North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

A. BACKGROUND AND DEFINITIONS
As a foreign visitor to North Korea marveled, “There are no shopping malls or
advertising boards, no lights or neon or color of any sort except for propaganda banners.” 1 Only
one major daily newspaper (with six pages) serves the country of 23 million people. The dials of
authorized radio receivers are pre-set to the government station. Two television stations
broadcast part-time, although few North Koreans have a television set in their home. Many
homes and most workplaces are equipped with a speaker system to broadcast local party news,
although these speakers are not always working. It is forbidden to read foreign publications,
listen to foreign broadcasts, or watch foreign television or videotapes. Personal communication
between people is restricted as well, thanks to a compartmentalized social structure and fear of
domestic surveillance. How then do the people get information about the outside world; and in
such an environment, what does that information mean to them?
Of course, no society can be perfectly regulated or sealed. The fact that the government
regularly publishes articles calling for vigilance against “the imperialists’ cunning maneuver of
ideological and cultural infiltration” attests to the imperfections of censorship and social control. 2
North Korea has its share of malingerers, black marketers, and rumor mongers. In a society
regulated by money and power, not by law, some who break the rules or speak ill of the Kim
regime are punished and perish, others are punished and later pardoned, and those with money
often avoid punishment altogether.
Kim’s socialist paradise-in-the-making is a typical communist class society, with party
cadres as the new ruling class. As the elite become disillusioned with socialism and use their
power to gain access to increasingly limited resources, the gap between the ruling and ruled
classes widens. Part of the advantage enjoyed by the ruling class is that its members have better
contact with the outside world. The increasing number of options for economic prosperity,
especially among the elite, is a threat to the homogeneity of North Korean society and to the
cohesiveness of the political elite.
1 Oliver August, “A Journey into the Land That Time Forgot,” The Times, September 17, 2003, Internet version.
FBIS EUP20030917000097.
2 To pick one of hundreds of examples. Article by Paek-hyon Yun so titled, Nodong Sinmun, May 24, 1997, pd 6.
FBIS FTS19970626000069.
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