Why North Korea may muddle along /The genius of propaganda

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Why North Korea may muddle along
By Sunny Lee 
Feb 28, 2012

BEIJING - There is fevered speculation that North Korea's newly minted young leader Kim Jong-eun might be little more than a figurehead, surrounded by a powerful old guard that includes his influential uncle, Jang Song-taek. According to this narrative, the sudden death of the Dear Leader last December has set the country on a road to a power struggle that will lead to the ruler's downfall in the not-too distant future.

While this doomsday scenario is popular in the aftermath of Kim Jong-il's death, there's a powerful alternative: Kim Jong-eun's North Korea may just make it. Ignorance to this potential outcome reflects a collective neglect among journalists and academics who've jumped on the bandwagon of popular discourse.

History shows repeated outbreaks of predictions of North Korea's collapse. In 1994, when North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung died, media outlets said without the charismatic leader the country would fall apart and collapse in just three months. It didn't happen.
In 1996 during a severe famine dubbed the "Arduous March", United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Deutch warned North Korea's system would "collapse within three years".

In December 2010, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak said twice publicly: "The unification [of the two Koreas] is near," an oblique yet unmistakable indication that he expected the implosion of North Korea. It seems likely Lee will step down before he sees the collapse of North Korea, his solitary term ends in February 2013.

Donald Gregg, who worked for the CIA for 31 years, including as Seoul station chief and later as American ambassador to South Korea, called North Korea "America's longest-running intelligence failure".

Given the track record, a more relevant question is to ask: Why are North Korean doomsday scenarios so hard to kill?

Predicting North Korea's imminent collapse is among the least successful areas of guesswork among Asian experts in the past decades. This is partly because North Korea has had the appearance of being on a deathbed for years. Other authoritarian regimes fell around the world - why has North Korea’s survived?

When we look at North Korea, we should begin with realities on the ground and the circumstances we confront, so Jonathan Pollack of the Brookings Institution told this author. So why exactly is the North not likely to collapse even under an untested and young new leader?

Firstly, the reason North Korea may muddle along, as it has been so far, is not because the Kims are capable leaders, but because of decades of thought control that have made people believe the Kims are a special breed. The Kims have the so-called "Paektu pedigree," referring to the Mount Paektu, revered by Koreans as holy.

This mythical construct, although laughable in the outside world, has a serious presence in the psyche of North Koreans who are exposed to it from birth and throughout schooling. Simply put, North Korea is run by a theocracy.

This is a country where anyone whose family name is not "Kim" cannot become a new leader, argued Liu Jiangyong, a professor of International Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Pretenders simply are not legitimate in a land where the Kims are gods.

The religiosity has been downplayed by experts who haven't been to the country and who raise questions such as whether the tears North Koreans wept hysterically over Kim Jong-il's death were real or not. The truth is somewhere in-between.

North Koreans older than 60 years old likely remember when the Kim family were just humans but those who are younger know the Kims as gods. Even the few foreign exports who repeatedly visited the reclusive country tend to not underestimate how much influence the idolatry, indoctrination, thought control and personality cults have had in shaping people's minds.

This also offers an explanation as to why Jang Song-taek, the powerful elder, cannot become a god himself, even if he may harbor the ambition. Even if he successfully pulls off a coup, he would have difficulty in establishing his authority among people. His name will be the first obstacle.

Those who argue that North Korea is run by a collective leadership also are yet to provide any evidence. Though the heir is young and has no military experience, after 60 days of his leadership, we have yet to see a single piece of proof that the country is run by a consultative entity.

According to the North Korea Strategic Information Service Center (NKSIS), an organization by senior North Korean defectors who monitor the North Korean situation through personal sources, "the role of Jang Song-taek is not as big as it is speculated."

The very concept of "collective leadership" in North Korea is different from in the outside world. China is run by the collective leadership of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, in which each member has a different share of stake. Each also has his own turf to manage. For example, when it comes to propaganda, it is Li Changchun who calls the shots, not Hu Jintao.

