North Korea's Challenge of Regime Survival: Internal Problems and Implications for the Future Author(s): Scott Snyder

Source: Pacific Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, Special Issue: Korea in Flux (Winter, 2000-2001), pp. 517-533 Published by: Pacific Affairs, University of British Columbia Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2672442 . Accessed: 18/04/2013 20:09
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North

Korea's Regime Internal

Challenge Survival: Problems

for

of

and
Future

Implications

the

Scott Snyder
T

he fall of the Soviet Union, German reunification, and China's

embrace of capitalism have brought about neither the collapse of North Korea nor the end of the confrontation on the Korean peninsula, contrary to the predictions of many analysts who presumed that North Korea would not long survive the loss of its Communist allies without being forced to engage in economic and political reform. Yet almost a decade after the end of the cold war, North Korea has defied the "natural laws"of the politics of transition to the post-cold war era, clinging to survival and even finding limited support from an international community that fears the consequences of a shift away from the current status quo in the international relations of NortheastAsia towardsan unpredictable, uncertain, and possibly unstable regional security environment. As time has passed, the choices have only grown more stark for North Korea and its neighbors: the Asian financial crisis underscored, for South Korean policy makers, the costs of instability in North Korea, yet it is equally clear that North Korea cannot recover economically without adjustment of Pyongyang's policies, although the argument has been made that North Korea's political leadership may be able to muddle through with only minor adjustments to the system.' However, recent progress in reducing interKorean tensions notwithstanding, there is the distinct possibility that the leadership in Pyongyang may eventually be faced with crises beyond its control, with spillover effects that would necessitate an international response to instability caused by the ultimate failure of North Korea's leadership to respond to the severe challenges it may face. Regardless of whether or not the North Korean leadership is able to muddle through with half-hearted adjustments to its current system or gain enough international food assistance and economic aid from the South to avoid the starkest possible choices, perceptions that the current regime in Pyongyang may not survive have already significantly influenced the policy
I Marcus Noland, "Why North Korea Will Muddle Through," ForeignAffairs, May/June 1997.

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PacificAffairs:Winter2000 calculus of North Korea and its neighbours, from the moment the Berlin Wallfell. The D.P.R.K.has decried the politics of "reunificationby absorption" and appears to have learned certain lessons from East Germany'sexperience. Assessments of North Korea's survival prospects have been a major factor influencing the implementation of Seoul's reunification policies, Washington's non-proliferation policies, and Beijing's decisions to provide food assistance to North Korea. Every neighboring state has already hedged its bets, promoting political dialogue formulas publicly while privately considering responses to various North Korean contingencies. But if there is instability in North Korea, precisely what factors must policy makers take into consideration? What factors have allowed the North Korean leadership to hold out against enormous systemic pressures for change? What sorts of contingencies might develop in the event of a breakdown in North Korea's political leadership, and what are the implications for regional stability? How have external assessments of North Korea's decline already influenced the direction of policy among North Korea's neighbors towards the Korean peninsula? What sorts of crisis might precipitate involvement by the international community, and how likely is it that such a failure might occur? The recent inter-Korean summit notwithstanding, all of these questions are more, not less, salient now that North Korea's economic and political situation has stabilized; after all, populations with empty stomachs historically don't make good revolutionaries, and a stable food situation may be accompanied by questions about political responsibility for North Korea's precipitous and sustained economic decline. One must explore these questions to determine whether North Korea is "defying gravity," or whether there will eventually be a leadership breakdown in North Korea similar to that which occurred in other formerly Communist states. North Korea's Collapse Avoidance and Regime Survival Strategies Examined Almost a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Kim II Sung dynasty still stands in Pyongyang despite the loss of political and economic support from its closest allies, the death of its founder and Great Leader, the narrow avoidance of a major military confrontation with the world's last remaining superpower over nuclear non-proliferation, a 25 to 40 percent drop in GDP, and a famine that has impoverished and killed hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of North Korean people in recent years. Considering these shocks to the North Korean system, the logical question is how the leadership in Pyongyang has thus far managed to achieve its primary objective of regime survival.Although an exhaustive analysis is beyond the scope of this paper, the following factors are most relevant as distinctive components of North Korea's survival strategy.

