Five years ago, the author of this article wrote a text, provisionally titled After Kim, which spread quickly across the Internet. In that text, the author tried to contemplate on the DPRK’s prospects after the passing of the Great Leader and outlined his forecast, which has actually proven to be correct: “North Korea will continue to retain that form in which we know it until Kim’s death and approximately for another 1–3 years after it.” Moreover, during these two years, North Korea has conducted another nuclear test and has at last launched a proper satellite, not an underwater one, into Earth’s orbit.
The new course of development implies certain transformations, and the economic situation in the country is improving. The amount of trade of the Kaesŏng complex in October 2013 stood at 152 million dollars. The Northerners are reducing their grain procurement, and in a year or two North Korea will have a chance to become self-sufficient in terms of food by reaching the minimum level of providing its people with 1,413 kilo-calories of food, which will enable it to be independent of the external humanitarian assistance and stop begging for it.
Kim Jong-un does not look like a person who perceives his position as the leader only in the paradigm of power and personal benefit. He has a certain understanding of his role and responsibility for the country and readiness to take harsh, even unexpectedly harsh decisions. He is willing to work – the fact that he was seen wearing glasses at the debunking of Jang Song-taek shows that his eyesight had gotten worse, which means (presumably) that he had spent a lot of time working with some documents.
What does the future hold for North Korea, bearing in mind that its young leader seeks to be an unorthodox politician, just like his father and grandfather?
There are a number of development options here, out of which the most probable one is the conditional maintaining of the status quo in the context of the further consolidation of young Kim’s power and the development of the byungjin policy. The economy is gradually improving, whilst the presence of the nuclear and missile programme allows them, as a minimum, to be sure that their country will not be subjected to the Yugoslavian, Iraqi or Libyan versions of the change of regime, fraught with very high costs. Although when it comes to military confrontation, North Korea does not have many chances, a Pyrrhic victory is not going to make anybody happy, therefore it is preferable not to take any risks.
In foreign policy, the DPRK has certain opportunities for weaving between the neighbouring superpowers and trying to make sure that none of them becomes dominant: on the one hand, Pyongyang will be using the positions of Moscow and Beijing interested in the existence of a buffer state; on the other hand, it will be using certain competition between Moscow, Beijing and Seoul. All of this allows Pyongyang to keep going like that for some time and to ensure a pretty comfortable existence for the regime, a piece of bread for the masses, and in the long-term perspective – even a piece of bread and butter.
There are three potential pitfalls in this way. Firstly, in the conditions of too much pressure on the North, Pyongyang may unnecessarily intensify the development of the nuclear and missile programme, which, in turn, will exacerbate the “security dilemma” and aggravate the relations with Beijing and Moscow. But we have already looked into this element of the problem before and not once.
Secondly, Kim Jong-un’s proactive nature and impulsiveness may lead to a certain accumulation of tactical errors when their quantity transforms into quality. Kim seems to have a certain degree of passion for “nice gestures”, and we can see that in his slightly different manner of posing for photographs or in Jang Song-taek’s elimination procedure, which had a nature of “public flogging”. For that reason, the author should also keep in mind the option in which the young general may catch a stellar disease, start indulging in the thrill of the external aspect of his activity and finally turn into a ruler who is interested only in the outer signs of loyalty and stability. But the key word here is “may”.
Thirdly, it is a question of whether Kim Jong-un has enough supporters who could replace the previous personnel in the key positions. And there is also a question of their quality. Without that, the level of the country’s governance may go down sharply, and the cleansing campaign, for example, will turn into over-zealous actions and searching for scapegoats, or one group of corruption offenders will be cleansed by another group of corruption offenders.
Another question that I have no answer to is in what light Kim Jong-un sees himself, and whether he realises that the country he is in charge of has long ceased to be an ideal administrative-command system and it is only the country’s façade that is still totalitarian/traditional. He may have fallen under the spell of certain illusions or he sees himself as a second Kim Il-sung in the heyday of his glory and believes that he himself is the state.
