Is Kim Jong Un's Bluster Really a Prelude to Reform?

On Tuesday, North Korea’s General Department of Atomic Energy announced it was restarting the country’s reactor in Yongbyon, which produces plutonium. It also suggested the North’s uranium enrichment facility there would begin producing fissile material. Previously, Pyongyang said its Yongbyon uranium plant was for peaceful purposes only, specifically, creating low-enriched uranium for the generation of electricity.

The announcement underscores the regime’s commitment to its nuclear weapons program and follows Sunday’s statement that Pyongyang would simultaneously build its nuclear arsenal and develop the North Korean economy. At the same time, a known reformer, Pak Pong Ju, was appointed premier. Some say the regime’s commitment to nukes, which appeases the military, gives Kim Jong Un the political space to pursue economic restructuring.

Can the Kim regime have both guns and butter? Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, thought he could have both, but his program failed miserably. When aid from his big-power sponsors ran out at the end of the Cold War, the North Korean economy tumbled. The country’s gross domestic product fell each year from 1990 through 1998, according to the Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank. During this period the North’s economy shrank by about half. 

Kim Il Sung’s economic revitalization plans in the 1990s all failed. There were many factors, of course, but they were doomed from the start because of his refusal to reduce military spending. During the end of his rule—he died of a heart attack in 1994—some 22 million North Koreans supported the world’s fifth-largest armed forces.

Approximately a quarter of the nation’s output had been devoted to the military for several decades up to then, and the army’s share of the economy was probably growing in the mid-1990s. Today, the budget for the Korean People’s Army is at least a third of the nation’s GDP. One estimate put it at a stunning 40 percent in 2004, and from all accounts the military call on the regime’s resources has only grown since then.

Kim Jong Un, the third Kim on the throne and the grandson of Kim Il Sung, is in the unenviable position of having to keep the generals and admirals happy as well as prevent mass starvation. From the first moments of his rule in December 2011, Kim had tried to ditch his father’s songun—“military first”—policy by elevating the status of the Korean Workers’ Party inside the regime. That effort, accompanied by a purge of flag officers loyal to Kim Jong Il (his father and predecessor), appears to have floundered.

Now, to win back the support of the top brass, Kim Jong Un has made recent rhetorical commitments to songun politics—and it is apparent he will not be slashing military budgets in the future.

Yet until Kim can reduce the military’s budget, the North Korean economy will suffer, during which time we can expect Kim to make nuclear threats in order to blackmail the international community for desperately needed aid—a familiar pattern in Pyongyang’s foreign policy. If there are more threats, however, angry nations may be reluctant to come to Kim’s assistance. The economy, therefore, will continue to suffer, trapping Kim Jong Un’s state in a downward economic spiral with geopolitical consequences yet unknown.

 

Photo Credit: Nicor