Juche, totalitarianism, and social control in North Korea

Juche, Totalitarianism, and Social Control in North Korea

North Korea can be considered a darkly successful enterprise in totalitarian rule. Since the Korean War rendered the peninsula in two, North Korea has withstood decades of economic collapse. By most measures, North Korea is a strange relic of a bygone era: a vestige of the Cold War. Whereas former Soviet Republics, China, and other communist countries have since adapted their domestic and foreign policies to participate in the global market economy, North Korea has not. Most of North Korea\'s closed-door policies have been visibly detrimental to the hermit nation and yet it persists in its practices. The ironically named Democratic People\'s Republic of North Korea has zero democratic institutions, lacking freedom of speech, press, religion, and even identity. North Korea has sustained a totalitarian, authoritarian regime for decades with seemingly no end in sight. The DPRK project is interesting from a sociological and historical standpoint, but absolutely devastating when looked at earnestly in terms of social justice, ethics, and human rights. Even by detached quantitative outcomes like political and economic expediency, the North Korea project has failed. Yet its ability to withstand international condemnation and resist change have also enabled the DPRK to develop weapons of mass destruction and present a clear and present danger to almost every other nation on the planet -- given North Korea\'s commitment to independence at all costs. Its stark self-reliance is ensconced in North Korea\'s official policy of juche.

Totalitarianism is the means by which the ruling authorities prevent change. Change could have occurred by one of two means: internal resistance and external pressure. North Korea has cleverly managed both via its skilled implementation of a totalitarian regime that is notable for its understanding of human psychology and social behavior. For example, the government of North Korea since Kim Il Sung has fused elements of cult worship with government and by doing so, capitalizes on the power of propaganda and mind control. Citizens who resist the groupthink risk all manner of harsh penalties and punishments that serve as both deterrent and physical control of dissident behavior. Being closed off to the outside world in the Age of Information is no small feat. Although Byman and Lind claim there is a \"growing flow of information into the country,\" the government of North Korea has been able to prevent its people from even being aware of the outside world not just via totalitarian firewalls but also because of the lack of access to information technology by ordinary North Koreans. North Koreans frequently live without electricity, making Internet access nothing but a dream.

The brand of totalitarianism used in North Korea is multifaceted and remarkable, and also includes a panoptic method of overseeing and monitoring the lives and behaviors of people in a frankly Orwellian fashion. North Korea can be considered at once a dangerous wild card on the world\'s stage and a warning sign of global instability. The country is also a powerful case study for how totalitarianism works and how to prevent it.

Instruments of Totalitarianism: The Penal System

Gaining information about North Korea\'s penal system is difficult because of the nation\'s closed door policy. However, satellite imagery and other surveillance technologies have facilitated information gathering. Satellite imagery and other technologies can show researchers where North Korean prisons are located and roughly what size they are, but fail to detail the conditions within them. Although relatively few in number, dissidents, refugees, and escapees have provided consistently horrific yet detail-rich information about how the North Korean correctional system works. From the time individuals are incarcerated until either execution or release, inmates experience \"extreme deprivation\" of food and medical treatment, and also outright torture (Haggard and Noland 2). There are several types of prisons in North Korea, including those for political dissidents, and those who commit what are known as \"economic\" or \"social\" crimes (Haggard and Noland 3). The economic crimes that can warrant incarceration include private entrepreneurial activity (Haggard and Noland 3). Other crimes include, of course, attempting to leave the country.

The North Korean penal system makes the American one seem kind in comparison. Without due process of law of any of the other familiar elements of democratic judicial procedures, the government of North Korea is free to detain whomever, whenever, and wherever, and do whatever to them. Political crimes are treated with special severity. As Haggard and Noland point out in their rare and singular exposition of the North Korean penal system based on anecdotal reports from interviews and surveys, the prisoners of political crimes are housed in separate facilities. Most prisons serve as labor camps. Many, if not most, prisoners serve for life and when they are imprisoned, bring their families with them (Haggard and Noland 9). Prison labor includes mining, logging, farming, and other hard labor, and is accompanied by a sort of \"re-education\" or brainwashing program (Haggard and Noland 10). The re-education program is used for political prisoners and those deemed to be members of the \"hostile class,\" (Smith and Rand 3). Members of the \"hostile class\" included those who practice religion -- a crime for which \"three generational guilt\" policies were introduced (Smith and Rand 3). A three-generational guilt policy is not unusual in North Korea and refers to the sentencing of a prisoner\'s descendants for three generations -- their great grandchildren are also interned in prison camps.

