‘Don’t worry. I am still in charge’
Published: 20 Oct. 2024, 19:40
Park Won-gon
The author is a professor of North Korea studies at Ewha Womans University.
The North Korean collapse theory is surfacing again. If North Korea crumbles, it means the collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime or the fall of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) itself. The regime will collapse when the Baekdu bloodline rule maintained by the Kim dynasty ends and a new leader or political system emerges. The DPRK will fall apart if the communist regime transitions to a liberal democracy. In that case, the possibility of unification will also grow.
The idea of a sudden change in the North was first raised in 1994 — shortly after the death of Kim Il Sung in the post-Cold War era. Many believed that the regime would collapse since the founding father died. Some experts even suggested specific times of the collapse after his death. The collapse theory appeared four times after drastic changes in the North’s internal and external situations. But the regime could survive for three generations.
Nevertheless, the possibility of a sudden change in the North increases. First, there are signs of serious ideological relaxation in the society. The regime has enacted three laws warning against the influx of South Korean culture and language — such as the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act (December 2020), the Youth Education Guarantee Act (September 2021) and the Pyongyang Culture and Language Protection Act (January 2023). Such legislation reflects the regime’s deepening anxiety about the fast spread of South Korean culture in the North. If a wife calls her husband oppa, as many South Koreans do, she will be punished — and if North Koreans watch South Korean dramas, they must receive up to 15 years of brainwashing at a labor camp.
North Korea claims to be “a law-governed state.” But unlike other countries that regard the Constitution as the highest law, the North placed the Workers’ Party’s bylaws above the Constitution — and put the supreme leader’s directives above the bylaws. In other words, Kim Jong-un’s words are mightier than any laws. The North’s rush to legislation to control its own people illustrates the regime’s deepening trouble in implementing the leader’s orders.
Second, a sharp increase in defections among North Korean elites is also evidence of the weakening of the regime. According to recent data from our Ministry of Unification, 54 North Korean elites defected to the South from 1997 to 2011 during the Kim Jong-il era, but the number soared to 134 after the launch of the Kim Jong-un regime. The proportion of elite defectors also rose from 0.23 percent in the Kim Jong-il era to 1.22 percent during the Kim Jong-un era. After the North closed its borders in 2020 due to Covid-19, more of its diplomats living overseas defected to the South. Their defection poses a serious challenge to the regime.
The reasons for their defections vary. But after living in foreign countries for a while, they reached the conclusion that they had been cheated by the regime, finally realizing that their society was based on a caste system divided into three classes — the “core,” the “wavering” and the “hostile” — contrary to the regime’s claim of “an equal society.”
Third, confusion about the leadership ideology also played a part in the relaxation. Kim’s declaration last year to abandon “national unification” can fuel confusion among the people over the values of their homeland. After the founding of North Korea in 1948, Kim Il Sung defined “building socialism” and “unifying the fatherland” as two primary missions of his regime. The justification for starting the 1950-53 Korean War was also to find a means of unification. Furthermore, the key principle of unification — such as “unification by our own people,” which was specified in the “July 4 South-North Joint Statement” in 1972 and the “June 15 South-North Joint Declaration” in 2000 — was persistently upheld by the North Korean regime until the Kim Jong-il era. But since Kim Jong-un abruptly ordered his people to forget the cherished tenet without presenting any visions to replace it, North Koreans accustomed to the “rule by legacy” were bewildered.
Lastly, the expansion of the private economy — as seen in the rapid spread of the jangmadang markets across the country — also endangers the regime. In February, the Unification Ministry published a report on the results of a survey targeting defectors. According to the report, under the Kim Jong-un regime (2016-2020), the proportion of private-sector workers (37%) was much higher than the state-run economy workers (23.5%) in the North — and their informal income (69.4%) through private-sector activities more than doubled official income (23.8%). That shows a dramatic increase in the share of the private economy and informal income in the North. Unlike Marx’s claim that humans act according to their material conditions, North Korea insists that humans can transcend material interests by changing their own consciousness through the juche (self-reliance) ideology. But the remarkable diffusion of the private economy makes the people be more dependent on material things and widens a gap with the juche ideology which underscores the importance of the mind. If the spread of the private economy fans individualism, it will certainly weaken the state control pursued by the regime.
These four phenomena of regime relaxation during the Kim Jong-un era pose a tough challenge to the regime. But we must carefully judge whether such signs will actually lead to the downfall of the Kim regime or the collapse of the country, as his regime is still operating an effective device that can control such challenges.
The North Korean regime can collapse from one of the three different kinds of revolutions: a “revolution from above,” just like in the former Soviet Union; a “revolution from the side,” as happened in December 1825 when young Russian officers rose up in arms in St. Petersburg to demand the abolition of serfdom and the realization of constitutional politics; and a “revolution from below,” in which North Koreans collectively rise up and overthrow the regime. At the moment, the leadership will not choose to change the system. Members of the “core” class pledging obsessive loyalty to Kim Jong-un and enjoying power and material benefits cannot separate themselves from the regime. Due to the North’s tight surveillance network, we can hardly expect a “revolution from the side” or a popular uprising, either. The regime mercilessly punishes people for even their slightest resentment. According to the recent testimony from a North Korean defector, a worker mobilized under Kim’s order mysteriously disappeared just because he got up late. Even if they take extreme risks and rebel against the system, a double — and triple — surveillance network will be activated immediately to block their communications so as to prevent a massive rally.
But we can’t just sit back and say the regime will last forever. The regime is extremely wary of people’s deepening individualism through the expansion of the private economy, the jangmadang generation’s growing interest in external trends, and the sharp decline in their loyalty to the state. Their deviations due to their scanty internal resources coupled with ideological confusion — and the regime’s toughened control to maintain the system — will be repeated over and over just like hide-and-seek. Even if the change in the residents’ consciousness doesn’t lead to an uprising right away, we cannot know when and how the cycle of discrepancy and control will reach a tipping point.
Deeming nuclear weapons as an “omnipotent sword,” North Korea seeks to unite its people by branding South Korea and the United States as enemies. But if the “reality” felt by the elites living overseas is exposed to the residents — and if their expectations for a better life are not met — even the Kim Jong-un regime won’t be able to ensure its own security. That’s the lesson we learned from history and the “reality” Kim must have recognized while studying in Switzerland long ago. Whether the regime collapses sooner or later, we must assume various scenarios from a long-term perspective and be fully prepared rather than making a short-sighted and biased diagnosis and preparation.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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