The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom
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The North Korean legal system is under the control of the party, as is stated plainly in Chapter 1, Article 11 of the 1998 constitution: “The DPRK shall carry out all of its activities under the leadership of the KWP [Korean Workers’ Party].” Common to all dictatorships, the law is a tool to consolidate the ruling party and the authority of the ruling class, while at the same time providing a patina of legitimacy for the government. In a collective society like North Korea’s, one should not expect the law to protect the rights of the individual; rather, it is the society as represented by the party and the leader that warrants protection. As Kim Il-sung said, “Our judicial organs are a weapon for carrying out the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”5
North Korea’s controlling legal code is not even a state law but rather a list of party principles in the form of the Ten-Point Principle (Ten Principles) for Solidifying the Party’s Monolithic Ideological System, mentioned in chapter 6. The principles appeared in 1974 and were attributed to Kim Jongil during the days when he was making a reputation as the interpreter and enforcer of his father’s Juche theory.6 The first principle reads, “All society must be dyed with Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary ideology,” and the entire list can be paraphrased in the following manner:
Accept the ideology of Kim Il-sung.
Respect, revere, and be loyal to Kim.
Make Kim’s authority absolute.
Believe in Kim’s ideology.
Carry out Kim’s instructions with unconditional loyalty.
Strengthen the party’s unity and solidarity around Kim.
Imitate Kim’s personality and work methods.
Repay Kim in loyalty for the political life he has given you.
Establish strong discipline such that everyone uniformly follows Kim’s
lead.
See to it that future generations inherit Kim’s revolutionary task.
To promote the illusion that the DPRK is a democratic country, periodic elections are held that are wholly typical of totalitarian communist systems; that is, they are forced votes of confidence in the party. On the advice and consent of higher levels, the members of the local party election committee choose one candidate for each office. In the run-up to election day, which is a national holiday, the media try to generate excitement. Banners with slogans like “Let us consolidate revolutionary sovereignty as firm as a rock by participating in the elections” are hung on buildings, and on election day agitprop teams beat drums and sing and shout outside the polling places to create a festive atmosphere.
The voting is anticlimactic. First thing in the morning, people of voting age (seventeen and older) proceed to their local polling places, where their registration cards are checked. After bowing to portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, they receive a ballot with the name of the party’s candidate. For a yes vote, the ballot is dropped into the ballot box. If anyone were foolish enough to vote against the candidate, it would be necessary to pick up a pencil and cross out the candidate’s name before dropping the ballot into the box. Since a police officer, security agent, or party official is present at every polling place, a no voter would be immediately investigated. Everyone who is healthy enough to get to a polling place is required to vote, and those unable to make it to the polls can cast a ballot in a mobile ballot box or by proxy. A special problem concerns the thousands of North Koreans who have illegally left their homes for other towns or to cross over into China. If the entire family has departed, the local authorities can list them as deceased, but if some family members remain, they are held accountable for their missing members and will have to pay a hefty bribe to local party and police investigators to register the missing persons as dead. Otherwise, the missing family members would be classified as traitors to the state, and the entire family would be in trouble.7 After voting, people are supposed to spend the rest of the day singing and dancing to show support for the regime and the election process. Election results are announced the same day and are always the same: a voter turnout above 99 percent (99.98 percent in the 2009 election for the Supreme People’s Assembly) and 100 percent approval of the party’s candidates. The media celebrate the election as a great victory for Kim Jong-il and the nation: “The election of deputies to the local power bodies [in the July 2007 nationwide local elections] marked an important occasion in reinforcing as firm as a rock the revolutionary government of the DPRK led by Kim Jong-il and further increasing the function and role of the people’s power by electing persons of ability, who have devotedly worked for the party and the leader, the country and the people, in the local power bodies.”8
The Political Class System
All societies have classes of one sort or another, and because communists come to power in a revolution of the working class against the bourgeoisie, communist societies will have at least two classes. The North Korean media frequently speak of the “uncompromising and merciless struggle” that the working class must wage against class enemies that include “remnants of the overthrown exploiting class and reactionaries.”9 Until the 1990s, North Korea’s political class lines were so rigid that they resembled those of a caste system.
The Ten Principles are the basis for social, political, and economic stratification. North Koreans are classified according to their loyalty, or presumed loyalty, to the Kim regime. Kim Il-sung based his political purges, which commenced as soon as he took power in the late 1940s, on his assessment of loyalty rather than professional competence. In 1958, the entire population was subjected to political classification, with successive classifications culminating in a system of three classes and fifty-one subclasses announced at the 1970 party congress.10 It seems the three-class structure has been maintained since then, although the subclass structure may have undergone some modification.
