IntroductionThe problem of North Korea today is the problem of the contradiction of inversion, that is, the inverse relation of dictatorial regime capacity and social reform pressures that have been intensified under impoverished and marketizing socioeconomic conditions. Importantly, this contradiction is not an abstract, metaphysical, or speculative principle formulated in the realm of pure logic or pure theory. Instead, the contradiction is a concrete, empirical, and real social involving the actual momentum of millions of people in everyday life and the struggle of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and Korean People's Army (KPA) elite to maintain its interests, privileges, and survival.While the Soviet-Stalinist-constructed North Korean party-army state-regime had been able to more or less contain the contradiction in the epoch of world Stalinism, with financial aid, fraternal trade, and material assistance from its allies and benefactors in the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, and China, the 1989 to 1991 liquidation of the Stalinist states and onset of the post-Soviet and post-COMECON era exacerbated the problems for the regime. North Korea confronted a crisis of compounded proportions: collapse of the bureaucratically planned economy, collapse of faith in Marxism-Leninism, collapse of discipline in the WPK, and, most catastrophically, collapse of the food-ration system.With the great famine of 1996 to 1999, an emergent market economy based on the spontaneous rise of petty trade and small proprietorship became the new social reality. Confronted with these conditions, the ruling group determined to secure its existence by distancing itself from Marxism-Leninism in 1992, emphasizing militaryfirst (songun) populism in 1998, adopting pragmatic socialism (shilli sahoejuui; markets plus planning) in 2002, and relinquishing communism in 2009. What the political-economic adaptations of the regime are indicative of is that the contradiction of inversion is moving North Korea into an alignment that is fundamentally in the interests of global capitalism.Contradiction of InversionHow is the contradiction of inversion constituted? North Korean studies scholars do not presently use the term, but its sense-content is axiomatic in empirical and predictive analyses of the contemporary North Korean socioeconomic and sociopolitical situation. A notable example is Un-Chul Yang's 2012 article Downfall of the North Korean State Economy in International Journal of Korean Studies, which speaks of from the bottom of and the rise of markets as a bottom-up process rather than a top-down process, resulting fundamentally from economic failure, financial bankruptcy, food shortages, and incapability of government to provide for the North Korean people.2As economic poverty is protracted and as markets at the bottom grow, the North Korean state-regime experiences declining political authority and decreasing influence of power.3 Summarizing the social process and its materially conditioned trajectory, Yang says:With constant economic difficulties, the reigning force of the dictatorial regime is, in fact, gradually loosening. The number of North Korean defectors is increasing, and corruption already seems to be out of control. In addition, the steady growth of private business will be an index to producing a new future.The pressure from the bottom of society to provide reform measures continues to increase as the capacity of the North Korean regime decreases. With the slowly shifting paradigm of the North Korean people and elites, the foundation for a market economy should gain strength in the near future.4What this description and prediction reveal is that the contradiction of inversion has four main factors: (1) progression of time, (2) social hierarchy, (3) dictatorial regime capacity, and (4) social reform pressures. The latter two factors, existing in the objective contexts of history and society, manifest a decrease-increase relation as a direct consequence of economic difficulties and a vertical opposition between the people and the elite. …