Is the DPRK going to have any reforms? Yes, there will be some, but they will be careful and limited. I would not place a firm equals sign between reforms in that sense in which they are understood in the West and those favours for the private sector that are taking place in the North. Suffice it to recall that, unlike in the USSR, the private sector in the other countries of the socialist camp (the GDR, Hungary etc.) was more developed than in the Soviet Union, and it existed well before the “velvet revolutions”. Besides, we should not forget that, for example, the Chinese reforms were based on a different demographic situation: Deng Xiaoping relied on the large number of workers in rural areas, whereas in the North, even before the crisis in the mid-1990s, only 30–40% of the population were employed in agriculture. This means that the mechanical copying of the Chinese way is very unlikely.
By the way, about the Chinese way. The second most probable option of the development of events implies a certain shift of the DPRK under China as the only country which really has genuine leverage over Pyongyang. The new Chinese leadership treats the North with increasing pragmatism, whilst the attitude to Pyongyang in the media and blogs is characterised by a high level of pluralism.
At the moment, Beijing is trying to keep the neighbouring country on a short lead to make the latter more agreeable. Firstly, Beijing is the only party which has leverage over the North. In particular, it can, indeed, cause a collapse in the North by simply closing the Chinese-Korean border.
Secondly, against the backdrop of overall sanctions, China is rendering assistance which is gradually turning into leverage because it enhances the dependence on it. At the same time, the PRC is tying the economy of the North to the economy of the provinces in the Northeast region, which leads to the emergence, in the parallel economy, of a wealthy and influential wing of those whose business and prosperity are associated with China. And if the authorities start restricting the Chinese-Korean contacts, that will have a negative impact not on their ideology but on their pockets, which is much more important.
Thirdly, the PRC is actively contributing to the creation of North Korea’s new elite. Of course, the top-level echelon can send their children to Switzerland. The mid-level echelon send their children to study in China, which is similar to the concept of the Near Abroad of the USSR times, in terms of the understanding of life from the other side of the curtain. A few years that they spend there affect their way of thinking because what has been minced cannot be “unminced”.
So the option of the “return of the suzerain” is quite probable. In this case, the Chinese way is declared the main political and economic strategy. Juche reveals not so much the communist or nationalist component but the Confucian one, and, with further ideological development, it can become a counterpart of “Asian values”. China’s economic assistance, which has been growing markedly, makes it possible to solve some of the economic problems in exchange for political loyalty and adherence to China’s foreign policy line. Korean migrant workers keep appearing China, but they do it in a more civilized manner. In the foreign policy area, North Korea supports the Chinese model of a multipolar world, and it rather counts on military protection by China than on nuclear weapons.
The third option suggests that the authorities will not be able to cut off the corrupt component from the parallel economy, and eventually we will be faced with the situation in which the “Party Centre” is slowly losing leverage over regions or structures, and the latter start pursuing policies in their own interests. The authorities turn a blind eye to everything that is not posing a threat, and they are engaged in increasing their personal wealth – in fact, they turn out to be not so much the state authority in its conventional sense, but the bosses of the largest corruption clique.
This option has already been dwelt upon to some extent in the article about “byungjin and mass shootings”. I would only like to add that, in the case of the emergence of a situation of totally corrupt regime, many of today’s propaganda horrors about the DPRK may well become a reality. As a result, the level of the problems that such a regime will be creating for its neighbours may force all to agree about joint actions to address this problem. But the hypothetical option of the use of force when North Korea becomes the target of “humanitarian intervention”, designed in Beijing and/or Washington, takes the last place in the probability list because no one in Eastern Asia will want the problem to escalate to that level.
And the last but one place may be taken by an option which seems relatively unlikely. Here a conflict arises from a set of irrational factors which are not directly connected with a political decision of this or that country’s leadership. This subject has already been discussed in our recent material.
Therefore, North Korea’s prospects seem to be positive on the whole, but there are quite a few pitfalls on the way. A lot depends on sudden changes in the international situation that create the global background, on the situation in Northeast Asia, and on the extent of the development of the young leader’s personal qualities and skills.
After all, when Kim Il-sung passed away about 20 years ago, the overwhelming majority of experts were also sure that the DPRK’s leader was an incompetent playboy and that the regime was going to collapse shortly. A few books dedicated to the inevitable “forthcoming collapse of North Korea” have been repeatedly reprinted since then. So we will be closely following the developments and taking measures to ensure that North Korea’s way is consistent with region-wide stability as much as possible.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, senior research fellow at the Centre for Korean Studies, Institute of the Far East RAS – exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
