Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
10/15/2006
What is happening to the Korean Workers’ Party, once the locus of all power in North Korea? What will be its fate? I suspect that nowadays these questions are asked not only by Pyongyang watchers, but also by many North Koreans. Indeed, something strange has happened to North Korea’s ruling party. Since the inception of the DPRK in 1948, the Korean Workers’ Party has remained the core of its political system. It was a typical specimen of the Stalinist-type Communist Party: highly centralized and subordinated to the will of the god-like “leader”.
On paper, the KWP appears to be quite democratic: for example, its committees are supposedly elected by the respective assemblies of Party representatives. However, quasi-democratic features and regulations bear no relation to the harsh realities. The “elections” meant an obligatory vote in support of the pre-arranged list of candidates, and for decades no party member has been sufficiently insane to use his presumed right to criticize, say, Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il.
Nonetheless, the Leninist Party has always been a rather rococo structure grafted onto an otherwise rational design of a Stalinist state. Its functions were not well defined, its interaction with more conventional state bodies was full of controversies, and many of its quasi-democratic conventions were expensive and patently hypocritical. It acted as a sort of central command network which ensured that all parts of the state mechanism were working according to the wish of the leader and/or ruling oligarchy. But it was not very rational, one has to admit.
In the last years of Kim Il Sung’s rule it became clear that the Great Leader was ready to jettison some of the traditions related to the Party. On paper, the KWP was supposed to hold a Congress every five years. In reality, there were only two KWP Congresses convened in the last 40 years: in 1970 and 1980. Kim Il Sung was running the country directly, using the Party bureaucracy as but one of many available tools.
When Kim Jong Il assumed supreme power after his father’s death, this move from the old tradition became more discernible. It was presumed that Kim Jong Il’s elevation would be formally ratified by a large and pompous party convention. It did not happen: Kim Jong Il was elevated through a chain of local party conferences. The meetings of the Central Committee, a convocation of some 230 Party heavyweights, also became rare and irregular under his rule. It appears that since 1993 this once powerful body has met only once, in October 1997, to confirm Kim Jong Il’s elevation to the position of leader of the country.
In recent years celebrations of Party history have been scaled down, and even October 10, the KWP Foundation Day – one of the nation’s major holidays – is no longer marked by pompous ceremonies.
Well, if the Party is going to be downgraded as the major state management tool, what will replace it? The answer is simple: the armed forces. According to official North Korean publications, as early as New Years Day 1995 Kim Jong Il suggested a new strategy, called the “army-first policy”. We do not know how soon it took precedence, but from 1998 references to the “army-first line” became routine in the North Korean press.
Why such a change? There is a great deal of pragmatism in attempts to woo the military top brass. After all, they have real power, and can be potentially dangerous. Before Kim Jong Il ascended to his position, there were speculations that the military was ready to get rid of him once his father died. This did not happen, but there are persistent rumours about an unsuccessful military coup which allegedly took place in the mid-1990s. Thus, flattering the generals by telling them about their special role is a good strategy, especially if sweet words are supported by deeds. Indeed, the army enjoys a great freedom in money-making activities, and many generals are now capitalists-in-the-making.
It is very likely that the “army-first policy” was conceived as an attempt to do away with the disastrously inefficient state socialist model and replace it with some sort of controlled capitalism – one controlled by the Kim family, of course. The generals and chiefs of the political police and intelligence services are probably seen as the best material available from which to produce locally grown capitalists.
But if this is the case, can we describe as “Stalinist” a state without a Leninist party and without a state-run industry? Probably not. I suspect that Stalinism in the North is dead or, at least dying.
