North Korea is Infamously known for its oppressive totalitarian state controlled by the continuous reign Kim family regime, now headed by Kim Jong Un, through a ruthless system of totalitarian control. Photo by Korean Central News Agency/EPA
Executive director’s note: This paper is extracted from Mathew Ha’s ongoing Ph.D. research.
Abstract
This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the overall social and political changes that have developed in North Korea following the development of underground black markets in response to the Arduous March famine in the 1990’s. The objective of this paper is to provide an informed assessment of the revolutionary potential inside North Korea based on these major changes. To conduct this analysis, this paper primarily employs qualitative methods that comprehensively review and synthesize the relevant literature on political revolutions and social protest by leading experts such as Dr. Jack Goldstone. Upon conducting this literature review, the paper then juxtaposes these expert assessments to the historical narrative of what occurred inside North Korea to evaluate the significance of these major social and political changes induced by these developing markets. Overall, this paper finds that while North Korea experienced major social and political changes due to the development of these private markets. The populace is still far from reaching the capacity to initiate a political revolution, primarily due to the lack of elite defections to their cause.
Introduction
In the current global political landscape, a nation-state that truly stands out among all is the “hermit kingdom” of Northeast Asia, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or more simply, North Korea. Infamously known for its oppressive totalitarian state, controlled by the continuous reign Kim family regime through a ruthless system of totalitarian control. The regime boasts one of the most egregious human rights track records worldwide over its populace of 26 million people. The Kim regime has been in power for over 70 years, enduring multiple changes, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Arduous March famine that claimed the lives of millions of North Korean citizens, as well as Covid-19, which many anticipated could lead to a collapse of the ruling family regime. Yet despite these major events political change has not occurred. The question that looms is whether political change is possible in North Korea.
Most earlier assessments focused on external factors, such as geopolitical and economic shocks. However, the focus of this paper will be on providing a precise but speculative evaluation for the possibility of long-term political change induced by internal factors, such as a popular revolution, considering how North Korea’s domestic political environment has drastically changed in the last two plus decades. A critical event that will be this paper’s central focus is the grassroots-led popular uprising in 2009 that was a direct response to the regime’s policy of a revaluation of the currency. North Korea experienced a brief moment of domestic backlash that saw limited acts of protest and even small but violent skirmishes against authorities. It surprised many to see these open acts of defiance in such an infamously politically closed regime.
This paper will then answer the following question: Why was this act of political protest in 2009 only limited to these minor skirmishes and limited acts of hostility, rather than an armed uprising despite the dramatic changes to the underlying social and political components defining North Korean citizens?
The paper will be organized in the following way. First, it will provide a concise but comprehensive literature review on extant scholarship evaluating the necessary conditions conducive to fomenting revolutions. Second, it will then provide a brief overview of the vast socioeconomic and political changes attributed to the development of grassroots markets and the dissemination of foreign media that has been brought in thanks to North Korean defectors, which drastically changed the social and political environment inside North Korea that led to this critical event in 2009. Upon establishing this contextual overview, the paper will then provide the overall evaluation based on the established conditions laid out in the literature review and the contextual summary surveying the overall evolution of modern-day North Korea. The intent is to evaluate what limited these acts of political protest in 2009, despite the vast changes that affected North Korea’s populace.
Methods
Primarily, this paper will rely on qualitative methods of conducting a comprehensive literature review of the extant academic scholarship on revolutionary theory and the key variables impacting political change. The key findings of this review will be then applied to a comprehensive understanding of the historical narrative of what social and political changes occurred inside North Korea following the development of these markets. Overall, the application of these key theoretical findings will allow for the evaluation of these past events to understand the broader revolutionary implications of these major historic changes,
Literature Review
In the extant scholarship focused on evaluating the likelihood of political revolutions, Dr. Jack Goldstone of George Mason University is a leading scholar. In his renowned text: Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction, Goldstone identifies five critical components for a revolution to emerge. He adds that one can compare revolutions to earthquakes because one may identify these general mechanisms conducive to facilitating a revolution, but this information alone will not predict when these cataclysmic political events occur. Moreover, the five components that Goldstone establishes include the following. First is a sense of economic and fiscal strain. Second is alienation and opposition among the ruling regime’s elite. Third is widespread popular anger over injustice, and fourth is a persuasive unifying ideology to unite the masses and elite. Fifth and finally is favorable international relations. Among these five listed critical components Goldstone does not suggest that one amongst them is the most important, but he also adds how beyond these underlying components, there must also be five structural conditions allowing for those five aforementioned components to have a more formative impact because these five structural conditions are long term trends that build up over time to create unstable equilibrium. An unstable equilibrium is essential because it is in these environments that a populace turns against its own ruling regime.
