Understanding the North Korean regime

“Understanding the North Korean Regime” by Atsuhito Isozaki

By Choi Yearn-hong

I am anxious to read any book or monograph that will help me understand the incomprehensible North Korean regime. How many people in the world can understand the totalitarian country ruled by one family over 70 years since 1945? Under that family rule, many people have starved to death, as the government funded heavy arms development programs, from those for nuclear warheads to intercontinental missiles.

The Woodrow Wilson Center released a monograph authored by one of its scholars, Atsuhito Isozaki, who is also affiliated with Keio University in Japan. His proposition is as follows: North Korea’s military-first policy, set up by Kim Jong-il, is a necessary condition of the third-generation hereditary rule over North Korea. In addition to Kim Il-sung’s Juche ideology, Kim Jong-il established the so-called Sungun policy that made possible the National Defense Commission and its chairman’s control of North Korea ultimately. To validate his proposition, Atsuhito used North Korean primary resources, Japanese documents and South Korean reports and scholarly papers on North Korea. He seems to be a young promising scholar on North Korean affairs.

It is interesting for Atsuhito to borrow fellow Japanese scholar Ayako Masuhara’s model of personal rule in North Korea. According to the author, “personal rule” was made possible by the North Korean Constitutional Amendment with the party-led military-first policy. Personal rule relies on state violence or violence by the state, and constant surveillance of people by the party cell leaders in all organizations, from elementary schools to colleges, collective farms and factories, military organizations, and towns and counties. The education and indoctrination of the Juche and Sungun ideologies of people, from young children to adults in all walks of life, have been shaping the North Korean regime for over 70 years, without the threats of a revolution or military coup d’etat.

It seems that the Workers Party and the National Defense Commission rule the country. However, only the supreme leader rules both the party and the commission, which glorify the revolutionary bloodline as the most legitimate succession of power.

I tend to agree with the personal rule, from Kim Il-sung to his son, Kim Jong-il, and then to his grandson, Kim Jong-un. However, I do not necessarily agree with the author’s view of the Confucian tradition supporting the personal rule over three generations. Confucius never mentioned and justified the three-generation rule over such a long period of time. It may be true that the dark age of the Joseon Kingdom, the Japanese colonial rule over Korea, and the totalitarian rule by the Stalin-like dictatorship after the Liberation in 1945 did not provide a bright light to the North Korean people, so that they have been accepting the hereditary rule supported by the Workers Party and the National Defense Commission. Freedom of thought is not allowed, and complete control of mind continues. Freedom of travel is not allowed in North Korea, worse than in the Joseon Kingdom, in which people could freely move from town to another. North Korean people need a permit to travel outside of their hometown. Visiting Pyongyang is a celebratory experience of a lifetime to most country people. I heard that story from a North Korean defector and a movie director who settled in South Korea and who visited Washington last year.

This research monograph emphasized the international situational factors that do not effectively regulate the North Korean nuclear program. They were ineffective. The United States and South Korea asked, relied and expected China’s intervention in denuclearizing North Korea. However, China never intended to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambition until most recently. I still have some doubts on China’s role in this matter. The United States could not press North Korea due to its Middle East priority. South Korea had a wishful thinking on China’s role to control North Korea’s nuclear program but never plotted a regime change. The Washington Post editorials have advocated a regime change as the only solution to North Korea’s nuclear development program.

Atsuhito used North Korean daily newspaper Rodong Sinmun and monthly magazine Kulloja, among other materials, for his research paper. They are no doubt useful primary sources. However, North Korean daily and monthly publications are all propaganda materials. In this research work, I do not see much about North Korean defectors who witnessed the shaky ground of Kim Jong-un’s power. The author claimed to have uses U.S. and Russian military documents that were disclosed after a certain time period, but I did not see those, either. I am sure that South Korean materials are more readily available from North Korean defectors, including high-level diplomats and government officials. In addition, Chinese information on North Korean affairs is now open to the outside world. I wonder whether the author used all the best available information for this research project.

I hope more scholarly works will be done for the demise of North Korea, or at least regime change. Why? The North Korean regime has been committing crimes against humanity. I met one Columbia-educated historian who predicted the demise of North Korea in the next 30 years. Thirty years is too long a time to wait!

Dr. Choi is a retired political scientist with a long teaching career in the United States and Korea.