wihan chungyohan yogu” [Revolutionizing, Working-Classization, and Intellectualizing of all the People Constitute the Most Important Demand for the Armament of the Entire Society with the Chuch’e Idea], Ku˘lloja, November 1980, 36. 63. Kim Il Sung, “Sahoe chu„i kyoyuk t’eje r„l ch’ÆlchÆhi kwanch’Æl hayÆ kyoyuk saÆp esÆ saeroun chÆnhwan „l ir„k’ija” [Let Us Make a New Transition in the Education Project by Completely Adopting the Thesis of Socialist Education, October 1, 1978], in Kim Il Sung ch†jakchip [Collected Works of Kim Il Sung], 33:439. 64. Kim Jong Il, “Sahoe chu„i e taehan hwebang „n hÆyong doel su Æpta” [Interference with Scialism Cannot Be Allowed], Korean Central Broadcasting, March 1, 1993. 65. Kim Jong Il, “HyÆngmyÆng kwa kÆnsÆl esÆ int’elli „i yÆkhal „l tÆuk nop’ija” [Let Us Uphold the Role of Intellectuals for the Continuation of the Revolution and Construction, September 20, 1990], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1992), 275. 66. For the views of such Western scholars on the collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, see Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 190–202; Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: Free Press, 1992); and S. N. Eisenstadt, “The Breakdown of Communist Regimes,” Daedalus 121, no. 2 (1992): 21–41. 67. See Kim Jong Il, “HyÆngmyÆng kwa kÆnsÆl esÆ int’elli „i yÆkhal „l tÆuk nop’ija” [Let Us Uphold the Role of Intellectuals for the Continuation of the Revolution and Construction, September 20, 1990], 279. 68. Ibid., 281. 69. Ibid., 293. 70. Ibid., 295. 71. Suh Jae Jean, Tto hana u˘i Pukhan sahoe [Another North Korean Society] (Seoul: Nanam, 1995), 178. 72. Both Pyongyang TV and Central TV broadcasted in September 1998 that the three-stage rocket, launched at the Musudan-ri Launching Facility of Hwadae County in North HamgyÆng Province, had succeeded in placing a satellite into orbit on August 31. 73. Yi Chae-sÆng, Pukhan u˘l umjik inu˘n technocrat [The Technocrats Operating North Korea] (Seoul: Ilbit, 1998), 74. 74. Ko Su-sÆk and Pak KyÆng-un, Kim Jong Il kwa IT hy†ngmy†ng [Kim Jong Il and the IT Revolution] (Seoul: Best Book, 2002), 135.

Notes to Chapter Eight

247

75. Nam Sung Wook, Pukhan u˘i IT san†p palch†n ch†llyak kwa kangs†ngdaeguk k†ns†l [The Strategy of IT Industry Development and the Building of a Strong State in North Korea] (Seoul: Hanul, 2002), 104. 76. Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., “A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK,” Occasional Paper No. 2, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute, 1999, 26. 77. The skip-over strategy was depicted in an article in Nodong Sinmun on January 7, 2001, entitled “More Courageously, Faster, and Higher,” which had this to say about the matter: “Our courageous policy is the way not to aggregate minor things together and follow the tails of others but to make a few optimal choices in the world. Instead of adhering to outmoded customs and remnants, our power lies in throwing away unnecessary things and in preparing ourselves with competent things. We have already tasted the ‘leap once and for all’ through the satellite of the KwangmyÆng-sÆng 1 [the launch of the Taep’odong 1] and the amazingly successful soil plowing campaign.” 78. Pyongyang Broadcasting, January 31, 2001. 79. Michael Lipson, “The Reincarnation of CoCoM: Explaining Post– Cold War Export Controls,” Nonproliferation Review 6, no. 2 (1999): 33. 80. Suh Jae Jean, Singnyangnan eso˘ IT sano˘p u˘ro [From the Famine to the IT Industry] (Seoul: Chisik Madang, 2001), 180. 81. Ibid., 202. 82. Ko KyÆng-min, Pukhan u˘i IT ch†llyak [The IT Strategy in North Korea] (Seoul: Communication Books, 2004), 159. 83. Yi YÆng-hwa, Pyongyang pimil chiphoe u˘i pam [The Nights of Secret Assembly in Pyongyang] (Seoul: Donga Publishing Company, 1995), 259.

Chapter 8. Conclusion: Dilemmas of Opening Up 1. Niklas Luhmann, Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 133. 2. For a discussion on the slow-motion famine, see Suk Lee, “Food Shortages and Economic Institutions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, 2003). 3. For the Law of National Economic Planning in April 1999, see the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), April 9, 1999. 4. In the 1998 constitution, the positions of chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee and party secretary of the province, both of which were concurrently undertaken by the latter in the previous constitution, are separated. This is also true for the positions of chairman of the County People’s Committee and county party secretary. With the separation of the titles between the local party head and the government head, the local government and its officials become responsible solely to the cabinet. These legal changes symbolize the acceptance of the irreversible trend toward increased local government latitude.

