The goal of the security organizations is to permeate every sector of society and to monitor the private and public life of North Korean citizens and for- eign visitors.People suspected of crimes often disappear during the night,never to be heard from again. Top cadres who fall from favor similarly disappear from public view. In a major campaign to stamp out illegal foreign currency earnings, Kim Jong Il replaced many of his foreign trade officials in 1998.What became of them is not known.26Needless to say, their disappearance disrupted
North Korea’s limited trade ties with other countries and sowed seeds of sus- picion about the transparency of its economic policies. Public executions as a deterrent to crime and corruption have become more frequent in the 1990s.
Numerous reports indicate that even top cadres, including a party secretary in charge of agriculture, have been executed.27
The greatest threat to the security of the Kim regime would come from a palace coup by top cadres or by the security people. It may be recalled that in South Korea, President Park Chung Hee, himself something of a dictator, was assassinated by the head of his own Central Intelligence Agency. To forestall such a coup in North Korea, Kim Jong Il puts his top people under multiple sources of surveillance.Every government delegation traveling overseas includes at least two intelligence agents who report on the activities of their colleagues (and one another). The intelligence apparatus is compartmentalized so that different intelligence organizations have limited contact with one another.
The most serious crime a North Korean can commit is disloyalty to the leader. Acts of disloyalty are defined in ways that are unimaginable in liberal democracies. In every building at least one set of portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il is displayed on a prominent wall, away from any other pictures. Anyone caught treating pictures of the Kims with disrespect, such as letting them collect dust, is subject to disciplinary action. Pictures of the Kims in news- papers and magazines are not to be folded or torn. In October 1997 South Korean workers at a KEDO construction site in North Korea were confined to their dormitory when a crumpled copy of Nodong Sinmun was found in a wastebasket. A photograph of Kim Jong Il in the newspaper had been torn in two—a crime by North Korean standards.After the South Korean government protested that no insult was intended, and that in any case the workers were covered by diplomatic immunity, the North Koreans released the workers from house arrest.28
Another view of what counts as a crime in North Korea is illustrated by the predicament of an unsuspecting South Korean tourist. In June 1999, during a period of high tension between the two Koreas, a housewife on the Hyundai- sponsored group tour to North Korea’s Kumgang Mountain was detained for six days by North Korean authorities. According to her report, backed up by South Korean witnesses, she told a North Korean security guard on the tour trail, in the context of a brief conversation, that she hoped he would come and live in South Korea after unification.29According to the North Koreans, “the
South Korean authorities sent [her] as a tourist to Mt. Kumgang for the pur- pose of inducing persons in the north to defect to the south.” Before being released, she was induced to sign a confession admitting to “all the grave polit- ical crimes committed by her and entreating for lenient pardon.”30
The key to effective deterrence and punishment in North Korea is the use of the traditional custom of yongoje (family purge), whereby punishment for
an individual’s crime is visited as well on the extended family and often on friends and colleagues. A father who incurs the wrath of the authorities can expect not only his immediate family, but also his parents, uncles, and cousins, to suffer for his crime if not by imprisonment or banishment, at least by hav- ing the crime entered into their personal records. This form of punishment has proved extremely effective in deterring all but the most brave, selfish, or reckless individuals from going against the Kim regime. Even those with little to lose personally (such as those who may be dying of starvation) will endure injustice and hardship even to the point of death rather than escape or pub- licly protest. The families of North Korean officials who travel abroad are usually kept in Korea. The strong consensus among defectors from North Korea is that this instrument of terror has proved highly effective in keeping people in line. Those who defect live with feelings of guilt about the fate of those they left behind.
North Koreans are also deterred from defecting to South Korea (by way of China or Russia) by North Korean propaganda, which teaches that any North Korean who falls into the hands of the South Korean authorities will be tor- tured to extract information and then executed.31When North Korean
commandos are stranded in South Korea, they usually commit suicide in order to die a hero’s death, with the assurance that their loved ones will earn the spe- cial kind of treatment accorded to the families of fallen heroes. For those in North Korea who are detained by the security police or thrown into prison, there is one way out. The North Korean bureaucracy is so corrupt that money changing hands or a visit to the right official will often effect a release.32
Besides the threat of punishment, the government controls peoples’ lives by controlling their livelihood. Until the breakdown of government services in the 1990s, most people depended on the government for food, clothing, and housing. Even travel between towns required special travel permits (although freedom of travel and residence is newly guaranteed in the 1998 constitution, that guarantee is probably as meaningless as other constitutional guarantees of human rights). Those who can get a travel permit must check in with the police at their destination to have their ration card validated to obtain food. Those banished from their homes for crimes and sent into the remote hills must forage for themselves, living like primitive hunting and gath- ering peoples.
