Korean Workers Party Research Articles

Winning the Korean War: Early DPRK and PRC Films

This paper adopts a comparative approach by focusing on a selection of early DPRK and People’s Republic of China war films made during the years that followed the Korean War. It looks into the narrative, and the aesthetics of the films in the general framework of socialist construction but also in terms of the DPRK’s shattered dream of reunification. The Korean War broke out during the beginnings of socialist construction, a time of awakening and departure into a new world. It marked the beginning of the Cold War that drew battle lines that would remain in place over the next four decades. The war also served as the theme of a number of films in both countries that reflected their war experience. For the DPRK and PRC, film provided an occasion to address the socialist construction and supremacy over the United States. While the earliest Chinese movies, The Battle of Shangganling Ridge (上甘岭 1956) and Flying in the Sky (长空比翼, 1958), focused on the heroic battles of the Chinese troops, later films such as Friendship (友谊, 1959), Raid (奇袭, 1960) and At the 38th Parallel (三八线上, 1960) recounted incidents of Chinese and Korean soldiers fighting in cooperation against the US enemy under the background of a “Resist the US and Help Korea” campaign. The eight DPRK films discussed include Again to the Front (또 다시 전선으로, 1951), Scouts (정찰병, 1953), and The Combat Unit of a Fighter Plane (비행기 사냥군조, 1953). These productions had to confront the fact that Kim Il Sung’s attempt for (forced) unification had ended in a complete failure that permeated divisions and cut family ties. The Korean War broke out during the early stages of socialist construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a time of awakening and departure into a new ideological world.1 It marked the beginning of the Cold War, drawing battle lines that would remain in place for the next four decades. When Chinese Volunteer troops entered the Korean War on the DPRK side, they were motivated, rather than by friendship, by a mutual enemy, the US, which the PRC feared might further invade Manchuria.2 The war became the theme of a number of films in the DPRK, and the PRC, reflecting their war experience. For the DPRK and the PRC, film was a means to address the process of socialist construction and its supremacy as a model over that of the United States. The DPRK’s films had to deal with the fact that Kim Il Sung’s attempt at (forced) unification had ended in complete failure, which permeated divisions on the Korean peninsula and cut family ties. In addition, the films were produced at a time when Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) sought to build North Korean society anew, in order to present the socialist system as superior to what had been before. A few years before, Mao Zedong had started to introduce socialist values among his followers during the first rectification campaign in Yan’an in 1942. However, the socialist construction period only started after the establishment of the PRC in 1949. This paper focuses on the war films made in the DPRK and the PRC during the Korean War and the years that followed it, when the Chollima movement in the DPRK (launched in 1955, in full swing by 1957), the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) and the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) in the PRC, served as ideological turning points until the beginning of the 1960s.

Introduction

Introduction

정전 후 북한의 사회주의 개조와 민간 상업의 몰락

This study examined whether the private commerce of North Korea were absorbed into the socialist economic system or liquidated, by analyzing private commercial policies at the time of the socialist transition.BRDuring the Korean War, private commerce grew steadily despite the suppressions by North Korean authorities. At that time, the policy direction of the Korean Workers’ Party(KWP) and the government were to restrain and eliminate private commerce rather than accepting it into the cooperative system. For this purpose, in January 1953, the income tax law, which applies a progressive tax rate of up to 74%, was amended. From November 1954, private trade in grains was banned. By these measures, private commerce shrank considerably, so that the socialist transformation of private commerce and industry could be promoted smoothly without intense class struggle. From the end of 1956, the North Korean government began to fully promote the socialist transformation of the private commerce and industry, declared its fulfillment in August 1958.BRPrivate merchants during this period were not ‘transformed’ into socialist workers by joining consumption cooperatives or production cooperatives. Many private merchants have been deprived of their economic basis and have fallen by imposing high rate of income tax, the blocking supply of goods and market.