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5. The representative article on this discussion is Kim Jong Il, “Panje t’ujaeng „i kich’i r„l tÆuk nop’i d„lgo sahoe chu„i kongsan chu„i killo himch’age naagaja” [Let Us Uphold the Anti-Imperialist Banner and Move to a Socialist and Communist Road, September 25, 1987], in Ch’inae hanu˘n chidoja Kim Jong Il tongji u˘i munh†njip [Collected Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il] (Pyongyang: ChosÆn Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1992), 170–95. 6. Selig S. Harrison, Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 168. 7. Ibid., 172. 8. In the two years from 2000 through 2001, North Korea normalized relations with sixteen countries and the European Union: Italy (January 4, 2000), Australia (May 8, 2000), the Philippines (July 12, 2000), the United Kingdom (December 12, 2000), the Netherlands (January 15, 2001), Belgium (January 23, 2001), Canada (February 6, 2001), Spain (February 7, 2001), Germany (March 1, 2001), Luxemburg (March 5, 2001), Greece (March 8, 2001), Brazil (March 9, 2001), New Zealand (March 26, 2001), Kuwait (April 6, 2001), Bahrain ( May 23, 2001), Turkey (June 27, 2001), and the European Union (May 14, 2001). Yonhap News, North Korea Yearbook 2003 (Seoul: Yonhap News, 2002), 424. 9. For a discussion of theater-based symbolization, see Wada Haruki, Chosen yuzi o nozomunoka [Expecting an Emergency in the Korean Peninsula?] (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2002), 172. 10. Komaki Teruo, “Kunosuru kitachosen no keizaikozo” [Agonizing over the North Korean Economic Structure] in Kitachosen: So no jitsuzo to kiseki [North Korea: Its Reality and Legacy], Izumi Hajime et al. (Tokyo: Kobunken, 1998), 86–87. 11. Of the many reasons for Koizumi’s summit talk with Kim Jong Il, it is said that Japanese appraisal of the political economy of the Korean peninsula and its impact on Japan, as well as the abduction issue in domestic politics, was an important consideration. If North Korea collapses, South Korea also may not be able to sustain its own economy, and in turn, this will be a nightmare for Japan. See Okonogi Masao, “Japanese Perspectives on Regime Dynamics in North Korea,” in Understanding Regime Dynamics in North Korea, ed. Chung-in Moon (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1998), 65–78. 12. It is said that the domestic atmosphere in Japan after the summit talk in September 2002 was similar to the sentiment of Americans after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. See Lee Jong Won, “Tatsureisen mezasi netsen no shusenjyo o husenkyodotai ni: Taibei itpento kara takokukan kankei e” [From the Main Battlefield of the Hot War to a War-Free Community in Pursuit of Getting Out of the Cold War: From the U.S.-only Approach to Multilateral Relations], in Itchokosyo: Kadai to tenbo [Tasks and Prospects of the Japan-North Korea Negotiations], eds. Kang Sang Jung, Mizuno Naoki, and Lee Jong Won (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003), 33–44. 13. For a related analysis of North Korea in late 1990s, see Byung Chul Koh, “The North Korean Political System under Kim Jong Il: A Comparative Perspective,” in North Korea in Transition and Policy Choices: Domestic Structure


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and External Relations, ed. Jae Kyu Park (Seoul: Kyungnam University Press, 1999), 47. 14. Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 177; and Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, North Korea: Through the Looking Glass (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002), 169. 15. For instance, on April 18, 2003, the KCNA reported the announcement made by the foreign minister’s spokesman that “the reprocessing of the eight thousand spent fuel rods successfully reached the last stage.” On April 30, the KCNA aired a statement, made by the spokesman, according to which “the DPRK is determined to act to prepare a necessary physical deterrence.” On October 2, the news agency again quoted the spokesman as saying that “the DPRK operates the nuclear facilities normally and transformed the use of the plutonium, taken as a result of the reprocessing, for the strengthening of nuclear deterrence.” See http://www3.yonhapnews.co.kr/cgi-bin/naver/get news?1420031002032001649+20031002+1649 (accessed on February 19, 2005). 16. The articles maintained that the military has a priority over the working class. Furthermore, they implied the necessity of nuclear deterrence: “A powerful state is a country that has an invincible, ever-victorious military might that no imperialist enemy can ever touch, however formidable he may be.” Also, the KCNA on April 6, 2003, aired a similar message with implications for nuclear deterrence: “only the physical deterrent force, tremendous military deterrent force powerful enough to decisively beat back an attack supported by any ultra-modern weapons.” See the English version translated by Nautilus on April 11, 2003, for the article of “Military-First Thought Is an Ever-Victorious Invincible Banner for Our Era’s Cause of Independence,” Nodong Sinmun, March 21, 2003, and the article “Military-First Politics Is a Precious Sword Ensuring Victory for National Sovereignty,” Nodong Sinmun, April 3, 2003. 17. Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary: A Memoir (New York: Miramax Books, 2003), 465. 18. L. Gordon Flake, “The Experiences of U.S. NGOs in North Korea,” in Paved with Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea, eds. L. Gordon Flake and Scott Snyder (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 39. 19. Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Nation Books, 2004), 156. 20. The Japanese were concerned not so much about the development of intercontinental missiles as about the midrange missiles that North Korea already deployed. This was so because Japan was within the range of North Korea’s missiles—that is, within the range of 1,000 to 1,500 km. See Albright, Madam Secretary, 460; and Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., “A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK,” Occasional Paper No. 2, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute, 1999, 16. 21. Victor D. Cha, “The Problems of Post-Cold War Policy Templates and North Korea,” in Jae Kyu Park, North Korea in Transition and Policy Choices, 241–43; and Cha, “Making Sense of the Black Box: Hypotheses on Strategic

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Doctrine and the DPRK Threat,” in The North Korean System in the Post-Cold War Era, ed. Sameul S. Kim (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 180. 22. For a discussion about risk-taking and risk-averse choices in the psychological analysis of rational choice, see Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,” in Rational Choice, ed. Jon Elster (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), chap. 5.

