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SPECIAL SECTION: NORTH KOREA

Guest Editor: Jae-Jung Suh

Introduction

Making Sense of North Korea:

Institutionalizing Juche at the

Nexus of Self and Other Jae-Jung Suh

In American discourse, both popular and scholarly, North Korea remains either an unknown hermit or a palpable evil. While it is a country everyone loves to hate, its reality remains elusive to most, and many speculate about its contemporary conditions and future viability. As a country, North Korea has existed for over half a century, yet its history remains in oblivion. The most recognizable features of contemporary North Koreaits nuclear problem, famine, and son gun chngch'i (military-first policy)seem somehow ahistoric, entities that the North's leadership has produced seemingly out of the blue, and perhaps out of evil intentions. In general, the world views North Koreawith a population of over twenty million spread over land the size of New York stateas little more than a monolithic unit that speaks with one voice and walks in regimental unison. For its part, the United States, which fought the first "hot" war (armed, open conflict) ofthe Cold War period against North Korea, considers the country to be a threat, constantly wielding weapons to undermine U.S. security and that of U.S. allies. Mostly, however, North Korea remains invisible. On the occasions that it emerges from the shadows, it does so as a laggard, an outlier, a violator, or a threat. In short, it
is the other.1

The state of discourse about North Korea parallels, at least partially, that of politics. The process through which the United States and North Korea produce knowledge about each other has been tainted by the enmity in which they have been mired for over fifty years. This enmity has cut off direct and meaningful channels of communication and exchange, and has created, in
Jae-Jung Suh is associate professor and director of Korea Studies Program at SAIS Johns Hopkins University. The Journal ofKorean Studies 12, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 3-14
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each case, the structural absence of the object of inquiry. The dearth of firsthand experience and direct knowledge between North Korea and the United States forces scholars to rely on secondary sources that are susceptible to existing presumptions, whereupon they often unwittingly reproduce them.2 The scarcity of "raw data" has been supplemented, or in some cases replaced, with theories developed in the context of studying other communist countries (particularly the Soviet Union), underdeveloped communist countries (such as China), or lately collapsed communist countries (such as Romania). Such knowledge is produced with empirical deficiencies, and the presumed generalizability of these theories elides the problems that underlie them. This vicious circle offlawed knowledge production is exacerbated by the powerful antagonism between North Korea and the United States, which skews and constrains the possible range of discursive space open to deliberations. To the extent that presumptions in the existing theories, which stand in for absent empirics, are affected by enmitywhether of a global Cold War kind or a more local Korean varietythe resulting knowledge contributes to reproducing enmity and misunderstanding. The cycle of confrontation is therefore complete: the enmity affects knowledge production, and the knowledge, so affected, reinforces the enmity. Out ofthis vicious circle, North Korea's identity emerges as everything the United States is not: totalitarian, economically bankrupt, morally repulsive, and backward. For those who contemplate offering assistance or who advocate engagement, such an identity provides a starting point: North Korea is needy, deserving of benevolence; an objective, ripe for transformation; or a target, crying out for civilizing mission. For those who dig deeper, North Korea represents a deviation even from the standard deviations, which compels them to add a prefix or modifier to the standard othering discourses, and
to underline that the North is the outlier of outliers. Hence, North Korea is
often described in terms of neo-totalitarianism or Confucian socialism.3 The

"securitization" framework that bifurcates the world into security and dangerand that squarely places the country in the latter zonebuttresses this discourse. North Korea's political deficiencies and economic difficulties, and even its very existence, are understood within the framework that links them to danger as the root cause.4 Various narratives about North Korea draw and build on the common perception that the country's mode ofbeing is antithetical to what the United States is and what it aspires to become.5 This special issue of the Journal ofKorean Studies seeks to move beyond such a binary framework of knowledge about North Korea. Specifically, the articles in this issue each highlight juche as the central institution of North Korean life, from which all of its organizing principles and patterned practices derive. Collectively, these articleswhich analyze, respectively, the