Purging ‘Factionalist’ Opposition to Kim Il Sung – The First Party Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party in 1958

In March 1958, delegates from across North Korea met in the National Art Theatre in Pyongyang for the First Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party. To date, it has an event largely overlooked by South Korean and Western historians of North Korea because of a lack of source material. The newly unearthed official minutes, however, reveal a highly staged event in which the opponents of high-level party opponents of Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng 김일성) are subjected to what amounts to a show trial, before they lose their party membership. The official minutes are notable for containing one of the only official North Korean descriptions of the alleged plot by certain military members of the Yanan Faction to overthrow the Kim Il Sung government in a military coup. The purpose of the Party Conference within Marxist-Leninist parties is discussed, the background to the Conference and developments in the communist world are also described. The delegate roster is then briefly analysed, interesting and significant statistics are explained with broader reference to North Korean history—the context and what it can tell us about the structure of power in the Korean Workers Party back then. Following this, the show trial by conference is detailed. The trial by conference is split into two parts, the first dealing with their economic crimes and the second with their political crimes. This article discusses both sets of allegations in light of the actual economic pathologies of Soviet-type economies and the political nature of the Kim Il-sungist system.

4·3 이후 김시종의 ‘재일’에 관한 재구성

Last year marks the 70th anniversary of the April 3 Jeju Uprising. This study aimed to look at 70 years of Kim Si-jong’s lifetime who used to be the contact for the South Korean Workers Party during the uprising and settled in Japan afterwards. For the past seven decades, he was the poet residing in Japan. This study will track the traces of his life and explore his world of poetry. “Living as Zainichi” of the 1950s will analyze his thesis through his poem collections 『Jindallae』 and 『Jiheishen』, ‘Verification of Self-existence’ of the 1960s will be analyzed through the poem collection 『Niigata』, and ‘The Though of Heimatlose’ of the 1970s will be examined through the poem collection 『The collection Poems from Ikaino』. In addition, his testimony related to the April 3 Jeju Uprising will be heard in approximately half a century by paying attention to the poem collection 『The Lost Season』 of the 2000s. As previously mentioned, this study will explain the meaning of ‘Zainichi’, ‘Korean’ and ‘poet’ to Kim Si-jong by tracking how he has wrote, participated in movements, and lived for 70 years since the uprising.

Centralizing North Korean Policymaking under Kim Jong Un

Following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in December 2011, Kim Jong Un assumed power and gradually transformed the policymaking environment in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). While some analysts expected the young and inexperienced leader to face greater hardship than his father in managing the country, in this article I argue that Kim Jong Un faced an easier transition. Kim Jong Un inherited an economy, inter-Korean relationship, and strategic landscape in foreign affairs in a relatively favorable position relative to his father's formal succession. From this position of strength, Kim Jong Un has centralized governance in the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) and his personal leadership. Drawing on internal documents and media, I show that inter-institutional debate previously observable between the party, military, and government has largely vanished under Kim Jong Un and the political roles of the military and government have receded from a comprehensive set of national policy questions.

THE NORTH KOREAN AUTOCRACY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The North Korean regime is unique among dictatorships because it is both long-lasting and highly personalized. We argue that initial factionalization of the regime, coupled with the presence of multiple foreign backers early in the regime, allowed the first leader to personalize the regime by first wresting power from the military and then subsequently curbing the autonomous power of the Korean Worker's Party. Using a measure of personalism constructed from historical data, we trace the consolidation of personal power in the North Korean regime and compare it to other communist regimes in the region to show how the evolution of personalist rule in these cases differed. We then explain this sequence of personalization in North Korea by showing how regime imposition by one foreign power, the Soviet Union, combined with military backing from a second foreign power, China, incentivized Kim Il-sung to consolidate personal control over the military and internal security apparatus by reducing the threat of military backlash.