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North Korean News Agency and Media Ch’†ngny†n Ch†nwi (youth league’s daily newspaper) Chos†n Inmin’gun (KPA’s daily newspaper) Korean Central Broadcasting Korean Central News Agency Nodong Sinmun (WPK’s daily newspaper) Pyongyang Broadcasting

North Korean Periodicals Chos†n Chungang Y†n’gam (North Korean yearbook) K‡lloja (WPK’s monthly journal)

Interviewees Ch’oe Chu-hwal (former lieutenant colonel of the KPA) Hwang Chang-yÆp (former secretary of the WPK)

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HyÆn SÆng-il (former North Korean diplomat) Kang In-duck (former minister of unification of South Korea) Kang In-jung (former representative of a trading company, affiliated with the KPA) Kim ChÆng-kil (former factory worker in North Korea) Kim JÆng-min (former representative of the Daeyang Trading Company, affiliated with the WPK) Kim Kwang-il (former county government official in North Korea) Kim Kwang-uk (former North Korean member of the work-team movement of the Three Great Revolutions in North Korea) Kim Sang-t’ae (former representative of a North Korean trading company) Ko Yong-hwan (former North Korean diplomat) Lim Gae-won (South Korean psychiatrist) Rhee Kun-hoo (South Korean psychiatrist) Sin Tong-hyÆk (former North Korean mine worker) Yim Chin-ho (Vice Dean, School of Physical Science of Yanbian University)


Index

267

Index Academy of Sciences, 173, 188, 189 adaptation, 194, 205; retardation of, 25 Agreed Framework. See North Korea-United States relations Albright, Madeleine, 202, 204 All-People’s State, 114 American Revolution, 16 Anhui (in China), 23 An Mak, 167 anti-imperialism, 6–7, 105, 163, 166, 195t, 203; anti-Americanism, 56; Chuch’e and, 135; party’s disciplinary tradition and, 57, 70 anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, 7, 65, 163, 166, 195t; Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Style in Production, Learning, and Life, 7, 88, 127; AntiJapanese People’s Guerrillas, 89; Chuch’e and, 135; military-first politics and, 7, 81; party-military relations and, 88; party’s disciplinary tradition and, 57, 65, 70 Asian Development Bank, 26, 199 associated enterprises, 120, 140, 143–144 August Incident, 85, 108 August 3 Production Drive, 117, 138, 164; decline of, 239n45; increase in, 141–142; private entrepreneurs and, 151, 156 autarchy, 7, 26 autopoiesis, 3, 212n8

Babson, Bradley, 25 Bailey, Kenneth D., 212n4 Bandung Conference, 108 bank, 120, 156. See also fiscal policy Barber, James, D., 45 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 211n1 binary code: definition of, 19; gray zone and, 23; reference points and, 19 Brezhnev, Leonid, 18, 150 budget constraints, 149 Bukharin, Nikolai, 30 bureaucratic pathology, 77–78, 80, 147; agency theory and, 226n40; bureaucratic tendency, 24 Bush (George W.) administration, 201, 204–205 Butenko, A. P., 116 cabinet, 11, 25, 37, 38, 41, 59, 61, 67, 68, 84, 167, 170; constitutional revision and, 49 capitalism: liberalism in, 129; new colonialism, 131; post-Marxist analyses of, 132–133; sustainability of, 55, 131–132 Carter, Jimmy, 197 Central Party School, 59, 167, 243n30 Central Party’s Concentrated Guidance, 13, 174 Central People’s Committee, 99 Central School for High Ranking Cadre, 59, 167

267

268

Index

Cha, Victor D., 205 Chang P’yÆng-san, 85 Chang Sun-myÆng, 223n9 Cheng, Hsiao-shih, 100 Chesnokov, D. I., 116 Chiang Kai-shek, 83 China, 6, 100, 108, 151; grain imports from, 149; oil imports from, 20; succession issue in, 43, 44–45 Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik, 4, 85, 108, 174 Ch’oe Chong-hak, 64, 85 Ch’oe HyÆn, 42 Ch’oe Kwang, 92, 178, 198 Ch’oe S„ng-h„i, 167 ˘ n-h„i, 118, 134 Ch’oe U Ch’oe Yong-gÆn, 42, 43 Cho Il-myÆng, 242n23 Cho MyÆng-nok, 33, 102, 204 ChÆng Chin-sÆk, 167 ChÆng Chi-yong, 167 ChÆng Chun-t’aek, 167, 240n4 Ch’Ængjin, 134 Ch’Ængsan-ri: Collective Farm, 64; Method, 65, 127, 144; Spirit, 127 ChÆng Yul (ChÆng Sang-jin), 170 ChÆn Mun-sÆp, 33 ChÆn PyÆng-ho, 98 Ch’Æn Se-bong, 180 ChosÆn dynasty, 30, 44, 177 Cho YÆng-bok, 242n23 Cho Yong-hwan, 36 Chuch’e idea, 6, 17, 76, 77; as a legitimating value, 109; Chuch’e Idea Tower, 53; consciousness in, 123–124; creative application of Marxism-Leninism, 11, 109, 121; creativity in, 123; estrangement from Marxism-Leninism, 111, 121– 130; human centeredness of, 55, 111, 122–124; internal differentiation and, 106; internalization of, 11; Kimilsungism and, 12, 110, 231n13; knowledge stagnation and, 180– 181; Maoism and, 12, 54, 110; origin of, 106–109; principles of

