North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

document control bureaus in each ministry. This organizational structure suggests that even
though Kim Il-sung was prime minister, his ability to exert control over the system was limited.
Even the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was under the leadership of Pak Ilu, was not
immune from control of the shadow apparatus. In contrast to the tight reins maintained by the
cabinet over most ministries, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was unique in its freedom from
close cabinet supervision. The Soviet Union—through Soviet advisers, a relatively large number
of Soviet Koreans, and probably representatives of the Soviet political police (MGB)
establishment in North Korea—was, on the other hand, closely involved in this phase of
government.
Nowhere was the influence of the Soviet Union more evident than in the ministry’s
political police, which had the maximum degree of freedom from external controls of the formal
apparatus and the broadest authority to intervene throughout the apparatus. It even had a
completely separate party organization independent of local party organs and responsible to the
party only at Central Headquarters. The political police were contained within the ministry’s
Political Defense Bureau, which was responsible for enforcement of loyalty to the North Korean
state. Pang Hak-se, a Soviet Korean, commanded the bureau. Soviet Koreans also held the
deputy chief post (Nam Chang-yong), as well as the chiefs of four of the five offices
(counterintelligence, investigation of political parties, surveillance of ministry personnel, and
interrogation). By 1950, the bureau had attained the position of an elite corps in North Korea. Its
power was evident in the awe with which both members of the bureaucracy and the general
public held it.
Kim Chong-il’s Rise to Power and Leadership Style
This system was destroyed in the 1950s with Kim Il-sung’s purge of the Soviet faction.
But, it laid the blueprint for Kim Chong-il’s power-building strategy twenty years later.
Kim Il-sung used the revision of the constitution in 1972 to establish a formal ruling
structure in North Korea. In addition to the creation of an office of the president, the new central
government, unlike the old one under the 1948 constitution, separated policy-making functions
performed by the newly created Central People’s Committee (CPC) from the policy-execution
functions to be carried out by the Administration Council. 6 While ultimate decision-making
authority remained in the KWP’s Politburo, the state was made much more active and Kim Ilsung
began to shift his ruling apparatus to the presidential administration.
6 The CPC was created specifically to control and supervise the state bureaucracy, whose performance and
efficiency were of concern to Kim Il-sung in the 1960s.
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