The three classes are the core class (haeksim kyechung), the wavering class (tongyo kyechung), and the hostile class (joktae kyechung), estimated (somehow) by Republic of Korea (ROK) authorities to consist of 30 percent, 50 percent, and 20 percent of the North Korean population, respectively. Some defectors (and South Korea’s unification ministry) refer to a somewhat different class-labeling system, consisting of core, basic, and complex classes, with the complex class subdivided into wavering and hostile subclasses.11 The Kim regime considers members of the core class, most of whom are party cadres, to be its loyal supporters. The DPRK has never made public the membership size of the KWP, but based on the proportional representation at the last party congress in 1980, membership in 2009 may number about three million out of a population of twenty-three million. The regime counts on the wavering class, consisting of workers, farmers, technicians, teachers, and enlisted soldiers, for nominal support but fears that enemies of socialism or their own human frailties could lead some of its members astray. Members of the hostile class are suspected of silently opposing socialism and the Kim regime. The classes are further divided into fifty-one subclasses. For example, the hostile class is broken down into subclasses including those who worked for the Japanese colonial administration before 1945, former members of the different religious organizations, and property owners. As one would expect, those who held the highest positions in precommunist Korea became members of the lowest political class, whereas at least some members of the low class moved up to the new privileged class. This was the case for Kim Il-sung and his military comrades, who became the leading figures in North Korea despite coming from working- and petty-merchant-class backgrounds.12
Forming a particularly unfortunate subclass are the thousands or tens of thousands of South Korean intellectuals and professionals who were systematically abducted by North Korean soldiers during the Korean War in order to build up the socialist state.13 Foretelling this campaign, Kim Il-sung in 1946 said, “To solve the problem of lacking intellectuals, we have to bring them from the South, rescuing them from the American imperialists and their collaborators.”14 These abductees were put to work for the North Korean state, sometimes in their former capacitie
s and sometimes as common laborers, but their record as former South Koreans remains a black mark for them and their descendants.
The first generation of North Korean leaders, including Kim Il-sung, received only a basic education. Kim never trusted intellectuals, who, throughout his fifty-year reign, suffered discrimination, even though the national symbol of the DPRK depicts a hammer, sickle, and pen, symbolizing the contributions of the workers, farmers, and intellectuals.
One feature of North Korea’s class system that resembles a caste system is that people are primarily classified by family history. For example, children of soldiers killed in the Korean War are core class, children of craftsmen are wavering class, and children of officials who worked for the Japanese administration are hostile class. The same goes for the children’s children. Members of the core and wavering classes who commit crimes, speak out against the regime, or are associated with those who commit political crimes are demoted to the hostile class. On the other hand, members of the hostile class who are law-abiding citizens remain in the hostile class.
The Core Class
No strict line separates the privileged core class from the masses, although there is a clear line separating the quasidivine Kim family from the rest of the core class, which explains why it is difficult to imagine that anyone from the privileged class other than a member of the Kim family could replace Kim Jong-il when he finally steps down or dies. The elites are best distinguished from the masses by their being part of the government and party bureaucracy. Because the state owns all means of production, it is important to be a part of, rather than to work for, the state—at least this was true until recently. Bureaucrats in the government and party can supplement their incomes by selling their services to the people in the form of bribes for such things as travel and housing permits, release from jail, and educational recommendations. Because the party is above the law, the only danger involved in accepting bribes is that it might come to the attention of Kim Jong-il, who despite being the biggest bribe taker in the country, has been known to punish those who follow his example.
The economy of corruption is hardly unique to North Korea: it is found wherever dictatorships exist. By all accounts, Victor Kuznetsov’s harsh characterization of the typical member of the Soviet nomenklatura applies to the North Korean cadres as well: “A confirmed member of the nomenklatura had no respect for the law; he knew that Soviet laws were formal and not meant to be enforced or were to be observed only by ordinary citizens. As long as he followed the unwritten rules common to all members of the ‘ruling upper class,’ his status in the hierarchy was assured. Breaking a formal law was dangerous for him only because it could be used by other members of the nomenklatura in their own interests in the course of the unrelenting inner struggle to obtaining a more prominent post.”15
The most privileged members of the core class live in Pyongyang, but being a Pyongyang resident and party member is no guarantee of a comfortable life. In hard times, even party members must live on reduced rations if they do not have the kind of job that enables them to solicit substantial bribes. Party members have no more individual freedom than do the masses; in fact, they are held to a higher standard than the rest of the population and are probably watched more closely, although they also have more resources to bribe their way out of trouble.