independence in, 105, 108–109, 122, 125; reference points and, 135–136; revolutionizing of intellectuals and, 178; self-reliance, 6; sociopolitical organism in, 55, 124– 128; succession and, 106–111 Chung Ju-young, 134, 198 Chu YÆng-ha, 223n9 Clinton administration, 50, 200, 204 collectivism, 17, 18, 129, 145 Colton, Timothy J., 97 Commemorating Tower of the Three Great Constitutions for National Unification, 53 competency trap, 77, 203, 217n62; definition of, 23; gray zone and, 23; patterns of, 23–24 complexity, 4, 8, 10, 15, 16, 24; notional utility of, 212n13; systemenvironment relations and, 218n66. See also functional differentiation, internal differentiation constitution: 48–49, 98–99, 109, 121, 157, 178, 196 continuous revolution, 17, 44, 129, 180–183 contract, 143, 157–160, 196; between funding squads and patrons, 155– 163; independent contract type, 161–162; legal dispute in, 160; period of, 159, 163; property rights and, 162–163; ratio of profit sharing, 158–159, 161, 162 county, 70, 71; as a self-sufficient unit, 140, 148, 149 coupling effect, 96–97 Cuban missile crisis, 139 Cultural Revolution, 43, 44, 100, 114 Cumings, Bruce, 8 Daean: Electrical Factory, 64, 144; Model, 127, 142, 144, 145–146 defense mechanism: discrepancy and, 45–47; displacement, 53–54; types of, 52–54

Index Demilitarized Zone, 100 Deng Xiaoping, 49, 111 detour diplomacy, 26, 56, 195t, 198; limits of, 203–206. See also North Korea-United States relations Dickson, Bruce, J., 157 differentiation: definition of, 4. See also external differentiation, internal differentiation, functional differentiation domestic-international linkage, 211n1 Eastern Europe: collapse of, 20, 119, 128–129, 165, 183; intellectuals in, 184–185 Easton, David, 212n7 Eberstadt, Nicholas, 20 Eckstein, Harry, 13 economic subsystem, 12, 18, 195t Emphasis on Heavy Industry, Simultaneous Development of Light Industries and Agriculture, 169 energy: coal as main energy source, 20; consumption of, 21t; oil imports, 20, 21t; shortage of, 20 Engels, Friedrich, 112 environment: asymmetrical relation with system, 2; definition of, 2, 212n3 external differentiation: between two Koreas, 5, 9; definition of, 4; systemic identity and, 4, 5–10 faction. See Manchurian guerrillas, Soviet-Koreans, Yanan veterans, Workers’ Party of South Korea factional strife: August Incident and, 85, 108; development strategy and, 238n26; Korean War and, 9–10; literary dispute and, 169–172; party’s organizational affairs and, 60–62; postwar period, 85, 145 familism, 17, 195t, 196 famine: as a conjuncture of systemic dissonance, 20–22; death toll, 20– 21; impact of, 20–21, 46–47, 95–96,

269

138, 151, 152; slow-motion famine, 195–196 farmers’ market, 151 Federation of Literary and Artistic Intellectuals, 171, 172, 176 fiscal policy, 120; deficit, 154 Flying Horse Movement, 173 food crisis. See famine foreign currency earners, 26, 154–155 Foreign Investment Law, 135 free-floating obedience, 93, 97 Freud, Sigmund, 34 full-time party cadre, 57, 66–67, 74; definition of, 66 functional differentiation, 10–13; definition of 10. See also economic subsystem, ideological subsystem, intellectual-cultural subsystem, political subsystem funding squads, 155–156. See also contract Gallucci, Robert, 197 General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Zainich Chosenjin Sorengokai), 182 George, Alexander L. and Juliette L. George, 51, 101, 102 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 100 grain: imports and supply of, 22 gray zone, 23, 197. See also competency trap Great Purges (in Soviet Union), 61, 222n3 guerrilla state, 88, 226n1. See also antiJapanese guerrilla tradition guidance personnel, 39 Gulf War, 197 Helsinki Accords: intellectuals and, 216n39 historical dependence, 16, 138 Hong Ki-yÆn, 33 Hong MyÆng-h„i, 33, 166 HÆ Pong-hak, 86–87, 178

270

Index

HÆ Tam, 48 HÆ Tong-ch’an, 107 Hough, Jerry, 101, 150 Hua Guofeng, 111 Hugo, Victor, 48 Hu Yaobang, 49, 111, 134 Hwang Chang-yÆp, 36, 37, 42, 47, 95, 98, 113, 114, 204; defection of, 119 Hwang Yong-su, 179, 180 HyÆn Chun-hyÆk, 223n9 HyÆn SÆng-il, 75 ideological subsystem, 11–12, 17–18, 195t. See also Chuch’e idea independent accounting, 120, 142– 144, 196 individualism, 17, 195t, 196 information technology, 187–190 infrastructure, 25, 26 institutional differentiation: between party and military, 96–101, 198 institutional dislocation: economic management and, 138–146; meaning of, 137–138 intellectual-cultural subsystem, 12– 13, 18, 195t; knowledge stagnation in, 180–183 intellectuals: as a quasi class, 12; class status changes of, 174–178; internal enemy, 129–130, 183–186, 195t; of southern origin, 13, 175; old and new, 169, 176–177; party’s guidance of, 185; persecution of, 166–174; reeducation of, 172–174; rehabilitated status of artists, 178–180, 183; systemic dissonance and, 165 interactive capacity, 7, 24–26; adaptive retardation and, 25; coevolution and, 15; definition of, 15; democracy and, 15; internal differentiation and, 15; lack of, 201–203 inter-Korean relations, 57–58, 139, 140, 222n2; aborted summit, 204; armed infiltrations, 86, 204, 230n7;

