North Korea now

What are the possibilities for rapprochement between North Korea and the US? In this guest editorial the author considers some of the issues at play.     

Democratisation and the British Empire

ABSTRACT

This article responds to the statistically established finding in democratisation studies that British rule seems to have been good for the survival of democracy in its former empire, and that the longer a nation spent under British rule, the likelier it is to have sustained democracy since independence. This is a finding which puzzles political scientists because they think of democracy and empire as opposites. The article considers the uses made of democratic innovation by the British and the responses anti-colonial nationalists made to the offer to ‘lead them to democracy’. It places democracy and empire in a different, more complex relationship. It also considers the contribution of anti-colonial protest to the working of democracy.     

The political economy of economic reform in North Korea

For over 10 years, North Korea has undergone a severe economic crisis, including food shortages, which has inflicted great suffering upon the North Korean people. Given such dire realities, it is beyond all doubt that the North Korean government should actively carry out comprehensive economic reforms as quickly as possible which aim to transform North Korea's present inefficient socialist planned economic system into a market economic system. Many argue that such reforms would give rise to successful economic growth in North Korea, which could enhance the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. Yet, the North Korean regime has consistently avoided implementing economic reforms, even though it has had a number of opportunities to do so. The July 1st reforms, which were introduced in 2002, have been half-hearted and inconsistently applied. This then raises an important question: Why has the North Korean government avoided adopting comprehensive economic reforms? In other words, what is the crucial barrier that has hindered North Korea's implementation of economic reforms? This article pinpoints North Korea's unique political system—i.e. its monolithic system of political control and policy making which exhibits the highest level of power concentration in one individual among all political systems—as the biggest barrier to economic reforms. No doubt North Korea desperately needs comprehensive economic reforms, in light of its economic crisis and food shortages. Nonetheless, the current North Korean regime has avoided adopting such reforms since they will undermine North Korea's monolithic system. In conclusion, North Korea's monolithic system has been the biggest obstacle to North Korea's economic reforms.     

Nuclear Sisyphus: the myth of denuclearising North Korea

Is North Korea ready and willing to give up its nuclear weapons? Proponents of arms control and sustained engagement with North Korea maintain that Pyongyang's desire to acquire nuclear weapons stemmed from ingrained insecurity vis-à-vis the United States or more specifically, the threat that the US poses to fundamental regime security.

However, the primordial source of Kim Jong Il's existential insecurity stems largely from the abnormal, structural idiosyncracies of his regime and not, as many naively believe, the hardline policies of the Bush administration. Accordingly, the Kim Jong Il regime's fundamental dilemma boils down to the fact that the domestic political costs of giving up its nuclear capabilities are just as high as the costs of retaining them.

Debunking the myth that the US, rather than North Korea, poses the greater challenge to South Korean security is as important as ensuring that North Korea dismantles its nuclear arsenal.     

Experimental territoriality: Assembling the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea

This paper examines the interactions of sovereignty and political economy that shape North Korea's Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC)—an economic zone jointly operated by North and South Korea. Drawing on contemporary literatures concerning sovereignty, territoriality, and sites of political economic experimentation in East Asia, we argue that the KIC represents an experimental form of territoriality: one that is particularly volatile due to its unique geopolitical location where interaction among the various actors that compose it periodically shuts down or threatens to suspend the project. This volatility cannot be reduced to the structure of the North Korean regime alone, however. Rather, it must be situated within the continuation of a framework of enmity on the Korean peninsula as well as the ethical and political conundrums raised by the largely capitalist nature of the KIC as a form of inter-Korean economic cooperation.     

Ecomuseums and the Democratisation of Japanese Museology

The idea of the ‘integrated museum’, a more socially inclusive form of cultural institution, was a key outcome from the UNESCO/ICOM ‘Round Table of Santiago’ in 1972. Many of the concepts embodied in this idea became part of ecomuseum philosophy and practice during the 1970s and 1980s, in particular the need to involve local communities and make museums more democratic. The ecomuseum has the potential to be a socially inclusive mechanism and is now a worldwide phenomenon. Many of its tenets (the museum as territory, fragmented sites, in situ conservation and community leadership) are used—in a variety of ways and with varying success—as a mechanism to conserve cultural and heritage resources and to construct and promote local or regional cultural identities. Although the philosophy and practice of ecomuseums has been subject to criticism, they are still being created, mainly in rural areas, as a means of conserving traditional landscapes and ways of life. Japan has embraced the ecomuseum philosophy, and three contrasting ecomuseums (Hirano, Asahi and Miura) are described here, their roles analysed and their democratic nature questioned. It appears that the ecomuseum does have the ability to be a truly democratic method of heritage conservation, but that ultimately much depends on leadership and the identification of the local community as the key stakeholder.     