These five structural conditions are: First, demographic change. Second, a shift in the pattern of international relations. Third is uneven or dependent economic development. Fourth is newly developing patterns of exclusion/or discrimination within the populace. And fifth is the evolution of a ruling personalist regime. Moreover, these five structural conditions, as well as the aforementioned five critical components, serve as helpful indicators to identify the precursors to revolutions and events of major political change. Identifying these conditions alone is not enough to predict when revolutions precisely occur, as these events are unpredictable, but one can use these as early signs to anticipate the possibility of political change.
Goldstone’ work will provide the basis for the evaluation of potential poltical change in North Korea.
Historical Narrative: North Korea’s Socio-Political Evolution Since 1994
1994 served as a major year for North Korea. This was the year the nation’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, and the heart of the regime’s cult of personality, passed away, which also followed the collapse of North Korea’s largest foreign benefactor, the Soviet Union. Specifically, North Korea experienced both major internal and external political shocks that also coincided with major natural disasters that devastated North Korea’s agricultural sector and laid the seeds for a major famine that would contribute to the death of millions of North Koreans. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to North Korea losing a major source of economic support which forced the regime to close several of its key programs and services, such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) that provided food and everyday needs for the populace, thus aggravating the conditions induced by the famine. This led to this period being dubbed as the Arduous March by the ruling regime. While the regime still claims these events only claimed the lives of 225,000 to 235,000 people, experts at the Wilson Center estimate that the total number of deaths was more likely to be between 2.5 and 3.5 million people.[1] Amidst this devastating situation, the North Korean populace responded to the loss of the PDS by creating their own markets where farmers would sell their excess crop yields. These private market practices in fact occurred before these famines and the PDS collapse. Research by South Korean think tanks such as the Korean Institute for National Unification shows these markets initially emerged as early as the 1970s when farmers had the capability to produce excess crops to sell.[2] The major events of the 1990s saw a drastic expansion and growth in these markets in terms of their size and importance, directly as a result of the collapsed PDS.[3]
From these humble beginnings in the early 1990s, North Korea’s grassroots market system drastically expanded in size and geographic scope across the whole country, based on satellite imagery analysis that found these markets emerging in at least 12 provincial capital cities. These markets were becoming more critical to North Korean everyday life.[4] More specifically, Daily NK, a digital news publication based in South Korea operated by North Korean defectors, conducted a comprehensive study of North Korea’s underground markets in 2017 from which they found that by 2017 North Korea operated 387 underground market facilities across 14 different provinces.[5] The leading experts of North Korean political economy Steph Haggard and Marcus Noland argue that the overall the political significance of this expansion of grassroots markets is that market expansion reflects a significant decline in regime influence and a fraying of state political control. These markets not only provide economic benefits but also sociopolitical benefits, as they offer citizens an autonomous social space for civil society.[6] Additionally these markets serve as an opportunity for North Korean citizens to practice a limited degree of entrepreneurialism. Dr. Victor Cha of Georgetown University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) argues this entrepreneurialism tied directly to a sense of individualistic thinking that poses a direct threat to the ruling regime’s control over its populace.[7]
