North Korea: The end of the beginning

Abstract

In surveying the condition of North Korea in the late 1980s, 40 years after the state's foundation, it is argued that, despite its initial dynamism and considerable social change, Kim Il Sung's regime is now seriously stagnating. The economy suffers from deficiencies in planning, organization, technology, consumer goods and foreign trade. In international relations, friends have been handled more skilfully than enemies, and North Korea has clearly now lost in the competition with the South. The polity and society, in a sense a reductio ad absurdum of tendencies visible in other communist countries (but mostly in the past), are stifled by extreme formalism and the cult of the personality. While this has produced a certain kind of stability in Kim's lifetime, it has also prevented much‐needed reform, and will pose huge problems for his successor ‐ who may not be Kim Jong Il.