North Korea: political system and international relations

North Korea

Due to its relative geographic and political isolation, North Korea remains of the most interesting and least understood countries in the world. Nicknamed the "Hermit Kingdom" for its extreme secrecy and attempts at a completely autonomous existence, North Korea has maintained a rocky relationship with West ever since its creation in the aftermath of World War II (French 1). Examining the country from a number of different perspectives will reveal certain lesser-known realities about life in North Korea while offering the reader a look into the country's likely political and economic future. In particular, understanding how the country's history has shaped its contemporary struggles will give insight into the difficulties everyday North Koreans face even as their leadership engages in high-stakes political maneuvering, all the while benefiting from the repression of the people.

North Korea rests on the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, a mass of land that extends south from China. Although most of North Korea's northern border is shared with China, a small strip of that border actually touches the edge of Russia near the northeastern-most area of the country. To the south lies South Korea, and the two countries split the peninsula roughly in half at the famous 38th parallel, which marks the demilitarized zone between each country (Kim, North Korea at the Crossroads 180). This position has made North Korea an important strategic entity in the region even though it remains extremely isolated, because the country is close to a number of major actors, including China, Russia, and Japan. As a result, North Korea sits at one of the globe's centers of power even though North Korea itself is not usually considered a superpower by any means, despite its relative success in developing nuclear weapons.

Although nearby mainland China features a number of different climates, North Korea is largely made up of mountainous or rocky terrain, and in fact the country's "hostile climate, bad soil conditions, elevated terrain and shorter growing seasons" have come to define the country as its political and social goal of self-sufficiency runs up against the practical realities of agriculture in such an inhospitable environment (Schwekendiek 133). Although the country is ideally situated to serve as a lever of power in the Pacific due to its proximity to China, Russia, and Japan, its actual climate and environment help make North Korea and especially difficult place to live. Furthermore, because North Korea has isolated itself, its proximity to other major powers has not brought with it a robust economy, so the country is forced to rely on the climate it has rather that succeed through imports and exports.

This difficult climate has contributed to one of the country's most pressing issues, namely, how it can feed its population. Starvation has been an issue almost since the country's inception, and the political and economic developments over its history have only exacerbated this problem. At the same time that the country's climate makes it difficult to produce enough food for the population, the political and economic circumstances of the country make it almost impossible to find assistance elsewhere, and even when this assistance does come, it comes at a high price for both North Korea and the international community. However, before discussing the contemporary political and economic issues that contribute to North Korea's instability, it is necessary to understand its history, because the roots of its contemporary problems lie in the founding of the country in the first place.

The climate and environment of North Korea is a direct result of the country's history, because its current borders only exists as a result of the post-World War II political environment. Prior to World War II, Korea existed as unified peninsula, although it had been under the control of the Japanese empire since 1905 as a result of the Russo-Japanese war (CIA.gov). Following decades of imperial rule, Korea finally saw some degree of liberty with the defeat of Japan during World War II. However, this liberty was largely illusory, because almost immediately the conquering powers of World War II used Korea as the first battlefield of the Cold War. This was because the two sides, led by the United States and the Soviet Union, decided to split up the territory: "following an American proposal, Japanese forces north of the 38th parallel surrender to the Soviet Union; south of it, they surrender to the Americans" (Kim, North Korea at the Crossroads 180). Following the expulsion of Japanese forces from the peninsula, the two areas established themselves as different countries.

After World War II, the United States and its allies supported the Republic of Korea in the south and the Soviet Union and its allies supported the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north. This set-up soon erupted into war, as the North, led by its founder Kim Il-Sung, attacked South Korea and began the Korean War, which lasted from 1950-1953 (CIA.gov). By the time it was over roughly 1.6 million people had died in combat alone, with many more suffering from the side effects of war such as disease and starvation (Schwekendiek 31). The war caused a serious rift between both North Korea and South Korea and North Korea and the rest of the world. In fact, this rift continues to this day because the Korean War never officially ended; instead of signing a peace treaty, the two sides merely signed an armistice that ended open hostilities but kept the two sides at war (French 314).

As a result, North Korea has maintained hostile posture towards the United States to this day, and the two countries do not maintain any official diplomatic ties (CIA.gov). As will be seen, this arrangement has led to substantial economic issues for North Korea, as its isolation has made it difficult for the country to develop its economy effectively or evenly. However, before exploring the economic and political issues facing contemporary North Korea, it will be helpful to get a better idea of culture and population.

Finding population data on North Korea has been historically difficult, because the extreme secrecy with which the regime has conducted itself over the last few decades has meant that external researchers have frequently not had the most up-to-date or accurate information (Kim, "The Population of North Korea" 120). According to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the best estimate for North Korea's population as of 2013 is somewhere around 24,720,400 people. While the country enjoys high rates of literacy, its economic and political woes have meant that average life expectancy is not particularly high, with the average male dying at around sixty-five years of age (CIA.gov). The official language of North Korea is Korean, and it is spoken by the vast majority of the country, although the CIA notes that "there is a small Chinese community and a few ethnic Japanese" in the country (CIA.gov).