Dystopia

Asian Perspective 40 (2016), 547-552 BOOK REVIEW ESSAY Dystopia Walter C. Clemens Jr. Robert Collins, Pyongyang Republic: North Korea’ s Capital of Human Rights Denial (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2016). Robert Collins, Markedfor Life: Songbun, North Korea’s Social Classification System (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012). Suki Kim, Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korean Elite (New York: Crown, 2014; Broadway, 2015). Pyongyang Republic by Robert Collins presents a deep analysis of the system by which North Koreans are ruled and the conse­ quences for human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Collins documents the ways that North Korea’s elites and subelites pursue their privileged existence in the DPRK capital. His earlier work, Markedfor Life, analyzed the DPRK’s political caste system that generates opportunity for some but severe limitations on the social mobility ofmost North Koreans. Each book details the broad context in which the stories ofindividual defectors have occurred. Collins draws on Korean and English-language doc­ uments and writings as well as interviews conducted by him and others with North Korean defectors and some DPRK officials. The persons strongly favored by the DPRK system probably number more than 1 percent. The Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) enrolls 3.2 million members—about one-eighth of the total popu­ lation, a larger percentage than in other communist countries. Some 42 percent of adults in Pyongyang belong to the KWP, according to Collins. Many if not most other residents are candi­ date members or belong to a member’s family. 547 548 Dystopia The data in Pyongyang Republic (pp. 83-84) show large dis­ crepancies in the estimated size of the city’s population. A 1990 cen­ sus puts it at 3,289,000—some 15.2 percent ofthe then total DPRK population. A 2008 census, however, showed a slight decline to 3,255,388. A UN analysis that same year put the number at only 2,581,076, while a DPRK state security document obtained by South Korea showed a population of 2,100,000. Given that the overall DPRK population has increased since 1990, these lower estimates suggest that Pyongyang’s population has shrunk to about 10 or 11 percent ofthe North’s total population ofroughly 25 million. Thanks in part to military service, there are just 71 males for every 100 females in Pyongyang, compared to a 96:100 ratio in Seoul. The streets of Pyongyang now boast many more autos than in previous years. Most cars belong to state, party, or economic organizations. The first numbers on the license plates reveal a pecking order. The hierarchy extends from 01 for KWP central committee section chiefs, to 13 for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to 21 for court judges, while 22 through 50 are reserved for eco­ nomic enterprises. Pyongyang is not only the hub for what passes for luxury but it is also home to the greatest concentration of DPRK citizens suf­ fering from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). This paradox has a simple answer: elites who suffer from TB can obtain the appropriate medications more readily than other North Koreans. Having already absorbed a variety of medicines, the haves acquire a resistance to the usual drugs used to fight TB. To make matters worse, members of the privileged classes often defy a doctor’s orders and fail to complete the appropriate regimen. (The tougher sanctions imposed on the DPRK by Seoul in early 2016 made no exception for MDR TB medications. The Eugene Bell Foundation warned in March 2016 that supplies in its twelve treatment cen­ ters in North Korea would become exhausted in April.) Of course there are class and wealth differences even among the residents of Pyongyang. The top ring contains a core of privi­ leged elites surrounded by circles ofthe less privileged. The second ring is made up of cadres. A third ring consists of people who are poor by the most elevated Pyongyang standards but who still live more comfortably than most North Koreans outside the capital. Walter C. Clemens Jr. 549 While Collins lists many educational institutions favored...

Structural Impediments, Domestic Politics, and Nuclear Diplomacy in Post-Kim Il-sung North Korea

This article uses theoretical insights from neoclassical realism to explain how the end of the Cold War shaped North Korea's domestic political structures and foreign-policy strategies. It suggests that political leaders are uniquely positioned at the nexus of domestic politics and international politics and employ two different strategies: utilizing international politics for domestic political gain and mobilizing domestic resources to further international ambitions. In the politicking process, political leaders are interested in maximizing both the state security and the regime security; leaders’ concern for regime security outweighs their protection of the national interest when threats to the regime appear more serious. In North Korea, the end of the Cold War forced Kim Jong-il to adopt military-first politics, in which the political power and authority of the Korean Worker's Party waned and the Korean People's Army gained the upper hand in the governing process. In foreign policy, Kim Jong-il and his son Jong-un pursued nuclear weapons to maximize national security at a lower cost and to secure the legitimacy of their rule through successful nuclear tests and mobilization of international threats.

