Political features of the North Korean regime

    The political structure of the country is certainly supported by the use of state terror, especially brutal under Kim Jong-UN. Experts ' opinions on the North Korean Peninsula are similar. All of them imply the DPRK as the most closed state with the most totalitarian regime in the world, which I can't deny and agree with the majority. The North Korean system has three main features: a one-party system, sole management board, and inheritance of power, I will also try to tell the pros and cons of each of them separately, furthermore I’m going to define the doctrine of Juche and story behind it. Next I will consider the foreign policy feature of the Korean Peninsula, Supreme people's Assembly, DPRK’s defense Committee, and how does the North Korean regime function?

                                           

                                           One-Party system

    The existence of a one-party system was characteristic of most socialist countries. The ruling party is at the very top of the political structure, and all three traditional branches of government – the legislative, Executive, and judicial-are below it. The party not only governs the state, it commands public organizations and governs the destinies of people. Based on this, North Korea can be called a "party state". At the same time, there are other parties, but they do not constitute the opposition, but are linked to each other. In North Korea, the ruling party is the labour party of Korea.

The one-party system is called totalitarianism. It allows you to concentrate all the forces of the state on solving a single task (to win the war, build communism, etc.). However, the interests of the people are quickly forgotten and soon the main thing is to preserve the power of those who are now with it (for example, Putin and United Russia, Kim Jung Un and DPRK).

 

                                        Sole management Board

    Sole management board is a characteristic feature of a dictatorial regime. If state power is concentrated in the ruling party, then within the party power is in the hands of a single leader. The word " monolithic "in North Korea is usually used in the expression "monolithic ideological system". But the author of this ideological system is the Leader. In North Korea, the leader is "the embodiment of the organized will of the party"," the commander-in-chief of the socio-political organization", that is, North Korea. Therefore, the role and power of the leader are absolute and indisputable.

Pros

- Quick decision-making (the army is a model of dictatorship)

- Ability to overcome the resistance of special interest groups

- The only possible way to make a decision when the parties are antagonistic (for example, in the labor collective or in the army)

- Education of "wild" fellow citizens by an enlightened dictator

Consequently, the more heterogeneous the managed system (ethnically, materially, mentally, etc.), the more likely it is that a dictatorship will be the way to keep it afloat.

Cons

However, the infantile disease of fascination with dictatorship quickly passes, and the shortcomings of dictatorial rule come to the scene.

- The dictator's humanity. The dictator is an ordinary person, for him always and in everything "the shirt is closer to the body". Therefore, sooner or later, the dictator will begin to redistribute resources from distant to close ones. Whether it's relatives, party mates, or childhood friends.

- The utility function of the dictator is usually not the same as the utility function of the governed. Of course, this option is possible when the governed are forced to act for their own good. But most often it is just a "divorce". The governed understand that they are given less than they are taken away. They either run, go suffer, or overthrow the dictator.

 

                                     Inheritance of power

    North Korea is unique in that its Stalinist government provided an example of successful succession of power as a logical continuation of sole rule. The dynastic system guarantees that the right to take the post of" commander-in-chief " is inherited on the basis that the heir has fully inherited the thoughts, abilities and skills of his father.

    Preparations for dynastic rule began in the early 1970s. the formation of this system was completed when Kim Il sung announced that " Kim Jong Il is fully capable of assuming the duties of (leader)". After the death of Kim Il Sung and the appointment of Kim Jong Il as General Secretary of the CPC in October 1997, the dynastic system of power worked successfully when Kim Jong Il took over as Chairman of the State defense Committee in September 1998.

Pros and Cons

 

 

                                         The Doctrine of Juche

    The word "Juche" - " Lord of all things". This doctrine was intended to combine the teachings of Marxism-Leninism with the mentality of East Asians. It preached an isolationist policy, feeding them ideas of militarism, autocracy, and authoritarianism. Like the precepts of Stalin, the Juche ideology was focused on building communism in one country, and that state was North Korea. The term "Juche" was first used in a speech by Kim Il Sung in December 1955, at the earliest stage of the campaign to eliminate Soviet influence. In his speech, he said that it is necessary to emphasize national traditions, hang paintings by Korean, not Soviet artists, study Korean poets, not poets from the USSR— and described all this with the expression "establishment of Juche".

    In fact, the term was well known to Korean nationalists, who had used it since the twenties. In Russian, the word "Juche" is translated as " subject "or " subjectivity", but it would be more accurate to translate it as"identity"or even"self".

By the way, employees of the Soviet Embassy, who closely followed the situation, reported that this term was introduced into widespread use not by Kim Il Sung himself, but by his adviser on ideology, Kim Jang man, who, as the Embassy said, "is very proud of it". However, the inventor of the official ideology ended badly: in the mid-sixties, he disappeared without a trace from the political arena, and his name was forbidden to be mentioned in official texts.

    The term "Juche" was turned into an ideology — or rather, into its semblance-in the mid-1960s.all the grounds for this turn of ideological policy were formed at that time. Relations between the USSR and China were extremely tense, it came to military clashes. Both Moscow and Beijing tried to win North Korea over to their side. Kim Il-sung was not going to participate in the conflict, and in this situation he needed to acquire an ideology that could justify his claim to neutrality-and neutrality with a touch, so to speak, of his own theoretical superiority. In the early 1970s, the North Korean leadership, in which Kim Jong Il, the eldest son and heir of Kim Il Sung, played a major role, tried to break with the Marxist-Leninist ideological legacy. At first, "Juche ideas"were presented as a local version of Marxism, or, to quote the 1972 Constitution of the DPRK," a creative application of Marxism-Leninism to Korean reality.

    But in the early 1970s, North Korean ideologues, including Kim Jong Il himself, had already argued that "Juche ideas" were not just a variant of Marxism, but a new and universal progressive theory. It was assumed that Marxism itself was such a theory in the time of capitalism, Leninism began to play this role in the era of imperialism, and in the conditions of the collapse of the colonial system and the emergence of new independent States, this role automatically passed to the "Juche ideas", which were then called "kimirsenism". Then Kim Jong-Il stressed that there is a fundamental difference between "Juche ideas" and Marxism.

However, this line did not develop and was curtailed in the late 1970s, so that in later periods the connection between "Juche ideas" and Marxism-Leninism remained unclear. Most likely, this reaction was caused by the fact that radical statements could negatively affect Pyongyang's relations with other socialist countries, which at that time were all (at least in words) Marxist-Leninist ideocracies. However, since the late 1960s, the number of references to Marxism-Leninism in the official North Korean press has steadily declined.

 

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