The disciplinary politics of antagonistic nationalism in militarized South and North Korea

After the Korean War (1950–53), the two militarized Koreas governed each and every member of society in similar ways through their disciplinary politics of antagonistic nationalism. The existing studies of state formation in the two Koreas have neglected an aspect of state power that was neither necessarily top‐down nor violent from above but also reproduced from below. In both South and North Korea, especially from the 1960s to the 1970s, state power had internal dynamics that penetrated the day‐to‐day activities of most citizens and led them to actively accept and participate in nationalist rule. This article explores an understudied aspect of the two Koreas' state power that was disciplinarily diffused in people's everyday practices through reproduction of aggressive nationalism from below and the organic construction of the individual body and nation.     

Watching North Korea from the sky: Remote sensing and documenting human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

For organisations committed to documenting human rights abuses in North Korea, gathering data is an ongoing challenge. Faced with the lack of access to the country, as well as the problems inherent in verifying testimonies from North Korean escapees, some organisations have turned to hybrid methodologies, including pairing remote sensing (RS) technologies with testimonial data to better understand the people, places and institutions associated with human rights violations. In the case of North Korea, to date, remote sensing has been used primarily to monitor nuclear weapons and missile development sites. This work has at times sparked controversy, given the scope for analytical error and the high stakes associated with flawed analysis. Against this backdrop, this article discusses the application of remote sensing to augment human rights abuse investigations and calls for greater attention to the potential of remote sensing data to both assist in eliciting information in research interviews, and to generate data that may be used to support the pursuit of accountability for alleged violations of international law. Specifically, it considers the work of an ongoing project developed in South Korea using satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems technology together with witness testimonies to document sites of state-led killings and burials in North Korea. The paper cites advantages to be had from developing hybrid methods of data-gathering in this context and describes some of the key methodological considerations involved, as well as the possible applications of the data in seeking justice and remedy in the future.     

Accountability,Democratisation and the Right to Information in India

ABSTRACT

Accountability is a core democratic value. It envisages that citizens hold the powerful to account for omissions and commissions. Influenced by the global agenda for good governance, the Right to Information (RTI) Act in India was designed to build accountability through transparency. RTI is primarily a result of democratic politics. It emerged from intense grassroots activism – articulating poor and ordinary citizens’ discontent over corruption and other abuses of power. This study is based on six empirical cases of RTI usage in India’s West Bengal province. I argue that even though it is primarily designed to elicit accountability, RTI has emerged as a “seed right” because of its enabling, foundational and evolving dimensions push forward the process of democratisation. When operating individually, our respondents experienced negligible empowerment, but when the relatively powerless citizens organised collectively and were able to work through political institutions such as political parties and CSOs/NGOs, they could convincingly bargain with the powerholders, and elicit some cooperation, if not accountability.     

Democratisation and Ethnic Conflict: The Kin Connection

Abstract. This article posits that individuation is a determining factor in making democratisation efforts workable or, where it is absent, ethnic conflict likely. Somalia serves as a case study. Since the Somali state has not been able to secure individuals' social welfare or their futures, citizens use genealogies, which chart trustworthiness, to construct social welfare safety-nets. There is also a moral dimension to genealogy. This is quite different from what occurs in the democratic West, where the state has guaranteed individuals a significant measure of social welfare security over time, and where identity can be considered situational. I argue that under conditions of uncertainty, such as have existed in Somalia, identity is not at all situational, but is fixed and fixes individuals in ethnic groups. The push to democratise can then lead to armed ethnic conflict.     

