Pyongyang's Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea

Abstract

Speculation about the future of the North Korean regime has been intense for nearly two decades. In the 1990s, economic crises and famine led to predictions of the Kim regime's imminent downfall. Today analysts highlight impending famine as well as threats to the regime's position brought by eroding information control. Several theories of authoritarian control help to explain how Kim Jong-il and his family have remained in power and how this might change over time. The Kim regime has employed a variety of authoritarian “tools” to protect itself both from popular revolt and from internal coups. Its social policies, reliance on certain ideas and nationalism, and use of force prevent the onset of revolution. Through numerous other tools (elite co-optation, manipulation of foreign governments for financial aid, and the “coupproofing” of domestic institutions), the regime protects itself from coups d'état and elite unrest. This framework not only helps to explain the past resilience of the regime, but it suggests that the regime is not in danger of being unseated by coups or revolution. Yet it also suggests that the regime has not adequately prepared for succession after Kim's death. This analysis has implications for policy planning about the future of the Korean Peninsula, as well as for negotiations with and coercive strategies toward Pyongyang.

New approaches to North Korean politics after reunification: The search for a common Korean identity

“…The same concerns can also be applied to North Korea: it is known from previous studies on textbooks that Pyongyang tends to portray South Koreas either as political elite enemies, or as peasants (Lee, 2010). The evidence found in the news article seem to confirm this trend, as well as reinforce the fact that North Korea also sees South Korean population and therefore identity as being depraved, mostly because of foreign ideals being implemented, as well as because of a loss of homogeneity due to mix-marriages, or the concept of 'contamination by association' as highlighted by Byman and Lind (2010). When considering both South Korean and North Korean tendencies to consider outside influence as compromising to their own identity, it might be reasonable to assume that both countries might be unwilling to see their civic identity move away from their baseline to converge somewhere in the middle.…”

“…The fall of communist ideologies in many parts of the world including the Soviet Union's collapse led the North Korean elite to strengthen some of its national symbols in order to create a new set of myths for its people, and the education system was used as an integral part of the identity reinforcement process. Schools had already been used since the late 1960s to promote the Great Leader's activities during and after the Japanese occupation (Lee, 2010) but recent studies on North Korean schooling give impressive numbers: indeed by the time a student reaches university, about 40 percent of subjects taught are exclusively about political education (Byman and Lind, 2010). Additionally, a large part of North Korean national identity is based on the politics of exclusion and dichotomy especially targeted at Japan and then at the United States.…”

“…Indeed, Lee's comprehensive studies of North Korean textbooks has shown that North Korea depicts Japanese especially in past historical contexts, while Americans are represented as an ever-present and contemporary threat (2010), with Kim suggesting that "representation of the Japanese...are twice as numerous as depictions of American" (1990a). Those depictions are also often accompanied by derogatory statements that often involve racial commentaries, hence hinting at North Korean national identity as being based on racial tendencies as well as xenophobia (Byman and Lind, 2010).…”

The Logic of the Survival of North Korea

“…The question is: is North Korea significantly different from other rogue states in terms of the relative capabilities of the poor and the military? As Byman and Lind () point out, North Korean leaders are not different from other authoritarian leaders in that they rely on the same instruments, such as restrictive social policies, the manipulation of ideas and information, the use of force, and institutional coup‐proofing, to avoid revolution and coup d’états. That is, the poor and the military in North Korea are repressed and controlled in the same way as in other authoritarian regimes, implying that North Korea is not an outlier in terms of nonethnic politics.…”

Coup-Proofing, Military Defection, and the Arab Spring

“…3 To protect themselves from military coups, authoritarian regimes throughout the world bolstered their rule by implementing a variety of "coup-proofing" strategies. 4 Such measures subordinate the armed forces to a country's political leadership, structuring civil-military relations in a way that reduces both their ability and willingness to challenge the political status quo. In the Middle East, coup-proofing strategies have virtually eliminated coup attempts since 1980, a remarkable feat given the region's tumultuous history of civil-military relations.…”