North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

Central People’s Committee (CPC), consisting of the CPC Foreign Policy Commission and the
National Defense Commission, as the supreme national collective body responsible for the
deliberation of foreign policy and national security issues. The Supreme People’s Assembly and
its Foreign Affairs Commission rubber-stamped the CPC decisions, whereas the International
Department of the WPK (Workers’ Party of Korea) Central Committee coordinated, supervised,
and controlled their implementation by various ministries and organizations under the
Administrative Council, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense
and its subordinate organizations, Ministry of External Economic Affairs and External Economic
Commission, Ministry of Foreign Trade, and many others.
From the late 1950s until the early 1990s, the essence of political life in the DPRK was
defined by the WPK uniform party rule, Kim Il Sung’s ruthless consolidation of personal power,
and its gradual and unconditional transfer to his heir and eldest son, Kim Jong Il. Intra-party
factional struggles served as a functional alternative to larger political and social conflicts and
policy disputes. Factional purges and political re-education in provincial exile was Kim Il Sung’s
weapon of choice in his quest for absolute power. The WPK imposed on the North Korean
people the twin cults of personality of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, rooted in neo-
Confucian familism and indigenous Korean shamanism, sprinkled with elements of the Japanese
emperor’s colonial worship, shadowed by the overtones of evangelical Christianity, backed by
the cults of benefactor Mao Zedong and Stalin, and buttressed by the Manchurian-born siege
mentality of the North Korean elites. All decision-making processes were subject to Kim Il
Sung-led WPK Central Committee Politburo and Secretariat control through the unified Juch’e
party doctrine and ubiquitous party committee system, reinforced by the ever vigilant and
merciless state security apparatus.
Public opinion was negligible. But, informed elite opinion was somewhat important,
especially when a major change of course (like the North-South détente in the early 1970s or the
break-up of relations with the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s) was contemplated. Rigid
ideological tenets, the over-bearing burden of past propaganda, and bureaucratic inertia
constricted the ability of the national leadership to initiate major strategic shifts in foreign and
domestic policies in total disregard for the dominant elite opinions. New policy initiatives always
had to masquerade as creative reinterpretations of existing Juch’e policies and introduced into
the public consciousness slowly and surreptitiously.
Kim Jong Il was designated as the Great Leader’s heir apparent at the age of 41 in 1973,
despite vociferous opposition from his step-family relatives and some of Great Leader’s older
revolutionary comrades-in-arms, who were later purged thrice in 1973-1974 (see below), in
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