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An Analysis of Political Instability in the DPRK: Identity, Interest, and Leader-Elite Relations

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An Analysis of Political Instability in the DPRK: Identity, Interest, and Leader-Elite Relations The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis Vol. 25, No. 1, March 2013, 87–107 An Analysis of Political Instability in the DPRK: Identity, Interest, and Leader-Elite Relations Kim Jina* Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, Seoul, Republic of Korea This study explores answers to such questions as “Why has North Korea been so immune to regime change?” and “What are the leading causes of North Korea’s regime fragility?” It acknowledges that indicators of macroeconomic performance, although they are primary indicators of a successful state, are neither available nor reliable for the study of North Korea’s regime stability. Therefore, this study tries to specify factors affecting the leadership rather than looking at a broad matrix of indicators. This study assumes that it becomes increasingly important for the North Korean leadership to provide privileged benefits to rent-seeking elites for the regime maintenance and hence tries to analyze variables related to change of identity and interests of the North Korean power elites. First, it identifies key variables of North Korea’s stability by reclassifying indicators from the indicator clusters examined in the previous studies. Next, it analyzes factors directly related to the leader-follower relationship in North Korea such as ruling ideology, elite composition, rent-seeking behaviors and opportunity cost of choosing alternative options. Findings of this study reveal many paradoxes in North Korea and suggest that North Korean elites’ support for the Kim Jong Un regime depends on the young new leader’s ability to retain the mechanism of providing benefits to the elites and increasing the opportunity cost of elites’ defection. Keywords: North Korea, political stability, contingency, constructivism, leader-elite relations Introduction The perceived pressure to anticipate state failure has increased in the past several years, and the pressure to anticipate North Korea’s fragility has also increased. However, the track record of previous studies in this regard has not been very good. The North Korean regime has spent decades figuring out ways to survive, which it is still managing to do, despite repeated predictions of imminent collapse, showing potential resilience to the internal and external challenges. Efforts to rank states to identify state weakness have increased but have little policy relevance for the DPRK. This inadequacy exists *E-mail: [email protected] **This paper was presented at a closed session of the KIDA-Brookings Seminar on September 5, 2012. ISSN 1016-3271 print, ISSN 1941-4641 online © 2013 Korea Institute for Defense Analyses http://www.kida.re.kr/kjda 88 Kim Jina for several reasons. First, there was a tendency to make hasty generalizations. Studies point out different causes of state failure without giving much attention to state-specific causes. Second, studies relied on monitoring background factors. Therefore, latent variables are examined without giving different weight to such factors related to regime fragility. Accordingly, studies do not provide accurate information on the probability of regime collapse in North Korea. Given North Korea’s resilience and adaptability, sorting out key variables is necessary. The death of Kim Jong Il could change the matrix of North Korea’s regime stability, and hence it becomes even more important than before to provide guidelines for identifying priority sectors. Notably, after the death of Kim Il Sung, North Korea underwent successful consolidation processes in the mid-1990s. As O’Donnell and Schmitter argue, political transition can increase the likelihood of regime collapse,1 but predicting whether or not North Korea will succeed again in power transition and regime stabilization should be based on thorough examination. Goldstone contends that a number of factors have to come together for a revolu- tionary change to succeed, and these factors include mobilization of a broad-based section of the population, the elites’ alienation from the state, and nonintervention of external powers.2 In the case of North Korea, mass mobilization is a less-likely scenario, and neighboring states, at least at this point, have interests in maintaining the status quo. However, the leader-follower relationship is a growing concern. In democracy, leaders need the support of citizens, but dictators maintain their command by having some of their authority delegated and forming an elite stratum below them.3 Therefore, in a dictatorship, politics centers on the interplay between leaders and elites. This study will focus on the relationship between the North Korean leadership and the power elites. It should be noted that defection among elites led to the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,4 the very factor that Kim Il Sung warned not to repeat in North Korea. North Korea has recruited elites who have demonstrated their ideological integrity and loyalty to the leadership while it ensured checks-and-balances among the elites. Because elites benefit from their membership, they are engaged in internal bargaining that maintains the existing structure. However, their ideational bond weakens and rational calculation dominates, and this is more likely to happen when there are changes of leadership, elite composition, and, consequently, bureaucratic culture. The North Korean leadership remains in control of the elites, and it is unlikely that that elite disintegration can occur in the coming months. However, it is important to study the significance of the North Korean elites, whose support the leader requires to stay in power, and how their relationship with the leadership has changed. This study is designed to find answers to such questions as “Why has North Korea been so immune to regime change?” “What are the leading causes of North Korea’s regime fragility?” “What are new variables to be examined?” and “What framework can be best applied to North Korea?” This paper is composed of two parts. It will first identify key indicators from the indicator clusters examined in the previous studies and reclassify variables to distinguish latent as well as key variables of North Korea’s stability. Then, it will examine how these variables are related to the mechanism of sustaining elite support for the North Korean regime. Political Instability in the DPRK 89 Literature on DPRK Contingency Previous studies conducted mostly by Korean scholars focused on presenting various scenarios of North Korea’s regime instability. However, these studies were rather focused on the consequences,5 not the causes, of North Korea’s regime fragility. They present requirements for managing problems associated with collapse,6 anticipate the attitudes of the neighboring states in mitigating consequences,7 and suggest advance planning for contingency situations.8 Other studies presented quantitative analysis for identifying leading indicators or conditions that are associated with states’ regime fragility, but these efforts largely were aimed at developing global risk assessment. They have been successful in conveying the impression that North Korea shows signs of slow collapse, but they were not adequately designed to make case-specific considerations of policy implications or predictions. In the previous studies, North Korea has a mixed profile, succeeding in some of the dimensions such as state control while failing in other dimensions such as economic efficiency.9 To many observers North Korea seems to be an anomaly. For example, CIFP (Country Indicator for Foreign Policy) fragile states reports measured relative strengths and weaknesses across a broad range of indicators of state fragility, and North Korea ranked 52nd in 2007 and 56th in 2011.10 However, North Korea’s ranking changes depending on the indicators:11 it becomes the 25th with a fragility index of 5.88 if selected indicators are considered, and North Korea’s average index decreases from 7.38 to 3.11 if political stability indicators are considered.12 Goldstone’s Global Forecasting Model of Political Instability13 selected control cases at random for a global model that identifies factors associated with the risk of all types of state failure, and North Korea is one of the states scoring high in strength but low in legitimacy. This means that North Korea is likely to be efficient at causing problems for its people, but it scores high in overall strength. Because indices do not converge, it is questionable whether or not the indicators used in the global models are adequately capturing the mechanisms that are making the DPRK fragile. Studies of quantitative analyses of comparable measures and comprehensive analyses of all the relevant indicators are meaningful. However, it is important to identify the key elements of the DPRK’s fragility at a given point. A simple numerical calculation, despite its strength of methodologically sound analysis, is not sufficient for a full understanding of North Korea’s unique environment. First, there are some indices that are neither available nor significant in the case of North Korea. Among unavailable and insignificant variables are elite ethnicity, income inequality, inflation, territory affected by conflict, unemployment rate, and crime rate. For example, indicators related to North Korea’s macroeconomic perfor- mance, although they are primary indicators of a successful state, are neither available nor reliable. In addition, experts use different measurements of GDP for the study of North Korea’s economy. Besides, studies assess state stability
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