North Korea and Its Quest for Autonomy

A s TE REALITY of polycentrism replaces the myth of the monolithic Communist world, the diverse policy orientations of the Communist nations take on added significance. North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has slowly emerged in recent years as one of the more industrialized nations of the Socialist orbit. Backed by its steadily growing economic power, it has also begun assert an appreciable measure of autonomy in the arena of international Communist politics. What follows is an attempt trace the path that it has traveled in reaching its present status of relative independence. If there is a single Korean word which sums up North Korea's national preoccupation today, it is probably chuch'e-a word which has been variously translated as autonomy,' independence,2 theme,3 and subjective entity.4 As far as can be determined, the word made its first appearance in a speech made by Premier Kim Il-song before a group of propaganda and agitation workers of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) on December 28, I955.5 In the speech, Kim reminded his audience that the ideological work of the KWP must be geared the peculiar requirements of the Korean He declared that the study of the history of Russian Communism, the Chinese Revolution, and the general principles of Marxism-Leninism had but one purpose: to enable us more correctly execute our own revolution. Deploring the failure of the Korean Communists study Korean history and culture in any systematic way, Kim stated:

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

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. …

The Formation of Korean Worker's Party and Kim Il-Sung

The Formation of Korean Worker's Party and Kim Il-Sung

Reform without Transition: The Economic Situation in North Korea since the July 1, 2002, Measures

Poor Economic Performance in North KoreaDespite the severe economic hardship, North Korea has devoted its energy to strengthening its capabilities. Adhering to the so-called military first politics, the harsh North Korean regime continues to maintain its stranglehold on the people and attempts to avert political democratization. North Korea propagates a juche ideology as the foundation of its legitimacy and uses this to insulate its people from the outside world.1 The fundamental obsession with a self-reliant economy has brought about overall economic inefficiency, including a low level of technology, serious neglect of production facilities, and a decrease of labor productivity. As the resultant economic dilemma accumulated, the North Korean economy tumbled severely in the 1990s. North Korea is well aware of the serious problem of its backward economy, but denies the fact that its economic slump can be ascribed to the accumulated problems of its inefficient system. Instead, North Korea blames the hostile policy of the United States, or its weak external economic relations caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc.The economy ceased to function during the 1990s, especially after North Korea suffered severe flooding in 1995. After several years of famine, North Korea announced that the country had overcome its economic hardship through an arduous march of sustained effort by Kim Jung-il and the Korean Workers Party. Positive economic growth in the early 2000s seemed to be made possible by foreign subsidies (see Figure 1). In general, however, the North Korean economy is believed to have failed, losing all its potential and ability to overcome the economic deadlock.Furthermore, North Korea has failed to supply daily necessities and subsistencelevel food to meet the demands of its people (see Figure 2). North Korea needs at least 6.5 million tons of grain to distribute to its people, but its grain supply is far below the demand-by more than a million tons. The poor performance of the agricultural sector is due to the shortage of energy and fertilizer. North Korea was too dependent on Soviet oil and fertilizer subsidies prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.2In an effort to ride out the economic hardship, North Korea introduced bold measures to improve economic management on July 1, 2002, by increasing salaries and prices and providing its state-run enterprises with some incentives. The socalled July 1st measures are viewed as the most aggressive economic policy adopted by North Korea in recent years. The measures were targeted at curing the country's economic inefficiency within the framework of the state-controlled economy. Although North Korea is encouraging production more practically than in the past, and has pushed ahead with reform-oriented changes in the economic sector, it has yet to find better alternatives that will yield substantial economic growth. The measures were designed only to smoothly manage the planned economy, rather than introducing the merits of the market economy. The most notable example is North Korea's industry, which is still the top-priority economic expedient under its stratocracy.3Put simply, the July 1st measures worked against economic reform.4 In reality, the overall level of production in North Korea has remained in the doldrums for a considerable period of time. The shortage of capital goods has almost paralyzed production activities in most industrial sectors.During the initial period of the July 1st measures, North Korea faced severe inflation. The drastic increase in wages pushed up the purchasing power of the North Korean people. As time passed, an excess demand, caused by high wages combined with the ever-increasing speculative demand, touched off skyrocketing price increases. This is a typical monetary illusion, which refers to the tendency of people to think of currency in nominal terms. To stop high inflation, there is a need to add up production factors or improve labor productivity. …