North Koreans are expected to inform on one another, even children on their parents, because if they do not report a crime and it is discovered, they are implicated. A basic principle in North Korea is that two people who trust each other may discuss sensitive issues, but when a third joins them, nothing
can be said. Between two people, if one accuses the other of disloyalty, it is one person’s word against the other. With three people, each must fear that the other two may report the incident and thus each is motivated to report on his own behalf—an example of the prisoner’s dilemma. Hence the near impossi- bility of organizing any kind of resistance movement against the Kim regime.33
Thought Control
Building on Confucian tradition, the Kims have taught that loyalty is the touchstone of all human virtues. They have promised that with unbounded loyalty and correct thoughts, people can accomplish anything; conversely, everything that generations of North Koreans have worked for will be lost if people abandon their leader. Political study sessions based on the teachings of the Kims begin at the kindergarten level and continue throughout life.
Korean children attend school for eleven years: one year of preschool, four of primary school, and six of senior middle school. An estimated 14 percent of students go on to specialized technical and professional schools or to Kim Il Sung University, the only university in the country.34The principal qualifica-
tions for admission to institutions of higher learning are political reliability and personal connections.35Schooling at all levels emphasizes political studies.
Kim Il Sung’s 1977 Thesis on Socialist Education set forth four guiding prin- ciples: inculcation of party and working-class consciousness; establishment of Juche in education; combination of education and revolutionary practice; and the government’s responsibility for education.36Kim stipulated that the edu-
cational curriculum consist of political education in Juche and communism, as well as general education and physical education.
Emphasis on political education begins early. In primary school, the fol- lowing subjects are taught: history of Kim Il Sung’s childhood days (one hour per week); special lecture on a political topic (one hour); communism and moral education (one hour); Korean language (seven to eight hours); math (five to six hours); natural studies (from third grade: three hours); health edu- cation (from fourth grade: one hour); physical education (two hours); music (two hours); and arts and crafts (two hours).37
This list of subjects may not seem overly laden with political studies, but political themes are an integral part of other studies. By one estimate, 35 per- cent of elementary schooling is devoted to political education, rising to more than 40 percent for university students.38For example, in Korean language
training, only 15 percent of class time is spent on grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension. Readings about the two Kims take up 64 percent of class time,
and lessons on the importance of manual labor, the collective life, and devel- oping a fighting spirit against the enemies of communism account for 21 percent of class time. Wherever the names of the two Kims appear, they are set in boldface type and preceded by such honorifics as Wonsunim (Honor- able Top Person) and Chidoja Sonsaengnim (Guiding Teacher). Of course this is standard practice in all North Korean publications. Words attributed to the two Kims or to Kim Il Sung’s first wife are always presented in quotation marks and frequently introduce a paragraph or reading section, as if all wisdom orig- inates with them.
School readings are filled with episodes illustrating how much the Kims love children; a strong theme of optimism about the future of Juche socialism is constantly present; stories about the evil deeds of North Korea’s enemies (primarily the United States and Japan) are commonplace.39Students are
taught arithmetic by counting how many American soldiers were killed and how many of their tanks were destroyed by the brave North Koreans during the Korean War.40In music class, students sing songs such as “Thank you Mar-
shal Kim Il Sung for bringing us up as future pillars of society.”41
Political education extends beyond the school room. Kim Il Sung taught that “Home education, social education and school education cannot be sep- arated; they must go hand in hand. The real education to transform a human being begins at home, then schools strengthen their education, which has to be continued and consolidated by social education.”42People of all ages are
expected to become members of party-supervised groups in order to keep them under surveillance and further educate them in the party line. Besides regular school classes, students participate in twelve to twenty hours of social work a week, including participation in loyalty marches for the two Kims, cultural events, recycling activities, tree-planting activities, searches for edibles in the countryside, and harvesting activities.43
The prescribed regimen of eight hours of work, eight hours of study, and eight hours of sleep may not be strictly followed by the average North Korean, but political study sessions in which the Kims’ works are read and discussed are an almost daily requirement for children and adults alike.One former North Korean jokingly predicted that North Korean children could easily win a world title for memorization because school students must memorize the major speeches made by the Kims. Committing one such speech to memory may take several weeks.44
It is difficult to determine just how effective North Korean propaganda is. Defectors almost unanimously claim that the cumulative effect of this indoc- trination is very strong, given the absence of alternative channels of
information. Just as Western television commercials influence the capitalist consumer, so too must a lifetime of political indoctrination come to shape the thinking of North Koreans.
The North Korean people are constantly tested in their beliefs. To deter- mine if information has been memorized and understood, people are quizzed in political study sessions; those who fail to demonstrate understanding and commitment receive black marks on their political record. To translate learn- ing into commitment and action,people undergo criticisms and self-criticisms. In group sessions they are required to confess their political failings, no mat- ter how small, and tell how they will improve themselves. All North Koreans, even the top cadres, must regularly attend such study sessions. More intensive “re-education” is sometimes ordered. Those convicted of crimes, including political crimes, are sentenced to hard work, intensive study, and self-criticism (death or banishment for the most serious crimes). North Koreans who come into contact with foreigners (for example, returning North Korean diplomats) must undergo months of re-education in the countryside accompanied by manual labor, to remind them of the so-called classless nature of communism. One former North Korean claims that workers at joint venture factories run by South Koreans must spend one month in anti-imperialist re-education classes for every two months of work at the plant.45North Korean workers are
rotated in and out of such assignments to prevent them from becoming too influenced by their foreign contacts.