North Korea's 2009 Currency Reform in the Context of National Narrative

Abstract

IntroductionThere is a new economic focus in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, one that overtly states it will improve the quality of people's lives and covertly states that the central government will provide this improvement. This has been made clear both through the Korean Worker's Party's public pronouncements and recent economic policies, in particular the currency reform of November 2009, which was car- ried out without warning and served to confiscate the wealth traders and corrupt officials privately earned through market activities. North Korea's deepening economic ties to China are the key material factor for this development strategy; no other trading partner is able or willing to provide the necessary investment. However, to understand the DPRK's prospects for one must first understand how the new focus has been constituted as a social movement. It is a recasting of the intimately bound Juche (the official ideology emphasizing self-reliance and independence) and the DPRK's national narrative. For North Korea's citizens, it is this national narrative that contextualizes the plans currently being implemented by Pyongyang, giving them a chance to stabilize the regime.The National NarrativeAll states employ some form of national narrative to shape the conduct and ideals of the populace. North Korea, more than any other nation, uses a national narrative that subsumes all other stories, local and personal. When one's society is ostensibly without a profit motive for individual the role of the national narrative becomes elevated for motivating the citizenry. Despite the hardships that ordinary North Korean citizens endure, there exists a basic, shared understanding of North Korea's position in the world, to which the majority of citizens subscribe, to varying degrees.The national narrative rests on the very edge of two seemingly contradictory positions: extreme victimhood and extraordinary accomplishment. A cursory glance at any North Korean media will reveal that victimization at the hands of the Japanese and then Americans is the glue that bonds their society and motivates action. Psychologist Joshua Searle White writes:One powerful way in which individuals can achieve a feeling of being right is to have been victimized, and to have others recognize that victimization. One would think that in a group's stories about its own history, national triumphs might play the dominant role. However, national tragedies often play an even more prominent role in the way that a nation sees itself.1Victimhood, as White writes, may be dominant in most nations, but in North Korea it operates only insofar as it contextualizes the successes the Korean people have achieved through struggle and unity. Shared victimhood that doesn't bear fruit will simply become uninspiring after a while. In this sense, the DPRK's domestic propaganda, while always intense and unremitting, must constantly be adjusted to actual circumstances, at times emphasizing victimization and at other times emphasizing accomplishments and victory.By way of comparison, the national narrative in the United States focuses on an imagined indefatigable march towards liberty (for all) and wealth (for some). One study of American schoolchildren's attitudes towards history concluded that success, not victimization, is at the heart of nationalism: Other people may desire freedom, but we have actually achieved it.2North Korean propaganda also claims that their society has achieved a type of freedom that others can only yearn for and emphasizes national successes. Indeed, with no private media to coo over social/political or technological accomplishments, state-owned propaganda promotes these themes with its own inimitable and bombastic style. North Korea, however, must trace a fine line in which the victim narrative must also be present in order to motivate the population as well as provide an external reason for the nation's shortcomings. …