Making Sense ofNorth Korea5

country's founding, politics, and agriculturepropose and demonstrate that analyzingy'wce (chuch 'e) offers a productive way to think about North Korea. Indeed, juche can provide considerable insight into this otherwise shadowy nation: juche as an institution that has developed in response to internal and external challenges, that has shaped North Korean actors' definition of interest, and that has both facilitated and hampered their choice of strategies. The authors in this issue examine concrete and specific social realities of North Korea in a way that complicates the conventional, and sometimes orientalistic, narratives that overlook or erase variegated historical realities and that

privilege a particular conceptualization of national identity over multiple

alternatives. Taken together, the articles in this special section challenge the monotonous securitization framework within which North Korea is routinely discussed, and develop instead a historical institutionalist framework that makes sense of the North's variegated realities and self-understandings in terms of the historical evolution of lisjuche institutions. This special issue also addresses the emerging and possibly widening gap between South Korean and American perceptions of North Korea. To the Americans, the North is one of a few remaining tyrannical communist despotic states. It is, they believe without doubt, a totalitarian, unstable, and aggressive country, and the threat it poses might impel the U.S. government to use military force or other means in order to quell it. Americans disagree over how to handle the threat, but most agree that North Korea is an "outpost of tyranny" and "kleptocracy" on the "axis of evil." Americans love to hate
North Korea.

The South Koreans, not surprisingly, take a different view. For them, North Korea is part oftheir nation, with which they consider themselves bound to live, regardless ofwhat they think ofits practices and policies. It is a country against

which South Koreans are increasingly unwilling to go to war. Furthermore, it

is a country they are becoming more and more familiar with, and perhaps even

view with fondness. Recent studies, for example, show that a majority of South
Koreans consider the people in the North as tongp'o (fellow countrymen).6 It is not that South Koreans hold up North Korea as an idealized space that preserves

the primordial Korean nation; they have their own complaints and criticisms ofthe country and even feel disdain for it. Yet their relationship with the North increasingly looks like a family affair, with all the accompanying contradictory
emotions. The shared understanding that powerful outsiders have victimized the Korean nation since at least the nineteenth century only intensifies these feelings. In short, the North remains the other to the United States, whereas to South Korea, it is increasingly becoming part ofthe self.7 Mindful ofthis perception gap, this special edition ofthe Journal ojKorean Studies brings together scholars from South Korea and the United States who

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share a concern about its cause and effect. They bring to their discussion of North Korea not only their expertise on the country but also their sensitivity to the different styles of scholarship that have developed in South Korea
and the United States. The differences between the two countries are wide

and deep, from political orientations to theoretical presumptions to scholarly perspectives, and have the potential to grow wider and deeper in the coming years unless they are consciously and carefully addressed. While the

exchanges of scholarship between South Korea and the United States will
not erase the gap entirely, this volume makes a modest contribution to the dialogue. We hope the dialogue not only will improve scholarly and popular understanding of North Korea, but also will enhance the two allies' perceptions of each other.

JUCHE AS NORTH KOREA'S CENTRAL INSTITUTION

The following articles examine the history of domestic politics, which has generated the institution ojuche as the central feature of North Korea's domestic order. Both Gwang-Oon Kim and Young Chul Chung argue that juche has taken its current shape not through omniscient design, as the North's official rhetoric suggests, nor as a sinister power motive, as many outsiders claim, but instead as the result of domestic actors' purposeful actions, contingent factors, and unanticipated consequences. Chong-Ae Yu further suggests that whilejuche, once established, has been the central feature that shapes North Koreans' lives, it has also produced divergent outcomes in response to dramatic changes in contingent factors. Nevertheless, Young Chul Chung also points out that as juche itself has evolved over the course of five decades, it has reacted to the pressure of changing realities on the ground, often constrained by its own inertia and influenced by domestic actors' divergent desires. In the United States, it is commonly suggested that the Soviet Union transplanted its own political institutions into North Korea at the end of
the Second World War, whereas in the official histories of North Korea,

the country fiercely defends its institutions as its own original creations. The truth lies somewhere between: North Korea's political framework was neither imposed solely by outsiders nor created entirely by domestic actors. The Soviet military, which reached Pyongyang in early August 1945 before American forces could land in Seoul, acted as the occupation force with overbearing power. The fact that it wielded enormous influence in shaping the basic contours of North Korea's political and economic landscape is dramatically illustrated by a contrast with the developments in the South, where

