Why North Korea Could Not Implement the Chinese Style Reform and Opening? The Internal Contradiction Between Economic Reform and Political Stability
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Sungmin Cho |
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797020962625 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research Article |
Why North Korea
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
Could Not Implement
7(3) 305 –324, 2020
The Author(s) 2020
the Chinese Style
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Reform and Opening?
DOI: 10.1177/2347797020962625
journals.sagepub.com/home/aia
The Internal
Contradiction Between
Economic Reform and
Political Stability
Sungmin Cho1
Abstract
Can North Korea implement Chinese-style reform and opening-up policies?
This is an important question, directly relevant to the policy debate on North
Korea’s nuclear challenges. Through comparative historical analysis, I argue
that Pyongyang has failed to adopt the Chinese-style reform and opening-up for
the internal and structural restraints. The Chinese experience shows that the
economic reform and opening, to be successful, requires a certain degree of
political reform and openness to be executed together. North Korea could not
implement the economic reform and opening policies as effectively as China did,
not because of the external conditions like international sanctions or security
threat to the country, but more for the internal contradiction that North Korea’s
own economic development is likely to endanger the stability of the political
system more rapidly and widely than China has experienced. For this analysis,
I rely on North Korea’s published laws and economic policies, previous survey
works and scholarly works published in Korean and Chinese.
Keywords
North Korea, China, economic reform and opening, Kim Jong-un, Deng Xiaoping,
legitimacy, propaganda
1 Professor, Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, Hawaii, USA.
Corresponding author:
Sungmin Cho, Professor, Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, U.S. Department of
Defense Academic Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
E-mail: chos@dkiapcss.net
306
Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(3)
Introduction
During the denuclearisation negotiation with North Korea, US President Donald
Trump mentioned that North Korea has the great potential to be the next economic
powerhouse, referring to the Vietnamese economic reform model (Talmadge,
2019). The idea that North Korea can follow the successful experiences of Chinese
or Vietnamese reform has been the critical premise of engagement policies vis-à-
vis North Korea, such as the former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung’s
‘Sunshine Policy’ in South Korea. Lim Dong-won, then the Minister of Unification
under the Kim administration, who is also known as the architect of the Sunshine
Policy, explained that the engagement policy was designed to pursue gradual
change within North Korea, instead of radical regime change (Lim, 2015). Lim
argued that the Kim family regime would be able to implement economic reform
and opening-up while preserving the political system, as China and Vietnam did,
and that South Korea should encourage Pyongyang to emulate the Chinese model
of reform and openness. This argument led to a policy prescription that the
international community, notably the United States, should lift sanctions and
provide security guarantees for North Korea, so that Pyongyang would feel safe
to focus on economic development, re-allocating resources from national defence
to economic growth.1
This line of argument requires a thorough reflection of (1) what it means that
North Korea implements the Chinese-style reform and openness policy and (2) to
what extent North Korea was able to emulate the Chinese model.2 Concerning
North Korea’s domestic issues, scholars have paid much attention to the political
aspect of the Kim family regime’s survival strategy, such as how the Kim family
regime has effectively developed the coup-proof mechanism and prevented
popular uprising in North Korea. (Byman & Lind, 2010; Cha & Anderson, 2011;
Grice, 2017; Yeo, 2017) Woo explains how the Kim family regime controls the
Korea People’s Army through the influence of the Korea Workers’ Party (Woo,
2018). Scholars also dealt with North Korea’s economic issues, but the comparative
study of North Korea’s economy with China or Vietnam have been published in
the format of op-ed or policy report, lacking in-depth analysis for rigorous and
systematic comparison (Dollar, 2019; Grossman et al., 2019; Haggard & Noland,
2019; Marumoto, 2007; Silberstein, 2019;). In this regard, Kim Byung-yeon
(2017) and Lankov’s researches (Lankov, 2017; Ward et al., 2019) are exceptional,
but their comparative approaches with other socialist countries were too broad to
be referred as a focused-analysis that exclusively compares North Korea’s past
attempts and current conditions with the Chinese experiences of reform and
opening-up.
The objective of this article is to empirically analyse the similarities and
differences between North Korea and China’s economic reform policies through
the method of comparative historical analysis. By doing so, it aims to assess North
Korea’s likelihood of success in emulating the China model. I compare the initial
conditions that Deng Xiaoping was faced with when he launched the reform and
Cho 307
open policies in 1979, to the terms that Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un had to deal
with for North Korea’s economic reform and open policies. Also, I trace the
process of how China could successfully implement the reform and open policies
while North Korea failed in the past, and discuss why Pyongyang is still less
likely to adopt the Chinese-style reform and opening-up policies in the future. For
these analyses, I rely on North Korea’s published laws and economic policies, the
survey data of the North Korean refugees and the existing scholarship on these
subjects. I refer to the literature published in Korean and Chinese languages, and
incorporate the Chinese views that are critical of North Korea’s economic policies
in particular.3
I argue that North Korea has failed to implement the Chinese-style reform and
opening policies because such policies, if successfully executed, could lead to the
collapse of the political system. The Chinese experience shows that effective
economic reform requires a relaxation of political control and decentralisation of
political power. Deng Xiaoping was willing to take the political risk of economic
reform, but Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un could not. Similarly, economic
opening-up requires a broad range of legal reforms to attract foreign investments
and a genuine tolerance for citizens’ interactions with foreigners. However, North
Korea cannot afford to take the political risks stemming from the inflow of
external information through foreign contact, which would neutralise North
Korea’s state-narratives about the Kim family regime and the outside world. Due
to these internal contradictions, North Korea is less likely to adopt the Chinese-
style reform and open policies, even if the external conditions like international
economic sanctions and security environment swing in favour of Pyongyang.
Understanding North Korea’s internal and structural limits against economic
reform is important because it is directly relevant to the policy debate concerning
North Korea’s nuclear challenge. Regarding the nuclear negotiation between the
United States and North Korea, the debate has been surrounding the question of
whether the United States should maintain the maximum pressure approach or not
(Cha & Kang, 2005; Cho, 2020a; Jackson, 2019). If an analyst or policymaker has
confidence that North Korea can implement the Chinese-style reform and opening,
he or she is more likely to support the policy of engagement. On the contrary, if
one does not have much confidence, he or she is less likely to support the idea of
replacing the maximum pressure approach with engagement policy. This article
contributes to this debate by informing North Korea’s economic prospects through
the comparative historical analysis between North Korea and China.
This article begins by comparing the political environments Deng Xiaoping
and Kim Jong-un were faced with when they became the supreme leaders in
China and North Korea. Next, it compares China’s economic reform programmes
with what Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un had tried for the North Korean version of
economic reforms, followed by comparing the opening-up policies of the two
countries at the structural level. I then explain why North Korea’s economic
reform and openness can deconstruct the country’s propaganda system. I conclude
the analysis with a discussion on policy and its theoretical implications.
308
Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(3)
Kim Jong-un and Deng Xiaoping
When Kim Jong-un became the supreme leader of North Korea in 2012, analysts
debated whether the new leader would become a North Korean version of Deng
Xiaoping. Just as Deng lived in France during his formative years, Kim Jong-un
spent his teenage years in Switzerland, exposed to Western lifestyles and values.
Therefore, some people expected that Kim Jong-un might have a stronger will than
his father to implement economic reform and open policies for North Korea. Indeed,
Kim Jong-un launched ‘Byung-Jin’, a policy that gives equal weight to the goals of
military expansion and economic development, shifting from his father’s military-
first policy. Kim Jong-un has also introduced a series of reforms, such as expanding
special economic zones and official markets....
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