Sultanism

Abstract

During the late 1960s, there were some significant purges in North Korea. While the one in 1967 was aimed at getting rid of some high-ranking party officials, the one in 1968 was meant to expel some top military officials. Conventional views had emphasized that Kim Il Sung's unlimited ambitions to seize ultimate power had caused these purges. These views, however, have failed to explain that these purges were closely related to shifts in the North Korean political system, which might have been a result of a complex process of policy competition, power struggle, and succession politics. Although some arguments have recently been made that the purges in the late 1960s were the outcome of conflicts on economic and military policies, there is still a lack of sufficient evidence that verify these claims. Therefore, this study seeks to uncover the actual reasons behind these purges. According to North Korean official documents Park Kum Chol and Lee Hyo Soon are alleged to be anti-party factionalists, since they have attempted to challenge Kim Il Sung's authority, exert their own authority in their respective fields, be opposed to the state's economic policy, and spread reactionary notions such as feudalism and bourgeois ideas. Surprisingly, they were all purged at the 15th Plenum of the Sixth Party Central Committee in 1967. Their purge was astonishing because they were closely related to Kim Il Sung's anti-Japanese armed struggle, and they had both led the purge of anti-Kim Il Sung forces in August 1958. After a year and a half, Kim Chang Bong, Minister of National Security; and Reo Bong Hak, Commander-in-Chief of the Korean People's Army; were accused and purged for almost the same reasons as the top party officials that had been purged the year before. These two purges were not caused so much by policy conflicts as they were by the combination of power struggle and policy differences amid succession politics. Kim Jong Il, even though a junior party official at the time, wielded the power to get rid of his revolutionary seniors. By way of these purges, Kim Il Sung proclaimed and established a system of monolithic ideology over the society, and the minimal pluralist traces that remained in the decision-making process were thoroughly eradicated. As a result, the North Korean political system was rapidly transformed into a new one, a sultanistic arrangement in which individual leadership becomes the utmost political norm.