Victor Cha’s initial assessment of the social and political impact of these market developments proved to be true based on subsequent polling data surveying both recent North Korean defectors and those still inside North Korea. In 2008, South Korea’s Seoul National University conducted a series of surveys with North Korean defectors who resettled in the South. These surveys found that there has been a growing sense of dissatisfaction against the Kim regime over time.[8] In addition to polling data of North Korean defectors leading think tanks such as CSIS conducted a groundbreaking poll in 2016 inside North Korea with 36 different correspondents who came from eight different provinces. The CSIS poll found that five of the 36 surveyed correspondents expressed open discontent with the ruling Kim Jong Un regime. Also, all of the correspondents stated they no longer relied on the regime’s public services such as the revived PDS but rather used these grassroots underground markets for their everyday survival. Along those lines, the survey also found that these correspondents expressed the most frustration and anger over the regime’s attempted interference with these market-based activities.[9] These survey data findings then tie directly into Victor Cha’s assessment that North Korea’s private markets have become entrenched as a fixture of life that now is virtually impossible to uproot.[10]
The greatest source of frustration from North Korean citizens was regime interference with private market activity, according to survey findings. This anger became most clearly demonstrated in November 2009, when the regime enacted a redenomination of North Korean currency that essentially wiped out the earnings and savings of North Korea’s private market traders and operators that drastically impacted the markets. Additionally, the regime followed up on this currency policy by temporarily and forcibly closing down the markets in an effort to restore regime control over its populace. These policy decisions, however led to an unprecedented reaction by the North Korean populace, who responded with anger and hostility rather than passive obedience. While there was no violent overthrow or coup, there were limited and contained acts of protest and hostility that included increased suicides, isolated disputes between citizens and police authorities, and the spread of anti-regime political graffiti. Although these limited acts of protest do not come close to be characterized as a political revolution, they demonstrate early signs of political change inside North Korea, which was made more obvious by the ruling regime’s reaction to these 2009 protests. The regime not only rolled back these earlier policies and reopened these markets but also purged and executed one of its own leading cadres, Park Nam Gi, who became the scapegoat and source of blame as the mastermind of these reforms.[11]
In addition to these limited acts of protest other examples of the regime’s decay in influence is evident in the weakening of regime monitoring institutions, such as its neighborhood watch system known as the Inminban system. This system served as the regime’s security apparatus’ internal monitoring mechanism that forced citizens to live in designated closed neighborhoods and monitor one another to report political crimes, which was monitored by a regime-appointed neighborhood leader. However, the growth and entrenchment of these markets provided North Koreans with their own reserves of cash from their market-based activities. This allowed citizens to use these extra forms of cash reserves as bribes for regime security officials such as the neighborhood watch leaders to turn a blind eye towards normally punishable actions, such as relocating homes, which is strongly prohibited under North Korean law. This evidence shows how there have been movements inside the country as North Korean citizens try to undercut this regime-mandated neighborhood watch program.[12] Specifically, Ken Gause, writing for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, found that in the city of Pyongsung nearly one fourth of its Inminban have moved out to other locations, according to defector testimony.[13] Moreover, the growing influence of cash bribes serves as an example of a critical tool of resistance for North Korean citizens to undermine the ruling regime’s tools of control.
Overall, this act of political protest in 2009 in direct response to the regime’s targeted action against these markets, as well as the ongoing impact on regime security practices and institutions such as the neighborhood watch system, serve as signs of major political change inside North Korea, which warrants a closer evaluation of what the trajectory of this political change will be.
Discussion: Evaluating the Long-term Prospects for Change
Applying Jack Goldstone’s five critical components can help one evaluate why this act was limited to only disparate acts of resistance rather than a full-scale armed uprising that has revolutionary implications, as well as anticipate the longer-term likelihood of political change. Among Goldstone’s five outlined components, this event only saw two out of the five outlined components defining the protesting group of citizens. These two components were a widespread popular anger over an act of injustice, which here was the currency revaluing policy and the forced closure of the markets. The second was to an extent the economic and fiscal strain which motivated the Kim regime to enact this policy. Several other components were missing.
