A History of Korea (106 page)

Kim Il-sung left his son a steeply declining economy. The fundamental cause of the decline was the inefficiencies of North Korea’s centrally planned economy, along with extravagant military spending (some 25 percent of the
GDP
), and droughts and floods that pushed the economy into a full-blown crisis. Disastrous food shortages occurred as a result of the country’s Stalinist-style collective agricultural system. From 1995 to 1998 about three million North Koreans, some 12 percent of the population, reportedly died of malnutrition. Major portions of the North Korean population survived primarily through the influx of food and other economic assistance from the international community, particularly from the United States, its “sworn enemy.” North Korea has referred to this period of hardship as the “Arduous March,” an apparent comparison with the “Long March” that occurred in the Chinese Civil War, when the Chinese communists fled Jiang Jieshi’s nationalist forces, covering a distance of some 6,000 kilometers, or 3,700 miles.

The faltering of the juche state was dramatized by Hwang Chang-y
ŏ
p’s defection to South Korea in early 1997. Hwang Chang-y
ŏ
p, known as the architect of the juche ideology, was then one of North Korea’s prominent officials, but in the mid-1990s Hwang had been increasingly kept at a distance from Kim Jong-il. On 28 January 1997 Hwang left Pyongyang to make a keynote address at a symposium in Japan held by the pro–North Korean Federation of Korean Residents in Japan. On 11 February he arrived in Beijing for an overnight stop before returning to Pyongyang the following afternoon. There, upon deciding to defect, he took refuge at the South Korean consulate in the Chinese capital. To avoid humiliating North Korea, China forced Hwang to go to a third country rather than going directly from China to South Korea. On 20 April 1997 Hwang arrived in Seoul by way of the Philippines.
⁴
In a zero-sum struggle between the two Koreas, the defection of Hwang Chang-y
ŏ
p, the first high-level insider ever to desert, struck a serious political blow to North Korea.

Under these circumstances, Kim Jong-il finally took office as General Secretary of the Korean Workers Party on 8 October 1997. Four years earlier Kim had assumed the post of chairman of the National Defense Commission (
NDC
), which had been created in 1972 as an entity subordinate to the Central People’s Committee. Initially the
NDC
included high-level officers empowered to formulate domestic and foreign policy, but later it had full authority to guide the work of national defense and security. By 1998, a constitutional amendment made the
NDC
“the highest post of the state,” and in the same year Kim Jong-il was “reelected” as chairman of the body.

After the mourning period for his father, Kim Jong-il further consolidated his totalitarian grip on power. On 5 September 1998 the Supreme People’s Assembly (
SPA
), in theory the highest legislative authority in North Korea, met for the first time since Kim Il-sung’s death. As expected, it named Kim Jong-il chairman of the National Defense Commission, which was declared to be North Korea’s supreme policy-making body. This marked Kim’s decision to rule North Korea from a military post and suggested to outsiders a further militarization of the country’s politics. The “military-first policy,” intended to build a “powerful and great state,” was officially adopted in North Korea. Kim retained the office of
NDC
chairman in 2003 and again in 2009. North Korea, under Kim’s rule, declared that it would become a great, prosperous, and powerful socialist nation by 2012, the centennial anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth.

Through the implementation of the military-first policy, Kim Jong-il tried to maintain the existing order, strengthen his regime based on personal authority, and consolidate control of military forces in order to prevent a coup against the state. Kim’s military-first policy also increased the role of the Korean People’s Army in daily life. Since the start of the Kim Jong-il era in 1997, North Korea’s political system remained stable, and its economy also improved, mainly because of large infusions of foreign aid. Economic difficulties, particularly food shortages, however, were still the country’s Achilles’ heel. Despite strict internal travel restrictions, food shortages drove North Korean citizens from their authorized residences to seek food elsewhere in the country. The North Korean government had no choice but to ignore the illegal traveling that enabled people to eke out a living, and the result was a flow of information among the people about the nationwide crisis.

Amid chronic economic difficulties, since 2002 North Korea allowed some reforms that, in a sense, legitimized what was already occurring following the virtual collapse of the centrally planned economy: the state-managed rationing system was abolished, the foreign exchange rate was adjusted to a realistic level, and currency exchange was freed to strengthen consumers’ ability to buy the necessities of life.