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NorthKorea'sChallenge of RegimeSurvival First, the legacy of Kim II Sung's leadership and thought is the foundation of state power in the D.P.R.K.,separate from the communist ideological core of other former communist states. Indeed, KimJong II has relied heavily on the mantle of his father as justification for his leadership, perpetuating his identification with his father through extensive propaganda, even to the extent of reformulating the North Korean calendar to coincide with the anniversary of Kim II Sung's birth. KimJong Il's genealogical relationship to Kim II Sung and his grooming as successor for over two decades are the critical pillars of Kim Jong Il's power as North Korea's supreme political ruler. The defection of HwangJangYop, who has proved to be a bitter critic of Kim Jong II, may illustrate the limits of internal criticism within the North Korean political system. That a senior figure such as HwangJang Yop found himself with no choice but to abandon his position within North Korea's current political structure may be an indicator of the limits of dissent within North Korean society. However, anecdotal and unconfirmed evidence suggests that Kim Jong Il's rule is increasingly subject to private criticism inside North Korea's political elite. Kim Jong Il's ability to manipulate his father's legacy and establish his own credentials in order to neutralize broader expressions of political dissent will remain one of the keys to regime survival.2 Apart from his father's mandate, and subject to international standards of performance legitimacy, it is doubtful that the current leadership in Pyongyangwould be able to continue without engaging in significant reforms. Second, the historical competition for legitimacy on the Korean peninsula provides powerful motivation for North Korea's leadership to perpetuate its own survival, but the D.P.R.K. has found that its economy can no longer survive without dependence on external inputs. Increased empirical or anecdotal understanding by the North Korean public of South Korea's economic success represents an indirect threat to North Korea's internal political control, possibly a major lesson drawn by North Korean leaders from the German unification experience. Those within North Korea who may be in a position to gain a concrete understanding of South Korea's system are sufficiently invested in the North Korean system that they are rarely in a position to defect without paying a very high personal cost, a fact that was underscored by the recent selection, on the basis of political standing, of North Korean divided-family members who were permitted to travel to Seoul to meet their relatives on 15-18 August 2000. Despite the adoption of Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy" towards the North, current North Korean leaders are probably not reassured regarding their likely treatment at the hands of South Korean authorities in the event of regime failure or a reunification process with South Korea on the German

2 Byong-lo Philo Kim has cited such evidence in his work, including in remarks presented at the International Council for Korean Studies, November 1996, Alexandria, VA.

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PacificAffairs:Winter2000 model. The historic competition for legitimacy between North and South Korea has inhibited North Korea's opening up because such a path would be an implicit admission of defeat; it is notable that inter-Korean economic cooperation posed at the historic inter-Korean summit in June 2000 has been done under the cover of KimJong Il's leadership in pursuit of Korean unification, an ironic twist on North Korea's historic use of political mobilization as a tool for maintaining political control. Third, traditional historical influences on North Korea's government structure and organization - including the "feudalistic" nature of North Korean social structures and the effective use of political mobilization measures and internal security mechanisms designed to enhance internal political control - have contributed to the political stability of the D.P.R.K. through ruthless suppression of political dissent.3 The North Korean succession process has relied on traditional Confucian influences to legitimize the leadership transition from father to son, extending expressions of filial piety and popular religious practice in the service of national mobilization in support of the political leadership. Disruptions in the public distribution system resulting from North Korea's food crisis during 1997 and 1998 had contradictory influences on North Korean stability, increasing unrest over food shortages while effectively eliminating the threat of political dissent in favor of the more immediate challenge of ensuring personal survival by foraging for food. In addition, the lack of infrastructure and communication channels across regions within North Korea, as well as lack of contact with the outside world, inhibits the possibilitythat a mass-basedorganized resistance might spring up to challenge the current leadership. The relative stability of the North Korean system of governance and penetration of political control into almost all components of North Korean society lessens the likelihood of mass demonstrations that could lead to political upheaval; however, the desperation of the current food situation has also meant that political controls on movement and on barter activities at private markets have been loosened for the time being, leading to limited changes and some devolution of political control from the central government to local administrative authorities within North Korean society. Whether the central government is able to eventually recover such controls will be an important test of whether a North Korean process of reform might be driven by necessity, despite the absence of support for reforms among the central leadership.4
I HwangJang Yop has often used the word "feudalistic" to describe the structure of the North Korean state. See most recently, "North Korea's Truth and Falsehood," Wolgan Chosun, August 1998, pp. 1 1 1-24. 4 Charles Armstrong and Alexandre Mansourov are among those who have explored historical influences on the formation of the North Korean state. See Charles King Armstrong, State and Social Transformationin North Korea, 1945-1950. vols. I and II, (PhD diss. University of Chicago, 1994) and Alexandre Y Mansourov, "In Search of a New Identity: Revival of Traditional Politics and Modernisation in Post-Kim II Sung North Korea," (paper presented at the Faculty Research Seminar at the East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 23January 1995).