Satellite treatment shows how both political prisoners and prisoners who have committed economic and social crimes both do hard labor in maximum security compounds, and both receive torture and deprivation (Haggard and Noland 10). A high percentage of North Korean prisoners die while incarcerated, according to Haggard and Noland, whose report combines evidence from satellite imagery and reports from refugees. Based on second hand reports, Smith and Rand compare the North Korean labor camps to Nazi concentration camps (3).

Militarization and Militarism

In North Korea, almost all men and women have some military experience -- which is not in itself unusual. Many countries have mandatory military service. However, North Korea\'s Constitution directly calls for \"arming the populace and turning the entire country into a fortress,\" (Cumings 1). In practice, the Constitutional policy of fortress building has worked. The country has militarized itself to a high degree, with goals of not only providing for a common defense but also for controlling its own citizenry and ensuring disciplinary obedience to the state. Compulsory military service for men is not just a few years; it is 8 full years during which 6 are spent without any home leave at all (Cumings 2). Women serve six years in a similarly sequestered state. The government of North Korea reportedly spends about a third of its entire budget on military operations; yet it could be more given that the nation has 15,000 underground military facilities (Cumings 2). Moreover, members of the military do more than just train for strategic operations. The military is a de facto government labor force too, as troops work on state-ordained construction projects and even work in agriculture (Cumings 3). Fortress building alone is not why the international community finds North Korea\'s militarism disturbing. Rather, it is the investment into and persistent development of nuclear weapons that proves troubling (Byman and Lind 2; Laney and Shaplen 16). Militarism is critical for the strength, duration, and success of the North Korean regime for practical and symbolic purposes.

Practically, militarism means bolstering the government\'s ability -- and technically the people\'s ability too -- to prevent and resist foreign invasions and deter threats. As the world\'s most heavily militarized border is between North and South Korea, the militarism inherent in state policy becomes inextricably tied with totalitarian control over the movement of people and resources (French 2). Knowing that North Korea is heavily armed and dangerous prevents the United States and South Korea, or any other entity, from intervention. Extreme militarization reinforces and enables totalitarianism, and vice-versa.

Closed Door Policy

Being shut off to the world is a critical component of North Korea\'s strategy for survival. A closed-door policy is one manifestation of juche, the official state policy of self-reliance. As Noland points out, juche is also \"fused to Korean nationalism,\" (106). Fusing juche to nationalist identity means that citizens of North Korea internalize self-reliance as a near-sacred duty. Given the godlike status of the Great Leader, being internally focused enhances the totalitarian regime by preventing dissent psychologically, sociologically, and systematically. The psychological focus on juche helps strengthen the individual\'s willingness and ability to suffer austerities, while the social norms would help place situational constraints on behavior through shaming and other methods of norming. However, in North Korea, juche is public policy, both domestic and international.

North Korea has voluntarily left itself out of global decision making and even eschews membership in regional organizations. As French points out, North Korea has never been a member of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and less formal institutions. Because early successes with juche offered the DKRP the ability to craft a nationalist ethos based on presumed long-term success, the fatal consequences of isolationism have since been ignored and/or difficult to protest. On the country\'s official website, it proudly discusses the glory of juche, and how self-reliance has led to a utopian socialist idea. At some points in the official website, the rhetoric becomes all but incoherent: \"The unified planning prevents in advance the departmentalism and localism of the producers and subjectivism and bureaucratism of the state organs by combining the state\'s centralized guidance with the mass line so that it helps to draw up dynamic and scientific plan,\" (DPRK). While critics have called the nation an example of \"decline and collapse,\" some outsiders even view the situation with thinly veiled admiration and respect for the country\'s ability to withstand pressure to conform to neoliberal capitalist ideals (French 3). The principle and practice of juche \"prescribes citizens to use creativity and independence to build a thriving society, so North Korea can protect itself from its capitalist enemies\" (Byman and Lind 52).

