Why North Korea did not collapse in 1989

North Korea like East Germany has a Capitalist ‘evil’ twin; North Korea closely resembles the late regime of Nicolae Ceauesceu in Romania. In fact, Ceauesceu consciously copied the North Korean example and to a lesser extent the Chinese Communist model after his visits to Beijing and Pyongyang in 1971. But unlike East Germany and Romania, North Korea did not experience revolution in the period of 1989-91.
The reasons given for the collapse of the East German state are:
- Economic inferiority contra West Germany
- The political illegitimacy of communism as perceived by the people due to corruption et al.
- The Cultural penetration of the West German culture into the East
- The repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine by Gorbachev
- The Reformist policies of the Soviet Union, and the spread of reformism to East German neighbours Hungary and Poland

In addition to this, the East German state was at the time seen as a state without a nation; in other words, it was an artificial construct imposed upon the Germany by the Cold War, because of the Soviet fears of a rearmed and hostile Germany. German unification was not inevitable, but Gorbachev’s reformism and its spread to the East Germany’s neighbours certainly endangered the regime. When it became clear that the regime could not rely on the Brezhnev doctrine to maintain itself against the reformists in its own elite, and the desire amongst its people for reunification, it collapsed. But this was only possible because East Germans were so aware of how poor they were compared to their West German brethren, the regime didn’t block TV signals after 1972, thus the virtues of Capitalism were plane for all East Germans to see. Additionally, the regime became increasingly reliant on West German trade, which meant that the West German Mark became the black market currency of choice. The Western Mark was clear and undeniable evidence of the superior lives of West Germans, and their prosperity. Finally East Germans were increasingly permitted to travel to the West for holidays, and vice-versa.

North Korea is most unlike East Germany in almost every regard. First, it has never been dependent on Soviet military support for regime survival, its own secret police and military provide ample protection for the regime against all potential threats from its populous. Second, until very recently the North Korean people were not aware of their own economic inferiority; the cultural penetration of North Korea by the South has been very gradual, and not officially sanctioned. In fact it remains illegal for North Koreans to trade in or own South Korean cultural products, but many still do. Third, with the exception of North Koreans who worked in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s (mainly involved in logging in Siberia), most North Koreans only knew what their government told them about Glasnost and Perestroika. Information even about ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ was not available to the average North Korean. The North Korean government had done a much better job of isolating their people from the outside world; this is partially thanks to the isolationist tendencies within Korean culture, the Korean War was also a factor. As a result there was no popular appetite for reform. South Korea has not penetrated North Korea economically in any way like the West German economy became attached to the East. East Germany was an important lesson for the North Korean elite; if we reform we will lose everything.

The lack of destalinization is also important. East Germany after Khrushchev denounced Stalin, became a post-Stalinist state. This means that it no longer underwent frequent, irrational, and terrifying purges of the party and populous. Instead the elite became imbedded, and increasingly aged. North Korea never destalinized, it remains the world’s Last Stalinist state at least in the sense of all pervading police network which seeks to deter and eliminate all threats to the regime’s survival from within the population. It remains effective in this regard, stifling all attempts to organise civil society. East Germany had an emerging civil society in the late 1980s, spearheaded by the Protestant Church, whose frequent campaigns and open dissent against the regime were tolerated.

North Korea therefore is not like East Germany, but it does bear striking resemblance to Romania. Romania’s leader until 1989, Ceausescu was very like Kim Il Sung. His personal vanity seemed to have known no limit; all attempts at dissent were ruthlessly crushed, as were protests. He actively copied North Korea and China in 1971 with his July theses. But there are two very important differences, whilst his Securitate was very effective, it could not keep out foreign information through radio broadcasts; so Romanians were aware of how Ceausescu’s policies were pauperising the nation contra the rest of Europe. Second, the reformism of the rest of Europe seeped into Romania, the substantial ethnic minority Hungarians became aware of the reformism and relative prosperity of their motherland through the radio. Third, the external threat of the Soviet Union after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 which united Romanians around the Ceausescu state no longer existed. Thus the regime had no economic legitimacy or foreign threat to help maintain its control over the people. So when the people rose up, the state splintered and the elite fractured between who saw the protest as ’counter-revolutionary’ and opportunists who saw it as a way to gain more power by toppling Ceausescu. North Korea still has and will always have an external enemy, in fact two, the United States and South Korea. Neither will be collapsing any time soon, so the elite would never dare to initiate reform, or topple the Kim dynasty. If they did, their state would most surely collapse and they would lose their privileges and maybe their lives. The Romanian elite could safely get rid of Ceausescu, blame him for everything, then seize power; the North Korean elite must cling to the Kims, they are the elite’s and the state’s Raison d'être.

North Korea is therefore unlikely to collapse like East Germany, or suddenly be overthrown by an elite coup like Romania (with popular support and unrest).