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As all our readers are aware, North Korea is frequently described as the world's only communist monarchy and it is indeed an absolute monarchy in all but name ― as the relatively recent succession of Kim Jong-un has once again confirmed.
However, when in the late 1970s policy analysts first heard rumors that Kim Il-sung (the country's founding father) had decided to promote his son Kim Jong-il as his successor, most observers were surprised and suspicious.
Indeed, while communism has shown itself to be rather prone to building hereditary privileges, the inheritance of supreme state power has always been unthinkable in the Socialist bloc. After all, none of Stalin's three children ever had serious political ambitions, and in fact never even occupied any political positions (one of his sons was an air force general, but kept a safe political distance from the Kremlin). The same is applicable to China's Chairman Mao and his children.
When the promotion finally happened, the breach with tradition had become obvious. However, it is remarkable that in the official ideology North Korea has always denied the hereditary nature of its top leadership. The official story is that Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un were promoted to high office because they geniuses of leadership, not because of who their fathers' were.
According to the official story, it is a sheer accident of fate that the most brilliant and popular candidates for the top job just happened to be born to the current holder of this job.
This is the reason why the North Korean propaganda machine has always gone to extremes to present the heirs to the throne as truly popular. It was important the leadership had no choice but to bend to popular demands and promote the young genius.
In both the case of Kim Jong-il in the 1970s and that of his son in 2009-11 similar devices were employed. North Koreans were told at confidential indoctrination sessions of the great deeds of the new leader and were also ordered to memorize songs that extolled their virtues.
For example, from 2009 North Koreans were ordered to memorize a song called "Footsteps," this song in a remarkably nebulous way alluded to the emerging genius of the Kim family whose presence and great virtues of leadership was increasingly felt by the lucky people of North Korea.
For North Korean officials it soon became possible to say that the entire North Korean people were full of admiration for the emerging leader. His promotion seemingly therefore became unavoidable – but of course, nothing to do with the reactionary and feudal principle of "hereditary power succession."
Only in the last couple of years were their some signs of change in this approach.
The same is applicable to the hereditary principle in other parts of North Korean life. In essence, North Korea can be described as a quasi-feudal state whose population is divided into hereditary castes. The major criterion that constitutes the system is what an individual's male ancestors were doing around 1945.
Descendants of colonial era landlords, clerks in the Japanese colonial government and the like belong to the excluded and despised "hostile class" ― deprived of the right to reside in big cities or enter good colleges. Conversely, descendants of former war heroes and anti-Japanese fighters (so long as the latter did not get themselves in trouble with the Kim family) are included in the "core class" whose members are alone eligible for mid-to-high level administrative jobs.
As a matter of fact, the same tendency is also observable in the history of other communist states: Leninism has shown itself to being surprisingly well disposed toward nepotism among its elite, this group had too much power and were largely free from outside pressures. Nonetheless, in no other country was this system formalized to the levels seen in North Korea.
Nonetheless, North Korea's official ideology is steeped in the language of socialism and social progress. Therefore, the existence of hereditary castes is never discussed or even admitted in North Korean publications. When forced to explain the reasons for the existence of this system in unofficial settings, North Korean propagandists usually say that one's family is vital for one's individual development.
Therefore, they continue, only individuals with a good family background can inherit the correct attitude toward the revolution, party and leader. Thus it is only natural that such people should be given preferential treatment when considered for important appointments.
Thus North Korea has managed to combine the features of a quasi-feudal society with an ideology that explicitly emphasizes equality and a deep suspicion of hereditary privileges.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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