Basic Agreement, 197, 203; comparison effect, 5; detour diplomacy and, 56, 198; external differentiation, 5, 9; intellectuals and, 174–176; Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, 200; July 4 Joint Declaration, 58; June 15 Joint Declaration, 198; North’s fear of South’s influence, 24, 134; NorthSouth national cooperation, 195t, 198; summit, 189, 190, 197, 204 internal differentiation, 4, 14–19, 20, 24, 81, 96–101, 163, 193, 194; democracy and, 15; disregard of, 16; interactive capacity and, 15, 24– 26. See also complexity, functional differentiation, unofficial internal differentiation international aid, 22t, 202 International Monetary Fund, 26, 199 Iraq War, 201 Jantsch, Erich, 15 KaesÆn Arch, 53 KaesÆng industrial complex, 135, 204, 205 Kang Chin-gÆn, 223n9 Kang Sok Ju, 103, 197 Kang SÆng-san, 136 Kapsan faction, 42 Kelly, James, 199, 200 Khrushchev, Nikita, 86, 108 Kim, Samuel S., 10 Kim Chae-gap, 223n9 Kim Ch’aek University, 182, 188 Kim Ch’ang-bong, 86–87, 178 Kim ChÆng-suk, 32 Kim Dae-jung, 56, 58, 134, 190, 197, 198, 203, 204 Kim Il, 42, 43 Kim Il-ch’Æl, 102 Kim Il-ch’Æng, 85 Kim Il-gyu, 85

Index Kim Il Sung: associate enterprises and, 143; Chuch’e idea and, 12, 47, 106–109; death of 46, 119, 204; dying injunctions of, 94; institutionalization of party committee, 62–65; instruction on proletarian dictatorship, 113–114; legacy in party affairs, 59–65; limitation of power in party, 60; Karyun meeting and, 107; Korean War and, 8–9, 10, 84; Manchurian guerrillas and, 4, 7; Mt. Paektu barracks and, 32; on-spot guidance, 37, 64; personality cult of, 41, 42, 45, 125, 178, 179, 225n26; policy toward intellectuals, 114, 166–178; power expansion, 4–5, 9–10, 61–62, 108; return from Russian Far East, 4; Revolutionary Supreme Leadership of, 128; role for succession, 42– 43; unofficial internal differentiation and, 15; views on socialism, 112–113 Kimilsungism 12, 54, 55, 110, 231n12. See also Chuch’e idea Kim Il Sung University, 5, 36, 46, 167, 168, 188, 220n23 Kim In-mo, 41 Kim Jong Il: Chuch’e idea and, 44, 47, 55, 105–106, 110–111; death of mother, 33–35; disregard of institutions, 98–99; film and art theory, 179; full-time party cadre and, 66–67; general secretary, 99; generous politics, 53–54; growth of, 31–40; guerrilla comrades and, 33– 34, 40, 43; heartfelt gifts to, 160; involvement in party affairs, 2; leadership character of, 45–54, 203, 206; leadership image of, 38–39, 48; management style of, 101–104, 202; military commandership of, 49, 92– 93, 98; military-first politics and, 17, 52, 91–96; myth of birthplace of, 32–33; nuclear weapons develop-

271

ment and, 1; on-spot guidance and, 37–38, 48; party center, 41, 65, 75, 126, 224n19; party committee and, 79; party secretary, 29, 39–40, 41, 57, 89, 109, 178–179; party’s organizational changes and, 65–69; policy toward intellectuals, 18, 129–130, 166, 178–191; Political Committee member, 109–110; political man, 30, 37–40; revolutionary operas and, 40, 43, 179; systemic dissonance and, 13; succession, 7, 30, 41–45, 94, 111, 198; Three Great Revolutions and, 44; tourist industry and, 134; trustbuilding defect, 32–35, 39, 51–52; views on capitalism, 130–133; views on economic management, 120–121; views on foreign economic relations, 133–135; views on masses, 114–117, 126–127; views on ownership, 121; visits to China, 189; visit to Moscow, 36–37 Kim Kwang-chin, 198 Kim KyÆng-h„i, 33, 34, 51 Kim Nam-ch’Æn, 167, 170, 171, 172, 174, 241n6 Kim P’yÆng-il, 51 Kim SÆng-ae, 33, 54, 87, 219n17 Kim SÆng-gap, 87 Kim To-man, 42 Kim TÆk-yÆng, 223n9 Kim Tu-bong, 4, 85 Kim Ung, 85 ˘ ng-ki, 223n9 Kim U Kim YÆl, 170 Kim Yong-bÆm, 223n9 Kim YÆng-ch’un, 102 Kim YÆng-ju, 34, 37, 42 Kim Yong-kyu, 41 Kim YÆng-nam, 99, 103, 136 Kim Young-sam, 204 Ki SÆk-bok, 170, 171 Koizumi Junichiro, 200, 205 Kolkowicz, Roman, 97