Making Sense ofNorth Korea7

its occupation authority, the U.S. Military Government, overwhelmingly

opposed and eventually uprooted political forces with similar aspirations.8

Many in the United States see North Korea's political institutions as the tools ofpower designed, established, and maintained with the overriding purpose of

keeping Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsng)and later Kim Jong Il (Kim Chngil)in
power. The North's official rhetoric again tells a different story, one of the leaders' benevolence and the masses' loyalty. In his article, Gwang-Oon Kim offers a historical account that North Korea's institutions have emerged and developed as a result of functionally constrained interactions between pur-

poseful actors and the consequencesboth foreseen and unanticipatedof

their previous actions. Institutions fundamentally shape the interests that

actors pursue while at the same time limiting the range of strategies available

to them. The interests that these actors pursue and the strategies they choose consequently reproduce and revise the institutions. Institutional analysis allows us to examine the relationship between political actors as objects and as agents of history. The institutions at the center of historical institutional analyses can shape and constrain political strategies in

important ways, but they are themselves also the outcome (conscious or unintended) of deliberate political strategies, of political conflict, and of choice. Institutionalism provides the theoretical bridge between "men [who] make their own history," and the "circumstances . . . given and transmitted from

the past" under which they are able to do so.9

Young Chul Chung situates the suryng (supreme leader) system in the historical context ofthe North's political economy, arguing that it has developed out of the interplay between the North's developmental strategies and their outcomes. The central location of suryng and the organic unity between him and the masses have emerged from the North Korean leadership's efforts to address the tensions among the goals that it has pursued, many of which work at cross-purposes. For example, Pyongyang has had to strike a balance between socialist Utopian goals and pragmatic developmental necessities,
and between collectivist intentions and individualistic desires. These cross-

cutting pressures have decisively affected the development of suryng and

the politics it engendered. The political system has in turn generated its own momentum, whichby facilitating idealistic choices that privilege human agency and excluding other pragmatic choices that emphasize immediate material necessitiesdelimits the future trajectory and pace of the North's political and economic development. Pyongyang's political programs have created the conditions of the political institution of suryng as much as the institution has shaped them. Institutionalists face a difficult challenge in attempting to explain North Korea's economic performance for the past fifty years, because its performance

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has varied a great deal under essentially the same economic institutions. The North's economic organization has mainly centered on the collective ownership ofthe means ofproduction, although it has adopted different management approaches to particular economic challenges. Its economic institution, once established, has generated a momentum of stasis, as institutionalists would expect, and yet it has produced an extremely uneven economic performance over the five decades. It was spectacularly successful in mobilizing human resources to rebuild its economy from the ashes of the war in the 1950s, and continued with an impressively high rate of economic development in the 1960s and 1970s, building a highly modernized economy by the end of the latter decade. It started to stagnate in the 1980s, and dropped precipitously in the 1990s, across all economic performance indicators, generating mass
starvation in the middle of the decade.

North Korea's inconsistent economic performance has led to a bifurcation of scholarship. Those scholars critical of North Korea's institutions attribute
the overall economic difficulties and famine of the 1990s to various charac-

teristics of its institutions.10 Scholars sympathetic to the North tend to focus on the very same institutional features, arguing that they gave rise to the earlier decades' economic successes.11 Despite their political differences, both groups of scholars share a common analytical strategy of using the same institutions to explain one part of the North's historical trajectory, but turning a blind eye to the other, less convenient part. The resulting scholarship is partial. Neither school of thought attempts to develop a coherent framework that encompasses both the dramatic success ofthe earlier period and the catastrophic failure of the later period. In her article, Chong-Ae Yu begins where the existing partial scholarship ends. Her institutionalist explanation of the success and failure of North Korea's agriculture begins with an understanding of how a shift in the context can bring about divergent performance from the same institutions. While institutions are by definition resistant to change, their impact on outcomes can alter over time, sometimes dramatically, in response to a change in the broader socioeconomic context.12 Yu shows how the North's agricultural system, built to rely on a massive infusion of industrial inputs, has produced opposite outcomes, depending on the level of those very inputs.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE OF JUCHE

Since the 1940s, American understanding of North Korea has gone through a number of changes: from Soviet puppet to totalitarian, and subsequently neototalitarian society, and finally to Confucian autocracy. More recently,

Making Sense ofNorth Korea9

American scholars have begun to pay attention to the ways in which the statesociety relationship and interactions between North Koreans and outsiders have shaped the North's institutions.13 The three articles featured in this special section build on the recent scholarship to make the case that North Korea's juche has emerged from interactions between Kim Il Sung's group and his challengers and between the North Koreans and outsiders, particularly Soviets and Chinese. As the North's pivotal institution,juche has evolved in response to shifting conditions and as a result of anticipated and unanticipated outcomes of the North's own choices. Juche provides the foundation for both the North's political and economic organizations and its social order. As such, it facilitates certain choices and impedes others, as North Koreans continuously respond to indigenous developments and exogenous shocks. The institutionalist approach described in the ensuing pages helps us to make better sense of continuity in the country and its potential for change. In speculating about the North's future, it is useful to start with a key historical institutionalist observation that political actors, behaving less as allknowing rational maximizers than as rule-following "satisfiers," generate the self-sustaining qualities of institutions, as DiMaggio and Powell explain:
The constant and repetitive quality of much organized life is explicable not

simply by reference to individual, maximizing actors but rather by a view that

locates the persistence of practices in both their taken-for-granted quality and their reproduction in structures that are to some extent self-sustaining.14