But in North Korea, Kim Jong-eun owns all authority, by default, inherited from his father. Every top-level decision requires the nod from Kim Jong-eun, according to a South Korean government official, who follows the matter in the field. The young Kim may use his uncle and aunt and other old guards in the bureaucracy for their expertise, but that's it. They are assisting the show, not running the show. And it is them who know the boundary too well; mortals shouldn't cross divine territory.

Interestingly, this gives a most important clue as to how North Korea's system could unwind: an opening up to the outside world. Opening up could mean a "system failure": the deconstruction of the divine myth surrounding the Kims.

Ground realities also debunk the popular view that a power struggle is in store. In Western political-science, a leadership-transition period is the most vulnerable time for any kind of autocratic regime. It's based on Sovietology. But North Korea is not your usual autocratic regime. It is a theocracy. Again, the Kims are gods. The elite cadres are the most privileged people in North Korea. They hold high positions, travel abroad, have foreign cash, buy iPads. They would lose all their privileges and even end up in jail when North Korea's system dismantles. They are bound by a collective instinct to preserve the system.

Then there is the popular theory that Kim Jong-eun has had very little time to prepare for his ascent. An alternative view states that power consolidation was largely complete before Kim Jong-il's death. Kim Jong-eun's power base is the Workers' Party, where he sits as vice chief of its Central Military Commission (CMC). When experts talk about "power transfer," more specifically they mean power transfer from the National Defense Commission (NDC) - which Kim Jong-il used as his main power platform - to the Workers' Party. It's a deliberate shake-off of a preexisting power base to create a new power base for a new leader.

After Kim Il-sung, the founder of the country and Kim Jong-eun's grandfather, died in 1994, Kim Jong-il consolidated his power by weakening the authority of the Workers' Party - the main power platform his father used to rule the country. He did this because the old guard was powerful, restraining Kim Jong-il's budding authority.

In an effort to structure his own power base, Kim Jong-il elevated the National Defense Commission (NDC) as the highest state body, with ultimate executive power resting with its chairman: Kim Jong-il himself. He also initiated the "military-first" policy.

With Kim in charge, the NDC naturally became the most powerful organ. But after his stroke in 2008, Kim also began to worry about what would happen to Jong-eun after he was gone. Kim Jong-il after his recovery, decided that his son, who was 25 or 26 at that time, would be unable to create serious credentials within the military. Jong-il attempted to shift the power pendulum back to the Workers' Party, Jack Pritchard, a former US negotiator with North Koreans, recently told this author in Washington.

We know as a fact that the CMC, not the NDC, choreographed Kim Jong-il's funeral. Also, all the members of the CMC were included in the funeral organization committee, which came under intense scrutinized by outside experts as a gauge of Pyongyang's emerging pecking order under the new leadership.

Jong-il may have begun grooming Jong-eun as heir earlier than the outside world has speculated. New evidence, coming from a former North Korean collective-farm instructor reveals that Kim Jong-eun was treated as the crown successor as early as in 2001 internally. If true, this turns the clock all the way back to 10 years ago as the time for Jong-eun begin his preparation as the crown prince.

With regard to Jong-eun's grip on the military, diplomatic cables from North Korea to its diplomatic missions abroad revealed that the military made a pledge of allegiance to Jong-eun in May 2009. Three months prior to that, Ri Yong-ho, a key confidant of Kim Jong-eun, was promoted to the highest position to run the Korean People's Army (KPA).

Thus, an alternative view is that Kim Jong-eun has secured both his power base in the administrative bureaucracy of the Workers' Party and through the CMC and the military - the two pillars of authority in North Korea. Besides, he also has the hereditary legitimacy that renders the clearest justification to his top seating in North Korea's power hierarchy.

Fourthly, there is too much media hoopla about Jang Song-taek as the most formidable "challenger" to Kim Jong-eun's throne. Jang is not only not a Kim, he also has little reason to rebel, which would risk the current privileges he enjoys in North Korea. Jang would require support from not only from other members of the privileged elite, but also from ordinary people. The latter could turn out to be the most daunting task for Jang as it would require a deconstruction of the divine myth surrounding the Kims.

There is also the China factor. Analysts who favor the Jang coup scenario critically forget that even if Jang did succeed in removing Kim Jong-eun, he will need external support to prop his feeble domestic legitimacy and credentials among people.