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's Challenge NorthKorea of RegimeSurvival Influence of North Korean Collapse Prospects on Policymaking by External States Despite the distinctive nature of the North Korean regime, analysis by "collapsists" has had an important impact on policy formation towards North Korea, particularly following negotiations resulting in the U.S.-D.P.R.K. Geneva Agreed Framework in 1994.5The rise in the influence of "collapsist" analysis was abetted by the tacit admission of weakness inherent in North Korea's decision to bargain away its nuclear weapons program for oil and energy resources, a development that many Washington-based intelligence analystshad predicted would not occur. As North Korea'ssystemicweaknesses have become more and more apparent following the death of Kim II Sung, further questions have been raised among many outside observers regarding the longevity of the North Korean system. According to one South Korean study which used a variety of concrete economic and social indicators to compare North Korea with the Eastern European communist states, North Korea faced systemic pressures that should have led to a collapse of the North Korean system already by 1992, prior to the death of Kim II Sung.6 The failure of North Korea'sagricultural system and unprecedented flooding in the summer of 1995 led for the first time to North Korean reliance on international food assistance from the United Nations World Food Programme, a dependence that has increased gradually since 1995. North Korea's growing difficulties have fed perceptions of its weakness, yet the threat of North Korea's collapse and the likely international costs of spillover, in the form of refugees or possibly even military conflict, has also increased North Korea's leverage relative to its extraordinarily weak negotiating position. Thus, the influence of a possible breakdown inside North Korea on the policy formation process of its external neighbours so far is an important indicator of what types of potential future difficulties in North Korea might stimulate an international response, an issue to be taken up in more detail later in this paper. For most South Koreans, the sudden fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent German reunification process was initially a vicarious euphoric experience. Events in Germany transformed the debate over Korean reunification from the realm of abstraction to that of realistic possibility.As the German process developed, Korean academicians and policy analystswatched closely, drawing the sobering lesson that the transition effects of unification may be more expensive and protracted than initially anticipated. The death of Kim II Sung
I Aidan Foster-Carter was by his own admission a "collapsist" whose analysis turned out to be wrong. See Aidan Foster-Carter, "North Korea: All Roads Lead to Collapse - All the More Reason to Engage Pyongyang" in Marcus Noland, ed., Economic Integration of the Korean Peninsula. (Institute for International Economics), Special Report 10january 1998, pp. 27-38.. 6 Sung Chull Kim, et. al., North Korea in Crisis:An Assessmentof Regime Stability, (Seoul, Korea: Korea Institute of National Unification, 1997). The study predicts that North Korea will face a "regime transformation" between 2001 and 2008.

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PacificAffairs:Winter2000 catalyzed further policy debate over whether South Korea should pursue a sudden or gradual reunification policy, as prospects for an inter-Korean summit evaporated and inter-Korean tensions rose with Kim Young Sam's critical assessment of Kim II Sung's leadership and place in history. During the next year, President Kim Young Sam appeared to pursue a defactopolicy of containment of North Korea premised on the idea that KimJong II was a transitional figure who would fail to consolidate political power. North Korea was a "broken airplane" headed downward, and prospects for an imminent reunification were at hand. One year following Kim II Sung's death, however, KimYoung Sam's advisorswere reported to revise their assessments,preparing to deal with Kim Jong II for the long haul; prospects for progress in interKorean dialogue were lost for the duration of Kim Young Sam's presidency. In contrast, Kim DaeJung's "Sunshine Policy" defers the issue of Korean reunification (and, by extension, appears to ignore the prospect of a North Korean collapse) in favor of enhanced dialogue, exchanges, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence.7 A common South Korean argument in the aftermath of South Korea'seconomic crisiswas that potential instabilityinside North Korea also put at risk South Korea's own economic performance by discouraging foreign direct investment in the South. South Korea's financial crisis also dramatically influenced South Korean public consideration of North Korea's prospective collapse through broad public support of the "Sunshine Policy"as away of deferring the economic shock of a North Korean "hard landing." The practical impact of the Asian financial crisis on North Korea has been to defer the likelihood of near-term economic stabilization, possibly exacerbating North Korea's economic decline and increasing the appeal of inter-Korean economic cooperation as the only conceivable means of securing North Korea's economic rehabilitation. Perceptions of North Korea's weakness have likewise been a central consideration in formulation of U.S. policy towards the Korean peninsula. LarryNiksch has analyzed the contradictory role and impact of perceptions of North Korea's collapse as a factor influencing U.S. policy towards the Korean peninsula. On the one hand, a justification of the Geneva Agreed Framework was that the proposed light water reactors would never be constructed because of the likelihood that the North Korean regime would collapse before the ten-year project would be concluded. Yet only a few years later, fears of the costs North Korea's collapse were used as ajustification for the provision of food assistance to North Korea, first expressed by the U.S. Ambassador to the R.O.K., James Laney, in a speech suggesting that deterrence remained necessary, but no longer sufficient, to respond to the potential implications and potential spillover effects of North Korea's drastic economic decline.8
7 JaeJean Suh, "Will North Korea Really Change?" KoreaFocus, vol. 6, no. 3, May-June 1998, pp. 57-66.

