A Brief History of North Korea

 

The Division of Korea

Japan annexed Korea from Russia in 1910 following the Russo-Japanese War, where it then ruled for thirty-five years. Koreans were not willing colonial subjects, and resistance included a nonviolent protests in 1919 that ended in 7,000 Koreans deaths and 50,000 arrests. The Korean language and culture was attacked, while millions were forced into labor and thousands conscripted into the Japanese military.

In 1943, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Chiang Kai-shek, met and agreed that Japan should lose all territories conquered by force, and determined that “in due course Korea shall become free and independent.” Yet, an independent nation of Korea still does not exist.

Two years later, Harry Truman, the new champion of freedom and independence, authorized the murder of some 230,000 Japanese in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 9, the “Fat Man” fell on Nagasaki and Russia invaded Korea. In response, a line was drawn a National Geographic map at the 38th parallel, and, after the division was accepted by Russia, the country was divided into a North (under control of Russia), and a South (under control of the United States). Korean citizens continued to protest against occupation by all foreign powers.

Ostensibly, there were still plans to create a unified and independent Korea. But independence is often anathema to the ambitions of imperial powers, who first and foremost seek areas of control against rival powers. While meeting several times in a Joint-Commission to discuss unification, the United States and Russia entrenched themselves on either side of the parallel.

In the south, the United States worked against any plans to unite the country by immediately forming a military government (USAMGIK) in direct opposition to goal of national unification put forward by the short-lived but popular People’s Republic of Korea (PRK). In August of 1946, it was made illegal for Koreans to cross between north and south without a permit. Shortly after, waves of protests and strikes rocked the south. In Busan, 8,000 railway workers went on strike, leading to uprisings across other cities that included peasants and factory workers. The military dictatorship responded as one would expect: over the next few years, left-wing activists were targeted and upwards of 100,000 people were killed. On July 19, 1948, the military government installed the anti-communist Syngman Rhee as president of South Korea through a controlled election.

In the north, the Soviet Union recognized the PRK but also did not heed the calls from Koreans for an end to occupation. The Workers Party of Korea was formed under the leadership of Kim Il-sung, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was born on September 9, 1948. Key industries were nationalized, and many formed landowners crossed into the south.

The UN tried to work toward national elections, but was hampered by the competing interests of the dominant nations in its ranks. Most Koreans opposed the division of the country into spheres of separate interest, and supported the Joint-Commision aimed at national unification and the eventual departure of Russia and the United States. They understood that independent elections in the north and south would lead to a permanently divided Korea.

There were a series of uprisings against the planned elections in the south, including one on the island of Jeju led by guerilla fighters with the communist Workers Party of South Korea. Nearly 10% of the island’s population was killed in the fighting and subsequent repression by the South Korean Government.

Following elections and in response to the Jeju massacre, the Yeosu-Suncheon rebellion saw some 3,000 South Korean soldiers rebel against the new Rhee government and occupy the town of Yeosu. South Korean forces, with aid from the U.S., killed thousands of soldiers and civilians in order to put down the uprising.

Some 88 suspected communist supporters or collaborators, including elderly woman and 32 children, were massacred by the South Korean military in December of 1949 in Mungyeong.

The Korean War

On June 25, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek took a definitive step towards national unification when his troops crossed the armistice line and began a full scale invasion of the much larger but militarily inferior south. (Stalin had given Kim Il-sung his approval for invasion after Mao agreed to enter the war if necessary). The United Nations, dominated by the United States and its army, asked its members to help "repel the armed attack." Truman ordered the American armed forces to help South Korea, and South Korea was put under US military command. The Americans, after pushing the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel, advanced to the border of China, at which point China entered the war and eventually pushed deep into South Korea. After years of brutal fighting, in which over two million people - including over a million North Koreans - were killed, the war was stalemated back at the 38th parallel, and a cessation of hostilities (not a peace treaty) was signed.

Horrors of War

In three years the U.S. dropped more bombs - including 32,000 tons of napalm -  on North Korean than on it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. Biological weapons were also tested on North Korea, including reports of American planes dropping canisters containing insects and voles contaminated with bubonic plague. After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops. An estimated 75 percent of Pyongyang was destroyed, a reality that, in one commentator’s eyes, “allowed the regimen to redesign [the capital city] from scratch as a grand and enduring work of propaganda in its own right."

Still, the bombings are secondary in anti-western Korean propaganda to the history of smaller village massacres carried out by U.S. troops. One example is the massacre of some 300 North Korean Civilians by U.S. troops in No Gun Ri on July 26, 1950, during which the waters of a nearby stream literally ran red with blood. The massacre at No Fun Ri went unreported outside of Korea until 1999. South Korea also executed some 100,000 to 200,000 suspected leftist and peasants during the Bodo League massacre in the summer of 1950. Most had no connection to communism, and thousands more were executed in other anti-communist purges.

North Korea Since 1953

The story of North Korea since 1953 is largely a testament to the impossibility of creating an alternate economic system in a sea of capitalism, as any alternative economic system will be retarded and slowly eroded if it cannot push beyond the borders of one country. Though it was not foreseen in 1953, North Korea's impending isolation from the global economy would lead to millions of death.

But things started out on high note. Despite the near total destruction of all major economic centers, North Korea’s economy was functioning at pre-war war levels just four years after the last bomb was dropped, far surpassing economic development in the south. Rejuvenation and growth in the north was possible almost entirely because of economic support from the Soviet Union and China, and from the real material benefits of a planned economy (functioning on intense exploitation of the working class). The last Chinese troops left in 1958, at which point North Korea could be called official independent for the first time in half a century. Ties with China remained close until the death of Mao in 1976 and China’s reorientation towards the west, at which point the south’s economy began expanding while the north’s shrunk.

