History of North Korea
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The History of North Korea begins with the establishment of North Korea in 1948. See History of Korea and Division of Korea for Korean history before 1948.
Korea had been forcibly annexed by Japan in 1910. Following Japan's defeat in World War II, the Korean peninsula was occupied by the Soviet Union in the north and the United States in the south. These two superpowers established provisional governments in their respective halves of Korea, and eventually oversaw the creations of two Korean governments, North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and South Korea (the Republic of Korea).
Establishment
North Korea (official name: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea) was proclaimed on September 9, 1948, under the supervision of the occupying Soviet forces. Although there was an indigenous Korean Communist Party, the Soviets preferred to place in power Korean Communists who had spent the war years in the Soviet Union, the same policy applied in Eastern Europe.In February 1946, the leading Korean exile Communist, Kim Il-sung, was named as head of the North Korean Provisional People's Committee, which preceded the formal establishment of the state. Kim then became Prime Minister, a post he held until 1972, when he became President. The centre of authority was the Korean Workers Party (KWP), of which Kim was General-Secretary.
The early years
In agriculture, the government moved more slowly towards a command economy. The land reform of 1946 redistributed the bulk of agricultural land to the poor and landless peasant population. In 1954, however, a partial collectivization was carried out, with peasants being urged, and often forced, into agricultural co-operatives. By 1958, virtually all farming was being carried out collectively, and the co-operatives were increasingly merged into larger productive units.
Like all the postwar Communist states, North Korea undertook massive state investment in heavy industry, state infrastructure and military strength, neglecting the production of consumer goods. By paying the collectivized peasants low state-controlled prices for their product, and using the surplus thus extracted to pay for industrial development, the state carried out a series of three-year plans, which brought industry's share of the economy from 47% in 1946 to 70% in 1959, despite the intervening devastation of the Korean War. There were huge increases in electricity production, steel production and machine building. The large output of tractors and other agricultural machinery achieved a great increase in agricultural productivity.
As a result of these revolutionary changes, the population was better fed and, at least in urban areas, better housed than they had been before the war, and also better than most people in the South in this period. Standards of living rose rapidly in North Korea in the later 1950s and into the 1960s. There was, however, a chronic shortage of consumer goods, and the urban population lived under a system of extreme labor discipline and constant demands for greater productivity.
The Korean War
The consolidation of Syngman Rhee's government in the South and the suppression of the October 1948 insurrection there ended hopes that the country could be reunified by way of revolution in the South, and from early 1949 Kim sought Soviet and Chinese support for a military campaign to reunify it by force. The almost total withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea in June 1949 left the South defended only by a weak and inexperienced South Korean army. The North Korean army, by contrast, had been the beneficiary of massive expenditure and of Soviet tutelage, as well as having a core of hardened veterans who had fought as anti-Japanese guerillas or with the Chinese Communists.
Initially Stalin rejected Kim's requests, but in late 1949 the victory of the Communists in China and development of the Soviet nuclear weapons made him re-consider Kim's proposal. In January 1950, the permission to stage an invasion was finally given by Stalin. The Soviet advisors helped to plan the operation, and Soviet instructors trained the Korean units. However, from the very beginning Stalin made clear that the Soviet Union would avoid a direct confrontation with the U.S. over Korea and would not commit ground forces even in case of some major military crisis.
North Korea attacked the South on June 25, 1950, achieving total surprise, and rapidly captured Seoul and advanced to the south of the peninsula. North Korean forces were soon driven out of South Korea by United Nations forces led by the U.S. By October, the U.N. forces had retaken Seoul and captured Pyongyang, and Kim and his government were forced to flee to China. But in November, Chinese forces entered the war and threw the U.N. forces back, retaking Pyongyang in December and Seoul in January 1951. In March U.N. forces retook Seoul, and the front was stabilised along what eventually became the permanent Armistice Line of 1953.
After the war, Kim re-established his absolute control of North Korean politics, with the crucial support of the armed forces, who respected his wartime record of resistance to the Japanese. The leader of the South Korean Communists, Pak Hon-yong, was blamed for the failure of the southern population to support North Korea during the war and was executed after a show-trial in 1955. Most of the South Korean leftists who defected to the North in 1945-1953 were also accused of espionage and other crimes and killed, imprisoned or exiled to remote agricultural and mining villages. Potential rivals from other groups such as Kim Tu-bong were also purged.