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NorthKorea'sChallenge of RegimeSurvival Karen Elliott House offered, in February of 1997, that the Clinton administration should simply cease to "propup" North Korea;Nick Eberstadt proposed that U.S. policy should be premised on facilitating an early Korean reunification; and Bob Manning, Jim Przystup, and James Lilley decried a self-contradictory administration policy that allowed North Korea to "blackmail"its way to the position of America's largest aid recipient in Asia.9 Although the tendency has been to magnify the likely role and influence of U.S. policy as a determinant of North Korean leadership choices or future outcomes, it is undeniable that the spectre of collapse had become a central component of the U.S. debate over policy towards North Korea. Likewise, the debate of 1996-97 stimulated serious efforts by the U.S. Department of Defense to coordinate contingency planning with South Korean andJapanese allies, leading to a regular official trilateral dialogue on these issues. Concern about the practical effects of North Korea's instability has influenced Beijing's policy towards the Korean peninsula. The impetus for an adjustment in China's policy most likely was a practical response to a surprising and disturbing increase in the number of North Korean refugees crossing the P.R.C.-D.P.R.K. border intojilin and Liaoning provinces in search of food in late 1996. Although the government followed its policy of repatriating those North Koreans who were caught, many North Koreans sought refuge with ethnic Korean relatives living in China. The Chinese offered official bilateral food assistance to North Korea and relaxed restrictions on local trade and barter by Chinese Koreans who delivered food to relatives in North Korea. By 1997, the total flow of foodstuffs from China to North Korea had reached over one million tons. This defactopolicy of support for food assistance to North Korea is consistent with China's strategic interest in stabilizing and perpetuating the existence of the North Korean regime as a security buffer while simultaneously increasing China's economic influence in North Korea even in the event of the failure of the leadership in Pyongyang."0 The prospect of a breakdown in North Korea's political leadership has had the least direct effect on policymaking inJapan, where domestic political factors have played a relatively more important role in constraining policy towards North Korea. In addition, Seoul's requests, under the Kim Young
8 See Larry A. Niksch, "U.S. Policy Towards North Korea: The Collapse Theory and Its Influence," (paper prepared for the Annual International Symposium of Korea National Defense University, 22 August 1996); and. AmbassadorJames T. Laney, "North and South Korea: Beyond Deterrence," (speech delivered to Asia Society conference, 11 May 1996). 9 See the following articles: Karen Elliott House, "Let North Korea Collapse," The Wall Street Journal, 21 February 1997, p. A14; Nicholas Eberstadt, "Hastening Korean Reunification," Foreign Affairs, March/April 1997; Robert A. Manning andJames Przystup, "Feed Me Or I'll Kill You," Washington Post, 20 February 1997; andJames Lilley (Congressional Testimony Before the House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, 26 February 1997). 10 See Scott Snyder, "North Korea's Decline and China's Strategic Dilemmas," U.S. Institute of Peace Special Report,October 1997.

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PacificAffairs:Winter 2000 Sam administration, thatJapan not take substantive action to improveJapanD.P.R.K.relations without progress in the inter-Korean dialogue, has limited the scope of Japan's diplomatic initiatives in dealing with North Korea. Despite Kim DaeJung's reversal in policy, both North Korea's Taepodong test in August of 1998 and the concerns of theJapanese public about unresolved alleged North Korean kidnapping cases from the 1970s and 1980s now serve as key brakes on the improvement of the Japan-D.P.R.K. relationship. However, the prospect of North Korean instabilitywas the primarymotivating factor in the review and strengthening of U.S.-Japan defense guidelines and the negotiation of the Agreement on Cross-Servicesand Acquisition in 1996, which specifically defined the forms of military supportJapan's Self-Defense Forces may provide in the event of a North Korean contingency. Possible Sources of Instability in North Korea It is likely that external perceptions of North Korea's economic decline will continue to influence the decisions of policy makers in neighboring states who are faced with the following dilemma: external assessments are virtually unanimous in suggesting that the current situation and balance of power between North and South Korea is not sustainable for the long-term, yet no one wants to face the unpredictable implications of a sudden change in the status quo. Change in North Korea is inevitable, but the likely direction and pace of change remains unclear." A symptom of the lack of clarityregarding the pace and direction of change in North Korea is the imprecise nature of the analytical debate over North Korea's possible future "collapse" or "soft landing." When analysts have referred to "collapse" or breakdown within North Korea, they have often failed to indicate whether they are referring to an event or an ongoing process that may have already begun to take place. In addition, the level of analysis of such a collapse is also unclear; i.e., does "collapse"mean regime transition, breakdown of state functions, or systemic change?12
11 In fact, the North Korean leadership has consistently recognized the inevitability of change but seeks to maintain control over changes that occur in North Korean society. The central question is not whether North Korea is changing but whether the leadership is able to maintain control over the pace of change. 12 This analytical difficulty has been widely acknowledged. For instance, in his written and oral presentations on the subject, Ahn Byungjoon has emphasized the need to understand collapse as a process (presentations in Washington, DC, Spring 1997). In addition, this shortcoming is discussed by Sung Chull Kim, et. al., North Korea in Crisis, pp. 5-21, and Chung-in Moon, "Crisis Forecasting Models for North Korea" (presentation at International Political Science Association, Toronto, March 1997). In addition to the problem of defining the level of analysis (regime, state, system) in discussions about the possibility of political breakdown in North Korea, Moon also notes the analytical problem of "normative bias" versus "objective factual analysis" and the need to analyze North Korea "based on the delineation of the dynamic interplay of internal and external factors" as difficulties to be overcome. He presents an alternative approach centered on dynamic analysis of initial conditions, leadership choice, and changes resulting from such choices that create conditions for new choices.