If the loss of a Chinese ally was a hardship, the fall of the USSR in 1990 was an “unprecedented disaster” for the North Korean economy, and as such, a nightmare for all Northerners outside of the privileged regime. Marxist economist Michael Roberts explains how the disappearance of Russia as an export market for coal led and supplier of subsidies, coupled with heavy military spending to protect the regime and bad harvest, lead to economic collapse and large scale famine. Though numbers are hard to crunch, excess deaths due to famine between 1993 and 2000 range from five to six hundred thousand. The average real GDP growth rate during the 1990s was an astounding negative four percent, and living standards fell by half.

The Economy

Though isolated and targeted for sanction by the U.S., today’s economy is growing at a rate of about four percent per year. North Korea ostensibly operates under a planned economy, with most people working for the state, and the government distributing products and paying for healthcare and housing. But this rapidly changing as the state looks to stimulate growth by opening the economy. Today, farmers can sow some fields themselves and sell proceeds in maret. There ares special economic zones where foreign companies can invest. The state also makes $1 billion a year by garnishing the wages of workers it exports to China, Russia, and Qatar. Michael Roberts explains that “some ‘state companies’ are in effect owned by rich individuals, usually well-placed or related to senior state officials”, and that about 75 percent of North Korean household income now comes not from the state but from assorted private economic activities – activities that are now tacitly tolerated by the government. North Koreans today tend to their very own private plots, run their own food stalls, make clothes, footwear (and even counterfeited Chinese cigarettes) in unofficial workshops, and of course, they trade. Since 2010, the number of government-approved markets in North Korea has doubled to 440, and satellite images show them growing in size in most cities. In a country with a population of 25 million, about 1.1 million people are now employed as retailers or managers in these markets.”

Juche and ‘Socialism in Our Style’

Juche - translated roughly as “self-reliance” - is the official state ideology introduced in 1955 as a “creative application of Marxist-Leninism.” It is the embodiment of Kim Il-sung’s wisdom and  "a complete answer to any question that arises in the struggle for national liberation"

Juche says that an individual is the master of his destiny, and that by becoming a self-reliant and strong nation one can achieve true socialism. Independence, a national economy, and self-defence are all in the name of establishing socialism. It also promotes the Kim family as the saviours of the “Korean Race.” This is a framework for justifying socialism in one country.

Juche says that man is the master of everything and decides everything, and that man is the driving force in history. This is seen in the ideas of ‘Socialism of Our Style’, introduced by Kim Jong-il in 1990. Socialism in Our Style, a part of Juche, says that North Korea survives as a socialist country because it has adapted socialism to fit the current historic period (socialism in the USSR failed because it was implemented in a mechanical and dogmatic manner). Socialism in Our Style is "a man-centered Socialism," that sees people, not material forces, as the driving force of history. And while man is the driving force of history, the masses need a great leader to guide them. The working class thinks through the great leader, and class struggle can only be recognized through the great leader - making him the leader of the working class. The great leader is flawless human being who always rules for the masses.

All images of Marx and Lenin were removed from public spaces by the turn of the 21st century.

The Military

August 25th is the Day of Songun, a national holiday and celebration of Kim Jung-il’s military first leadership in the 1960s. Songun says that all social ills can be corrected by giving priority to the military. Under Songun, the Korean People’s Army holds the highest position in the North Korean state. According to the constitutional revision of 1998, the National Defense Commision is the supreme body of the state and a source of emulation for all other state institutions. The Songun policy fits into the goals of self-defense as laid out in Juche.

North Korea has a massive military. There are 1,200,000 people on ‘active military duty’, which ranks fourth behind China (over 2 million), the U.S., and India. When ‘military reserve’ numbers are included, the army balloons to a massive 7,700,000. Only South Korea has more people on military reserve (7,500,000) and a larger total (active plus reserve) military, absorbing more than eight million people. Twenty-five percent of North Korea’s population is on active or reserve military designation, and a quarter of the state’s GDP is spent on the military.

The military is double edged sword for the regime - a defense from the outside but a threat from within. The military has been purged at least once of all those disloyal to Kim Jon-un (age 33). Since taking power, he has killed about 140 military officials.

Inequality

Some estimates put North Korea's Gini Coefficient (the most common measure of inequality, with a score of ‘1’ being the most unequal) from 2002 to 2004 at a range of 0.60 to 0.85. For context, the United States scored a 0.45 in 2011, Haiti .59, and Namibia .71 (making it the most unequal country). It’s widely agreed that capitalists have it best under Kim Jong-un than at any other time in the country’s history. Many see capitalism as the “only game in town.” There is a growing gap between those with disposable income and those without it. Pyongyang has a new nickname - Pyonghattan. In April the first foreign brand chain store, Miniso, opened in the capital. The Chinese-based company has promised to bring “the happiness of stress-free shopping” to country with 28 state-sponsored haircuts. Only the wealthiest in North Korea will be able to afford any of the products.

Nuclear Weapons

North Korea’s nuclear program is based on self-defense. The country first started to develop nuclear weapons in 1980, about 5 years after South Korea. But the largest threat is the United States as exemplified to North Korea in the invasion of Iraq, and every time the US, in collaboration with forces in the South, practices decapitation raids. It was only after Iraq that, in 2006,  the North conducted its first successful nuclear weapons test. At the time, 43% of South Koreans saw the United States as responsible for the nuclear tests, compared with 37% who held the North responsible. On July 4, 2017, North Korea successfully tested its first intercontinental missile, but it doesn’t have the capacity to put a nuke in an IBM.