Song of Youth: North Korean Music from Liberation to War

IntroductionKim Il Sung claimed expertise in an array of disciplines, but few areas appeared to enliven his intelligence more fully than the musical arts. Music served Kim's statist ambitions from 1945 to 1950, strengthening national consciousness among the first post-colonial generation of North Koreans. Musical techniques pioneered by Christian missionaries would aid in the Kim's cultivation of a corps of North Korean youth steeped, as he said in October 1945, in people's democracy ... proletarian internationalism [and] hatred for the imperialists.1 North Korean music depicted Korea's imperialistic enemies and concurrently plunged down the taproot of Kim Il Sung's powerful personality cult, feeding the legend of the great general with persuasive poetry and attractive melodies. Finally, music promoted the spirit of revolutionary militancy and suffused the Korean War, promoting alliances and ultimately memorializing the conflict as a triumph for the state and its surviving leaders.Christian InfluencesNorth Korea's revolutionary musical techniques did not emerge ex nihilo, but represented a singular amalgamation inclusive of Korean folk tradition, practices of Christian missionaries, legacies of Japanese military government, and Soviet influence. Of these, the importance of Christian and Japanese influences could be considered the greatest external influences on North Korean musical development, not least because the story of the sculptor of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, begins within the church and stands juxtaposed against the crimson backdrop of Japanese imperialism.Kim Il Sung's recognition of music's power to motivate and unify disparate groups was rooted in his youthful experience in a church in Mangyongdae, where he grew of age under the influence of Protestantism. His father, a church rector, and his mother, a Pentecostal deaconess, encouraged him to participate in the musical life of the church as an organist.2 His late-appearing autobiography With the Century explained in part his Christian heritage and youthful love of music, but Kim Il Sung's much earlier Works imply with equal clarity the impact of Kim's experience as a church musician.3 (While the Works remain problematic because of their heavy and multiple editing, they are used here in conjunction with contemporary materials to suggest the broader gesture of North Korean arts policy.)4 Kim's childhood experience as an organist not only solidified his belief in music as good propaganda, it gave him a firm grounding in music theory. The depth of Kim's understanding of music's key relationships (for example, tonality) was wholly apparent when, comparing the keys of D and E major for his son in the 1960s, the elder Kim betrayed a close knowledge of key structure and its emotional impact on singers and listeners. The notion that each key retains the power to provoke certain emotions (including discomfort) originated from European music theorists such as Robert Schumann, and was almost certainly an idea that Kim had picked up at the organist's bench. As Kim Il Sung noted to the attentive Kim Jong-il, E major was more likely to make people rush forward involuntarily, springing the bodies of singers and audience into alertness and anger.5Kim's published writings from the late 1940s are punctuated with references to music and reveal his related attention to the effectiveness of missionary propaganda. Kim, clearly, recognized that religion's profound influence on Korea stemmed in part from musical techniques that, if harnessed and filled with proletarian class content, could be turned into formidable tools for cultural change. In the uncertain ideological climate after liberation, Kim and his Korean Worker's Party also needed to create an alternative to missionary education. Here they recast foreign models as carriers of proletarian catechism. Kim explicitly modeled his new propaganda centers, termed democratic publicity halls, on previously established Christian education centers. …

Interest Groups in North Korean Politics

North Korea is often characterized as some form of highly centralized rule: totalitarian, posttotalitarian, corporatist, or personalistic. This article argues that much of the confusion around understanding North Korea's actions stems from misplaced models. Much of the current thinking on North Korea's politics does not account for the limited institutional plurality in the system. The article documents how the state's political institutions have changed since the country's founding and highlights the formal and informal roles of each major bureaucracy today. The Korean Workers Party and the role of Juche have declined, but the National Defense Commission and “military-first politics” have not taken their place as reigning supreme. Rather the interaction between the Korean Workers Party, military, and cabinet helps explain and moderate policy outcomes.