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NorthKorea'sChallenge of RegimeSurvival For instance, it is possible to envision a regime transition in Pyongyang without an accompanying collapse of the North Korean system, or regime transition may be a leading indicator signaling that the likelihood of a collapse of the system is significantly increased. (For many analysts, without a regime transition, a collapse of the political system under current circumstances is unthinkable; i.e., unless Kim Jong II leaves the scene, the system will not change.) Even if North Korea's central government were to become a failed state for a temporary period of time, a new leadership cadre - most probably led by the North Korean military- might consolidate political power and reassert control by winning support from local authorities. Such developments could mean the end of the Kim II Sung system in North Korea, or some elements of the system could live on in a different form."3Even if the regime were to fail and state collapse or chaos ensues, it is not immediately clear that Korean reunification would be at hand. Such a process of absorption would still require negotiations with, or perhaps even pacification of, North Korean local leaders who may not be willing to surrender political control or pledge their loyalties to a government in Seoul. Because the term "collapse"is used to encompass such a wide range of possible outcomes, discussion of "collapse" only hints at the various factors to be considered in formulating a proper policy response to a myriad of potential developments. In addition, there are many disagreements over the level of priority to assign to various "symptoms"of North Korea's decline. Which factors are primary indicators of a potential systemic breakdown and which factors are peripheral or of only secondary influence? The extensive problems faced by the regime are well documented. Under dire circumstances, in which the North Korean leadership may find itself unable to cope with the multiple problems it faces, there may not be a single "strawthat breaks the camel's back"leading to systemic breakdown in North Korea; rather, the complexity accompanying simultaneous challenges from different quarters may be precisely the condition under which the North Korean leadership might find itself overwhelmed. The bias of this author is that politics remains in command in North Korea, and economic, food, refugee, or even military problems ultimately remain secondary influences on North Korean stability, or are important factors only to the extent that they carry political implications for North Korea'sunique leadership system. However,North Korea'seconomic decline, food crisis and possibility of refugee flows, the security balance on the Korean peninsula, and the impact of the external security environment on North Korea's political leadership are all secondary factors which may significantly
13 For instance, it is possible that the image of Kim I1 Sung may even remain as a critical tool for perpetuating symbolic political legitimacy in a successor regime, in much the same way that Genghis Khan became a symbolic representation of renewed Mongolian nationalism in the early 1990s in Ulan Bator.

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PacificAffairs:Winter 2000 influence politics inside North Korea, albeit in an obscure and often opaque manner. These broad categories are also the primary entry points for discussing the current situation and possible international responses. The discussion that follows seeks to highlight the most important issues for consideration as potential indirect or direct contributing factors to potential instability in North Korea, or as triggers that may stimulate some response from the international community. NorthKorea's Economic Decline North Korea's industrial economy is widely recognized to have been in collapse for several years, as overall productivity and capacity utilization rates have dropped to the level of 10-15 percent, and many factories have shuttered their doors and been cannibalized for scrap metal that can be traded across the border with China in exchange for food. Replacement parts necessary to keep key factories open are scarce, and energy necessary to run the factories that are in working order is also hard to come by. Despite certain signs of stabilization - for instance through the construction of small-scale hydroelectric plants in certain localities - under the slogan of kang song tae-guk, or "strong country and great nation," the D.P.R.K.'s industrial economy is moribund, with only certain key military-run facilities high enough on the priority list to receive the resources necessary to continue operations. Energy shortages are also pervasive. The occasional blackouts reported in 1995 have only increased, and now facilities that have power are the exception rather than the rule. North Korea's hydroelectric plants power an electric transportation system that runs at efficiency rates of less than 30 percent, meaning that North Korea loses more of its power production through the inefficiency of its system than it utilizes. China has reportedly maintained a supply of oil to North Korea of about one million tons per year. In addition, North Korea relies on 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from KEDO, the supply of which has been sporadic due to KEDO's own funding difficulties. North Korea's external trade balance stabilized in 1999, suggesting the possibility of a bottoming out of North Korea's economic decline, or at least a stabilization of the continuous shrinkage in volume of North Korea's trade since 1990. North Korea's search for additional cash resources has extended to a willingness to trade access for resources, as represented by North Korea's dealings with the international food aid community, its dealings on POW/MIAs, and its willingness to allow commercial travelacross its own airspace in return for IATAfees. Desperation behavior, including North Korean involvement in all sorts of illicit trade activities, underscores North Korea's economic bankruptcy.14

14 These types of desperation measures serve primarily to perpetuate North Korea's economic well-being and as such serve to strengthen the regime, but reliance on such measures is also a qualitative measure of the limitations North Korea faces as a result of being unable to use more conventional mechanisms to finance budgetary needs.

