The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom

by Ralph Hassig

  Prospects for Survival

  To adopt a phrase from the American social reformer W. E. B. DuBois, the end is coming slowly for North Korea. The regime is trying to convince its people that by 2012, the centennial of Kim Il-sung’s birth, North Korea will have become an economically powerful state, but there is no prospect of this happening. The regime’s political decisions have locked the economy into a cycle of failure, and the government’s campaign for economic self-sufficiency is self-defeating. The country’s isolation, while protecting the regime, has cut it off from the global economy. And the saber rattling of Kim’s military-first politics is isolating the country even more.

  Ever since Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, North Korea watchers have speculated about the impending collapse of the Kim Jong-il regime. Kim stayed out of the public eye for three years, during which time no meetings of the Supreme People’s Assembly were held. Floods in 1995 and 1996 devastated the countryside and triggered the Arduous March famine. Most concessionary trade with the former Warsaw Pact signatories ended. Bureaucratic corruption continued unabated. The country was drifting. In the late 1990s, top defector Hwang Jang-yop predicted a collapse within five years.

  Then the United States and the international community threw the Kim regime a lifeline. Billions of dollars in aid began flowing into the country in 1996, including over $1 billion from the United States, which in 1994 had signed the Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which provided North Korea with an annual delivery of a half million tons of heavy fuel oil and construction of a new light-water nuclear reactor, all in return for a freeze of Pyongyang’s aging nuclear facilities. More important than the oil and the reactor construction was the political recognition that the Kim regime received as a dialogue partner with the United States. In October 2000, North Korea’s top political military officer, Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok, received an invitation from President Bill Clinton to visit the White House, and later that month Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang—two diplomatic firsts for U.S.–North Korean relations. Other countries also engaged the Kim regime at the highest levels. South Korean president Kim Dae-jung visited Pyongyang in June 2000, and his successor, President Roh Moo-hyun, visited in October 2007. Russian president Vladimir Putin paid a visit in July 2000—the first Russian president ever to visit North Korea while in office. Chinese president Jiang Zemin traveled to Pyongyang in September 2001, marking the first presidential visit since China angered North Korea by normalizing relations with South Korea in 1992. In September 2002, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi became the first Japanese head of state to go to Pyongyang and paid a return visit two years later. “Why on earth do I have to go visit big countries?” asked Kim Jong-il in August 2000. “Even though I stay in Pyongyang, various powerful countries come visit me, do they not?”3

  This international recognition, coming at a time when the country was undergoing its greatest domestic trials since the Korean War, could hardly help but impress the North Korean people, despite their bitter disappointment with Kim’s domestic leadership. It undoubtedly emboldened Kim, who took it as a sign that his policies were a success.

  The Kim regime continues to employ leverage provided by its nuclear and missile programs. At the Six-Party Talks, first convened in 2003 (and further legitimizing the Kim regime), a new denuclearization agreement was reached in principle in September 2005. Unhappy with delays in its implementation, North Korea detonated its first nuclear device in October 2006, angering the other five parties to the talks. However, no one could think of a better option than continuing to negotiate, and in February and September 2007, steps were taken to implement the October 2006 agreement, including resuming economic aid to North Korea. It is doubtful that this most recent agreement will be any more lasting than previous ones. At the time this book goes to press, six years after the start of the Six-Party Talks, North Korea appears to have more nuclear weapons and more long-range missiles than before the talks began, and the talks themselves are, once again, in jeopardy.

  Destabilizing Influences

  Although international events seem to favor the continued rule of Kim Jongil, his health does not. Kim turned sixty-seven in 2009, and years of drinking and smoking have compromised his health. More importantly, he seems to be suffering from the aftereffects of his 2008 stroke. Until he secures some kind of security guarantee from the United States, Kim must worry about the future of his regime. China, although a loyal supporter to date, holds Kim in low regard and seems to be positioning itself to exercise more influence over the Korean Peninsula in the future. North Korea’s relations with Japan remain hostile. The South Korean government’s support for the northern regime depends on which administration happens to be in office; the Lee Myung-bak administration that took office in early 2008 is much less generous with Kim than were the previous two South Korean administrations.

  Among North Korea watchers, economists tend to be the most pessimistic about the country’s chances for survival, and indeed, defectors most often cite economic difficulties as their main reason for leaving their country. North Koreans have gotten used to living in an economy of severe shortages, but they do not like it. The daily struggle to eat, keep warm, and get to school and work continues to threaten social stability. Even the fortunate three million living in Pyongyang, who are Kim Jong-il’s strongest supporters, are not insulated from economic hardships. North Korea’s international businesses are likewise plagued by economic problems. When the George W. Bush administration in late 2005 tried to pressure the Kim regime to end its nuclear program by targeting foreign banks doing business with North Korea, the effect was dramatic. A North Korean government official involved in international transactions said in a private interview, “I have to find money, but it is almost impossible. There is no credit, no trust, no interest in investment in North Korea.”4