On 12 September 2002 the
SPA
passed a law to establish the Sin
ŭ
iju Special District. Because of its geographical proximity to the Chinese border, the Sin
ŭ
iju Special District was expected to play a central role in North Korea’s bilateral economic ties with China. Contrary to North Korean expectation, however, the Sin
ŭ
iju Special District project did not go smoothly. The Chinese recommended to North Koreans that Kaes
ŏ
ng, located just above the northern side of the
DMZ
, rather than Sin
ŭ
iju, would be an appropriate special district.

On 3 August 2003 North Korea held parliamentary elections to choose 687 deputies for the 11th Session of the Supreme People’s Assembly and 26,650 persons for local parliaments who would serve for the next five years. In the first session of the new
SPA
on 3 September, Kim Jong-il, as noted earlier, was reelected chairman of the National Defense Commission. Kim Y
ŏ
ng-nam was retained as chairman of the
SPA
Presidium, the ceremonial head of state. These elections were followed by a major reshuffling of the cabinet marked by a generational change and the infusion of reform-minded technocrats. The
SPA
appointed technocrat Pak Pong-ju, a former minister of the chemical industry, as premier, replacing the much older Hong S
ŏ
ng-nam. Significant changes
were made in the economic team, with five of its members newly recruited. These pragmatic technocrats were expected to advance an economic reform program.

North Korea’s efforts to reform its crippled economy were reflected most in its push for joint projects with South Korea. On 26 January 2003 military authorities from the two Koreas signed an agreement allowing civilians to travel through the Military Demarcation Line, clearing the first obstacle to inter-Korean programs such as the reconnection of cross-border railways and roads, establishment of an industrial complex at Kaes
ŏ
ng, and overland travel to K
ŭ
mgang-san. Among the inter-Korean projects, the Kaes
ŏ
ng Industrial Complex was particularly important. In August 2000, amid a mood of reconciliation and cooperation following the inter-Korean summit in June of that year, the North Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee and South Korea’s Hyundai Asan Corporation agreed to develop the Kaes
ŏ
ng Industrial Complex. The development began with a groundbreaking ceremony on 20 June 2003.

In 2004, to cope with the disastrous agricultural economy, the North Korean government formalized an arrangement whereby private “farmers’ markets” were allowed to sell a wider range of goods and some private farming was permitted on an experimental basis. Since late 2004, however, for fear of the breakdown of the communist economic system itself, the North Korean leadership worked hard to turn the clock back, reviving the system that had existed until the mid-1990s and then collapsed under the pressures of famine and social disruption.

Finally, in October 2005, the North Korean government announced that it would revive the Public Distribution System (
PDS
), under which all major food items were distributed by the state. Private trade in grain was prohibited, and the only legitimate way to buy grain was by presenting food coupons in a state-run shop. Private dealing in grain occurred but on a small scale. By December 2005 the North Korean government terminated most international humanitarian assistance operations in the country. Instead, it called for development assistance only and restricted the activities of remaining international and nongovernmental aid organizations, such the World Food Program. External food aid came primarily from South Korea and China in the form of grants and long-term concessional loans. Firm political control remained the overriding concern of the Stalinist government, which inhibited the loosening of economic regulations.

Under these circumstances, on 1 December 2009, the North Korean government carried out a currency redenomination that replaced its practically worthless currency at a rate of 1 new w
ŏ
n to 100 old w
ŏ
n. North Korea had already conducted five currency reforms, the last one in 1992, all of them during transitional periods or when it felt it needed to tighten control. This latest currency reform was intended to tighten control as well as to manage climbing inflation, confiscate the savings of small businesses, and forbid the use of foreign money. The impromptu currency reform, however, caused severe food shortages. As a result, in late May 2010, bowing to grim reality, the North Korean regime, desperate to prevent mass starvation, lifted all restrictions on private markets as a last resort. This policy switch was an acknowledgment that the currency reform was a failure and that only capitalist-style trading could prevent widespread famine.