272

Index

Korean Artists Proletarian Federation, 240n6 Korean Central Intelligence Agency, 58 Korean People’s Army (KPA): antiJapanese guerrilla tradition and, 7, 88–89; Council of Party Members, 62; Cultural Bureau, 62; domestic and external roles of, 82; establishment of, 88–89; political commissar in, 86–88; relative autonomy from party, 17, 83–85; status change of, 93. See also party-military relations Korean-style revolutionary struggle, 107 Korean War: administration reform during, 236n7; differentiation between two Koreas, 9; factional strife and, 9–10; intellectuals and, 13, 165, 168–172; interpretations of, 8–9; National Liberation War, 6, 46; postwar rehabilitation, 168; power dispersion during, 84–85; Stalin and Mao’s role, 8 Kuran, Timur, 76 Laclau, Ernesto, 132 land reform, 5, 20, 83 Lankov, Andrei, 61 Lasswell, Harold D., 30 Law of National Economic Planning, 196 leadership character, 45–54; comparison between Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, 47; political personality and, 29; types of, 45 Lee Jong-suk, 60 Lee Suk, 21 legitimacy, 17, 19, 30, 37, 40, 55, 75, 80, 93, 94–96, 135, 163, 195t, 198 Lenin, Vladimir, 112, 127, 128, 130– 131 Light Industry Revolution, 117, 141 Lin Biao, 43, 44–45, 110, 221n38 loan sharks, 153–154

local enterprises, 141–142, 151, 152. See also regional self-reliance local latitude, 147–150; comparison to Chinese case, 148; constitutional revision and, 247; famine and, 148; forced autonomy, 149; meaning of, 147; national-local relations, 149– 150; self-sufficiency and, 148–149 Long An model (in Vietnam), 23 Lowenthal, Richard, 16 loyalty vacuum, 93–94 Luhmann, Niklas, 2, 3, 193 MacArthur, Douglas, 35, 168 Maeng Chong-ho, 242n23 management style: competitive model, 102–103; military-first politics and, 102–103; models of, 101–102 Manchurian guerrillas, 4, 5, 7, 84, 105, 125, 214n23 Man’gyÆngdae Revolutionary Academy, 35 Maoism, 11, 12, 44, 54, 110 Mao Zedong, 8, 11, 16, 30, 43, 44, 45, 110, 111, 139, 140 March, James, 14, 16, 77 Marx, Karl, 112, 115, 123, 124, 132, 179 Marxism-Leninism, 5, 11, 12, 54, 60, 110, 112, 123–124, 195t Maturana, Humberto R., 3 means of production, 157, 158, 163 Meetings for the Scrutinizing of Thoughts, 13, 176 military. See KPA, military-first politics, party-military relations military adventurism, 86–87, 90, 230n7 military-first politics, 7, 17, 19, 52, 198–199, 214n25; anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition and, 81, 195t, 198–199; background of, 92–96; management style and, 102–103; meanings of, 81–83, 92; military

Index first and workers later, 91–92; party-military relations and, 82, 96–101; propagation of, 91–92 Mingers, John, 4 missile: Taep’odong, 186, 188–189, 204; KwangmyÆng-song, 187, 247n77 Moscow State University, 37 Mouffe, Chantal, 132 Mt. K„mgang, 40, 134, 204 Mt. Paektu, 32 Mun Ye-bong, 167 Mun Yun-p’il, 179, 180 Najin-SÆnbong Free Economic and Trade Zone, 25, 135 National Defense Commission (NDC), 49, 92, 99, 195t new institutionalism, 16, 138 North Korea (DPRK)-Japan relations, 193; abduction issue, 199; Korean residents in Japan, 182, 190; missile and, 186–187, 199, 204; sanctions, 190; summit, 200, 205 North Korea (DPRK)-United States relations, 25, 56, 197–198, 199, 201– 205; Agreed Framework, 50, 101, 186, 199, 200, 204, 205, 207–210; American forces withdrawal issue, 197; axis of evil, 204; economic sanctions, 1, 6, 205, 213n20; liaison office issue, 49–50; military-first politics and, 82; military’s role in, 100–101; missile issue, 50, 204; normalization issue, 204; nuclear weapons development and, 1, 82; Pueblo incident, 230n7. See also antiimperialism, detour diplomacy, nuclear nuclear: crises, 2, 193, 199, 200, 205; de facto nuclear state, 200–201; deterrence, 205, 249n15, 249n16; game, 205–206; light-water reactors, 199, 200; Non-Proliferation Treaty, 200; uranium enrich-

273 ment program, 199, 200, 205; weapons development, 1, 82. See also North Korea-United States relations

O Chin-u, 7, 42, 92, 102, 198 Odom, William E., 97 oedipus complex, 34–35 Oi, Jean C., 148, 161 O Ki-sÆp, 223n9 Olsen, Johan, 14, 16, 77 ˘ m Ho-sÆk, 170, 171 O ˘ m Kil-sÆn, 179, 180 O openness (or opening up): definition of, 24–25; diplomatic normalizations, 248n8; failure in, 201–206; Kim Jong Il’s views on 130–135; selective economic opening, 195t; systemic viability and, 24–26 Organization and Guidance Department (in WPK), 39–40, 70, 88; party-military relations and, 89–90 ownership, 121, 196, 239n48 Pae Ch’Æl, 242n23 Paek Hak-nim, 33 Paek Hak-soon, 215n29 Paek HyÆng-bok, 242n23 Paek Nam-sun, 103 Paek Nam-un, 167 Paek Yong-ku, 223n9 Paige, Glenn D., 30 Pak Ch’ang-ok, 85, 108, 170, 174 Pak ChÆng-ae, 170 Pak HÆn-yÆng, 4, 62, 84, 167, 170, 172, 174, 241n6; trial of, 242n23 Pak K„m-ch’Æl, 42, 178 Pak Se-yÆng, 167 Pak SÆng-ch’Æl, 42 Pak S„ng-wÆn, 242n23 Pak YÆng-bin, 170 Pak Yong-guk, 42 Pang Ho-san, 85 Parallel Development of the Economy and National Defense, 140