  The influx of information into North Korea, especially about how people in other countries live, is opening people’s eyes as they have never been opened before. Even so, not until they cross into China do North Koreans begin to understand how other people actually live, and those who only get as far as the Chinese border area still do not see the prosperity that South Koreans enjoy. Information about the outside world makes the pain of economic deprivation all the more difficult to bear. The most damaging comparisons are with life in China and South Korea, two neighboring countries that North Koreans formerly considered poor. In a 2002 defector survey, 83 percent agreed that “North Korea is far poorer than China,” and 79 percent agreed that “South Korea is an economically affluent country.”5 The North Korean people have to ask the obvious questions: Why should South Koreans be so rich when we North Koreans, who are supposedly following a more advanced economic model, are so poor? How can the Chinese, whom we have looked down on all these years, have passed us by, even though they also have a socialist system?

  Ordinary North Koreans are also comparing themselves with the more affluent living among them—in what is supposed to be an egalitarian society. Kim Jong-il’s lifestyle has never been revealed, so most North Koreans are unaware that he lives like a king. Similarly closed to their view are the lives of the top officials, who live in Pyongyang’s residential enclaves. They can, however, see how local party cadres live, and while those people do not live in luxury, they do have more than the average North Korean, even though they are supposed to “serve the people.” And then there are the newly rich who flaunt their wealth by driving private cars, wearing expensive clothes, and living in illegally purchased apartments and houses. This violation of socialist equality angers ordinary people, but they dare not voice complaints because rich people also have good political connections. A well-dressed person may be rudely jostled on the street or subjected to snide remarks, but that is usually the extent of the complaints. One former member of the Pyongyang elite class relates how he was forced to take a bus to work after Kim Jong-il decreed, for some reason
or another, that people should not ride bicycles in the city. A fellow bus rider, probably frustrated because the buses and trolleys are usually overcrowded and people have to wait in long lines to get on, said, “Hey, you seem to be a well-off class guy with such a fine suit and smooth skin, but let us tell you that we are not happy to see you in such a fine condition.”6

  Another potentially destabilizing factor almost unique to North Korea is the fact that the legitimacy of the father-and-son regime is built on lies: that Kim Il-sung liberated Korea from the Japanese, that South Korea and the United States started the Korean War, that Kim Il-sung won the war, that Kim Jong-il was born on the slopes of Mt. Paektu, and so forth. In the 2002 defector survey cited above, 41 percent said that North Koreans consider Kim Il-sung’s greatest alleged accomplishment to be “liberating us from Japan’s colonial rule.”7 Dictators, and for that matter most politicians in democracies, rely to some degree on lies and half-truths to elevate themselves above the masses and distinguish themselves from their competitors for power, but the two Kim’s have taken lying beyond even what was seen in the days of Mao and Stalin. What will happen when the truth finally comes out is hard to say. In Russia, the truth about Stalin temporarily dimmed his reputation, but many Russians who miss the economic security the state formerly provided now remember him fondly. Perhaps Kim Il-sung will be forgiven for the same reason. Kim Jong-il, who boasts of resisting “imperialistic aggression,” may by that means save his reputation as well.

  A destabilizing trend particularly worrisome to the regime is the emergence of a Western-oriented youth culture of individualism and consumerism. Young people want to earn money to buy things they have seen in South Korean videos, and they want to sing South Korean pop songs, dance to Western music, and wear jeans and printed T-shirts. They are not interested in socialism. And then there are the truly pernicious influences on society that are not limited to the youth, including crime, alcoholism, and the use of hard drugs.

  Any number of structural influences put pressure on North Korean society and contribute to its instability, although these influences are not so easily seen. The economic cost of corruption is staggering. The insistence on running a socialist command economy is suicidal. Kim’s military-first policy guarantees that the best of the country’s resources will go to the nonproductive military rather than to the civilian sector. Bureaucratic infighting takes a severe toll on managerial resources. Internationally, the U.S. economic embargo on North Korea, including international trading restrictions such as the Wassenaar Arrangement, hinder North Korean commerce.

  Stabilizing Influences

  And yet, for all its problems, North Korea appears to be a relatively stable society, and the Kim Jong-il regime, incompetent though it may be in running the economy, seems as secure as when Kim Il-sung was overseeing a growing economy in the 1960s. As in any society, the strongest force for stability is simply inertia. People have grown accustomed to Kim family rule. Kim Jong-il is not well liked, but because his highly respected father appointed him successor, the son is politically untouchable. Politically, North Koreans suffer from a kind of tunnel vision resulting from the fact that they do not have contemporary or historical experience with democratic governance. After centuries of living under Korean monarchs and forty years under a Japanese colonial administration, prior to Kim Il-sung’s assuming power, the people have low political expectations. They take for granted that they will be ruled by their superiors and simply wish those superiors would do a better job. At least under the Kim regime, they are ruled by Koreans rather than foreigners.