Amid chronically terrible economic conditions, Kim Jong-il chose his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as heir to the family dynasty to rule the reclusive state. This second consecutive father-to-son succession was unique even among nations that called themselves communist. On 7 June 2010 the Supreme People’s Assembly promoted Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law Chang S
ŏ
ng-t’aek, a key supporter of the younger Kim, to vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, making him the number-two man in the North Korean leadership and signaling that the power transfer to Kim Jong-un was well under way. Further, the cabinet underwent a sweeping reshuffle, with premier Kim Y
ŏ
ng-il, who had succeeded Pak Pong-ju in April 2007, replaced by Ch’oe Y
ŏ
ng-nim, a close confidant of Kim Il-sung.

In late September 2010 North Korea officially started the dynastic power succession process, making it the first country in modern history to allow power to be transferred to the third generation of the ruling family. On 28 September the Korean Workers Party, which convened its biggest extraordinary congress in 44 years, commissioned Kim Jong-un a four-star general of the Korean People’s Army. The young heir-apparent, then in his mid-twenties, was also appointed a member of the Central Committee of the KWP as well as a vice chairman of the party’s powerful Central Military Commission headed by his father. The senior military posts were essential to becoming the supreme leader under the country’s “military-first” political system.

With his nation at the edge of starvation and collapse, Kim Jong-il died on 17 December 2011 reportedly of a heart attack. As expected, his son Kim Jong-un tipped to be North Korea’s next leader. Even with this “Great Successor,” as he
was called by North Koreans, there was great possibility of a behind-the-scenes power struggle in this crippled and isolated Stalinist nation.

North Korea now stands at a crossroads, facing the danger of regime change or complete collapse from every direction. One of the most centrally planned and isolated economies in the world, the North Korean economy has been barely surviving. In 2006 North Korea’s national income per capita in purchasing power parity (
PPP
) prices was roughly in the range of that of Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, and Sudan. Most remarkable is that in the post–Korean War era and into the mid-1970s, living standards were higher in North Korea than either in South Korea or China. Now, however, North Korea is far behind its rapidly growing neighbors.

Although its leadership calls it a “socialist paradise,” in a number of obvious ways North Korea is a “failed state.” As a truculent little pariah state, North Korea conjures an Orwellian image of grim dystopia depicted in the novel
1984.
In the juche state, the repressed population ekes out a scanty existence under dire poverty and rigid dogma.

Because North Korea was identified with Kim Jong-il, it is essential to address his personality and abilities. A wicked tale about Kim Jong-il in recent years was that he sentenced a bodyguard and his family to years of hard labor because the hapless man used the ashtray in the Dear Leader’s limousine and left the evidence behind. The media have been replete with scandalous anecdotes about him, describing him as a lover of slasher flicks and a womanizer with a personal nurse who had fashion-model looks. Sporting a retro bouffant hairstyle, he was also known as the world’s single largest consumer of Hennessy cognac.
⁵

Some foreign commentators and analysts, however, had a more sympathetic appreciation of Kim and his regime, viewing his perceived recalcitrance as a plaintive cry for understanding and help. The bottom line of this new school of thought was that he was a failed leader trying to come in from the cold and join the world. Regarding the North Korean nuclear crisis, for instance, they argued that, lacking normal relations, which from the North Korean perspective meant a continued threat of attack from the United States, Kim believed that he had no choice but to go nuclear.

These favorable comments do not justify the fact that Kim was a failed leader. Belying his caricature image as an eccentric playboy, he was a ruthless ruler who kept North Korea’s brutal regime in place despite severe famine and virtual economic collapse. Obsessed with his father’s teachings and his own lust for
power, Kim failed to provide the North Korean people with material goods, and he had a devastating impact on the North Korean economy, including excessively operating the limited number of machines and wasting manpower by pushing for anti-economic campaigns such as the “Three Revolutions Teams Movement” and the “70-Day campaign.” Moreover, he was irresponsible in casting the entire blame for his country’s economic difficulties on his unfortunate subordinates. The North Korean system became even more centralized and autocratic under Kim Jong-il than it had been under his father. Kim demanded absolute obedience and agreement, and viewed any deviation from his thinking as a sign of disloyalty.