The obvious place for him to turn to would be China, but the Chinese leadership has already given its full and unmistakably public support to Jong-eun, From China's perspective, its prime national interest lies in stability in North Korea. China regards North Korea as its "backyard" and it wants the backyard to stay quiet, while it is focusing on building its economy until 2020 - the year Beijing set as a "strategic opportunity period" to grow its national strengths.

China also fears North Korean refugees running across the border after internal turmoil as it would destabilize China's northeastern region. Border instability is a serious national security concern for China, which has restive ethnic minority groups including Tibetans and Xinjiang Uhygurs living along its land border of 22,117 kilometers (13,743 mi), the longest in the world. In the aftermath of Kim Jong-il's death, Beijing deployed a troop of 250,000 soldiers near the border.

China also took a series of measures to "stabilize" the situation and reduce uncertainty over North Korea. Within hours after the announcement of Kim's death, China took the initiative for diplomatic coordination by rounding up ambassadors from the US, South Korea, Japan and Russia, and counseling them not to "provoke" North Korea during this highly volatile time. The next day, President Hu Jintao personally visited the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, flanked by other top Politburo members, and paid condolences to the late Kim, a further signal to the world of the importance Beijing attaches to Pyongyang.

Besides regarding North Korea as its "backyard," China also regards North Korea as a strategic buffer against the presence of US military in East Asia. China, therefore, hoped for a smooth power transition in the North and rallied all-out support around the untested rookie, Kim Jong-eun. China's Global Times, the international news arm of the official People's Daily, later assessed that China played the role of "stabilizer."

Finally, if there is instability or coup in North Korea, it requires people's participation to bring it up to the threshold to be "meaningful." Critically, when it happens, it needs to gain hearts and minds of people living in Pyongyang, the political center of the country. The capital city Pyongyang has a population of 2 million. They are the most privileged people in the country of 24 million.

Only those whose family background has a proven revolutionary record of being loyal to the Kim family or those who made contributions to the Kim dynasty are allowed to live there. They are also the ones who are much better off economically than those in the countryside. These are the people buying Sony notebook computers and Samsung mobile phones in Pyongyang's department stores.

Unless Jang or any other faction in North Korea secures of legitimacy, and establishes a firm internal and outside support, any movement to replace Kim Jong-eun stands very little chance of being successful.

North Korea is surely an incredibly brittle society and there are many reasons why it could shatter. Indeed, almost all commentaries crafted in the aftermath of Kim Jong-il's death focused on this aspect. However, a military coup or power struggle in North Korea is nearly impossible because preventing that outcome it what the Kim family has paid the most attention to prevent over the 60 years. There is no cohesive alternative faction that can rise against the Kim family. The powerful are all loyal to the Kim dynasty as they are part of the vested interest group. It's correct to say Kim Jong-eun is a figurehead. But he is a god too.

All in all, the instinct for survival shared by the Kim family and the dynastic element of the key leadership plus theocracy are powerfully working together to create a mental state that demands loyal to the system, which is poor, backward and abusing its people. And the untested young rookie leader still stands as good a chance to survive as he doesn't. But those in the position to explain the matter to the public are predominantly telling only one side of the story. And that's a problem.

Sunny Lee (sleethenational@gmail.com) is a Seoul-born columnist and journalist; he has degrees from the US and China.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NB28Dg02.html

The genius of propaganda
By Ben Kolisnyk

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

The death of Kim Jong-il raised many questions about stability in North Korea, especially concerning the regime's tactics to ensure Kim Jong-eun's ascension goes smoothly in the face of internal and external, and real and imagined threats. No less important and inextricably linked to these key questions is how, after the collapse of most communist regimes, North Korea has managed to survive. As Bruce Cumings noted recently, North Korea will soon have existed as a state longer than the Soviet Union did.

S N Eisenstadt in his seminal piece on the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes identifies the general conditions, or in his lexicon, contradictions, which contributed to the demise of former communist regimes: economic stagnation; the disenchantment of large sectors of the population; a weakening of regime legitimacy; and, the regime's diminished international standing. But he also highlights the importance of examining the unique causes in each case to explain why particular regimes failed.

