North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

B. PATH DEPENDENCE, CRITICAL JUNCTURES, AND INSTITUTIONAL
CHANGE
Institutions, both formal and informal, are the rules of the game that structure incentives
in human exchange in a society and reduce uncertainty by providing a stable structure to
everyday life. Institutions define and limit the set of choices of individuals. Institutional change
shapes the way societies evolve through time. Institutions connect the past with the present and
the future so that history is a largely incremental story of institutional evolution, a study of the
evolution of collective incentives and constraints against human individualism and the problem
of achieving cooperative solutions to collective problems. Lack of public information and
external transparency in a closed society should not be mistaken for the lack of rules, procedures,
formal organizations, informal influence networks, and hierarchies of authority that are always
present and very clear to the internal actors themselves.
The current form of political organization and policy decision-making process in North
Korea is derived from the opportunity set provided by the traditional values, inherent
administrative culture, and domestic institutional structures that evolved sometimes
incrementally, showing a great degree of stability, and at other times experiencing rapid,
discontinuous change. They reflect a mixture of traditional neo-Confucian influences, the imprint
of the Japanese colonial rule and post-liberation Soviet military occupation, the impact of the
Korean War-time experiences, the “self-reliant” post-war socialist reconstruction and decay.
Traditional Korean political culture is characterized by the heavy influence of neo-
Confucianism accentuated by the teachings of Chu-Hsi, especially his emphasis on the so-called
“Three Basic Relationships” between the father and the son, the state and the subject, and the
heaven and the ruler. That gave rise to such traditional aspects of Korean politics as paternalism
and filial piety, state-centered consensual politics and autocratic political agenda-setting,
“government of men rather than government of laws,” and the exercise of the Mandate of
Heaven and authoritarian despotism. Nepotism, corruption, and factionalism were the inevitable
by-products of rigid hierarchical social-political structures that evolved in the Hermit Kingdom.
The policymaking process in traditional Korea was exclusively personalistic in nature. At
the policy initiation stage, either concerned individuals submitted memorials to the throne, or the
king solicited the opinions of eminent Confucian scholars and former ministers and counselors,
primarily at times of crises. Six administrative departments – the Civil Office, the War Office,
the Revenues Office, the Punishment Office, the Public Works Office, and the Ceremony Office
– were in charge of policy deliberation. It was the Defense Council in the 16th century and the
State Council later on that was responsible for policy formulation and policy recommendations
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