WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- North Korea maintains a labyrinth of pervasive security agencies and informants to control the country's 24 million people, a report said Thursday.
The North has three main security agencies -- the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security and the Military Security Command -- and this internal security apparatus, built under former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, will continue to be a key element of new leader Kim Jong-un's political control, according to the 163-page report published by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK).
The HRNK is a nongovernmental organization in Washington, campaigning for improving human rights conditions in North Korea.
"For sixty years, the internal security apparatus has ensured the survival of the Kim family dictatorship," said North Korean leadership specialist Ken E. Gause, who wrote the report, "Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: and Examination of North Korea's Police State."
"Whether or not North Korea collapses, evolves, or continues to muddle through will depend a great deal on the viability of this all-pervasive apparatus," he added.
Gause, senior researcher at CNA Strategic Studies' International Affairs Group, based in Alexandria, Va., said it is still hard to figure out the North's intention behind the sudden dismissal of its top military commander, Ri Yong-ho, and the appointment of leader Kim Jong-un as "marshal" of the republic.
"North Korea's intent is still up in the air," he said. "We will have to wait and see."
He was speaking at a forum, co-hosted by HRNK and the Korea Economic Institute, to mark the launch of his report, a result of years of work.
"In 2012, the North Korean regime finds itself faced with many problems that threaten internal stability," he said. "Not only is the country facing another year of food shortages, but Kim Jong-il's death raises many questions about the regime's stability at the top.
The information cordon that once surrounded the country has deteriorated, and information about the outside world filters in through cell phones, DVDs and surreptitious radio and television monitoring."
Roberta Cohen, co-chair of HRNK, said Pyongyang will be tempted to tighten internal security controls despite the new leader's push for some political reform.
"Even if Kim Jong-un wanted to reform North Korea's political system, he will come up against security staff intent on purging, arbitrarily arresting and meting out inhumane treatment to all those perceived as threatening to the Kim family's continuance in power," Cohen said.