In North Korea's case, the general conditions which could lead to collapse have existed to various degrees at different points in time. There are many reasons it has not only been able to avoid collapse and revolution, but also prevent even the hint of significant dissent. One especially esoteric factor is its capacity to use propaganda to counteract consciousness of its contradictions. Part and parcel of this practice is paying extra attention to massaging Kim Jong-eun's image at home.

Influences on propaganda
North Korea, like many autocratic regimes, uses numerous mediums to control ideas and information. This includes, but is not limited to, state run media, art (film, posters, theatre, mass games) and the educational system. As Jane Portal has pointed out, using art to persuade people to think that they live in the best possible world is not new. Augustus Caesar used art in the 5th century BC to perpetuate a new and lasting vision of Rome as the ideal world.

The stylistic elements of North Korea's socialist realist propaganda art, according to Portal, have been influenced strongly by the Soviet Union. The primary characteristics of this art form are “accessibility to the masses, class consciousness, relevance to current issues and faithfulness to the Party.” Although this art is realist in its life-like depictions of subjects, it is idealistic in the content and messages it portrays. Socialist society and quality of life is hyper-inflated, and the people in it are given almost superhero qualities as a means of encouraging the masses to strive for this perfection. Leaders are portrayed as omnipresent, great soldiers, and benevolent fathers to assure the masses that they have their leaders to thank for successes and comforts, and are in capable hands.

Thus, a common goal of autocratic regime propaganda is mobilizing support for the leader. Eisenstadt stresses that support for a leader is not only based on individual columns of interest but also a foundation created by the “articulation of different conceptions of the common good.” This mobilization is commonly anchored in collective rallying symbols like social, political or ethnic identity, many of which are evident in North Korean propaganda. Racial purity, national distinctiveness, self-sufficiency, and freedom from foreign rule are just some examples.

Producers and consumers
Does the average North Korean believe what they see and read, and do they take seriously the symbols and messages being fed to them? Since this can be challenging to know definitively, a more constructive approach might be to consider to whom exactly the propaganda is primarily directed.

It is said that there are three classes of people in North Korea - core, wavering, and hostile, determined primarily by one's family background. Andrei Lankov makes a strong case that the growing pervasiveness of an underground economy is chipping away at the importance of family background, the result of which is that success and quality of life are increasingly determined by entrepreneurial prowess. Nevertheless, the three class structure is a legacy that will take many years to dissolve completely; if ever, if the regime has its way.

Each of these classes is composed of individuals about whom the regime has particular ideas and different levels of trust. As such, the regime has developed different tools of authoritarian control to deal with each class. The core class, for example, which is comprised of privileged party and military elites and their families, are provided a decent and in some cases a luxurious quality of life. As Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind have noted, this class is also the subject of co-optation and other tools to help preserve the quality of life of the class that is probably in the best position to dissent but won't as long as they continue to prosper under the regime, and as long as an infrastructure for genuine civil engagement and political discourse is not permitted to blossom.

Although Byman and Lind rightly point to the ubiquity of propaganda to influence the thoughts of the people, they don't discuss the layers of propaganda aimed at various classes within society. Socialist realist art may be designed to appeal to the masses but in this case George Orwell is instructive - some North Koreans are more equal than others; or in other words, some just need more convincing than others. Even those who produce the propaganda are bureaucrats with stable jobs and a quality of life unseen outside of Pyongyang. It matters less that they actually believe what they are producing and instead that they disseminate the images of the benevolent leader and socialist paradise - after all, their job and livelihood depends on it.

This is not to suggest that the core class is not a concern for the regime; as an extra measure propaganda is promulgated to this part of the population too. Wherever possible the regime must mask the contradictions of the system in order to prevent the seeds of dissent from taking root, and part of this masking involves political indoctrination at all levels. However, it is clearly the hungry, destitute, politically marginalized and oppressed wavering and hostile classes that need the most convincing.

Getting the message across
There is a widespread view that successful leadership transition hinges on power brokering and purges in the circle of Party and military elites. While this may be the case, the regime is certainly not ignoring the threat posed by rest of the population.

According to Portal, national characteristics were naturally woven in when adopting Soviet propaganda artistic style and messaging. In North Korea this has been especially true of the messages the regime has perpetuated regarding the importance of bloodline and racial purity, historically predominant socio-political rallying points on the entire Korean peninsula.

