North Korean Regime Research Articles

The Weakening of Social Control in North Korea since the Arduous March: The Case of Physical Education

ABSTRACT This article shows how much the North Korean regime’s control over its people’s bodies has weakened as a result of the loosening of micro-power since the ‘Arduous March’ of the late 1990s. To track these types of micro-level change, the study uses Foucault’s disciplinary power and historico-critical ontology to explore the disciplinary power that has been exercised through physical education (PE) classes in North Korean schools for more than 70 years. According to Foucault, modern states have instituted networks of disciplinary power in their societies to control their people, using the political technique of the body. This type of power is directed at everyday life through social practices. By drawing on primary sources regarding PE in North Korea and on seven interviews with defectors, the article illustrates that micro-power began to develop a meticulous PE network in the school system from the 1950s and mass-produced a ‘New Communist Man’ in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the Arduous March disrupted the public distribution system, and both the network of micro-power and the institutional network of PE began to loosen. Subsequently, the New Communist Man in North Korea seems to be gradually being liberated from micro-power and is less likely to internalise obedience.

Building Connections to Protect Ethnic Education: The Chōsen Schools’ Intercultural Network

Abstract: Prompted by the desire to return to their homeland and reclaim their ethnic identity after the end of Japan’s colonial rule, Zainichi Koreans taught their children the Korean language and educated them about their cultural heritage at what later became known as Chōsen schools. While neither the Japanese nor the South Korean government supported the Chōsen schools, the North Korean government provided them with financial support through an organization called Chongryun. Despite enduring suppression and discriminatory treatment by the Japanese government, Chōsen schools have managed to survive, becoming the largest foreign school system in Japan. This article examines the impact of activism by the Chōsen school community in protecting ethnic education and promoting intercultural engagement between Zainichi Koreans, Japanese, and foreign school communities. Focusing on three key events, the article examines efforts by the Chōsen school community to resolve bias and misunderstanding among members of the Japanese public concerning the ethnic education they provide. It argues that Zainichi Koreans’ grassroots activities have helped to build intercultural connections with local communities and other foreign schools in Japan.

US news media’s framing of the ‘North Korean crisis’ under the Trump administration: The new ideological foreign affairs paradigm

On 11 February 2017, North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of the Trump administration. Over the ensuing year the North Korean government continued to defy international pressures through the intensification of its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. During this time frame, an escalation of adversarial rhetoric between the Trump administration and the Kim Jong-un military government gained widespread media attention for its potential to escalate into military aggression. This study analyzes USA Today coverage of the ‘North Korean crisis’, and its subsequent de-escalation following the announcements of diplomatic talks in March 2018 in order to gain insight into the nature of mainstream US media framing of the issue. The study found that US news media appropriates ingroup/outgroup dichotomies in the service of US interests. Analysis also revealed that the coverage embraced an ideologically-based narrative predicated on the rejection of an international system based on the moral imperatives of democracy and human rights in favor of a realpolitik interpretation of the international system in which actors compete for advantage.

Strategies of Political Control under Kim Jong Un

In this article, we trace the strategy of political control employed in North Korea under Kim Jong Un. Using conceptual tools created in the literature on comparative authoritarianism, we consider the roles of repression, co-optation, coercive distribution, and containment with respect to how the North Korean regime responds to external and internal threats. We focus on two areas as case studies in differentiated, contingent political control strategies. First, we consider the role of border as a conduit for unauthorized goods, migrants, and illicit information and the regime’s regulation of it. Second, we examine the regime’s management of internal economic actors, namely urban entrepreneurs and farmers. The main argument of this article is that Kim Jong Un has employed a policy of simultaneous co-optation, repression, and latterly under COVID-19, reemergent coercive distribution, building on but also modifying the strategic approaches pursued under Kim Jong Il.