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NorthKorea'sChallenge of RegimeSurvival Indeed, North Korea's industrial economy has already collapsed, and it is not clear whether, or for how long, the core functions of the militaryeconomy itself can be sustained without continued reliance on external inputs as a vehicle for stimulating internal economic activity.In addition, North Korea's economy is dependent on the most fundamental forms of transactions, including barter trade, with little capacity or ability to take advantage of normal financing or banking mechanisms (this may be due partly to the U.S. embargo) or other efficiencies that come with a modern economic infrastructure. North Korea's economic need has also been a major factor, along with KimJong Il's consolidation of political control, in facilitating the inter-Korean dialogue process that began with R.O.K. President Kim DaeJung's historic visit to Pyongyang and his welcome by Kim Jong II on the tarmac of the Sunan airport. Initial visits to Pyongyang by the IMF and World Bank in 1997 and 1998 indicate a possible willingness on the part of North Korean authorities to engage international financial institutions in order to gain technical assistance,but the standardsof transparencynecessary for the World Bank and IMF to undertake significant lending activity in North Korea will not come to North Korea without protracted and painstaking negotiations. Nonetheless, North Korea's diplomatic offensive, beginning in late 1999 and expanding throughout 2000, has resulted not only in normalization of diplomatic relations with potential new donors such as Italy,Australia, and New Zealand, it has also brought about the D.P.R.K'sadmission to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the increasing likelihood that the D.P.R.K.will renew its membership application to the Asian Development Bank. North Korea's economic difficulties raise many issues that may have an indirect effect on North Korea's politics. To the extent that economic difficulties increase, North Korea's leadership faces ever more difficult tradeoffs as it considers how to procure the resources necessary to perpetuate its own survival.Given the vertical structure of the power relationships in North Korea, limited resources may engender conflicts among various groups; however, a more likely result is that those who are on the margin of society (including "wavering" classes) will no longer receive support from the government and will have to fend for themselves."5And it is not yet clear what minimum level of resource procurement is necessary to support the
15 For this reason, the KINU study on factors affecting North Korea's regime stability suggests that "wavering elements" rather than the elite are the potential trigger for regime transformation; however, their dissatisfaction results from their distance from the center. The KINU study suggests that conditions for "regime transformation" have existed for some time, but such developments have been thwarted by the reinforcement of political controls, and that it remains possible that the North Korean power elite may "adopt measures to legalize the informal sector that currently deviates from official control." It forecasts a D.P.R.K regime transformation, but not necessarily a "total system disintegration," which would require "attendant changes in international relations around the Korean peninsula" before such a disintegration could occur. Sung Chull Kim, North Korea in Crisis, pp. 124-126.

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PacificAffairs:Winter 2000 critical sectors that form the backbone of Kim Jong II's political support base, i.e., his family, top-ranking cadres, the military, and party members. To a certain extent, the shock of a 25 percent decline in GDP is absorbed primarilyby those on the periphery of the system, and existing infrastructure, albeit gradually eroding, also acts as a shock absorber that diminishes the impact of economic decline on key groups within North Korean society.16 TheFoodSituation and Refugee Flows North Korea'schronic food shortage is significant primarilyas a manifestation of its increasing dependence on the international community to gain the resources necessary to feed its people. It has also revealed clearly the insufficiency of North Korea's agriculturalpolicies or distribution capabilities to meet the country's needs. And the food shortage has demonstrated that North Korea's social structure retains characteristics of a vertically based hierarchy characteristic of traditional, or "feudal,"organization, rather than being characterized by the egalitarianism one might expect of a truly socialist society. However, as with the Great Leap Forwardin China, the food shortage in and of itself probably does not necessarily represent a direct threat to the political order within North Korea. The decision by North Korean authorities to request international assistance following massive floods in August of 1995 was unprecedented; however, those floods did not mark the start of the North Korean food crisis. Indeed, North Korea's public distribution system began to cut back on food allocations in some regions as early as 1991-92, and both South Korea and Japan had agreed to provide unprecedented supplies of rice to North Korea in the spring of 1995, prior to the impact of major national disasters in North Korea. Anecdotal evidence from Northeastern China suggests that the height of the North Korean food crisis was the late fall of 1996. The flow of refugees to northeastern China was highest during this period, and the price of grain on the black market marked a peak at this time, suggesting severe shortage that was possibly exacerbated both by individual hoarding and the North Korean government's attempts to collect sufficient amounts of grain to ensure that its priority distribution needs to the military and high-ranking cadres were sufficiently met. At the height of the food crisis, there were also rumors of localized food riots in different parts of the country, resulting from the failure of North Korea's Public Distribution System (PDS) to provide food. Because poor
16 For additional information regarding structural weaknesses of North Korea's current economic structure and implications for Korean reunification, see Marcus Noland, Sherman Robinson, and Ligang Liu, "Calculating the Costs (and Benefits) of Unification," in Noland, EconomicIntegration of the Korean Peninsula. See also, Brian J. Barna, "An Economic Roadmap to Korean Reunification: Pitfalls and Prospects," Asian Survey,vol. XXXVIII, no. 3, March 1998, pp. 265-90.

