Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent German unification in 1990, the conventional wisdom was that North Korea or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) would also fall shortly and Korea would be unified. Two and a half decades later, North Korea still stands, with the third-generation Kim succession, nuclear weapons program, and a dysfunctional economy. Despite defying experts’ predictions of its collapse for so long, specialists continue to question how long the regime can last. North Korea’s economy is in shambles. Its central planning and distribution system has failed to provide the basic needs of its people. Necessity gave rise to black markets, but the regime is not prepared to fully embrace the markets. To remedy its economic problems, North Korea must reform and open up its economy; yet to do so could invite external information that might compete with the official narrative. The resulting loss of faith among the population would challenge the regime’s legitimacy and its firm grip on power.
A collapsed North Korea would be a watershed event, unleashing dynamics that would redefine the geopolitical landscape and test the future of the region. The regional powers—South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the U.S.—are ill prepared to handle short- and long-term challenges to their vital national interests emerging from a collapsed North Korea. If Pyongyang collapses, the result could be mass migration, mass suffering due to instability, and uncontrolled nuclear weapons. Such a volatile situation could halt or even reverse the progress of this dynamic and prosperous region, with widespread international implications. However, the regional powers are ill prepared for such a contingency. Each is focused on a different aspect of the potential disaster. China is concerned about the mass refugee flow from North Korea and the loss of a buffer state, and it therefore continues to support the North Korean regime. Despite Pyongyang’s continued irritation, including nuclear and missile tests, Beijing provides aid, trade, and political support to sustain the Kim regime. South Korea or the Republic of Korea (ROK) fears the high unification cost as well as the influx of North Koreans, and so desires slow integration with North Korea. South Korea under presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak has begun to address the issue, which was a taboo under the two previous presidents. Meanwhile, the U.S. is focused on the control of nuclear weapons and materials.
The long-term development of North Korea will also require regional and international coordination. The regional powers should anticipate several possible scenarios and develop plans to mitigate negative consequences. Such a forward-looking approach would help establish a solid foundation to manage the challenges of the most likely contingencies and set the stage for a more stable and prosperous future for the region.
1 Purpose of the Book
The purpose of this book is to highlight the rising risk of North Korea’s collapse and to urge the neighboring countries to plan and prepare for such a cataclysmic event. It begins by describing various unification scenarios, of which collapse is one. The study explains the conditions affecting the stability of North Korea’s regime, identifies the regional issues that could affect cooperation, and explores ways to respond to the challenges of collapse.
The majority of the unification literature focuses on unification scenarios and costs. Due to the political sensitivities of the regional powers and North Korean regime’s longevity compared to the former Soviet Union and Central and East European states, a regime collapse has not been a main focus of literature for some time. Recently, there has been a greater number of collapse or contingency studies. This book addresses various challenges of unification in detail, with an emphasis on planning and preparing. It also describes regional powers’ bilateral concerns because their potential impacts on the strategic calculations regarding unification.
The North Korean regime is a system of government that controls all aspects of public and private life, including people’s thoughts and attitudes. The leader has the absolute power and dedication to him is all-important. Due to a strong cult of personality propagated by the state’s myth-making machine and enforced by the state security apparatus, the leader is elevated to a godlike status of a theocratic state.1 The Korean Workers’ Party transmits ruler Kim’s ambitions and will to the entire society, and the people are expected not only to adhere to them, but also to support them enthusiastically. The regime forces people to understand their own life experience by conforming to the official doctrine. The regime limits people’s self-realization and autonomy. This effort for total control by repressing the population is a crucial flaw of the system and it is unsustainable.
2 North Korea’s Class System of Songbun
The North Korean regime created a class system to control every aspect of human life to further the political objectives of the ruling elites. North Korea’s current structure is not so much a Marxist-socialist system as a system consisting of three classes based on Songbun, which is determined by heredity and loyalty. The Songbun classification system is a state-sanctioned discriminatory system that categorizes every North Korean based on the position, status, and occupation of not only the person in question but also those of his/her parents and extended family.
Everyone in North Korea seems to know pretty much what his songbun is, although there are no precise gradations and no official notice is ever given. At every important juncture in life—at the end of middle school and high school, with admission or nonadmissions to college, entry or nonentry into the army, admission or nonadmission to the party, approval or nonapproval for marriage, assignment to a job, or transfer into or out of the city or into or out of a collective farm—it is fairly obvious whether one’s songbun is good or bad.39
Every North Korean is investigated and classified into one of three broad groups of loyalty—the core class, the wavering class, and the hostile class—which are further divided into 51 subgroups.40 The system “creates a form of slave labor for a third of North Korea’s population of 23 million citizens and loyalty-bound servants out of the remainder.”41
The core group consists of those most loyal to the Kim regime, including those who were factory workers, poor farmers, office clerks, soldiers, and revolutionaries (anti-Japanese) in the pre-liberation period, as well as the families of those who were killed during the Korean War.42 The core class comprises about 20–25% of the population, of which about two million are estimated to be the top cadre serving in key positions that sustain and protect the regime.43 In return for loyalty, the core receives the best housing, food, jobs, education, medical care, and other perquisites.
