Present-day North Korea is often perceived
as a tightly controlled Stalinist society whose
life is arranged in strict accordance with
countless regulations. That indeed used to be the
case a couple of decades ago, but nowadays there
are few countries where laws and regulations are
broken with such ease and impunity.
There
are many factors that make this possible, and
corruption is one of them. Indeed, official
corruption is endemic in many parts of the
under-developed world, but it appears that North
Korea is unique even in this regard - at least in
East Asia.
Countless times this writer has
asked a North Korean whether it is conceivable
that a police officer or bureaucrat would refuse a
bribe. My interlocutors always look at me with
some bewilderment, since the question itself
sounds strange - and
recently a middle-aged
woman, a market vendor, said: "Are they crazy? How
else would they stay alive?"
Contrary to
what many believe, this was not always the case.
North Korea of Kim Il-sung's era, that is, of the
years 1960-1990, was not a nice place to live - as
a matter of fact, it might have been the world's
most regulated and regimented country.
Nonetheless, it was quite clean. Officials and
policemen enforced regulations and usually did not
accept bribes. Indeed, until the late 1980s, it
was often dangerous to offer a bribe to an
official whom one did not know personally. Such an
offer would not merely be rejected but might also
have led to grave consequences.
The
incorruptibility of the old bureaucracy has a
rather simple and rational explanation: Most of
the time, it did not pay to be a corrupt official
under Kim Il-sung. Money was of surprisingly
little use in the 1960s and 1970s, when pretty
much everything was rationed and distributed by
the state according to predetermined quotas and
norms.
In those days officials lived
significantly better than the average North
Korean, no doubt. But they were affluent not
because they had significantly more money (the
wage differential between a top official and a
humble worker was remarkably low), but rather
because they had access to higher-quality goods
and services that were not available to the common
people. One of my North Korean interlocutors said:
"Back in the 1980s, I did not care about money.
Nobody did, since money did not buy much in those
days." In those days, in the 1970s or 1980s, one
had to be an official to drink beer every week, to
smoke cigarettes with filters, or feast on pork a
few times a month. But officials did not buy these
goods at market; rather they received them from
the state as part of their special (very special)
rations.
In this situation, it did not
make sense for an official to accept bribes as a
reward for overlooking some misbehavior or
violations of some rules. Money would not be
particularly useful and at the same time there was
a significant risk of being caught. If caught, an
unlucky official would at best lose his or her job
and at worst even freedom, and no amount of money
would compensate for this disaster.
Things
changed, though, in the early 1990s when the
hyper-distributive economy of Stalinist North
Korea collapsed. Minor officials were hit very
hard by the crisis of the mid-1990s. Many of my
North Korean friends have stated that during the
famine of 1996-99, honest officials - those who
sincerely believed in the official ideology, and
operated strictly in accordance with rules - were
usually among the first people to die. In most
cases, their food rations were no longer delivered
and, being loyal soldiers of the Great Leader,
they did not want to involve themselves in any
kind of illegal and immoral capitalist market
activity. So a sorry fate awaited these true
believers, and their colleagues learned a lot from
their demise.
Indeed, an emerging market
created numerous opportunities for
self-enrichment.
Take the example of a
police sergeant whose job in the late 1990s was to
be a security guard on a train (in North Korea,
all long-distance trains going to and from
Pyongyang have a permanent police presence of one
or two). Technically, he was supposed to arrest
anyone who moved noticeable quantities of smuggled
Chinese produce from the borderland areas to the
capital of the revolution.
However, it did
not work that way. A young woman trading in
cigarettes would give him 500 won to make sure
that nothing would happen to her or her sacks of
cigarettes. That amount was roughly equivalent to
five or six months of the sergeant's official
salary. He did not merely accept the regular
payments from the girl but also made sure that she
would have a relatively comfortable seat, and even
stood guard next to her sacks of merchandise.
By the mid-1990s, the old bureaucratic
order had collapsed all but completely. People
began to take bribes for anything, and this had
much impact on daily life. For example, from the
late 1960s, North Korea was remarkable for the
level of control that was imposed on domestic
travel; for any trip outside one's town or county,
one would have to apply for a permit. This is
still the case, but the trips have become much
liberalized because a small bribe (the equivalent
of US$1-$2) ensures that such a permit is issued
immediately with no questions asked and no papers
required.
We are conditioned to see
official corruption as an evil, but in present-day
North Korea, corruption might be a life-saver. The
average North Korean gets most of his or her
income (about 75%, if recent estimates are to be
believed) from private economic activities - these
include private agriculture, trade and small-scale
household production, and myriad other things.
Nonetheless, nearly all of these activities remain
technically illegal. Unlike China, North Korea has
never undertaken serious economic reform, so
private economic activities are still considered
crimes, even though they have long become, in
practice, a universal norm (and without such
activities many would be unable to stay alive).
The only reason these activities are able
to exist is corruption. Without widespread
corruption, many more North Koreans would probably
have perished in the great famine because there
would have been no way to have private
agriculture, and it would have been nearly
impossible for private traders to move food across
the country, delivering it to areas where the food
situation was especially dire. After all, trade in
grain and long-distance travel for commercial
purposes are both technically crimes. No markets
would be possible had the local bureaucracy been
serious about enforcing a multitude of bans and
restrictions on commercial activities.
It
is interesting that there are even some unspoken
rules that regulate the way corruption happens.
For example, at market, police would seldom, if
ever, harass an obedient, generous vendor more
than twice a month. Once a policeman is paid a
bribe for overlooking some irregularities (say the
sale of grain, liquor, blank DVDs and other
prohibited items), he seldom pays attention to
these activities for the next couple of weeks.
Bribes do not just buy the vendor out of trouble
in the moment, but also buy him or her relative
security for a certain period of time.
Over the past decade, the corruption and
vested interests of low- and mid-level bureaucrats
are the major reason the government has failed to
succeed in its dangerous attempts to revive the
Stalinist economy. These efforts failed because of
the quiet sabotage of these officials, who saw no
reason to eradicate their major source of income:
private and market activities.
Nonetheless, one should not be too
positive about North Korean corruption. It might
have saved many lives in recent times, but is also
likely to create major problems in future.
Corruption has become an inseparable part of North
Korean culture, and has come to be seen as part of
standard operating procedure. One has to be naive
to think that this ingrained habit will disappear
overnight, even in the case of a dramatic
political change.
Even when the Kim family
regime meets its eventual demise, when a new North
Korea emerges, the culture of corruption may
remain as part of its heritage. And perhaps
eventually it will become a serious burden to a
resurgent North Korean economy.
Dr
Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty
of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center,
Australian National University. He graduated from
Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far
Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea,
and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi
Dynasty. He has published books and articles on
Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave,
teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