In an ideal world, juche would prevent North Korea from becoming dependent on foreign aid in times of need. However, North Korea could have used foreign aid at many times in its history and especially recently. Due to unequivocal \"state failure\" and inadequate use of state resources, the administration has dealt poorly with agricultural policy and land use in addition to preventing international food trade (Haggard and Noland 2). The first several decades of the Kim regime could be considered moderately successful, with few problems and in fact examples of how communism might be applied in an organized manner to improve the welfare of peasants and promote gender equity. However, by the 1990s, up to five percent of the population -- between 600,000 and one million people -- died of famine (Haggard and Noland 2). The famine was not due to a cataclysmic environmental event; even if it were, North Korea\'s juche policy would have precluded it from seeking and accepting foreign aid.

Suppression of Dissidents

North Korea has maintained a totalitarian regime successfully throughout several generations of Kim leaders because it has a systematic means of suppressing dissidents. Suppression of alternative beliefs is actually built into the system itself, particularly in the way the regime obliterates a middle class (Byman and Lind). The suppression of political dissidents begins with methods of social control and nationalist identity construction. Those methods of social control include ensuring a \"dependent and docile\" populace utterly dependent on the government, which is why independent entrepreneurial activity is punishable by law in North Korea (Byman and Lind 48). In place of a public or civil society, the regime creates its own institutions that inhibit assembly and free speech. If all else fails, the regime counts on the use of force through the harsh penalties embedded in the penal system.

The Cult of the Supreme Leader

One of the ways North Korea has been successful in its totalitarian regime is through a veneration of the Supreme Leader, a system known as suryong. Starting with the nation\'s founding father Kim Il-Sung, who has been called \"sun of the nation,\" \"eternal President of the Republic,\" and most notably, \"Supreme Leader,\" (Byman and Lind 52). A patriarchal leadership system coincides with Confucian philosophy, ethos, and values. More importantly, the patriarchal suryong system serves as a means of social control akin to religion. The cliche moniker for the suryong system is a \"cult of personality,\" but suryong is much more than that. Worship of the Supreme Leader as a semi-divine entity ensures psychological and social submission and prevents deviance from the norm. In North Korea, photographic and television imagery of the Supreme Leader ensure constant bombardment with reminders of the importance of his role as father of the nation and protector of the people -- who are infantilized and openly talked about as \"children,\" (Byman and Lind 52).

The cult of the Supreme Leader usurps all other religions, which is why oppression of religious worship is forbidden and considered akin to a political crime (Smith and Rand 5). Smith and Rand claim that Christianity is more harshly punished than other forms of religion, citing evidence international human rights reports. What is clear is that religious worship would detract from worship of the Supreme Leader. Religion and suryong cannot coexist, because worship of an external deity is an offence to juche itself. Also, worship of an external deity disempowers the Supreme Leader, questioning his authority.

The North Korean Economy

Since 2000, several state policies hint at possible cracks in the juche policy. The government has declared a series of economic reforms that do not necessarily open up the nation but they do signal interest in possibly doing so in the future. Lee, Kim and Lee claim that information technology is the primary sector on the economic agenda for North Korea, which has hinted that it wants to play \"catch up,\" with a policy it calls dan-bun do-yak, or leap-frogging (279). The leap-frogging model is partly based on the Chinese model, but is more directly related to the fact that North Korea is entering the information technology sector at such a late stage that it might actually be able to achieve its goals because it will not need to invest as heavily in first and second-generation architecture. Bypassing what frontrunner nations have done in terms of building information technology infrastructure might allow North Korea to actually generate economic reform. Leap-frogging has worked in China, Vietnam, and Eastern Europe (Lee, Kim and Lee). However, the leap-frogging is only going to succeed if it is also accompanied by some participation in the global market economy. Foreign direct investment is critical for the future of North Korea, particularly if South Korea can become active partner in helping its counterpart to succeed (Lee, Kim and Lee).