Most ofus, most ofthe time, follow societally defined rules, even when doing so may not be directly in our self-interest. It seems reasonable to expect that, in this respect, people in North Korea are no different.

But institutional stasis does not completely preclude the possibility of

change. Despite institutional inertia and stasis, institutions do change. Three mechanisms of change that derive from institutional attributes are notable in this regard. First, institutions empower certain actors to act and disempower others; the accumulation of these actions and inactions can prompt institutional changes. The rise of the cabinet's importance in the North's government structure in recent years, for example, may reflect the fact that juche institutions have nurtured the offspring of the first-generation revolutionaries to become elite technocrats, who occupy key decision-making positions. The intentional nurturing, inspired by the idealisticjuche institutions to continue the juche revolution, have produced the unintended consequence that the second generation, surrounding the suryng, often prefers to follow a more pragmatic course than an idealistic one. Second, institutions also influence an actor's definition ofhis own interests, by establishing his institutional

10Jae-Jung Suh

responsibilities and relationship to other actors. Institutional factors affect both the degree of pressure an actor can bring to bear on policy, and the likely direction ofthat pressure. Although scholars generally posit some sort of external change or exogenous shocks to explain change in institutions, the key is not simply change in the environment but how actors interpret that environment, including their understanding of the degree and significance of change. To the extent that existing institutions color their interpretations, these existing institutions will affect the direction and pace of change. Kim Jong U's sn'gun chngch ? (military-first policy) represents the continuation ofjuche, but with significant revisions that reflect the power ofthe institution over the direction and pace of change. The third and final mechanism of change is the dense matrix of institutions that characterizes modern society and embodies values that are not necessarily compatible. This matrix influences individuals' definition of interest and their repertoire of available behavior, in complex and sometimes conflicting ways.15 The diversity of, and potential tension among, preferences and behavior that these institutions evoke contribute to the system's dynamism, as Friedland and Alford point out: "These institutions are potentially contradictory and hence make multiple logics available to individuals and organizations. Individuals and organizations transform the institutional relations of society by exploiting these contradictions."16 Chung's rich account of suryng illustrates how institutional mechanisms of change have operated in the past. Recent efforts to introduce, or officially sanction, market mechanisms indicate that these dynamics are alive and well in contemporary North Korea: many individuals have responded to the failure ofjuche economic institutions to provide for basic needs by taking advantage of the exchange mechanism that thejuche system had long allowed. For the past five decades, juche has constituted the central institution that underpins North Korea's political cohesion, under a concentric power system with suryng at the center. This system continues to underscore human agency and idealistic goals in economic decision-making, and privileges the national sovereignty over diplomatic necessities in the North's foreign relations. The institutional continuity stands out as the most striking feature. However, as the articles in this special edition note, beneath the ostensible stasis, North Korea's institutions underwent a number of significant changes before taking on today's shape. The changes ofthe past indicate that thejuche institutions will continue to evolve in the future, even if the nature and pace of their change are constrained by institutional inertia. Understanding the North's past in terms of its juche institutions helps to make sense of North Korea's present continuity and future change.

