The following is a summary of the CDA Institute roundtable on the subject of “North Korea, Land of the Juche”, held in Ottawa on 22 October 2014. These roundtable discussions are held under the Chatham House Rule. This summary reflects CDA Institute Analyst Melissa Hawco‘s perception of the discussion. The CDA Institute thanks Lockheed Martin Canada for its generous sponsorship of the 2014 Roundtable Discussion Series.
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The only certainty about the DPRK is that the West doesn’t understand North Korea almost as much as North Korea doesn’t understand the West. Every visit is carefully constructed to produce a specific impression…all accounts of the DPRK are suspect.
To support the Clinton Administration’s North Korea policy toward a “soft landing”, Canada moved to recognize the DPRK. In service of this objective, Sven Jurschewsky visited North Korea 19 times in 1999-2003. China supported the mission with extraordinary help and the DPRK allowed surprisingly wide access, far beyond the norm. Contacts with senior government and Korean Workers Party personalities, Korean People’s Army general officers and the general public were facilitated. Travel included almost every part of the DPRK, far beyond the limits set on Pyongyang’s Diplomatic Corps, not to speak of visitors.
Korea suffered severely during the Japanese colonial period: Japanese policy went beyond economic exploitation and aimed at cultural genocide. The historic xenophobia was further reinforced by the extensive depredations of the Korean War, and the DPRK can now be fairly said to verge on paranoia.
A joke told by a German NGO worker provides the basis for a proper understanding of the DPRK. “What nationality were Adam and Eve? North Korean, of course. They were so poor, they only had an apple to eat and they had no clothes at all. But they believed they were in paradise.”
Kim Il Sung originated the regnant ideology, Juche, as a variant of Nationalist-Marxism-Leninism, similar to Albania’s Hoxa’ism or Romania’s Ceausescu’ism, during his exile in Krasnoyarsk in the 1930’s. To facilitate his eventual accession to power and to establish a superior means of social control, Kim Jong, Il together with his university philosophy professor, Hwang Jang Op, re-fashioned Juche. Taking advantage of Korean’s religious predispositions, Juche was provided with a specifically religious dimension based on Christianity (for its traditions of prayer and divine intercession), Confucian (for its emphasis on family and hierarchy) and Chondo’ism, an indigenous Korean syncretic 19th century variant of Ural-Altaic shamanism (for its nationalist roots in the Korean anti-Japanese struggle).
What resulted can only be called an “epistemology machine” that, through the fully coordinated operation of all means of cultural expression and mass communication, completely and effectively controls North Korea’s social and political reality. North Koreans are led to believe that the deprivations of the present amount to spiritual preparation for the construction of paradise on earth. The perfect state of mind, the expression of complete freedom, is cha ju son … when one thinks what the Great Leader is thinking when he is thinking it. The Confucian emphasis on hierarchy and family conjoined with Ural-Altaic shamanism ensured the “precious” status of the Leader and religiously necessitated that he be a member of the Kim Family. Chinese scholars have noted that the DPRK broke its links with Marxism long ago.
The West often underestimates the effectiveness of North Korea’s propaganda machine to fully indoctrinate its citizens with loyalty to its Leader and the state. Visitors to North Korea have their memories against which to measure their experiences. North Koreans, especially those born since the early 1970’s, when Juche as a quasi-religion became fully operational, are fully subject to the operation of the “epistemology machine” which constructs, on an on-going basis, their social reality. Considering Western ideals of individualism, the West has a poor understanding of the unity of mind that Juche seeks to inspire in North Koreans and which, to a very significant measure, it succeeds in accomplishing.
Believing the DPRK to be under unremitting threat, particularly from the US, the Korean People’s Army is venerated. Every North Korean family has at least one family member in the KPA. The KPA can be seen as consisting of two parts: one of conscripts on tours of 3-5 years of service, and a second made up of well-trained, highly professional Special Forces. North Korea officially budgets about 16% of its GDP (about $6 billion) for its armed forces. The real expenditures are probably much higher.
North Korea poses a real and substantial threat to Canada’s material interests in the region. A war in the Korean Peninsula, Chinese policy makers legitimately fear, would result in a series of events that include the closure of every port north of Shanghai and the end of China’s “economic miracle”, a declaration of independence by Taiwan’s “splittists”, military confrontation with the US on two fronts and, consequently, a return to power of the conservative, anti-democratic Neo-Maoist faction of the Chinese Communist Party. Well-embedded artillery along the DMZ really could turn Seoul into a “sea of fire”. The first 6 hours of a North Korean artillery barrage would entail a minimum of $100 billion in property damage and 50,000 dead. Japan is well within range of DPRK’s nuclear-tipped missile forces. China, the Republic of Korea and Japan are among Canada’s most important trading partners. Looking ahead, continuing development of its ballistic missile program ensures that targets in North America will soon come into North Korea’s range.
In a time of severe economic crisis and actual threat from the US, it took Kim Jong Il three years to achieve the titles and powers of his father. Kim Il Sung, after he died in 1994. No minister was replaced and Kim Jong Il was only able to install personally-loyal #2’s in institutions of power and authority. The make-up of the National Defense Committee, which replaced the Politburo as the most senior governmental organ, reflects the deal Kim Jong Il was required to strike. He held the chairmanship and was joined by two senior KPA generals and two KWP officials. Under the auspices of the so-called Army-First policy, the influence of the KPA has significantly expanded since. It now holds a preponderance of seats in a significantly expanded NDC.
By contrast, Kim Jong Un was accorded all titles and privileges in only a month. Plain common sense indicates that Kim Jong Un does not in fact control the Government and KPA but that he is a puppet, most likely of the KPA. The appearance in Seoul after the recent Asian Games of a senior KPA General and Vice-Chair of the NDC to re-launch North-South Talks, the first time a North Korean general has played a specifically political role, is among the factors that buttress such a view.
North Korea’s economic collapse appears to have bottomed out and modest growth of around 4% p.a. has resumed, mostly due to Chinese FDI. China has long sought to persuade North Korea’s leadership of the need for economic reform along the lines it has pursued without much success. Since 2002 China has promoted investment in North Korea as means of introducing new ideas and setting the stage for wider reform. Regrettably, China’s investments have been mostly in the mining sector. Isolated mining towns are a poor platform for introducing new ideas toward effecting political and economic reform. With the execution of then-Vice-Chair of the NDC, Jung Son Taek, China lost “its man” in Pyongyang’s corridors of power. Jung’s wife and Kim Jung Un’s aunt, a former KPA general, Minister of Light Industry and voice in favour of economic reform, has been sidelined. Whether these events signal an end to the possibility of reform remains to be seen, but the KPA’s accession to power and control may well entail a more consistent, though hardly more flexible and emollient, external stance.
North Koreans fear and hate foreigners. In 1999, walks taken alone by visitors in Pyongyang were not advisable. By 2003, walks in public were possible. Informal out-reach by the large number of resident NGO workers, especially from the World Food Program, has resulted in modest, though significant, changes in public attitudes. The evidence is slight but the indication is that North Koreans can be changed.
Nevertheless, the DPRK remains a significant risk to peace and stability in Northeast Asia and beyond. There is a signboard one often sees in Pyongyang and in the rest of the country whose message provides ample grounds for more concerted and effective diplomatic effort on behalf of stabilization and reform. It reads: “A world without the DPRK does not deserve to persist.”
Melissa Hawco is an Analyst at the CDA Institute and a second year student at Carleton University. She is currently working towards her BA Honours in English with a strong interest in politics, defence and human rights.
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