274

Index

Park Chung-hee, 58, 139, 199 party. See WPK party committee: collective leadership in, 71; composition of, 69; elementary party committee, 68, 70, 71–72, 74; institutionalization of, 62–65; limits of, 76, 145–146; management and 145; military and, 62–63, 64, 85–86 party-life criticism, 57; in Defense Ministry, 71–73; in Foreign Ministry, 74–75; intellectuals and, 177; mutual criticism, 72, 75; selfcriticism, 72, 75; strengthening of, 68–69 party-military relations, 62, 64; changes in, 83–91; comparison to Chinese and Vietnamese cases, 83– 84, 97–98; divide-and-rule, 96–100; institutional differentiation, 91– 101; institutionalization of, 85–89; interorganizational appointment, 87–88, 91; Kim Jong Il’s military commandership and, 98; Korean War and, 84; Leninist doctrine and, 96; limits of party’s control over military, 83–85; myths and reality, 100–101; political commissar and, 86–88; state-building and, 83–84; theoretical discussion about, 97 party-state, 11, 16, 17, 81 path dependence, 16, 138, 236n2 patrons, 155–156, 157–160. See also contract People’s Safety Ministry (PSM), 70, 75, 102, 155 P’ibada, 39–40, 43, 180. See also revolutionary operas Political Committee (later Politburo), 41, 42, 84, 95, 96, Political Commission (in Defense Ministry), 62, 64, 70, 71, 73, 84, 86, 98, 104. See also party-military relations political officer, 230n48; self-criticism of, 73; transfer to party, 88. See also party-military relations

political personality, 29–31; analogy to computer, 31; impact of, 31 political psychology, 30, 218–219n7 political subsystem, 11, 17, 81, 195t politicization, 16 power hierarchy, 102 power struggle. See factional strife preference falsification, 76 preferential correlation, 138, 236n2 prime minister, constitutional revision and, 49 private entrepreneurs, 150–157; activities of, 152–153; background of, 150–153; Chinese influence, 151; entrepreneurship, 13, 18, 19, 22, 137, 151, 152, 157, 160, 195t; examples of, 153–157; interdependence with local authorities, 149 production quota, 159, 184 Propaganda and Agitation Department (in WPK), 39–40, 42 property rights: elements of, 160–161; informal transition of, 157–163, 195t; privatization and, 161; transition patterns of, 161 public bond, 154 purge, 42, 61–62, 85, 86–87, 139, 172, 179, 223n9. See also factional strife Putnam, Robert, 211n1 Pyongyang Institute, 59, 167 reference points, 5–10, 57, 137, 163, 166, 193, 194, 195t, 206; binary code and, 19; disclaimers of, 19; selfreproduction and, 6. See also antiimperialism, anti-Japanese guerrilla tradition, socialist principles reform: Chinese and Vietnamese cases, 217n57; conditions of, 215n37; definition of, 22, 217n56; 71 economic measures, 137, 150, 196, 199, 205; systemic dissonance and, 22–23 regional self-reliance, 139–142, 148– 149, 156, 196, 202; background of,

Index 139–140, 236n6; comparison to Chinese case, 139; local budget and, 141–142, 236–237n11; local enterprises and, 141–142 revolutionary mass line, 63, 144 revolutionary operas, 39–40, 43, 66, 81, 88, 179–180, 198 revolutionizing, 69, 123, 177–178, 244n44 Revolutionizing and Intellectualizing the Whole of Society and Converting All People to the Working Class, 183 Revolutionizing Intellectuals and Converting Them to the Working Class, 13, 117, 176–178. See also intellectuals Rhee, Yong Pil, 216n41 Rhee Kun-hoo, 48 Rhee Syngman, 5, 6, 9, 213n15 Richardson, Bill, 100 Rigby, T. H., 11 risk-averse, 205 risk-taking, 80, 205–206 Rosenau, James N., 211n1 routinization of revolution, 16 Safety Commanding Headquarters (in KPA), 103–104 Secretariat, 90, 95, 96 Sejong (in ChosÆn dynasty), 44 self-reproduction, 3–4, 16, 213n17 Shirk, Susan, 226n40 Simon, Herbert A., 96 Sin KyÆng-hwan, 33, 43 Sino-Soviet conflict, 12, 108, 122 Sin Sang-ok, 51, 52, 118, 134 Six-Party Talks, 82 Skilling, Gordon, 101 skip-over strategy, 186–191, 195t, 247n77 SÆ Ch’Æl, 42 socialism, 112–121; betrayal of, 119; collectivism in, 129; complete victory of, 117, 231n19, 232n25; contract in, 118–120; economic

275

management in, 120–121; proletarian dictatorship in, 112–117; supremacy over capitalism, 118; transitional characteristics of, 117– 120 Socialism in Our Own Style, 55, 128– 130 socialist principles, 163, 195t; as a reference point of systemic identity, 6; Chuch’e and, 135; decay of, 194–197; party’s disciplinary tradition and, 69 Socialist Youth League, 38, 74, 76, 109 sociopolitical organism, 124–128; analogy to Christianity, 125–126; leader in, 125–126; masses in, 126– 127; party’s role in, 126–127 software industry, 187, 190–191. See also information technology SÆ Hwi, 85 SÆl ChÆng-sik, 167, 242n23 Solinger, Dorothy J., 24, 158 Songdo College of Political Economy, 175, 243n30, 243n31 Song YÆng, 167 Soviet-Koreans, 4, , 9, 10, 60, 174; alliance with intellectuals of southern origin, 169–172, 241n6; August Incident and, 85, 108; background of, 60; Korean War and, 84; leniency toward Communists of Workers’ Party of South Korea, 62, 242n17; party’s organizational affairs and, 60. See also factional strife Soviet Union, 6, 20, 43, 100, 108, 119, 128–129, 165 Stalin, Joseph, 6, 8, 11, 30, 43, 48, 59, 61, 108, 222n3 Stalinism, 11, 54 state-building, 4–5, 6, 166–168 State Council, 68, 79 state-owned enterprises, 142–143, 151 State Planning Committee, 120, 142– 144 state president, 49, 58, 99

