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North Korea PROSPECTS
As of mid-1993, North Korea seemed eager to seek
reconciliation with South Korea and to open its doors to the
outside world. This eagerness is largely the result of demands by
the United States, Japan, and other Asian countries that North
Korea improve its relations with South Korea as a precondition to
improving their own relations with North Korea. At the same time,
North Korea also worries that the opening of North Korean society
to South Korea and the West will be problematic because it will
allow potential ideological contamination.
The IAEA agreement on nuclear facilities poses a challenge to
North Korea because both United States and South Korean analysts
have indicated that North Korea is working on developing nuclear
weapons at a facility in Yngbyn, approximately 100 kilometers
north of P'yongyang. On January 30, 1992, P'yongyang signed the
IAEA Full Scope Safeguards Agreement and agreed to open its
nuclear installations for inspection. North Korea also was
required to submit to the IAEA an inventory of all of its nuclear
materials before inspections.
North Korea is under pressure to embrace opportunities
presented by the changing world situation in the 1990s as well as
to concentrate on accelerating its economic development.
Nonetheless, it is likely that North Korea will continue its
present course with respect to internal politics until its
economy improves substantially. Economic pressures are forcing
P'yongyang to hint that it would like to begin to open up to the
noncommunist world
(see Foreign Economic Relations
, ch. 3). In
this regard, it has established a special economic zone offering
preferential tax rates for foreign investments in the Tumen River
area.
From a political perspective, it is unlikely that political
liberalization will occur in the near future. Such action would
probably lead to subversive tendencies and jeopardize the
existing political system. The upheaval in the former Soviet
Union and East European countries has aggravated North Korea's
economic woes and caused political fear among--and the exercise
of caution by--P'yongyang's leaders. Because the KWP firmly
controls the state and no formally organized dissident movement
against the regime exists, the party is likely to continue its
political conservatism and to intensify its "socialist
education."
What changes will occur in terms of political development are
uncertain. An accelerated opening of North Korea, fueled by
improved relations with South Korea, the United States, and
Japan, will erode North Korea's socialism and is hence unlikely
to occur. Kim Il Sung's succession plan for handing over power to
Kim Jong Il has been reinforced with the younger Kim's assumption
of power as the supreme commander of the armed forces. North
Korea's sluggish economy, however, is a principal stumbling block
for maintenance of the regime and its leadership succession
process. Support among top military and political elites for Kim
Il Sung's succession plan may depend on the achievement of
political stability and economic growth as well as the
maintenance of the status quo for those in power. Their support
may waver with Kim Il Sung's death.
Overall, North Korea is likely to continue its two-track
policy: strengthening ideological indoctrination while increasing
economic relations with capitalist countries. Whatever options
Kim Jong Il chooses, his references to the need for bolder
reforms may be followed immediately both by warnings about moving
too fast from hardliners who stress the importance of orthodox
ideology over economic reform and by complaints about reforming
too slowly from technical experts who stress the urgent need for
economic development and technology accumulation. However, given
his years of studious apprenticeship, and assuming the absence of
major upheavals in the Koreas and the international environment,
continuity under Kim Jong Il seems assured, at least for the
early 1990s.
* * *
Sources on North Korea vary considerably in reliability and
balance, so they should be used with care, particularly in the
case of information emanating from North Korea. Information from
South Korea also has a political bias. Major articles in
Nodong simmun (Workers' Daily), K lloja (The
Worker), and other Korean-language publications are translated
into English in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service's
Daily Report: East Asia and the Korean Affairs
Report issued by the Joint Publications Research Service.
For in-depth coverage of North Korea, one of the most
comprehensive sources is Pukhan Chns (North Korean
Handbook), in Korean, prepared by South Korea's Kuktong Munje
Yn'guso (Institute for East Asian Studies). Pukhan (North
Korea), the monthly organ of Pukhan Yn'guso, the Research
Institute on North Korea in Seoul; and Kita Ch sen kenky
(Studies on North Korea), a Japanese-language monthly of the
Kokusai Kankei Ky d Kenky jo (Joint Research Institute on
International Relations) in Tokyo are also useful. Vantage
Point, an English-language monthly periodical issued by
Naewoe Press in Seoul, and East Asian Review, an Englishlanguage quarterly published by the Institute for East Asian
Studies in Seoul, provide in-depth studies of North Korean
social, economic, and political developments.
Other sources include the annual survey articles on North
Korea in Asian Survey, the annual roundup of articles on
North Korea in the Far Eastern Economic Review's Asia
Yearbook, and the now defunct Yearbook on International
Communist Affairs, published by Hoover Institution Press.
(For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of June 1993
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