North Korea features a number of religions, but in almost every respect these religious only exist in name, rather than practice. The country is "traditionally Buddhist and Confucianist, [with] some Christian and syncretic Chondogya (Religion of the Heavenly Way)," but in reality these religious activities are so constrained by the government that they cannot really be considered examples of religious practice (CIA.gov). Instead, they simple serve to provide the appearance of religious freedom to the country, because in reality the government maintains strict controls over meetings and the discussion of any texts that might be considered subversive or contrary to the official line (Havet and Gaudreau 1). While there are likely underground religious movements that practice without the consent or knowledge of the government, getting information on these groups is likely even more difficult that getting data from the North Korean government itself, so it is impossible to say the number of religious adherents in North Korea.

The current state of religious oppression is directly tied to the political nature of North Korea. Since its inception, North Korea has been centered around a cult of personality focusing on the Kim family. Beginning with the country's founder, Kim Il-Sung, power has been passed down from father to son. Kim Jong-Il took over the rule when Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, and after Kim Jong-Il's death in 2011, his son Kim Jong-Un assumed leadership of the country (CIA.gov). The family has maintained -control over the entire country, including its economy and military.

Although North Korean was ostensibly born as part of a Communist revolution, the country's governance has been more in line with totalitarian dictatorships like that of Stalin or Mao than with genuine communal efforts (Armstrong 361). Even as countless North Koreans have died from starvation and disease, the Kim family has maintained lavish lifestyles, and has continued to spend exorbitant amounts of money on military projects, including efforts to expand its nuclear arsenal (Kim & Chang 141). In many ways North Korea stands out for the way in which the Kim family has maintained despotic power over the course of multiple generations, because this continuity means it has been one of the most successful dictatorial regimes of the twentieth century as well as one of its oldest, having existed since the immediate aftermath of World War II. While the dictators of Europe often get the most attention, the Kim family has actually been far more successful in terms of maintaining power, to the point that it has not only managed to exist well into the twenty-first century, but it has also managed to develop its own nuclear weapon program.

The existence of North Korea's nuclear weapon program is one of the reasons for the country's extremely serious economic woes, because its desire to expand its weapons programs has led Western countries to impose increasingly harsh sanctions (Kim & Chang 1). However, while these recent sanctions have become more biting and precisely targeted in order to impose hardship on particular members of the regime, it is also important to note that the United States has imposed economic sanctions on North Korea consistently since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. This means that at no point in the country's history has it even been free from economic sanctions, a fact that helps partially explain both the regime's animosity to the West and the continued difficulty that the regime has had in maintaining a stable, productive economy.

However, while the United States and its allies have made it difficult for North Korea to exercise certain options in improving its economy and the welfare of its citizens, it would be naive to blame the poverty and hardship faced by regular North Koreans on the United States, because no amount of sanctions could top the kind of repression the North Korean government engages in itself. As mentioned above, religious practice is entirely circumscribed within the context of the state's control. On top of this, the government has been careful to quash any signs of internal dissent. For example, while "North Korea has not been without dissent, both overt -- food riots in Hamhung and Sinuiju, prison riots, suspected coup attempts in 1970, 1992, 1995, and 1998 -- and covert -- including political satire and listening to short wave radio," the regime has always succeeded in repressing this dissent, often through the use of violence, including slave labor, torture, and summary executions (French 273).

As a result, North Korea has had to maintain an image of the West as their internal ally in order to continue justifying its treatment of its own people. Even its nuclear weapons program does not seem aimed at actually using it so much as it for forcing Western powers like the United States into a better negotiating position. Even though North Korea's ideology is based on an idea of complete self-sufficiency, in reality the country has to rely on food and economic aid from a number of other countries, which has at times included the United States (Kim & Chang 131). This reality has presented successive Kim regimes with fairly few options when it comes to dealing with other countries, because they have had to maintain a posture of belligerence in order to pacify and repress their own population while at the same time attempting to secure assistance from the very countries they have been challenging.

Over the last two decades the nuclear weapons program has become the central bargaining chip in this process of international negotiation, as Western powers promise more aid in response for North Korea's willingness to abandon or halt its nuclear weapons program (Kim & Chang 132). However, these negotiations have only had limited success, because it seems as if North Korea is willing to restart its nuclear program once it has secured the temporary assistance it requires. Furthermore, North Korea has frequently shown a willingness to redirect aid aimed at the general population towards its military, so that only the military benefits from these international diplomatic transactions (CIA.gov). This is on top of the fact that North Korea already spends large sums on its military, which includes roughly 13 million male and female soldiers available at any given time (CIA.gov).