Postwar consolidation
The shortage of consumer goods and the decay in social infrastructure brought a decline in productivity despite harsh discipline. Most seriously, the massive and growing expenditure on armaments distorted the whole economy and led to increasing levels of debt. Since the Communist regime's hold on power ultimately depended on the loyalty of the army, it was not possible to restrain, let alone reduce, spending on the armed forces - a problem North Korea shared with the Soviet Union and other Communist states. At the same time the North Korea's increasing international isolation made it difficult to expand foreign trade or secure credit.
North Korea's position was complicated by the Sino-Soviet split, which began in 1960. Relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union worsened when the Soviets concluded that Kim was supporting the Chinese side, although in fact Kim hoped to use the split to play China and the Soviets off against each other while pursuing a more independent policy. The result was a sharp decline in Soviet aid and credit, which could not be replaced by the less advanced Chinese even if China had been minded to do so. In fact Kim's enthusiasm for Mao Zedong's policies was limited, despite his rhetorical denunciations of "revisionism." While he supported Chinese campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward, he saw Maoist initiatives such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Cultural Revolution as destabilising and dangerous.
As an alternative, Kim promoted Juche ("self-reliance"), a slogan he began to develop in the late 1950s and which he ultimately made North Korea's official ideology, displacing Marxism-Leninism. This policy was to a large extent making a virtue of a necessity, since North Korea's isolation from the world economy and its alienation from the Soviet Union left it with few friends or sources of support in the outside world. As a result North Korea became increasingly introverted, and was dubbed "the hermit kingdom" by some foreign observers. To shore up his position, Kim fostered an increasingly bizarre personality cult around himself and his family, coming to be known by titles such as the "Great Leader" and deified by the state media.
Economic decline
Most importantly, however, the Soviet-style command economy, based on heavy industry, had reached the limits of its productive potential in North Korea, as it had in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. By the 1970s the capitalist world, including South Korea, was advancing into new phases of technology and economic development and phasing out the coal-and-steel-based economies of the earlier period. This gave the United States and Japan a huge and increasing technological and economic advantage over the Soviet-style economies, and during the presidency of Ronald Reagan this was translated into a corresponding military advantage.
One of the consequences of this new phase of capitalist development was the export of manufacturing jobs to low-wage economies, and South Korea was one of the main beneficiaries of this. Until the mid-1960s the South had had a poorly performing economy, held back by corruption and inefficiency. Under Park Chung-hee, however, there had been major economic reforms in the South, and this, combined with the export of capital from the high-wage economies, produced a self-reinforcing boom in the South which began in about 1970 and has continued ever since. After the fall of Chun Doo-hwan in 1988, South Korea became a stable democracy, increasing the contrast with the unreformed Stalinist regime in the North.
The ageing Kim Il-sung was unable to respond effectively to the challenge of an increasingly prosperous, democratic and well-armed South Korea, which undermined the legitimacy of his own regime. Instead of turning to market-economy reforms like those carried out in China by Deng Xiaoping, Kim opted for continued ideological purity and isolation from the outside world, coupled with increasingly belligerent rhetoric towards South Korea, Japan and the U.S. The DPRK defaulted on its loans in 1980 and by the late 1980s its industrial output was declining.
Succession by Kim Jong-il
-->Kim Il-sung died in 1994, and his son, Kim Jong-il, succeeded him as General-Secretary of the Korean Workers Party. Although the post of President was left vacant, Kim Jong-il became Chairman of the National Defense Commission, a position described as the nation's "highest administrative authority," and thus North Korea's de facto head of state. His succession had been decided as early as 1980, with the support of the most important interest group, the armed forces led by Defence Minister Oh Jin-wu.
During the decade of Kim Jong-il's rule, North Korea's economy has continued to deteriorate and the standard of living of its 23 million people has continued to fall. From 1996 to 1999 the country experienced a large-scale famine which left some 600-900,000 people dead. The fundamental cause of this decline is that the state, which runs the entire economy, is bankrupt, and cannot pay for the necessary imports of capital goods to undertake the desperately needed modernisation of its industrial plants. The inefficiency of North Korea's Stalinist-style collective agricultural system also contributed to the disaster. North Korea spends about a quarter of its GDP on armaments, including the development of nuclear weapons, and keeps nearly all able-bodied males aged 18-30 in uniform, while the basic infrastructure of the state is allowed to crumble.