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NorthKorea'sChallenge of RegimeSurvival infrastructure remains an obstacle to the spreading of such food riots to different regions so as to develop into a nationwide movement against the current political leadership, it is highly unlikely that such riots would gain momentum in the face of weakening public controls and lead to a serious leadership challenge. In fact, Kim Jong Il's public emergence suggests precisely that North Korea's economic stabilization has been accompanied by political consolidation of his own power at the top of the North Korean system. One result of the shortage of grain products in North Korea has been the increased level of trade and barter arrangements, including the increase in the number of representatives of North Korean local and provincial groups who sought out Chinese counterparts with whom to engage in barter trade. In recent years, market activityhas steadily increased, with more sites at which barter trade regularly occurs, and the type and variety of goods to be traded has steadily expanded.'7 At the same time, UNWFP estimates of the average amounts of grain available through the public distribution system dropped to unsustainable levels, forcing the average North Korean to engage in coping mechanisms and to turn to private markets in order to survive. Certain urban centers were most badly hit, with reports in the northern regions of North Korea suggesting a death toll as high as 30 percent of the population in these isolated villages. NGO survey data from refugees, as yet unconfirmed by any official government source, suggests an aggregate death toll in the millions,18 which, if true, would make the North Korean famine proportionate to that of China's Great Leap Forward in the 1950s. The policy response of the North Korean central government to its own straitened circumstances was twofold. First, responsibility for providing food for the North Korean populace has devolved from the central government to local authorities and private market activity has been tolerated as the central government was no longer able to provide for the needs of the people. Second, at the height of the food crisis, the D.P.R.K. government engaged in a prioritization and triage policy, ensuring that essential personnel, including high-ranking cadres and members of the military, were fed first, with individuals on the fringes of North Korea's social structure left to fend for themselves or to die. As the international community marks its fifth year of response to North Korea's food crisis, donor fatigue has set in, yet there are also reports that the cumulative effects of the chronic food shortage are leading to additional health problems that could further decimate the North Korean population.
Author interviews conducted in Northeastern China, June 1997. Although the survey data collected by the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement is useful, one can not extrapolate on the basis of this self-selected group to determine that the famine has had the same effects in all regions of the country. In isolated regions the death toll may have been high, but one result of North Korea's poor infrastructure is that conditions may be very different even in adjoining regions.
17 18

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PacificAffairs:Winter 2000 If incontrovertible evidence were provided that the North Korean death toll had indeed reached into the millions, one must ask whether such facts would change the response of the international community or put additional pressure on the ruling regime in Pyongyang. Stephen Solarz and Michael O'Hanlon have argued that the international community has a duty to intervene in analogous situations such as the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, and the North Korean leadership was reportedly worried that Pyongyang would be the next target of the "Clinton Doctrine," following the NATO intervention in Kosovo, yet it is not clear that, in the case of North Korea, the international community would find itself willing to challenge North Korea's sovereignty even if it failed to feed its own people."9 TheExternalSecurity Environment Despite North Korea'sideological declarations of "self-reliance," Pyongyang's external dependency has received attention from some analysts concerned with prospects of a political breakdown in North Korea. First, there is a perception that the U.S. has continued to offer support for the on-going existence of the D.P.R.K. through negotiation of the Geneva Agreed Framework.Second, the D.P.R.K.'s dependency on food and energy resources from the P.R.C., as mentioned above, has grown quite significant. But what would the impact on North Korea's leadership be if either one or the other or both of these external conditions were to change? In particular, North Korea's dependency on Chinese resources has received a great deal of attention, particularly following China's strategic decision to remove obstacles to the flow of food across the border into North Korea in 1996-97. Since the North Koreans rightly perceive that this assistance is coming to them as a result of Beijing's own self-interest, the assistance has not increased Beijing's diplomatic leverage with Pyongyang. But some analysts have suggested that the withdrawalof those resources might have the practical effect of forcing political tensions and possibly even a regime transition in Pyongyang. Since Beijing's chief objective is to maintain stability on the Korean peninsula, it is unlikely that the decision would be made to suddenly cut off trade relations with North Korea; however, if the regime in Pyongyang were perceived as a factor for instability beyond its own borders, it is not inconceivable that China might reconsider its own policy,with possible serious near-term implications for stability in North Korea. Second, the U.S. recognition of the D.P.R.K. as a legitimate negotiating partner through the Geneva Agreed Framework and KEDO does not confer many material benefits in support of the North Korean regime, yet a longstanding objective of Pyongyang's foreign policy continues to be to improve relations with the United States. What if political circumstances
19 Stephen Solarz and Michael O'Hanlon, "Humanitarian Intervention: When is Force Justified," The Washington Quarterly,Autumn 1997.

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NorthKorea'sChallenge of RegimeSurvival were to force the reconsideration of U.S. policy towards North Korea, either due to perceptions that North Korea had failed to respond to U.S. diplomacy or as a result of political erosion of U.S. support for an engagement policy with the D.P.R.K.?While the D.P.R.K. may not face additional economic constraints as a result of its failure to engage with Washington, it is possible that the political implications in Pyongyang of such a failure might be severe. Such a situation could result in desperation measures, including escalation of military threats in an attempt to induce a negotiation or to threaten the outside world with devastating consequences for failing to take Pyongyang's initiative seriously, and could also lead to internal dissension over policy towards the United States. Political/MilitaryInstability The prospect of political instabilityconstitutes a direct threat to North Korea's survival, yet even the prospects for a widespread loss of political control remain low. Nonetheless, the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a stern reminder that sudden change, while shocking, cannot be discounted. While the volcano of potential instabilityand transition in North Korea is active, who can know the exact date on which it may erupt, or whether current pressures may gradually subside? Kim Jong II has effectively extended political control to the extent that public criticism remains unthinkable, and known private efforts to organize against the KimJong Ii regime may regarded as nascent at best. The tools of political control in the totalitarian state appear to remain firmly in his hands, and the only realistic prospects for change lie not in the form of mass popular demonstrations or public uprisings, but rather in the form of a palace coup, assassination, the most difficult forms of potential instability to detect from outside North Korea's opaque and relatively impenetrable political system, or in his accidental death.20There is greater knowledge of public opposition to Saddam Hussein in Iraq than there is to KimJong II in North Korea. The prospect of political breakdown in North Korea, if indeed it were to occur, raises directly the questions of whether external intervention might be considered and what forms it might take. The most likely form of breakdown consistent with Korean historical trends would come in the form of the rise of factionalism among political or military elites vying for power, either among different bureaucratic sectors within North Korea or via open splits among the North Korean military. Such dissension could develop in
20 Michael Green notes the party leadership (divisions within Pyongyang's ruling elite), military (breakdown of vertical discipline, lateral fissures in the command structure), and society (deterioration of KWP authority, unauthorized migration, black markets) as key sectors to watch and suggests that "instability indicators" in those sectors could lead to a palace coup, social unrest and repression, civil war, or implosion. Michael Green, "North Korean Regime Crisis: U.S. Perspectives and Responses," The KoreanJournal of Defense Analysis, vol. IX, no. 2, Winter 1997, pp. 7-25.

