Home > Work > The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia
1 " North "
― Andrei Lankov , The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia
2 " It has often been suggested that Chinese-style, market-oriented reforms are the solution to the North Korean problem. "
3 " Some people believe that North Korean decision makers can be lured or blackmailed into starting reforms, while others hope that they will finally come to their senses and do the right thing for their people as long as the outside world stops meddling in their affairs. "
4 " Just as the book was going to print a new leadership has begun to emerge in North Korea. As one might expect, the emergence of this new leadership has been accompanied by expectations and hopes for a better future for North Korea. As we will see, however, the country’s past gives little ground for optimism, but it is not impossible that the plump and jolly-looking young new Kim may well seek to break with the past and reform the country. He is still surrounded by the advisers and senior lieutenants of his father, but he might not agree with the logic of their survival strategy. There is a distinct possibility that he will attempt to improve the situation. Such attempts might even succeed, but it is also possible that the old guard is right, and that tampering with the system will aggravate the situation and lead to an uncontrollable implosion of the regime—a nightmarish scenario for North Korea’s many neighbors. "
5 " North Korean rulers do what they are doing not because they are “evil” or driven by some delusionary ideologies, but rather "
6 " because they sincerely believe that their current policy has no alternatives, and that any other policy choice will bring ruin to them and their families. "
7 " The reasons for the failure of the Leninist economic model have been studied thoroughly and in the case of North Korea they were essentially the same as elsewhere: distorted price information, lack of incentives for innovation and quality improvement, and an ingrained inability to handle data efficiently. "
8 " The native Korean Communist movement emerged in the early 1920s, and Marxism was much in vogue among the Korean intellectuals of the colonial era. Nonetheless, due to the harshness of the Japanese colonial regime, a majority of the prominent Korean Communists in 1945 operated outside the country. "
9 " While in Europe aspiring Communists were motivated, above all, by the desire to ameliorate social injustices, the East Asian version of Communism had both social and nationalist dimensions. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the era when Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh were young idealists, Communism in East Asia was widely seen as a shortcut to the national revival and modernity, a way not only to solve social problems but also to leapfrog past stages of backwardness and colonial dependency. "
10 " Their approach is often described as paranoid, but I will argue that there may be no alternative to the current North Korean policies if judged from the prospects of the regime’s survival, which is the supreme goal of North Korean policy makers. Their current survival strategy might inflict considerable suffering on ordinary people, make genuine economic growth impossible, and generate significant international security risks. However, this strategy also ensures that a small hereditary elite keeps enjoying power and (moderate) luxury. And, sadly, there is no alternative that would be acceptable to the decision makers. "
11 " Finally, in a truly Orwellian twist, the North Korean authorities took care to isolate the populace not only from the foreign media but also from the official publications of earlier years. All North Korean periodicals and a significant number of publications on social and political topics were regularly removed from common access libraries and could only be perused by people with special permissions. With periodicals the removal was done automatically, with all newspapers published more than 10 to 15 years ago being made inaccessible for the laity. "
12 " For example, until 1972 Seoul (not Pyongyang!) was constitutionally the capital of the DPRK. Concurrently, the ROK government still appoints governors to the provinces of North Korea. Incidentally, the joint offices of these five governors are located not far from the university where this book was being written—and these offices are bustling with bureaucratic activity every time I visit. "
13 " North Korea is not irrational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against all odds. North Korea is essentially a political living fossil, a relic of an era long gone. "
14 " North Korea is a small country with few resources and a moribund economy. In spite of all this, however, it has managed to survive and successfully manipulate larger players, including an impressive number of the great powers. "
15 " A Western doctor who frequently goes to North Korea with aid missions put it nicely in a private talk with the author: “For a health care professional, a police state is a paradise. I came with my medical van to a North Korean village, the local official blew a whistle, and in 10 minutes everyone in the village was waiting in front of our van. Every single person! No excuse was tolerated, and nobody dared to evade us. In other developing countries it was so different! "
16 " North Korea’s alleged penchant for irrational and erratic behavior is illusionary: the North Korean leaders actually know perfectly well what they are doing. They are neither madmen nor ideological zealots, but rather remarkably efficient and cold-minded calculators, perhaps the best practitioners of Machiavellian politics that can be found in the modern world. "