The Suryŏng System as the Institution of Collectivist Development

Abstract This article explains North Korea’s political framework as centered on suryŏng (supreme leader), in terms of domestic debates about the best developmental strategy to achieve the dual (and often contradictory) goals of building a “socialist utopia" and achieving economic development. In pursuit of these goals, the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) has adopted a collectivist developmental strategy that places a premium on collective efforts and nonmaterial incentives. Several problems arose in the process of implementation, and the challenges of de-Stalinization from outside, and dogmatism and individualism from within, were particularly serious. The KWP responded with political projects to solidify the party and strengthen its unity with the public while privileging ideological incentives over material rewards. The series of choices eventually led to the establishment of the suryŏng system, in which Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng) occupied the central position of power around which the party and mass were organized. In the 1990s, when the suryŏng system faced particularly difficult challenges, Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏngil) sought to institutionalize the system further by adopting the military-first policy, which placed the military at the center of the efforts to diffuse the suryŏng system’s normative values throughout the society.

Press laws in North Korea

The press in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is closely tied to its communist sociopolitical structures. The North Korean press finds its modus operandi in the ‘Soviet Communist’ theory for its relationship with its government. This study examines the press laws and regulations in North Korea, pursuing three questions: (1) What is the status of the press as a sociopolitical institution in North Korea?; (2) What is the constitutional and statutory scheme relating to press freedom in North Korea?; and (3) What is the impact of the statutory mechanisms on the press in North Korea? The press and other mass media in North Korea are totally controlled by the Korean Worker's Party. No dissenting voice is permitted in the news media. North Korea recognizes freedom of the press as a Constitutional right of their citizens. Nevertheless, there is a considerable disparity between the constitutional guarantee of press freedom and its practical application. In the name of ‘collective good’ as de...

An Introduction to the A Short History of the Korean Workers Party

An Introduction to the A Short History of the Korean Workers Party

North Korea in 1982: Continuing Revolution under Kim Jong Il

Research Article| January 01 1983 North Korea in 1982: Continuing Revolution under Kim Jong Il Rinn-Sup Shinn Rinn-Sup Shinn Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Far Eastern Survey (1954) 23 (1): 102–109. https://doi.org/10.2307/2644331 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Rinn-Sup Shinn; North Korea in 1982: Continuing Revolution under Kim Jong Il. Far Eastern Survey 1 January 1954; 23 (1): 102–109. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2644331 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1983 Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Evolution of the Korean Workers' Party and the Rise of Kim Chŏng-il

THE SIXTH CONGRESS of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP), held in October 1980, officially confirmed the status of Kim Ch6ng-il (or Kim J6ng-il) as the successor to the supreme leader who has led the party for the past three and a half decades. By installing his son in the top positions in the politburo, the party secretariat, and the military commission, President Kim Il-sung, once and for all, solved the mystery behind the building of the cult of his family. The junior Kim is expected to embody the revolutionary spirit that has been handed down from his great-great-grandfather and push forward the revolutionary goals established by his father. While the ascendance of Kim Ch6ng-il solved the mystery behind the cult of the family, it also raised many new questions. Why did Kim Il-sung choose his son as his successor? Why did he bypass the generation between himself (age 69 in 1981) and his son (age 41 in 1981) and select his son? Did he select his son solely because of his desire to create a dynasty as some critics charged? More importantly, why was it necessary for him to select a successor at all? In short, what is the meaning of the ascendance of Kim Ch6ng-il? One could argue, as South Korean critics did, that the hereditary succession of power was an inevitable consequence of the elder Kim's irrevocable commitment to the dream of founding a dynasty of his own and of his family, and that the designation of Kim Ch6ng-il as his father's successor was simply a manifestation of KWP's degeneration into a thoroughly personalized family affair built up around a personality cult.' This line of argument, of course, has its merit, but it sounds too simplistic. The North Korean leader must have anticipated such a change-both within and outside of North Korea-and, under normal