  Another source of stability is the excellent social-control mechanisms the regime has put in place, consisting of an overlapping assortment of security forces that includes the Ministry of People’s Security, the State Security Department, and the Security Command, backed up by party cells and neighborhood groups. According to testimony from defectors, spies (actually, ordinary people recruited by the police temporarily) have infiltrated the entire population. Because they have the collective power to undermine the regime, the elites are kept under particularly close surveillance. Those few people with telephones in their homes can expect that their lines are tapped. Everyone in the society, from highest to lowest, must attend weekly political-struggle sessions in which they are required to confess a sample of their failings and report on the failings of others. Hundreds and even thousands of people, including party members, are caught up in purges. And to deter the brave and reckless from disobedience, the Kim regime has perfected the practice of yongoje, or “family punishment,” whereby not only the individual but his or her immediate family, relatives, and even close friends and associates may be arrested.

  The members of the privileged class of three million (the upper half of the core class) appear to support the regime actively on the premise that they would not otherwise have as good a life. Compared to the masses, as well as to what their parents and grandparents had before the communists came to power, they are well-off and know that if they stray from the party line, they risk being thrown back into the working class—or even into prison. They also fear that if South Korea should ever take control of the North, they would face discrimination or punishment. To reinforce this fear, the regime distributed videotapes in the 1990s of former Eastern European Communist Party members reduced to selling pencils on the street.

  The Kims have never tolerated the existence of any political party or organized group other than the Korean Workers’ Party, so even though the regime’s hold on the people has weakened, there are no alternative groups or institutions that people can rally to, unlike in Cold War Eastern Europe where churches, trade unions, student groups, and intellectuals provided the nucleus for political dissent. No political factions exist even among the educated elites. Very small opposition groups might secretly exist, but by the time they became known to outside observers, the regime would already have eliminated them. Defectors say that people sometimes mutter about how bad things are, but only among trusted friends and family, and even so, people are occasionally hauled off to prison for voicing an innocent complaint. North Korean propagandists’ warnings that “impure, hostile elements are wriggling inside our country” should be interpreted as the regime’s attempt to demonstrate its vigilance rather than as a reference to organized opposition.8

  Some North Korea watchers have speculated about the existence of deeper political fault lines in North Korean society. For example, it has been suggested that there may be tension between political hard-liners, who prefer the status quo, and soft-liners, who favor liberalizing society. North Koreans indeed hold a variety of viewpoints about the merits of change, but these viewpoints represent differences more in individual opinion than among groups or classes. Likewise, some observers see signs that the party and the military are in competition for power, perhaps also with the government bureaucracy, but there is considerable overlap in membership among these three institutions. Members of the younger generation of North Koreans are more liberal in their ideas and tastes than their seniors, but the different generations do not have their own independent political organizations: everyone is a member of one or more party-controlled organizations.

  Yet another source of stability is North Koreans’ self-image as “Kim Il-sung’s people.” As a nation, the North Korean people believe they face a hostile world, and this belief contributes to internal cohesion, as outlined in chapter 1. Most importantly, North Korea’s long-running disputes with the United States (over weapons of mass destruction and other issues) create tension that the regime employs to keep its people united in the face of a purported foreign threat.

  Some of the factors that threaten to destabilize North Korea act at the same time as sources of stability. The most obvious example is the food shortage, a cause of widespread dissatisfaction with the regime that at the same time keeps people preoccupied with hunting for food. Drug and alcohol use increases crime but also provides an escape from daily misery. Widespread corruption is a
clear sign that the government is not working properly, but it also provides a practical way to get things done. Loss of faith in the eventual triumph of socialism highlights the futility of years of working within the socialist system but also stifles the false hope that the party’s promises will ever be fulfilled. Finally, Kim Jong-il’s remoteness as a leader leaves a gaping hole in the lives of those North Koreans who remember his father, but a remote Kim escapes some of the blame for the poor economy.

  Change, Not Collapse

  Social instability does not necessarily lead to a dramatic collapse. Numerous African countries have been unstable since becoming independent several decades ago; yet, they survive as sovereign states with well-entrenched rulers. North Korea is probably too organized a society to collapse into anarchy like, say, Somalia, and if it did, South Korea and China would quickly step in to provide economic assistance and social order. A collapse of only the North Korean government and party would be less dramatic (and more likely) than a broad-scale social collapse. This is what happened in the former Soviet Union. People’s lives would be disrupted, but since they are already gaining economic independence and losing respect for the law, the collapse of their government would simply give them more room for individual action, although that in turn would introduce a measure of chaos into society.

  An even more limited kind of collapse would involve the removal of the Kim family from power. This type of collapse is quite common and even includes political-party changes in democracies. Because Kim Jong-il never appears in public except at local events such as military-base or factory inspections, it would be quite possible for the military to rule in his name without the people even noticing. In this case the greatest threat to social stability would be the emergence of factional strife among party and military leaders.