Making Sense ofNorth Korea1 1 NOTES

1.See K. W. Ku, "Pukhan yn'gu i "kukche chngch'i": Orient'allijm pip'an" (International Politics of North Korean Studies: Criticizing Orientalism), Hyondae Pukhan yngu 5, no. 1 (2002): 237-80. 2.The few exceptions, which prove the rule by their existence, have been based mainly on North Korean documents that the American military gathered during the Korean War. See B. Cumings, The Origins ofthe Korean War. Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981); H. S. Paik, "North Korean State Formation, 1945-1950," PhD diss. (University of Pennsylvania, 1993). 3.See G. McCormack, "Kim's Country: Hard Times in North Korea," New Left Review, no. 198 (March-April 1993): 21-148; and K. D. Oh and R. C. Hassig, North Korea through the Looking Glass (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). 4.See H. Smith, "Bad, Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the 'Securitization' Paradigm Makes for Poor Policy Analysis ofNorth Korea," International Affairs 76, no. 1 (January 2000): 111-32. 5.See Nick Eberstadt, The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2007); Raphael F. Perl and Dick K. Nanto, "North Korean Crime-for-Profit Activities" (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2007); Staff of U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, "Gangster Regime: How North Korea Counterfeits United States Currency," March 12, 2007; and David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2003). 6.See P'ynghwa t'ongil chamun wiwnhoe (Advisory Council on Peaceful Reunification). Kungmin sik chosa charyo (National Opinion Poll, 2004). 7.See G. W Shin and K. C. Burke, "North Korea and Contending South Korean Identities: Analysis of the South Korean Media; Policy Implications for the United States," KEl Academic Paper Series (Washington, D.C.: Korea Economic Institute, 2007). 8.See Cumings, The Origins ofthe Korean War, particularly chapters 9, 10, and
11.

9.Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire ofLouis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 15. 10.See N. Eberstadt, The End ofNorth Korea (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press for the American Enterprise Institute, 1999); and S. Haggard and M. Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 11.See E. Brun and J. Hersh, Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976); and L. Rinser, Ruije Rinj Hi Pukhan yagi (Luise Rinser's North Korea Story) (Seoul: Hyngsngsa, 1988).

12Jae-Jung Suh

12.See K. A. Thelen and S. Steinmo, "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, ed. S. Steinmo, K. A. Thelen, and F. Longstreth (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1-32. 13.See C. K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003). 14.P. DiMaggio and W Powell, "Introduction," in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. P. DiMaggio and W Powell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 9. 15.See K. A. Thelen and S. Steinmo, "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, ed. S. Steinmo, K. A. Thelen, and F. Longstreth (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1-32. 16.R. Friedland and R. Alford, "Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions," in The New Institutionalism in OrganizationalAnalysis, ed. W Powell and P. DiMaggio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 232.
REFERENCES

Armstrong, C. K. The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003. Brun, E., and J. Hersh. Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy ofEconomic Development. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976. Cumings, B. The Origins of the Korean War. Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981. DiMaggio, P., and W. Powell. "Introduction." Pp. 1-40 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. P. Powell and W DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Eberstadt, N. The End ofNorth Korea. Washington, D.C.: AEI Press for the American Enterprise Institute. 1999. ---------. The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2007.

Friedland, R., and R. Alford. "Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions." Pp. 232-63 in The New Institutionalism in Organi-

zational Analysis, ed. P. Powell and W DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1991.

Haggard, S., and M. Noland. Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Hawk, David. The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2003.

Ku, K. W. "Pukhan yn'gu i "kukche chngch'i": Orient'allijm pip'an" (International Politics of North Korean Studies: Criticizing Orientalism). Hyondae Pukhanyn'gu 5, no. 1 (2002): 237-80.

Making Sense ofNorth Korea13

Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire ofLouis Bonaparte. New York: International
Publishers, 1963.

McCormack, G. "Kim's Country: Hard Times in North Korea." New Left Review, no. 198 (March-April 1993): 21-148. Oh, K. D., and R. C. Hassig. North Korea through the Looking Glass. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000. Paik, H. S. "North Korean State Formation, 1945-1950." PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1993. Perl, Raphael F, and Dick K. Nanto. "North Korean Crime-for-Profit Activities." Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2007. P 'ynghwa t'ongil chamun wiwnhoe (Advisory Council on Peaceful Reunification). Kungmin itisik chosa charyo (National Opinion Poll), 2004. Rinser, L. Ruije Rinj i Pukhan iyagi (Luise Rinser's North Korea Story). Seoul: Hyngsngsa, 1988. Royce, Staff of U.S. Rep. Ed. "Gangster Regime: How North Korea Counterfeits United States Currency." March 12, 2007. Shin, G. W, and K. C. Burke. "North Korea and Contending South Korean Identities: Analysis of the South Korean Media; Policy Implications for the United States." KEIAcademic Paper Series. Washington, D.C.: Korea Economic Institute, 2007. Smith, H. "Bad, Mad, Sad or Rational Actor? Why the 'Securitization' Paradigm

Makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea." International Affairs 76, no. 1
(January 2000): 111-32.

Thelen, K. A., and S. Steinmo. "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics." Pp. 1-32 in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative

Analysis, ed. S. Steinmo, K. A. Thelen, and F. Longstreth. Cambridge/New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1992.