북한의 지속가능발전목표 이행에 관한 연구

Purpose: Based on the compliance theory and the institutionalist approach, this article is intended to assess North Korea’s compliance levels of No Poverty goal under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
 Originality: Although SDGs stands for advanced global norms, its application constitutes significant challenges for the developing world. For the better achievement of SDG within the global community, this paper highlights country-specific limitations and opportunities for SDG compliance and implementation through the case of North Korea.
 Methodology: For the analysis, this study conducts content analysis on a range of documents and information released by the North Korean government, including the Voluntary National Review (2021) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (2018). In order to evaluate the direct and indirect availability of poverty data (including estimates), relevant academic works and reports are also reviewed.
 Result: To assess and explain North Korea’s weak compliance, this study does not stick to the issue of statistical capacity only. For incorporating the wider institutional contexts, the localization of the global discourse on poverty and the internal structure for SDG implementation are also highlighted. Despite the country’s willingness, due to the communist tradition as well as regime justification, we interpret that the country still shows strategic but roundabout behavior in adopting the global concept of poverty.
 Conclusion and Implication: This study concludes with recommendations that can help North Korea improve its compliance with the SDG.

Editorial Note

Editorial Note

The Interview: Citra Politik Kim Jong Un Dalam Hegemoni Film Amerika

This study examines film The Interview to determine hegemonic process of political power relations in American films. North Korea is known as a closed country that strongly opposes western domination, especially America. Foreign media always describe North Korean government as a dictator, meaning absolute power of leader. In contrast, film The Interview depicts a humorous figure of North Korean leader by showing figure of Kim Jong Un who enjoys American culture. The plot of Twits in this film depicts uprising that took place to make North Korea a democracy. Qualitative descriptive research method is used in analyzing film through approach of Gramsci hegemony theory about how hegemony process in the film The Interview. Data collection techniques through literature examination include books, journals, documents, and films. Data reduction, data visualization, and drawing conclusions are data analysis activities. The results of study show that dominant group tries to exert influence with concepts of mastery in a persuasive manner by presenting reality from a different point of view. The dominant people here are Americans who are trying to change mindset audience by seeing North Korea as an oppressed people. Leaders who have been known to be assertive, such as Kim Jong Un, who is feared by people, are portrayed as humorous figures with a love for American culture, which is a clear fact in their development that they often experience political tensions.

Chondoist Religion in North Korea: Selected Aspects

Chondoism is a 20th-century Korean pantheistic religion, based on the 19th-century Tonghak movement. Originally, Chondoism was recognized as the national religion of Korea, unlike Buddhism and Christianity. Being a patriotic movement, Chondoism was able to develop itself in North Korea when North Korea was liberated from the Japanese occupation (1910–1945). Despite the nature of the North Korean regime, Chondoism is still present in the North Korean society. Like other religious groups in North Korea, the Chondoist religion today serves political aims in this country as the Chondoist Chongu Party belongs to the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea. On the other side, its influence cannot be neglected when understanding the society of North Korea.

북한의 코로나 대응정책에 대한 비판적 고찰

North Korea has vowed to provide equal health and medical services to all citizens, including free treatment, doctor's care assigned to each area, and preventive medicine, but it is suffering from a recession that began in the mid- to late 1990s and a lack of budget for arms strengthening. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s added to this difficult situation. This study criticizes the causes and effects of the Kim Jong-un administration's hasty policy errors in the COVID-19 pandemic, as North Korea's poor health care situation is due to various aspects of politics, economy, and society. This research first introduces the current status and attributes of the North Korean economy, and examines the characteristics of the North Korean health and medical treatment policy based on them. Subsequently, in terms of international cooperation in the International Health Regulations (2005), the North Korean government's COVID-19 pandemic policy is critically reviewed and the policy direction for private cooperation as a non-political means is presented in the conclusion. Finally, this paper argues that in order to effectively supplement the North Korean government's COVID-19 response policy, international solidarity and cooperation, including South Korea, should be promoted transnational, and the International Health Regulations (2005) should be revised to the International Health Law with treaty-level coercion to ensure human mobility as much as possible.