276

Index

State Security Agency (SSA), 75, 102, 103 Strengthening of the Three Revolutionary Potentials, 175 Strong State, 55, 189 subsystem: definition of, 10; dual operation of, 18. See also economic subsystem, ideological subsystem, intellectual-cultural subsystem, political subsystem Suh, Dae-Sook, 32, 42, 82 Sun, Yan, 23 Sunshine Policy, 135, 203 supreme commander, 9, 92, 98, 99, 178 Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA): constitutional revision and, 49; Standing Committee of, 99 Suzuki Masayuki, 41, 132 system: closed system, 3; environment and, 2; interactivity capacity of, 24–26; open system, 3 systemic dissonance, 13–22, 163–164, 201, 205; conjunctures of, 20–22; meaning of, 13–14, 194; reform and, 22–23; sources of, 18–19 systemic identity: differentiation and, 4; emergence of system (statebuilding) and, 4–5; North Korea and, 2, 3–13; reference points of, 5–10 systemic viability: openness and, 24–26 systems theory, 2; development of, 211–212n2, 212n7; holism and individualism, 8, 214n26 Taylor, Brian D., 87 Ten Principles for the Establishment of the Chuch’e Idea, 17, 93, 110; party-life criticism and, 72, 73; personality cult and, 70 Three Great Revolutions, 44, 115, 225–226n37; continuous revolution through generations, 115, 180;

technological revolution, 187, 225n37; work team members, 245n53; work-team movement of, 77, 78, 110, 180–181 Training Institute for Security Officers, 59 trust-building defect, 32–35, 39, 51–52 unified and detailed planning, 142–144 unofficial internal differentiation 16, 17–18, 25, 157, 163 Varela, Francisco J., 3 Vietnam War, 139, 175 Wada Haruki, 81, 88 wage: differential-, 118; fixed-, 118, 119 Walder, Andrew G., 161 Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, 190, 205, 213n20 Weber, Max, 30 Winter, David G., 31 Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK): antiJapanese guerrilla tradition and, 7; bylaw of, 7, 42, 99; Central Military Committee of, 86, 227–228n11; consolidation of power, 58; decline of, 55, 75–79, 94–96, 195t; democratic centralism in, 128; discipline of, 55, 57, 65, 78, 79; emblem of, 165; guidance role of, 17, 62, 144– 146; institutional emergency of, 95; mass party, 59–62, 222n9; membership increase, 62; Military Committee of, 86, 96, 227–228n11; national crisis and, 80; organizational renovation of, 67–69; organizational viewpoint of, 127 Workers’ Party of South Korea: factional strife and 4, 62, 242n17; intellectuals of southern origin and, 167, 169, 170–172, 174–176

Index working class, 6, 18, 46, 59, 61, 197; consciousness of, 185; intellectuals and, 176–178; masses and, 112, 114– 117; working-classization, 69, 123 Yanan veterans, 4, 59, 174 Yang HyÆng-sÆp, 136 Yi Chae-dÆk, 33 Yi Chong-ok, 240n5 Yi Chu-ha, 223n9 Yi Hu-rak, 58 Yi Hyo-sun, 42, 178 Yi Kang-guk, 242n23 Yi Ki-yÆng, 167, 240n6 Yi Kwang-su, 167 Yim Hwa, 167, 171, 172, 174, 240n6, 242n23 Yi MyÆn-sang, 179

Yi Na-yÆng, 178 Yi P’il-gyu, 85 Yi Pong-wÆn, 87, 88, 93 Yi PyÆng-nam, 167 Yi S„ng-gi 167, 168, 240n5 Yi S„ng-yÆp, 172, 242n23 Yi T’ae-jun, 167, 171, 174, 241n6 Yi Tong-ch’un, 87 Yi Tong-gyu, 167 Yi WÆn-jo, 167, 242n23 YÆnsan’gun, 30 Yun Ki-chÆng, 167 Yun Kong-h„m, 85 Yun Sun-dal, 242n23 Zhao Ziyang, 49 Zhou Enlai, 45 Zhukov, Georgi, 86–87

277


POLITICAL SCIENCE / ASIAN STUDIES

NORTH KOREA UNDER KIM JONG IL From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance Sung Chull Kim North Korea has long been a country of mystique, both provoking two nuclear crises and receiving aid from the international community and South Korea in more recent times. North Korea under Kim Jong Il examines how internal changes in North Korea since the early 1970s have structured that nation’s apparently provocative nuclear diplomacy and recent economic reform measures. To understand these changes, author Sung Chull Kim uncovers relatively unknown internal aspects of the country under Kim Jong Il’s leadership. His account, based on a thorough examination of primary sources, traces the origins, consolidation, and dissonance of North Korea’s systemic identity. He reveals how official and unofficial developments in the domains of North Korea’s politics, ideology, economics, and intellectual-cultural affairs have brought about systemwide duality, particularly between socialist principles embedded in the official ideology and economic institutions. “This book focuses not only upon regime change within North Korea, but also on the personal qualities of Kim Jong Il and his father. It goes beyond the usual sort of political analysis to use systems principles. The result is the most comprehensive and valuable book on North Korea to date.”—Kenneth D. Bailey, author of Sociology and the New Systems Theory: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis Sung Chull Kim is Associate Professor of Northeast Asian Studies at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan. State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu

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Escape from Camp 14- One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

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