Kremlinology Update
Yonhap, South Korea’s government news agency, is reporting that Pyongyang is giving its bureacracy a transfusion of new blood:
North Korea is expected to hire more young loyal “technocrats” to fill key party and government posts in 2005 as part of its efforts to strengthen the power of leader Kim Jong-il, a South Korean government report said Sunday.
There are no clear signs of Kim’s grip on power weakening but outsiders are closely watching whether the 62-year-old leader may be moving to groom his successor. The leader inherited power from his late father and president, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.
Well, that seems innocent enough. But Japan’s spy agency has heard about these personnel management actions, too, and it has a somewhat darker explanation:
According to the report, social confusion — such as the widening gap between rich and poor — has appeared due to rapid inflation resulting from economic reforms initiated in 2002. It forecasted that such confusion would increase in the future.
The report also said signs had appeared that due to economic reforms and the flow of information from the outside, there was increasing polarization between “winners” and “losers” among government officials, resulting in regime instability. In analyzed that following the government’s recognition in July 2002 of private and corporate for-profit activities, markets had opened and the economy had been revitalized to some extent, but gaps between the rich and poor have widened, and society has grown more chaotic with rising rates of worker absenteeism, theft and burglary.
Accordingly, the report said the possibility couldn’t be denied that as complaints with the system grew, fissures would appear in Kim Jong-il’s power base and friction felt within the North Korean leadership over the question of succession.
Channel News Asia has more:
In a desperate drive to revive its moribund economy, North Korea launched economic reform in July 2002, allowing individuals and corporations to run for-profit operations. The move has spawned markets handling a broad range of commodities and helped revitalise the economy to a certain extent, the Japanese agency said. “As a result, public discontent against the establishment may possibly grow while confrontation develops between winners and losers in the ruling class such as military and government leaders.”
The report warned that if the economy further deteriorates it could accelerate the country’s efforts to earn foreign currency through trafficking in narcotics, forging money and spreading weapons of mass destruction.
Is this a regime desperate to feed everyone? A society seeking true modernization? An ideologically socialist economy that is seeking a fairer distribution of resources? Not if any of these reports are true. On the contrary, the economic and political object of the North Korean government appears to be protecting and profiting a small, elite group that hold the reigns of power at the expense of everyone else. All of the new facts we learn about Kim Jong Ils government seem to fit the model of an exploitive and controlling–yet ideologically neutral–dynasty.
When viewed through that lens, the limited progress on openness, diplomacy, and economic reform makes sense. Nor is it that limited from the regime’s perspective, if you understand that the goal is merely to feed and enrich a small number of people while the rest fend for themselves.