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PacificAffairs:Winter2000 the form of refusal to take orders from above out of frustration with military rations, or it could take the form of breakaway units that might attempt to challenge the current leadership structure.2"Although a strictly internal struggle for power may not invite immediate action by North Korea's neighbours, the risk of spillover in the form of refugees or conflict beyond North Korea's borders could invite certain forms of external intervention. Specifically, under what circumstances might South Korea or China feel compelled to offer indirect support for, or direct intervention on behalf of, factional leaders in a fractured North Korean leadership, and would a successor leadership in North Korea opt to negotiate reforms leading to a Korean reunification process? Given the priority of China's own economic reform, Beijing would be reluctant to intervene directly in the event of a breakdown in North Korea; however, stabilization measures along the border with North Korea could be required. Such measures would likely include provision of indirect support to military factions capable of limiting spillover of refugees or violent action to the Chinese side of the border. Indirect actions deemed to restore stability quickly might also be considered positively. In addition, Beijing would watch Seoul's response to such instability very carefully, with a special focus on whether events would enhance the U.S. military position on the Korean peninsula. The most difficult choices in response to North Korean instability or internal conflict, however, would be faced by Seoul. First, there is the possibility that internal dissension in Pyongyang might result in a military action against Seoul as a tactical political maneuver to eliminate potential opposition through political-military mobilization. Second, sustained instability or civil war in North Korea would constitute a direct threat to South Korea's security. Third, domestic political pressure in Seoul could support actions taken in pursuit of the objective of Korean reunification, although popular sentiment in Seoul appears, for the time being, to prefer a gradual rather than a sudden Korean reunification process. Finally, the South Korean government could face the difficult choice of whether to throw support behind a North Korean faction vying for power or whether to intervene to reimpose order in the North. Such a hypothetical intervention would also be likely to raise thorny questions for the United States, which has wartime, but no longer peacetime, operational control over Korean military forces. In the case of prolonged North Korean instability or breakdown, specific political, economic, and military circumstances would determine whether an intervention in North Korea would be desirable or inevitable, although the current predilection in Seoul and elsewhere would be to avoid such direct involvement unless absolutely necessary.
21 Although there have been periodic reports of isolated military uprisings in regional areas, including reports of failed coups attempts, for several years, these reports are very difficult to confirm.

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NorthKoreas Challenge of RegimeSurvival Conclusion: Can North Korea's Leadership Manage Its Current Difficulties? Former South Korean Vice Unification Minister Song Dae-sung has described the nature of North Korea's current political system as "stability within instability."This phrase evokes the inherent contradictions of a regime that continues to defy predictions of its imminent demise (or, possibly, the more recent trend of predictions of near to mid-term survival), yet is increasingly unable to function in a normal manner. Although the regime appears by many Western estimates to be increasingly constrained with the stark Darwinian options of reform or extinction, it continues to seek the third way of limited opening, without abandoning the core elements of its political system. Unlike the "failed states" of Africa, where political chaos has led to systemic breakdowns, the North Korean leadership has used totalitarian methods of political mobilization to maintain control despite the breakdown of the economic system. The most intriguing and potentially risky development is in fact the scenario that Kim Jong Il's controlled opening, made possible by his own ability to consolidate internal political control, may turn out to have been an enormous political risk to the system (as turned out to be the case with Gorbachev's perestroika). The North Korean people and the leadership cope with the tasks of ensuring their survival through perpetual crisis management, but their energies and ability to manage such tasks are being continuously depleted. The most direct methods of economic control have ceased under siege from North Korea's prolonged crisis, yet the totalitarian nature of political control and strong survival instincts have bound the core of the North Korean leadership together in their own defence. Instability has grown closer to the core, yet the instruments of political control remain in place, and the leadership is keenly aware of potential political vulnerabilities. Unless the central leadership is able to identify new economic options to perpetuate its own survival, eventually the crises of North Korea's economy and society could present a political challenge that is beyond the ability of the current North Korean leadership to manage. Even the latest efforts at rapprochement with South Korea and the rest of the international community, driven by economic desperation, carrywith them potentially dangerous political risks and possibly unresolvable dilemmas for North Korea's political leadership. Such are the stark challenges that must be overcome for a state such as North Korea to successfully "defy gravity." 2000 TheAsia Foundation,Seoul,Korea,October

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