1948~2019년 북한의 사회복지 정책 변동에 대한 소고: 북한헌법을 중심으로

The purpose of this study is to identify policy changes by tracking social welfare-related clauses in North Korea's constitution. To achieve this, this research reviews the North Korean Constitution, which has been amended ten times since the establishment of the North Korean regime in 1948. The constitution is analyzed by the literature review method.
 North Korea's position on social welfare changed significantly only between the first constitution of 1948 and the second constitution of 1972, but there was no significant change after that. Based on this fact, this paper is focused on the reason why North Korea hasn’t changed their social welfare policy for about 50 years and what the rationale is, and the background for it. In this paper, four reasons are considered. First, it is due to the basic nature of North Korea's concept of welfare, and the limitations rooted in the blind belief that their social welfare system is superior and complete. Second, expansion of the social welfare system in the constitution would imply acceptance that there is a flaw in their current constitution. However, ratifying an amendment would require acknowledgment of such a flaw by the North Korea regime itself, which they are unwilling to give.
 Third, extending from the second reason, the social welfare system is especially considered to be an achievement of the North Korean supreme leader, and changing the social welfare policy could be considered contradictory to the perception of the success of these policies. Fourth, as an extension of the third reason, North Korea’s constitution can only be changed by the leader or under the leader’s permission. It is therefore the leader's sole right to change or expand the social welfare system in the constitution. Because of these reasons, North Korea has not been able to change the social welfare system in the constitution in the years since 1972.

Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World by Benjamin R. Young

<i>Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World</i> by Benjamin R. Young

The Bloody Footprints of North Korean Refugees

North Korean refugees first caught the notice of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service during the 1990s when North Korea had to suffer an unprecedented famine. Since then the number of North Korea refugees had steadily increased until it started to fluctuate depending on the regulations of North Korea and China at particular moments in history (King, 2021). Although the initial motivation for the refugees was survival from hunger, later refugees left North Korea seeking basic human rights that were denied to them. Although these North Koreans know the punishment for getting caught while trying to escape from the North Korean regime was an undignified and slow death full of suffering, they still left their country to pursue a life where they could be treated as free and proper human beings. The journey to South Korea is an arduous and taxing one, and the refugees must navigate the dangerous checkpoints and border patrols in China lest they get caught and repatriated back to North Korea. Upon traveling from north China to south China, the refugees enter two transition countries, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Thailand. Each country provides their own hardships to the refugees, before allowing them passage into South Korea. Once inside, the North Korean refugees are questioned and subsequently educated regarding the differences between North Korea and South Korea lifestyles. Upon finishing their schooling, the refugees are considered South Korean citizens.

How to kill a sage: North Korean discourse on Jizi/Kija 箕子

Abstract After liberation in 1945, the new North Korean regime initiated a process to liquidate so-called “old” or “feudal” thought. One prime target of the North Korean authorities was the myth of Jizi 箕子 (kor. Kija) and the story of his migration to the Korean Peninsula. The elimination of Kija and his legacy was a complicated task; the ancient legend of the Shang dynasty sage who brought civilisation and culture to the Korean people was widely known in all strata of Korean society, deeply ingrained in thousands of literary works, and the new North Korean capital, Pyongyang, was the traditional centre of the Kija cult. In spite of censorship, physical destructions of Kija-related relics, or academic conferences, which tried to repudiate the link between Kija and the Chosŏn state on a scientific basis, the North Korean authorities were never able to fully suppress the old narrative. The ancient sage remains, until nowadays, a problematic point for North Korean historiography and cultural memory.

Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World by Benjamin R. Young

Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader centers on North Korea’s “Third Worldism,” tracing its international-relations outreach to developing nations starting in 1956, when leader Kim Il-sung consolidated his domestic power, to 1989, when North Korea hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students. Young draws from such rich sources as newspaper articles from around the world, third-party embassy records, and North Korean state media reports. His globe-spanning study captures North Korean activities in far-flung locales, from Senegal to Mexico, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Vietnam, Uganda, Pakistan, Egypt, Zambia, and many more. It even reaches so far as the tiny Micronesian island nation of Nauru, where the president explained that his nation already had “relations with some countries they didn’t really like” when justifying his acceptance of North Korea’s diplomatic overtures in 1982 (123). These engagements, we learn, served several purposes for North Korea. Internationally, Kim Il-sung promoted the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (dprk) as a model for other struggling nations seeking to move beyond binary Cold War entanglements, arguing that they could achieve independence and self-reliance by following the dprk’s philosophy of self-sufficiency, or Juche. Meanwhile, domestically, North Korean media outlets highlighted these initiatives as evidence of the respect that Kim Il-sung and the dprk commanded on the world stage while obscuring the fact that they had been initiated and funded by the North Korean government.Young reveals that these campaigns had mixed results. North Korea’s training for staging overseas “friendship games” proved to be its most enduring diplomatic initiative. Brisk sales of bespoke statues to dictators abroad showcased the dprk’s unique expertise, earned the country praise from outside authoritarian regimes, and infused the North Korean economy with much-needed hard currency. Less successful, however, were funded North Korean friendship societies, laudatory articles about North Korea planted in local newspapers, and sponsored dprk state visits for foreign dignitaries. At times, these efforts appear to have engendered an appreciation for North Korea’s development model in unlikely corners, but, by and large, they were dismissed as overt and simplistic propaganda or exploited for profit by target audiences, doing little to improve North Korea’s international image. More importantly, Young shows that the North Korean government increasingly approached target nations not as diplomatic partners but as sites for hacking and theft, for disseminating anti–South Korea propaganda, and for staging direct terrorism against adversaries (like the 1983 attempted assassination of South Korean leader Chun Doo-hwan in Rangoon [Yangon]).This book’s central focus on long-term, proactive engagement rather than on episodes of defensive brinksmanship provides a welcome addition to studies of dprk international diplomacy. Nonetheless, Young does not substantively engage with international-relations scholarship and political theory that would permit a comparison of North Korea’s practices with those of other nations. Likewise, Young could have used the extensive research about North Korea’s diplomatic history with its larger allies, such as China and the Soviet Union, and with its adversaries, such as the United States, to situate North Korea’s developing world initiatives within a broader strategy, providing perspective on the goals and effects of these campaigns. In sum, Young’s Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader tells a fascinating story, but its primary contribution lies in expanding our knowledge of a lesser-known aspect of North Korean diplomatic history rather than in an elucidating theoretical framework or an innovative and interdisciplinary methodology.

The Critical Review of the Discourse of North Korean Human Rights and International Anti-corruption: Focused on the Paradox of Human Rights and Sovereignty

The corruption scandal of North Korea has seen by UN reports said the food and humanitarian aid being diverted to corrupt bureaucrat, whereby requesting to open an investigation. Given int'l inquiry, North Korea has responded by the paradox of human rights and sovereignty, which reflected human security and the principle of nonintervention. That is not, however, only North Korea's assertion in which some way analogous to a long-standing claim of the third world : the issue of North and South, and imperialism versus anti-colonialism. From the sense, the analysis has focused the normative issue of human rights and state sovereignty, and has explored the sphere of the notion in which North Korea engaged the Third World enquiring the justice of the core in line with anti-corruption regime's evolvement. Secondly, it evolved to show what attributes the paradoxical logic to North Korean regime's highly rigid political sense, namely sovereign priority.

SRAD Director's Corner: Understanding North Korea and the Key to Security in East Asia

In the third installment of the SRAD Director’s Corner, Colonel George Shatzer focuses on North Korea and the Kim family regime. He reviews Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer’s Insights into North Korea’s Enigmatic Young Dictator by Jung H. Pak and Rationality in the North Korean Regime: Understanding the Kims’ Strategy of Provocation by David W. Shin and shows how these books might help readers better understand North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un and the implications of his actions for US foreign and military policy in the region. The books also provide insights for strategists attempting to plan for security in East Asia.