Conceivably, part of the 2012 Strong and Prosperous Nation campaign's coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth is to reinforce the importance of bloodline, in particular that of the Kim dynasty, by associating big celebrations and achievements with the founding father. This in itself is an important part of the regime's messaging to ensure that all North Koreans, but particularly the majority of the wavering and hostile classes, support dynastic succession. This enables the regime to gloss over Kim Jong-eun's shortcomings as a leader and divert attention away from the contradiction of regime legitimacy. The bloodline element of the 2012 campaign is just one of many noticeable attempts to reinforce this notion.

What is frequently overlooked is that the Strong and Prosperous campaign demonstrates how brilliant the North Korean propaganda machine really is. While analysts have obsessed with the prosperous half of the equation, the regime has already convinced not only the entire North Korean population, but many in the international community as well that it is genuinely strong; at least militarily. As for prosperity, everything is relative. The core class needs no convincing; and getting the wavering and hostile classes on side is nothing that extra rice, a few apartment complexes, large public statues and other architectural feats like the completion of the Ryugyong hotel can't solve. A majority of North Koreans may be starving, but it doesn't take much to create the image of prosperity. This contributes greatly to camouflaging the contradiction of economic stagnation.

North Korea has also distracted the population from the regime's diminished international standing, if it ever had it. North Koreans are repeatedly told about the international influence the nuclear weapons program has generated. While the weapons have given Pyongyang increased bargaining power, the international community is mostly united on condemning the North's weapons. And on the topic of North Korea's standing vis-เ-vis South Korea, again Lankov is enlightening noting that regime propaganda has adapted to increased information inflow. Where the south was once portrayed as a “land of hunger and poverty” it is now attacked for the drawbacks of its capitalist system like income disparities.

The key propaganda themes of benevolent father and military man are also being played out in photographs and televised media. Observers have lamented that the images of Kim Jong-eun inspecting weapons and riding in tanks and horses are shameful copies of the Vladimir Putin image boosting campaign. Since North Korea has borrowed much of the Soviet propaganda tradition the similarities should really come as no surprise. The key difference, of course, is that Kim Jong-eun acts out these scenes while being made to look like his grandfather, down to the hairstyle and uniform, something that has not gone unnoticed.

And just what is it about the frequent use of horses in North Korean propaganda? The first statue ever erected of Kim Jong-il is him riding a wild steed, the first statue we are told because he was too humble to have one erected while he was alive (although a towering likeness is reportedly in the works). And as mentioned, Kim Jong-eun has frequently been pictured riding horses by state media.

White horses, in particular, have a special meaning in Korean mythology in the story of Silla. In this story a white horse emerges from a bolt of lightning and bows to a shining egg from which a boy emerges. The boy then goes on to unify six warring states. While many scoff at the idea that North Korea is working towards a unified peninsula, the regime excels at linking Korean unity with racial purity, resistance to foreign intrusion, and how the Kim family lineage gives it the legitimacy to lead this charge.

Another example is the Chollima movement, North Korea's version of China's Great Leap Forward, named after a mythical horse which could apparently leap 1,000 ri (approximately 250 kilometers). The motivation for naming this movement after a symbol of extraordinary dexterity is no doubt partly behind the ongoing use of horses. Much like the depiction of superhuman qualities in socialist heroes, urging progress in leaps and bounds gives the masses something to strive for, and images of Kim Jong-eun riding horses give the impression that the Kim family is comfortably in the saddle of overseeing North Korea.

Although North Korea's internally directed propaganda is just one slice in the leadership succession pie, it is important nonetheless. The regime may be able to conceal contradictions to some degree, but realistically propaganda is not enough on its own to make North Koreans forget their hunger. This certainly makes it challenging for the regime to ultimately veil the contradiction of discontent amongst a large portion of the population. Of course, this is where the regime's other tools of authoritarian control come into play, a rather successful venture to date.

Ben Kolisnyk holds two degrees in political science and is an avid North Korea watcher. He is currently working as a policy analyst for a non-profit organization in Canada.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NB28Dg02.html