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North Korea Classes and Social Strata
Although socialism promises a society of equals in which
class oppression is eliminated, most evidence shows that great
social and political inequality continues to exist in North Korea
in the early 1990s. The state is the sole allocator of resources,
and inequalities are justified in terms of the state's political
and economic imperatives. Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are
described by unsympathetic foreign observers as living like
kings. (The South Korean film director Sin Sangok and his actress
wife, Ch'oe Unhui, who were apparently kidnapped and taken to
North Korea on Kim Jong Il's orders, described him as a fanatic
film buff with a library of 15,000 films; they claimed that he
alone could view these films, which were collected for his
benefit by North Korean diplomats abroad.) Equally important from
the standpoint of social stratification, however, is a small and
clearly defined elite within the ruling KWP, who, like the
privileged communists listed in the former Soviet Union's
nomenklatura, a listing of positions and personnel, have
emerged as a "new class" with a relatively high standard of
living and access to consumer goods not available to ordinary
people.
According to North Korean sources cited by Eberstadt and
Banister, total membership in the KWP in 1987 was "over 3
million," or almost 15 percent of the estimated population of
20.3 million that year. Membership in the party requires a
politically "clean" background. Given the KWP's status as a
revolutionary "vanguard party," these individuals clearly
constitute an elite; it is unclear, however, how the standards of
living of lower echelon party members differ from those of
nonparty members
(see
Party Leadership and Elite Recruitment
, ch.
4). Nonetheless, party membership is clearly the smoothest path
for upward social mobility. It opens opportunities such as
university attendance to members and their children. The statecontrolled media repeatedly exhorts party members to eschew
"bureaucratism" and arrogance in dealing with nonparty people.
But it is unclear how successful the regime is in uprooting the
centuries-old tradition of kwanjon minbi (honor officials,
despise the people), which often make the traditional
aristocratic yangban elite insufferably arrogant.
Although Japan had promoted some industrialization in the
northern part of their Korean colony during the occupation, most
of the Korean Peninsula's population before 1945 were farmers.
North Korea's industrialization after the Korean War, however,
transformed the nature of work and occupational categories. In
the late 1980s, the government divided the labor force into four
categories: "workers," who were employed at state-owned
enterprises; "farmers," who worked on agricultural collectives;
"officials," who performed nonmanual labor and probably included
teachers, technicians, and health-care workers as well as civil
servants and KWP cadres; and workers employed in "cooperative
industrial units," which Eberstadt and Banister suggest
constitute a minuscule private sector. North Korean government
statistics showed that the state "worker" category constituted
the largest category in 1987, or 57 percent of the labor force.
Farmers comprised the second largest category at 25.3 percent;
and officials and industrial cooperative workers, 16.8 percent
and 0.9 percent, respectively. Within the "worker" category,
skilled workers in the fisheries and in the heavy, mining, and
defense industries tend to be favored in terms of economic
incentives over their counterparts in light and consumer
industries; the labor force in urban areas tend to be favored
over farmers
(see Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries
, ch. 3).
Despite the small size of the "cooperative industrial sector,"
that is, the industrial counterpart of the cooperative
(collective) farms enterprise, a black market apparently exists,
with prices as much as ten times higher than those in the
official distribution system. Farmers' markets also exist. The
black market is not likely to be large enough to foster the
emergence of a sizable, shadowy class of smugglers and
entrepreneurs.
Food and other necessities of life are strictly rationed, and
different occupational groups are reported to receive different
qualities and kinds of goods. Sin Sangok and Ch'oe Unhui wrote in
the South Korean media in the late 1980s that consumption of beef
and pork is largely restricted to "middle-class" and "upper-class
people"; "ordinary people" can obtain no meat except dog meat,
which is not rationed. An exception is made for the New Year's
holidays, Kim Il Sung's birthday, and other holidays, when pork
is made available to all. They also report that the regime is
actively encouraging sons to assume the occupations of their
fathers and that "job succession is regarded as a cardinal virtue
in North Korea."
Housing is another area of social inequality. According to a
South Korean source, North Korea has five types of standardized
housing allotted according to rank; the highest ranks--the party
and state elite--live in one- or two-story detached houses. Sixty
percent of the population, consisting of ordinary workers and
farmers, live in multi-unit dwellings of no more than one or two
rooms, including the kitchen.
Family background, in terms of political and ideological
criteria, is extremely relevant to one's social status and
standard of living. Sons and daughters of revolutionaries and
those who died in the Korean War are favored for educational
opportunities and advancement. For these children, a special
elite school, the Mangyngdae Revolutionary Institute, was
established near P'yongyang at the birthsite of Kim Il Sung.
South Korean scholar Lee Mun Woong wrote that illegitimate
children are also favored because they are raised entirely in
state-run nurseries and schools and are not subject to the
corruption of traditionally minded parents.
Conversely, the children and descendants of "exploiting
class" parents--those who collaborated with the Japanese during
the colonial era, opposed agricultural collectivization in the
1950s, or were associated with those who had fled to South Korea-
-are discriminated against. They are considered "contaminated" by
the bad influences of their parents and have to work harder to
acquire reputable positions. Relatives of those who had fled to
South Korea are especially looked down on and considered "bad
elements." Persons with unfavorable political backgrounds are
often denied admission to institutions of higher education,
despite their intellectual qualifications.
With the exception of disabled Korean War veterans,
physically handicapped people appear to be subject to special
discrimination, according to international human rights
organizations. For example, they are not allowed to enter
P'yongyang, and those who manage to live in the capital are
periodically sought out by the police and expelled. These sources
also allege that persons of below-normal height (dwarfs) have
been forced to live in a special settlement in a remote rural
area. South Korean sources also cite examples of single women
over forty years of age who are considered social misfits and are
thus harassed.
Data as of June 1993
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