대북 경제제재의 효과성 분석

This article concludes that UNSC economic sanctions on Byungjin Policy were effective in US-North Korea Hanoi Summit, investigating Kim Jong Un’s decision making to pursuit summit diplomacy was motivated by the urgency of sanctions lift. It can be presumed that Kim’s cost-benefit calculation pursuing his political survival, which is the top priority of the North Korean foreign policy, can be worked via not a nuclear programme but an economic improvement along with US-NK normalization.&#x0D; To empirically confirm research hypothesis whether UNSC sanctions coerced the failure of Byungjin Policy, this article investigated the correlation both Byungjin Policy and UNSC sanctions in 2013-2019. As a result, it is probable that dictator Kim would determine a strategic trade-off between dismantling Yongbyon nuclear facility and UNSC sanctions lift to secure economic improvement, which is a preliminary affair to prolonging his tenure in office. Given the effectiveness of UNSC sanctions on Byungjin policy, economic pressure on North Korean regime was at least effective to induce Kim’s recalibration as to political survival although economic sanctions hardly coerce North Korea’s denuclearization.

North Korea's Anti-Great Power Diplomacy

Benjamin R. Young’s Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader weaves together diplomatic records of various countries and North Korea’s publications to show how “Third Worldism formed a fundamental part of North Korea’s national identity during the Cold War era” (4). It uses a wide-angle lens to capture North Korea’s numerous attempts to promote its ideology, support fights against powerful nations, offer to build factories, organize friendly societies, provide military assistance, and spread Mass Games in various small nations in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In the introduction, Young argues that “Juche’s utopian motivations and ideological simplicity, with its emphasis on national autonomy, was precisely what appealed to many Third World peoples and operated as an effective form of soft power for the North Korean regime” (7). But the following chapters plentily show that North Korea’s incessant attempts to support small nations met with mixed reactions—some leaders were inspired greatly and regarded North Korea as a developmental model to emulate, but others mocked its cultural production as boring and were disappointed at the low quality of the goods produced in North Korean-built factories.

The Benefit of the Wind: Testing the Rally Effect of North Korea Shocks during the Park Geun-hye Administration

The "rally-'round-the-flag effect" sparked by North Korea (the so-called 'Northern Wind') has been an important part of South Korean domestic politics. Despite the long history and controversy associated with politics of Northern Wind, the literature provides surprisingly little quantitative evidence on this phenomenon. In this study, we empirically investigate the relationship between North Korean-induced incidents and former President Park Geun-hye's weekly job approval ratings. Using vector autoregressions, we find that (1) President Park gained political benefits from North Korea, where negative events (e.g., armed attacks) generated a larger boost in approval than positive events (e.g., high-level talks); (2) rally effects varied across regions according to different perceptions of the North Korean regime: during security crisis, Park received the largest rallies in Gyeongnam province where the dominant image of North Korea was an 'enemy that threatens our safety'; and (3) a test of nuclear weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) did not affect approval ratings even though it captured widespread media attention.

구원자 혹은 폭군: 남북한 『실낙원』 번역서의 God 비교 연구

This study aims to compare the translated versions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost published in South Korea and North Korea, specifically examining representations of God in both versions. Using Mona Baker’s narrative reframing theory, this study analyzes varying presentations of God’s identity, power, and intention. The analysis shows that the South and the North Korean translated versions have been reframed drastically differently through selective appropriation and labelling. On the one hand, the South Korean translation reframes the text as a religious poem and the author as a devout Christian poet. In the preface of this version of Milton’s text, God is reframed as a merciful and generous savior. The main body of the text positively reframes narratives about God. In comparison, the North Korean version reframes Milton’s poem as a political text, and the author as an anti-feudalist revolutionary. In the preface of the North Korean version, God is reframed as a merciless tyrant and an absolute autocrat. In the main body, the North Korean version bypasses positive narratives about God and removes the Christian narrative this paper argues is found within the source text. This paper reads such translating processes as an ideological reflection of the political imperatives of a North Korean government rejecting and suppressing the Christian belief system.