The ordinary or wavering-class members are those whose loyalty is questionable, but can potentially be won over by constant ideological indoctrination. This class of people comprises 45–55% of North Korea’s population and includes merchants, farmers, and service workers. The ordinary citizens live on luck, effort, and bribery. They may get extra food or gifts on special days, such as Kim Jong-un’s birthday. The regime is aware that this class of ordinary citizens should not become discontented to the point of opposing the regime, as it comprises the majority of the public.
The hostile group, about 20–25%, is considered “suspicious” and includes those whose family members were wealthy landlords, merchants, and religious leaders, and are therefore considered counter to the socialist revolution and disloyal to the regime. Seen as the class enemy by the Kim regime, they are subjected to close scrutiny by the regime’s extensive security apparatus and heavily discriminated against regarding food, housing, medical care, education, employment, military service, and marriage. Members of the hostile group fend for themselves in the countryside.
Outside the three main groups are some 200,000 people in concentration camps, whose existence North Korea denies. 44 Thomas Hobbes’ portrayal of life as “poor, nasty, brutish, and short” describes this class rather accurately. The existence of political prison camps and the atrocities committed there by the regime are highlighted in the Kirby Report, the investigative work of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK, published in February 2014. Among various disturbing findings in the report are the standing orders to kill those held in the camps in the event of an armed conflict or revolution to eliminate the evidence of the camps’ existence. 45
Party cadre and security officials keep detailed records of everyone and continually update the records.46 Although it is easy for one’s songbun to be downgraded, it is much more difficult to improve one’s songbun. Downgrading occurs for lack of ideological fervor, marrying someone with bad songbun, or even for being related to someone who commits a crime. Crimes include leaving North Korea or not revering the Kim family enough.
Initially, it was possible to hide one’s songbun by concealing that the grandfather or an uncle was a doctor, Christian minister, or landowner. However, the North Korean regime conducted full-scale secret background investigations in the late 1960s, with repeated probes to weed out any substantial opposition to the Kim rule.47 The regime implements the social stratification through various security organizations. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS)’s Resident Registration Project Reference Manual describes how to investigate North Koreans’ songbun, with each section beginning with Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jong-il’s personal instructions on the significance of differentiating people on the basis of loyalty.48 The ordinary class, armed with information, could pose a potent challenge to the current regime if they are able to organize and demand changes. The regime will need to continue to co-opt the core class for support. To extract loyalty, Kim Jong-un needs resources to continuously provide perquisites to this group. The core group members are probably better informed about the outside world than the ordinary class because they have access to more goods and information; at the same time, the core benefits most from the current system. If the benefits stop, then this class could also present a challenge to the current regime, especially if their personal security concerns are not addressed.
3 North Korea’s Paradox
The regime enforces the totalitarian, autocratic, and theocratic state through fear and monopoly of information. It employs a secret police apparatus and a network of informants to constantly surveil the population, violate human rights, and control the flow of information.2 The state-sanctioned discrimination system of Songbun also extends the state’s control by classifying the population by loyalty level, which is based on family background. The artificial division creates a small group of people whose loyalty is bought with privileges. The regime, with information monopoly, creates official stories and blocks outside information which competes with the official versions. Propaganda portrays the Kims, whether it is Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, or Kim Jong-un, as nurturing leaders who protect and provide for the people.3 Such unchecked propaganda provides legitimacy and engenders strong faith in the leader and the system, one of the critical components for regime survival. Total control of the society is one of the reasons the regime can maintain political continuity, despite economic hardship.4 However, information is seeping into North Korea because of markets.
Markets emerged in the mid-1990s to cope with famine. The state no longer had enough food to distribute through its Public Distribution System (PDS). Hungry, people turned elsewhere for food. Markets emerged. Most of the small-scale private economic activities are illegal or unofficial, but they have grown and spread to various places in North Korea. In addition to food, portable media players, South Korean drama DVDs, and tunable radios are also found on the market, bringing in additional information.5
Outside information broadens people’s perspectives and can change people’s hearts and minds regarding the leader and the system. It provides a window to alternate lives. While such changes may or may not lead to mass insurrection or a coup d’état, the regime fears such possibilities.
North Korea shows increasing signs of systemic weaknesses. North Korea is plagued by floods and famine, faces chronic food shortages, and has a bleak economy. The regime continues to prioritize weapons and the extravagant lifestyle of the leaders over meeting the basic needs of its people. Its nuclear weapons program and repressive system have isolated the regime in an increasingly globalized world. If the government refuses to open up and reform, its inability weakens its legitimacy and the system could collapse and precipitate the regime’s demise.
On the other hand, the openness and reform necessary to fix these problems would allow people access to outside information and greater self-sufficiency, both of which are threats to the regime. The outside information would compete with the regime’s version of the truth, leading to ques...