Members of the core class, especially at its upper reaches, live and die by politics, monitoring the most recent political lines embraced by Kim Jong-il. If for some reason Kim is currently sensitive to the spread of popular music, or long hair, or a particular type of clothing, one does well to avoid these things until Kim’s attention is diverted elsewhere. Jealous colleagues or too much alcohol still sometimes trip up even those who try to stay within the bounds of current political trends. For example, a former North Korean medical professional tells how, while drinking at a party with friends, he complained that people in his profession could not procure adequate equipment for their work but that in China the equipment was available. “North Korea is now worse than those smelly Chinese, and China has become a new country with a reformed economy.” One of the people at the party, who was the son of a high-ranking party cadre, reported the comments to security officials, who two days later raided the professional’s home at dawn, arrested him, and interrogated his family members, associates, and even fellow students from his university days.16
To combat the ever-present danger of falling from grace, it is necessary to have a means to ward off, or bail oneself out of, trouble. Traditionally, the best means has been personal connections with powerful people, although as North Korea has transformed into a money-driven society, personal wealth has started to take the place of personal connections as a political insurance policy. In the case of the unfortunate medical professional, one of his patients with political connections arranged for his escape. Another defector tells how, with a bribe of $5,000, he was able not only to get his brother out of prison but to get him admitted to a North Korean medical college.17
Members of the privileged class pass on their privileges to their children. Those among the highest-ranking elites, numbering one to two hundred thousand, can send their children to the eleven-year Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, and after graduation, their family connections enable them to avoid military service and proceed directly to a university—if not Kim Il-sung University, then one of the other top schools in Pyongyang such as Kim Chaek University of Technology or the Pyongyang Foreign Language School. After college they are given jobs in the government or party bureaucracy. The most important requirement for success is to fit in socially and politically. Showing initiative can be dangerous because Kim Jong-il sets party policies, so the best course of action is simply to implement whatever policy the party is promoting at the moment; if this can be done in a way that reflects well on one’s superiors, so much the better. Some university graduates succeed by dint of their professional skills in science and technology rather than through political connections, but these people are not likely to rise to the highest levels of the bureaucracy.
And so it has been for the last fifty years. But times are changing and a new economic elite class is emerging, comprising people who care little for party membership but know how to make money. They are not replacing the political elites, but their numbers are growing, and they often live better than many of the political elites.
Members of this new economic class, introduced at the end of chapter 3, must be sensitive to political trends and depend on well-placed officials to further their interests and protect them when they get into trouble. Because their economic endeavors are technically illegal, their lives are even less secure than those of the political elites. Few of these capitalists work for themselves. They develop affiliations with party, government, and military organizations that take a cut of their profits in return for offering them legitimacy and protection. Army regiments, police units, and factories all have trading arms that send people out to sell whatever is at hand. The more organized and powerful of these organizations send traders abroad; the less organized and poorer simply send their traders across the border into China.
The Hostile Class
No scarlet letter identifies members of the hostile class. Security services maintain their political records, but they themselves often do not have certain knowledge of their political class designation, although they usually have a pretty good idea of where their family stands in the class system. A former Korean People’s Army (KPA) officer tells of how he surreptitiously gained access to his security file and discovered that he had been denied higher promotion because one of his father’s cousins, a former police chief of Haeju City (then part of South Korea), had been arrested and killed by the communists during the Korean War.18 This incident had happened forty years earlier and had nothing to do with the KPA officer, but the record remained in his file and limited his life chances. Other former North Koreans tell how their parents shielded them from knowledge of politically tainted relatives in the of
ten vain hope that the family’s class designation would not spoil their children’s lives.
As in the case of the KPA officer, members of the hostile class are sometimes permitted to join the army officers’ corps but will not be promoted much above the rank of captain. Nor will they be recruited for any of the security services. Hostile-class members who are arrested for ordinary crimes are likely to receive severer sentences than members of the other two classes. When people are publicly identified as hostile-class members—for example, they have been banished from Pyongyang to a small village—some of their new neighbors may avoid them for fear of political contamination. A defector tells of how, after her father was sent to prison, the family was banished from Pyongyang to a small town, where they were assigned to live in an abandoned shack. She had a three-month-old baby who suffered from flea and bug bites in the shack, but none of her new neighbors would have anything to do with the Pyongyang family. They were eventually able to move to another town where they were not known as banished people.19