Pressures on Pyongyang raise risk of regime collapse
North Korea is under severe economic pressure, largely self-created; this could potentially have political impact
Sanctions, natural disasters, and above all near-total border closure for goods and people in response to COVID-19, are crippling North Korea's economy. On April 6, supreme leader Kim Jong-un called this "the worst-ever situation in which we have to overcome unprecedentedly numerous challenges". Much hinges on how soon trade with China resumes. If that happens this month, as Chinese businesses near the border expect (though other reports are sceptical), then some North Koreans will experience some relief. However, other sources of discontent are brewing.
What next
Regime collapse is still unlikely, but more likely now than at any point since the early years of Kim's leadership, before his hold on power was secure. Popular discontent can be suppressed, but elite dissatisfaction is a greater risk if this key constituency sees its modest wealth and future hopes evaporating.
Subsidiary Impacts
- Economic failure is inevitable without market reforms, but the regime is moving in the opposite direction.
- Scapegoating and purging the nomenklatura for economic failures will breed resentment among the elite.
- North Korea needs China, but that fact is widely resented.
Analysis
In the 1990s-2000s the idea of regime collapse seemed highly plausible. In 1989-91, communist rule crumbled in Eastern Europe, Mongolia and the Soviet Union. Communist parties in China and Vietnam partially embraced market economics and gained a new source of legitimacy in the prosperity and aspirations this delivered. These changes left North Korea an outlier: politically extreme in its tyranny and personality cult, and economically impoverished because it spurned market reforms.
The abrupt end of Soviet aid was catastrophic. A visiting IMF mission was told that GDP shrank from USD20.9bn in 1992 to USD10.6bn in 1996. It also caused a famine during 1996-98 which may have killed 1 million people.
The view that the regime was moribund shaped US policy, notably the 1994 Agreed Framework. After the regime's founding leader, Kim Il-sung, died that year, the Clinton administration tacitly reckoned Washington would never have to deliver on its full promises of nuclear aid.
Such assumptions proved to be wishful thinking. The Kim regime has endured, despite the famine and the death of two leaders. Successions are often autocracies' Achilles heel, but Pyongyang has accomplished two: to Kim Jong-il in 1994, and to Kim Jong-un in 2011. The former was long prepared; the latter came quite suddenly, and while the regime was under international pressure and sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
Despite a minimal apprenticeship, Kim Jong-un has ruled skilfully, if ruthlessly. Yet he now faces major challenges.
Triple whammy
Last year dealt three further blows to an already weak economy:
- Seasonal flood damage from typhoons was much worse than usual.
- UN and other sanctions, though widely evaded, contributed to a steep decline in commerce with China, North Korea's sole substantial partner. Bilateral trade fell 80.7% year-on-year to USD539mn, its lowest figure since 2000.
- The main cause, however, was the regime's extreme response to COVID-19: border closure and virtual cessation of trade.
North Korea still claims to be COVID-free, though many are sceptical: public hygiene measures are intense and masks are widely worn, suggesting that the disease is present. Impacting private traders as well as state firms, the lack of imports has led to consumer goods shortages in Pyongyang and sharp rises nationwide in the price of maize, the main staple.
As often, the exact situation is unclear. Most foreign diplomats and NGOs have left, as travel and other curbs (supposedly for COVID-19) made their work impossible.
Malnutrition
On April 6, Pyongyang angrily denied claims in the latest UN Panel of Experts report, issued on April 1, that 100,000 children were malnourished due to anti-COVID-19 restrictions. It threatened to end humanitarian cooperation with the UN and NGOs for spreading "lies".
Unofficial media, citing unverifiable in-country sources, confirm localised malnutrition on top of what was already endemic. Local lockdowns are one reason. After two month-long lockdowns in the northern border city of Hyesan, a third was lifted on March 4 after only two days, reportedly due to widespread protests by residents that they could not get food.
Defector numbers, never large, had fallen even before COVID-19. Even so, new barriers and high-voltage wires are reportedly being erected along part of the border with China.
Sanctions stay
Kim's diplomatic high point in 2018, when he held seven summits with the leaders of China, South Korea and the United States, did not yield the sanctions relief he sought.
Despite expectations of tentative diplomacy at some level with the Biden administration, prospects of a breakthrough leading to sanctions relief look remote.
More missile launches are coming
More and larger missile launches -- likely soon, after the smaller but advanced weaponry tested in March -- may serve to distract the populace as well as pressure Washington into talks.
Absent legitimate revenue inflows, North Korea will increasingly resort to cybertheft. In February Washington branded it "the world's leading 21st century nation-state bank robber" (see NORTH KOREA: Cybercrime capabilities are evolving - October 9, 2020).
North Korea will increasingly resort to cybertheft
Sources of dissent
Beyond the immediate economic crisis, several wider sources of potential dissent exist:
Demob unhappy
Male military service was recently cut from 13 years to eight. Welcome in principle, the resulting mass discharge is causing problems: those sent to rural areas or mines feel ill-rewarded. Former officers are discontented too. In March, about 30 were reportedly expelled from Pyongyang, with their families, for "inappropriate speech and behaviour". Assigned to jobs in markets, they had allegedly clashed with managers and disobeyed orders.
Great expectations
Kim Jong-un has offered some imprudent verbal hostages to fortune. Early in his reign he pledged that people would no longer have to "tighten their belts". Frank admissions of failure -- that plan targets have not been met, or that there was little to celebrate at the regime's 70th anniversary last October -- may backfire.
Blaming bureaucrats
Officials get blamed for problems, rather than the system. In February, Kim sacked the ruling party's economics chief, Kim Tu-il, after just a month in post (see NORTH KOREA: Pyongyang will be poorer but better armed - January 22, 2021).
Media message
South Korean media are widely watched, despite tight control and penalties. North Koreans know that life there, and in China, is much better. This awareness, while hard to act on, is destabilising.
Harsher penalties for accessing South Korean media under a new law passed last year -- up to 15 years in a prison camp -- highlight the regime's fears of losing ideological control. Yet cracking down risks a backlash, especially if children of the elite are targeted. For that reason, scapegoats may be sought outside Pyongyang.
Curbing capitalism
Implementing declared plans to curb private businesses would risk a serious backlash from the nouveaux riches. Protests are possible, as happened after a botched currency reform in 2009. Private businesses and their state agency partners will resist any bid by central government to control, much less confiscate, their mutually beneficial arrangements.
Chinese influence
Many North Koreans resent their country's ever-growing dependence on China. A new Chinese-built road bridge across the Yalu, completed in 2014 but not yet in use (it may finally open this year), bespeaks worries in Pyongyang over opening too widely.
Outlook
The regime's vast coercive apparatus can probably quash dissent for now. Yet for Kim to lose his people's hearts and minds may have long-term consequences if North Koreans see only unending poverty and tyranny ahead.