The Palestinian Uprising,Bread Riots and Arab Democratisation

In most theoretical treatments civil strife and domestic political conflict are interpreted as deconstructive and negative, as exemplified by Gurr 1980, p. 239 . Yet no messengers from Christ to Muhammad , no leaders from Bolivar to Gandhi , and no revolutionaries from Lenin to Mao to Mandela ushered in new orders and ideas without conflict. Whether viewed diachronically or synchronically, humankind's history is the history of conflict. However, domestic conflict is neither always negative, as Dixon and Moon 1989 have shown, nor does it always have only short-term effects, as Bienen and Gersovitz 1986 have assumed. There is ample historical evidence for this in the aforementioned cases. Against the backdrop of domestic conflict these historical figures effected positive and lasting changes. Hence the chief postulate of this essay: domestic political conflict, despite the 'inherent plausibility' of its harmfulness, presents opportunities for positive change with long-term effects. This position is tested using examples of Arab bread riots and the spill-over effect of the Palestinian intifadah uprising . Support for this position is found in the context of the recent wave of Arab democratisations. Although generally guided and controlled, Arab political liberalisations especially that of Sudan, Algeria and Jordan have their roots in pressure from below. Elsewhere as in Tunisia and Egypt , similar pressure helped consolidate, or, at least, place political reform on the agenda of delegitimised ruling elites. When compared with other regions, the Arab Middle East AME can readily be shown to have advanced on the road to democracy, even if such a democracy is yet to presage polyarchal rule. Democracy and democratisation in the AME have almost invariably meant a trend towards 'parliamentariasation' and 'electoralisation'. Between 1985 and 1996 the AME has experienced no less than seventeen multi-party elections, twice more than the entire preceding period since the early 1960s when many Arab countries won independence from colonial rule. While renderings of Arab democracy tend to be either 'exceptionalist' projecting pessimistic scenarios or euphoric equating democracy with the number of polls , they fail to consider the role of domestic political violence in the rise of Arab electoral activities, a vacuum area taken up by this essay.     

Policies and Ideologies of the Kim Jong-un Regime in North Korea: Theoretical Implications

Soon after the death of Kim Jong-il on 17 December 2011, his youngest and previously least-known son, Kim Jong-un, was declared the next leader of North Korea. At least for now, it seems clear that the Kim Jong-un regime is determined to uphold the established policies and ideologies of its predecessor. The present study attempts to explain why that is the case using path-dependence theory. Obviously, the old policies and ideologies are intimately bound up with the political processes of the present regime. North Korea’s unique monolithic system, comprising the Juche ideology and the military-first policy, which was constructed during the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il regimes, has exerted a comprehensive influence on the country’s political and socioeconomic development processes for decades, and it is clear that the existing policy and the institutional framework based on it wield a powerful influence on the current political processes. This greatly restricts the autonomy and the range of choices of the new incumbent, suggesting that path dependence is relevant in the case of the North Korean regime.     

Democratisation: Antidemocratic and democratic elements in the political culture of China

The nature of the political culture itself is often seen by commentators as the cause of democracy failing to take root in China; the antidemocratic elements of that culture being overemphasised while the democratic elements are underemphasised. This paper examines the application of the ideas of democratic culture in China to the current state of play, including the possibility of the democratic card being played by factions within the Chinese Communist Parry (CCP). There are indeed cultural problems associated with Chinese democratisation such as cultural anomie, unconscious authoritarian personalities, the legacy of egalitarianism, the radical polarisation of Chinese culture, difficulties of institutional compromise and the irrational control of aggression and fear. While the antidemocratic culture is stronger at present than the democratic culture, the new Chinese democratic culture is likely to gather strength in the future.     

Rebels without a cause: North Korea, Iran and the NPT

Unchecked nuclear weapons development in North Korea and the incipient nuclear weapons programme in Iran currently pose seminal challenges to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The disposition of these cases may determine the future of the NPT and will shape non-proliferation and disarmament efforts for the next decade or more. This article assesses these two challenges, focusing on the actions concerned European states might take to leverage and guide the inevitably central US role. The article concludes that, by smoothing the sharper edges of US nuclear and strategic policies, European states can promote political conditions more favourable to non-proliferation solutions in both critical cases and help reduce reliance on nuclear weapons threats in global security relations more broadly.