Most notably missing was the structural component of alienation/opposition among regime elites. This missing component of the lack of alienation among elites, particularly within the military, is what undermined the potential magnitude of this rebellious response. This component is important because it can help strengthen multiple aspects of a revolutionary body of protesters. Specifically, elite defectors could serve as critical leaders who have access to necessary resources and tools and the political charisma to form a unifying ideology to organize and unify the masses. Additionally, Goldstone explains how elite defections are essential for revolutions to occur because if military elites defect away from the incumbent leadership to side with the masses, these elite defectors can serve as the effective leaders to properly equip and mobilize these aggravated masses to forcibly change and target the regime. However, in 2009, North Korea saw no dissatisfaction among the regime elite, which left the populace without effective leadership and without the resources to organize to orchestrate a more organized and cohesive means of rebellion, which resulted in only limited forms of protests.
Moreover, then, for the continuous development of political change and to strengthen the prospect for more revolutionary conditions, the next step would be for North Koreans to exacerbate the development of more disunity within the political and military elites, which could be possible through these emerging markets by increasing the reserve of cash to use as bribes to attract elites away from depending on the regime for their livelihood. There has been evidence that common North Korean citizens can further exploit these emerging markets to widen elite fissures to increase the chance for potential defections, because there is growing evidence that members of North Korea’s political and economic elite are also dependent on the private markets more than the regime’s provisions. This is because, since 1994 when North Korea’s regime-led command economy collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union, the North Korean regime enacted a new policy to force all of its government agencies to independently fund themselves due to the regime’s lack of resources to finance their activities.[14]
This cut off of regime financial subsidies forced these government leaders to seek alternative monetary sources, as the regime still demanded mandatory “loyalty funds.”[15] This in turn forced these government officials to rely on private market activities to generate the revenue to operate their agencies as well as pay these mandatory funds. As the ruling regime remains economically strained due to the impact of international economic sanctions, it may be more limited in offering the pay and sustenance to its elite, thereby inserting an exploitable wedge for the populace to use with cash bribes to gain support among members of the elite to seek their defection to their greater political cause.
Beyond the lack of elite defections, another missing component is the lack of a unifying narrative and ideology to collectively mobilize the masses, which speaks also to the lack of an effective and influential leader, which may be addressed with more elite defections. Consequently, without this unifying ideology and a vision for what the populace seeks to change those seeking political change lack an achievable long-term goal, which in turn has limited the development of more organized forms of rebellion that has revolutionary potential in response to the events of 2009.
Conclusion
In sum, North Korea indeed has demonstrated significant signs of internal political change, but a closer evaluation of the internal social and political conditions reveal that it is still far from seeing any kind of revolutionary act of that will cause political change. This is mainly due to the lack of elite defections and the lack of leadership, which in turn underscores the importance of the aspects of individual agency in impacting the likelihood of revolutions beyond just the structural factors, as the major social changes initiated by these emerging markets initiated key structural developments that allowed North Koreans to exercise a degree of independence. Yet, to see a leap to more organized and effective forms of political change, the next step would be to cultivate the development of these leaders and organizing ideologies, which is tied to the key structural component of increasing elite defections. It is only then that one will likely see a more organized form of political opposition then what was witnessed in 2009.
Author’s bio: Mathew Ha is an adjunct fellow with FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI). He is also a Ph.D. student at George Mason University’s Schar School of Government and Policy Studies focusing on political science, international relations, and comparative politics. He completed his master’s in Asian studies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a concentration on the politics and security of Asia. Previously, Mathew served as a research analyst with FDD’s North Korea and East Asia programs, where his research focused on North Korean sanctions evasion and illicit economic schemes as well as the Kim regime’s evolving cyber capabilities and U.S. policies on the Korean Peninsula and East Asia. His research expertise at FDD focuses on issues related to the Korean Peninsula and the threats posed by Pyongyang.