As a result, North Korea is now dependent on international food aid to feed its population. According to Amnesty International, more than 13 million people suffered from malnutrition in the DPRK in 2003. In 2001 the DPRK received nearly $US300 million in food aid from the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and the European Union, plus much additional aid from the United Nations and non-governmental organizations. Unspecified (but apparently large) amounts of aid in the form of food, oil and coal are also provided by China every year. Despite this North Korea maintained its violent rhetoric against the U.S., South Korea and Japan. The supply of heating and electricity outside the capital is practically non-existent, and food and medical supplies are scarce. When there is a bad harvest, as has been persistently the case over recent years, the population faces actual famine: a situation never before seen in a peacetime industrial economy. Since 1997 there has been a steady stream of illegal emigration to China, despite the efforts of both countries to prevent it.
Kim's regime has said that the solution to this crisis is earning hard currency, developing information technology and attracting foreign aid, but despite some gestures towards reform it has made no real progress towards reducing the state's control over the economy or introducing the market-oriented reforms which have produced such spectacular economic growth in China since 1979, and are now doing the same in Vietnam. Without these reforms the regime's strategy for recovery remains unattainable. So far the DPRK, not surprisingly, has made little progress in attracting private capital.
In July 2002 some limited reforms were announced. The currency was devalued and food prices were allowed to rise in the hope of stimulating agricultural production. It was announced that food rationing systems as well as subsidized housing would be phased out. A "family-unit farming system" was introduced on a trial basis for the first time since collectivization in 1954. The government also set up a "special administrative zone" in Sinuiju, a town near the border with China. The local authority was given near-autonomy, especially in its economic affairs. This was an attempt to emulate the success of such free-trade zones in China, but it attracted little outside interest. Despite some optimistic talk in the foreign press the impetus of these reforms has not been followed through with, for example, a large-scale decollectivization such as occurred in China under Deng.
Current situation
President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea actively attempted to reduce tensions between the two Koreas under the Sunshine Policy, but this produced few practical results. Since the election of George W. Bush as President of the United States, North Korea has faced renewed external pressure over its nuclear program, reducing the prospect of international economic assistance.
North Korea remains a Stalinist state. The lack of access to the foreign media and the tradition of secrecy in North Korea means that there is little news about political conditions, but Amnesty International's 2003 report on North Korea says that "there were reports of severe repression of people involved in public and private religious activities, including imprisonment, torture and executions. Unconfirmed reports suggested that torture and ill-treatment were widespread in prisons and labour camps. Conditions were reportedly extremely harsh."
There seems little immediate likelihood that North Korea will undergo an East German-style collapse: a prospect that South Korea and China view with great trepidation because of fear of sudden and large exodus of North Korean refugees into their countries. There appears to be no internal opposition to the regime.
In 2002 Kim Jong Il declared that "money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities", followed by some small market economy relaxations, and the creation of the Kaesong Industrial Region with transport links to South Korea was announced. Experiments are under way to allow factory managers to fire underperforming workers and give bonuses. China’s investments increased to $200 million in 2004. China has counseled North Korea’s leaders to gradually open the economy to market forces, and it is possible this path will be successfully followed.
North Korea declared on Feb. 10, 2005 that it has nuclear weapons [link] bringing widespread expressions of dismay and near-universal calls for the North to return to the six-party talks aimed at curbing its nuclear program. North Korea tested a long-range missile in 2006 that has the potential to reach the U.S., creating much international anxiety though the test failed.
See also
External links
- [Speak Out About Human Rights In North Korea] (a commentary from Human Rights Watch, published in The Asian Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2004)
- [On North Korea's streets, pink and tangerine buses], Christian Science Monitor, June 2, 2005
- [North Korea on the rebound], Global Beat Syndicate, June 27, 2005
Further Reading
- O'Hanlon, Michael; Mochizuki, Mike. "Crisis on the Korean Peninsula." McGraw-Hill. 2003. ISBN 0-07-143155-1
- Cumings, Bruce, et al.. "Inventing the Axis of Evil." The New Press. 2004. ISBN 1-56584-904-3
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