Nothing new under North Korean
son By Benjamin Katzeff
Silberstein
Is North Korea reforming under Kim
Jong-eun? Many believe so, and the stream of news
articles on the topic seems endless. We have, however,
to some extent seen it all before.
Similar to today's situation, Kim
Jong-Il's early days in power were surrounded by
hopes of the new leader being a reformer. South
Korea elected Kim Dae-Jung president only months
after Kim Jong-il formally took power in 1997, and
the era of sunshine-policy began. South Korea was
obviously the driving force. In addition, as it
later turned out, the North was given extensive
bribes in exchange for its cooperation. But the
sun kept shining for years after the bribes, and
the overall North Korean attitude was far from the
dogmatic "Hermit Kingdom" the world had previously
known.
For a few years, an unprecedented
amount of Inter-Korean events
and agreements occurred,
culminating in the June 2000 summit. Not unlike
Kim Jong-un's Moranbong Band concert where Disney
characters and lightly dressed violin-playing
women appeared, typically Western-style K-pop
groups such as Shinhwa and Baby V.O.X were invited
to perform in Pyongyang. During these years North
Korea established diplomatic relations with
several western countries. North Korea seemed to
be coming out of its shell, and Kim Jong-il was
spearheading the journey.
Kim Jong-il 's
visit to China in 2001 made many believe in a
Chinese-style development. During a visit to
Shanghai, Kim allegedly exclaimed: "Let's build
skyscrapers. China has succeeded in economic
reforms. Why have we failed?" Kim Jong-Un
certainly isn't the first leader to recognize the
dire state of North Korea's economy. The same year
as Kim Jong-il 's China visit, one Rodong Sinmun
editorial stated that "... the socialist economic
management method is still immature and not
perfect ... If we stick to this hackneyed and
outdated method, which is not applicable to the
realities of today, then we will be unable to
develop our economy." [1]
This echoes
similar to Kim Jong-eun's rumored criticism of the
country's economists for dogmatic thinking. Keep
in mind, for comparison, that Kim Jong-eun has
been deemed a realist for having talked about the
North's food problem, admitting that the people's
living standards need to be improved, and for
pointing out the "pitiful" state of a theme park.
The next big step came in July 2002, when
the North announced major economic reforms. Prices
and wages were raised to match the black market
level. Enterprises were given greater autonomy and
incentives, and "profits [were] to be distributed
based on individual efforts, thereby stimulating
the labor force to work harder." [2] The North
adopted legislation formally paving the way for
the special economic zones in Kaesong and Sinuiju,
and the Mount Kumgang tourist zone also got its
judicial grounding. [3] The 2002 reforms finally
legalized widespread black market activities.
Interestingly, even in the mid-1990s,
North Korea experimented with agricultural
policies similar to Kim Jong-eun's "6.28 Policy".
According to information trickling out from North
Korea, the "6.28" reforms will reduce the sizes of
farming units to three to four members and allow
farmers to keep 30% of their crops. In the reforms
of the mid-1990s, farming unit sizes decreased to
5-7 members, and according to one researcher,
"squads were allowed to keep or dispose of any
surplus". In 2002, North Korea again tried to
reform the agricultural sector by raising the
prices of grains to a level more comparable with
the black market, and loosened central planning.
The reforms were partially reversed in 2005, but
nonetheless, they had at least been attempted.
Overall, these developments seemed rather
dramatic. In 2000, one writer stated that North
Korea was showing "tentative signs of opening to
the West". Kim Dae-jung claimed that the 2002
reforms showed that Kim Jong-il had an
"intellectual ability and discernment [as] a
reform-minded and the type of man we can talk with
in a common-sense fashion". [4] In the words of
Victor D Cha, "many argued that the unprecedented
and far-reaching nature of the July 2002 measures
demonstrated North Korea intentions to seek
integration into the international community
[...]". [5]
In the early 2000s, visitors
to North Korea observed many signs of sprouting
entrepreneurship, and the increased commercial
activity was signified by spots such as
Pyongyang's Tongil ("Unification") Market. And
don't forget the appearance of billboards
advertising the North Korean-made cars model
Huiparam ("whistle") in 2003.
According to
the Asian Times Online contributor Bertil Lintner,
who visited Pyongyang in 2004, the view of Kim
Jong-il as reform-minded was common among the
city's foreign community. [6] Despite his many
statements assuring that North Korea would stick
to its ideological line, Kim Jong-il was acutely
aware that the country's model was not working. He
even admitted this the US state secretary
Madeleine Albright in 2000, while claiming to have
been eyeing the social model of my home country,
Sweden, who has successfully combined free markets
with a welfare state.
This comparison
between father and son does not suggest that North
Korea cannot change. On the contrary, North Korea
has always been changing and reforming. The image
of a never-changing system, one that is making
today's rumors about change seem more radical,
simply isn't true. The problem is that reforms
have never gone far enough. Is this time any
different? Maybe the Supreme People's Assembly
plenum suddenly scheduled for September 25 will be
the occasion for us to finally find out.
Notes: 1. Quoted in Cha,
Victor D. (2012), The Impossible State. New
York: Harper Collins, p 142. 2. Quoted in
Hong, Ihk-pyo (2002), A Shift Toward
Capitalism? Recent Economic Reforms in North
Korea. East Asian Review, vol. 14, no. 4,
Winter 2002, pp 93 - 106. 3. Yoon, Dae-kyu
(2009), "Economic reform and Institutional
Transformation: A Legal Perspective", in Park,
Philip H. (ed), (2009), The Dynamics of Change
in North Korea: An Institutionalist
Perspective. Seoul: Institute for Far Eastern
Studies, Kyungnam University. 4. Quoted in Cha
2012, p143. 5. Ibid, p147. 6. Lintner,
Bertil (2005), Great Leader, Dear Leader.
Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.
Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
is an editorial writer at the Swedish daily
newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, a formerly
Seoul-based freelance writer focusing on North
Korea and co-author of the book Images from
North Korea (Atlas 2010).
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