SPEAKING
FREELY Pyongyang has what it
wants By Alexander Acimovic
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Since the succession
of Kim Jong-eun last December, many observers and
analysts of North Korea have speculated on the
likelihood of the Kim regime pursuing economic
reform and opening, possibly along the lines of
the Chinese reforms initiated in the late 1970s by
Deng Xiaoping.
The implication of much of
this speculation has been that, if pursued, the
two processes of reform and opening up will be
pursued together. Unfortunately for the majority
of North Koreans, the history of the dynasty and
the actions so far taken under Kim
Jong-eun all indicate that
if economic reforms are attempted, they will
likely be designed to rejuvenate control by the
state rather than to loosen it, and that the
regime sees opening North Korea to the outside
world as diametrically opposed to the complex
system of political repression by which it
survives, and something it will avoid at all
costs.
Several policy changes initiated
during the past year bear the stamp of intentions
to retrench the existing system:
An increase in the number of visas granted for
travel to China by approved North Korean citizens
was complemented by a restructuring of the border
patrol units, leading to at least a temporary
reduction in illegal border crossings by economic
migrants, potential defectors and unsanctioned
traders. The government was also said to have
started more strictly enforcing the very harsh
penalties for those caught attempting to cross the
border, and to have redoubled its covert
surveillance and retributive efforts within China
against both illegal migrants and humanitarian aid
groups, mainly South Korean, assisting them.
With the desire to cross unabated by
conditions within North Korea, these measures
opened the possibility for a substantial increase
in the amount paid as bribes both for illegal
allowance to cross the border and to return over
it and to avoid or reduce penalties for those
caught, such as temporary or permanent sentences
to concentration camps.
Additionally,
those who, in the reshuffled border patrol force,
received the bribes would be more likely to kick
the expected tithes up the ladder, and that the
system would therefore receive a small influx of
cash.
The announced increase in state-approved
travel across the Chinese border gave rise to the
possibility of realizing the potential for more
North Koreans to serve as guest workers in
industrial areas of northeast China - an
attraction to the Chinese businesses and factory
owners for the low wages they hoped to get away
with paying the North Koreans.
For the
North Korean government, strong motivation was
provided by the possibility of an influx of hard
currency through garnishing a large chunk of their
migrant citizens' wages (as is done, for example,
with the salaries of North Korean loggers and
other workers employed in far eastern Russia and
those already in China), while having them
employed in a place where North Korean agents can
monitor their activities and maintain enforcement
of regime discipline.
It also presented a
potential diversion of the currency flow, since
illegal migrants send earned income home through
brokers and then to their families, depriving the
regime of a cut.
The much-hyped "June 28" agricultural reforms
- following in large part the design of previously
announced but little realized farming policy
changes - promised collective farms the right to
sell at market prices and to non-state purchasers
either 30% plus any excess of agricultural
production quotas, or at least the excess amounts,
for their own benefit, as well as a reduction in
the mandated size of farm work groups.
Besides the obvious hedge that with
production quotas being variable and set by the
state, whether potential excess output could be
consistently realized and profited from was
doubtful, the slim prospect of any increase in the
quantity and quality of fertilizer and farming
equipment, or of the likelihood of the regime
purchasing the farms' output at market rates
rather than below-market prices that allow it to
subsidize food distribution in non-farming areas,
discourage the possibility of either increases in
gross production at all or of farmers' prospects
for improving their take.
As yet, even the
meager reforms that have been declared have barely
been put into effect, but one announced part of
the reform package that has been implemented was
the regime's insidious confiscation of numerous
privately held and farmed plots of land around the
outskirts of collective farms - so providing the
state system with a small increase in productive
land and decreasing the amount of productive land
from which it does not skim off the top.
Other prospective economic changes, such
as the institution of special economic zones, have
thus far yielded little more than announced
intentions similar to those emitted for the last
two decades, while joint ventures from foreign
investors - such as that with a Chinese mining
company which recently ended with mutual
recriminations - have been pursued in a manner
more beneficial to short-term regime gains than
one that would be systematically sustainable.
Meanwhile, new regime presentations to
accompany the new ruler - in-vogue pop music
bands, knock-off Mickey Mouse shows, and deep
concern over the infrastructure condition of
Pyongyang amusement parks - most of which are more
in the way of attempts to co-opt and follow trends
which the populace has acquired a taste for
through smuggled goods and media than anything of
original production, have not been followed by
even a hint of relaxation of political controls.
This should come as no surprise
whatsoever. Those things that could be most easily
identified as signs of opening - greater freedom
of internal and external movement, allowance of
unsupervised external communications or internal
association, freedom of choice as to type and
location of employment - are the very things that
under Kim Il-sung the North Korean regime set up
an intricate, repressive system to forbid, and
which have been refined over several decades to
suit the changes of time and function efficiently.
They have been and continue to be employed
with unswerving discipline.
As Kim
Jong-eun nears the completion of his first year in
power, what has been seen to date is the standard
dynastic pattern of pronouncements and attendant
propaganda showing the leader's awareness of and
sympathy with popular sufferings, followed by
promises to solve the country's economic problems
that are intended to raise hopes, followed by
aborted implementations of these solutions - the
main actualizations being those that benefit the
state, followed by blame for failures being laid
on outside forces, (be they unfavorable weather,
the hostility of other countries, or subversion by
internal enemies) despite the leader's superhuman
efforts.
Whether or not it is possible to
have a market economy without substantial opening
to the wider world is open to debate. But the
primary question is whether North Korea wishes or
intends to try even that much, and to date the
answer is highly doubtful.
For the ruling
caste, there is very little motivation to
implement major reforms, as despite dire
predictions from some observers, the current
situation is in fact quite stable. Whether new
production yields much or little, the elite will
continue to commandeer enough to support their
plush lifestyles and maintain the state apparatus
that protects their power.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Alexander Acimovic is an
independent historian and policy analyst based in
New York
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