Works Cited
How did the North Korean famine happen?” Wilson Center April 30, 2002, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/how-did-the-north-korean-famine-happen
Park, Hyeong-jung, and Choi, Sahyun, “Fiscal Segmentation and Economic Changes in North Korea.” Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU)-Study Series 14-05, May 2014, 14-16
Lankov, Andrei. “The Resurgence of a North Korean Market Economy” Carnegie Moscow Center (January 2016), 5-6
[1] Katzeff Silberstein, Benjamin. “Growth and Geography of Markets in North Korea: New Evidence from Satellite Imagery” US Korea Institute at SAIS, (October 2015)
[1] Daily NK. The Creation of the North Korean Market System. Green People Publishing Company, (Seoul, 2017)
Stephen Haggard, and Marcus Noland. Witness to transformation: refugee insights into North Korea. 100-101
Cha, Victor The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future, (New York: Ecco 2012), 445.
Fifield, Anna. “What do North Korean’s think about Kim Jong UN? This survey tries to find out.” The Washington Post. November 12, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/what-do-north-koreans-think-about-kim-jong-un-this-survey-tries-to-find-out/2016/11/01/2a2cc357-34a9-464c-b32f-1291d16dd1b0_story.html
Park, Hyeong-jung, and Choi, Sahyun, “Fiscal Segmentation and Economic Changes in North Korea.” Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU)-Study Series 14-05, May 2014
Beyond Parallel, “Meager Rations, Banned Markets, and Growing Anger Towards Government.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Korea Chair. October 3, 2016, https://beyondparallel.csis.org/view-inside-north-korea-meager-rations-banned-markets-and-growing-anger-toward-govt/
Cha, Victor The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future, (New York: Ecco 2012),
Choe, Sang-Hun. “As Economy Grows, North Korea’s Grip on Society is Tested.” The New York Times, April 30, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html
Ken E. Gause. Coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment: an examination of the North Korean police state. Washington D.C: The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea-2013. 43-50
Hastings, Justin V. A Most Enterprising Country: North Korea in the Global Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.
Mathew J Ha, “A compromise for control: understanding North Korea’s private Market economy” Georgetown University, May 8, 2017.
[1] “How did the North Korean famine Happen?” Wilson Center April 30, 2002, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/how-did-the-north-korean-famine-happen
[2] Park, Hyeong-jung, and Choi, Sahyun, “Fiscal Segmentation and Economic Changes in North Korea.” Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU)-Study Series 14-05, May 2014, 14-16
[3] Lankov, Andrei. “The Resurgence of a North Korean Market Economy” Carnegie Moscow Center (January, 2016), 5-6
[4] Katzeff Silberstein, Benjamin. “Growth and Geography of Markets in North Korea: New Evidence from Satellite Imagery” US Korea Institute at SAIS, (October 2015)
[5] Daily NK. The Creation of the North Korean Market System. Green People Publishing Company, (Seoul, 2017), 26
[6] Stephen Haggard, and Marcus Noland. Witness to transformation: refugee insights into North Korea. 100-101
[7] Cha, Victor The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future, (New York: Ecco 2012), 445.
[8] Fifield, Anna. “What do North Korean’s think about Kim Jong Un? This survey tries to find out.” The Washington Post. November 12, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/what-do-north-koreans-think-about-kim-jong-un-this-survey-tries-to-find-out/2016/11/01/2a2cc357-34a9-464c-b32f-1291d16dd1b0_story.html
[9] Beyond Parallel, “Meager Rations, Banned Markets, and Growing Anger Towards Government.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Korea Chair. October 3, 2016, https://beyondparallel.csis.org/view-inside-north-korea-meager-rations-banned-markets-and-growing-anger-toward-govt/
[10] Cha, Victor The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future, (New York: Ecco 2012), pp. 447
[11] Choe, Sang-Hun. “As Economy Grows, North Korea’s Grip on Society is Tested.” The New York Times, April 30, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html
[12] Mathew J Ha, “A compromise for control: understanding North Korea’s private Market economy” Georgetown University, May 8, 2017.
[13] Ken E. Gause. Coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment: an examination of the North Korean police state. Washington D.C: The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea-2013. 43-50
[14]Park, Hyeong-jung, and Choi, Sahyun, “Fiscal Segmentation and Economic Changes in North Korea.” Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU)-Study Series 14-05, May 2014, 7-38
[15] Hastings, Justin V. A Most Enterprising Country: North Korea in the Global Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. 105
