In this episode, Richard Hanania speaks with Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute. Ward studies North Korean foreign policy, political economy, human rights, and Korean security issues. He also writes for NK Pro (NK News) and has published in various academic journals.
This discussion explores the structure of the North Korean state, its evolving legal system, ideological shifts, and everyday life under Kim Jong Un, including stand-up comedy, sports, pornography, religion, and the ways in which the government has allowed markets to function.
The conversation spends significant time on what may be the most consequential shift ever in North Korean ideology: Kim Jong Un's abandonment of Korean reunification as a goal. For generations, reunification was the animating myth of the North Korean state. Kim has now declared South Korea a corrupted and permanently hostile country, in many ways little different from any other enemy. Ward explains why this happened and how it changes the geopolitical situation. As it turns out, there is both a more optimistic and a less benign interpretation of this change.
Ward talks about the emergence of the category of “unsocialist” behavior, a concept that is increasingly used, surprisingly, to crack down on cultural deviance. What makes this paradoxical, as Hanania points out, is that the regime has simultaneously become more tolerant of markets. He asks about BR Myers’ book The Cleanest Race, and whether it is correct to say that North Korea has moved away from Marxism-Leninism and toward a racialized view of the world.
Perhaps the sharpest edge of the regime's legal apparatus is directed not at "hostile" foreign culture generally but at South Korean culture specifically. Ward explains the legal distinctions: disseminating South Korean cultural content carries harsher penalties than disseminating content from other officially hostile countries. A North Korean caught with American media potentially faces a less stringent punishment than one found watching a K-drama. The regime understands that South Korean culture is uniquely threatening because it comes from a society that shares the same ethnocultural background.
The episode closes with the question of succession. Kim Ju Ae, Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter, looks to be his heir apparent. Ward says that whether she is the successor or not, we know that her father wants us to think she is. This at the very least tells us something about the impression the regime is trying to create internally and for the rest of the world. Yet we can only guess whether she actually is the successor, and what exactly the North Koreans believe they are communicating.
Links
Peter’s work at the Sejong Institute, NK Pro (NK News), and Google Scholar
Peter’s recent appearance on the NK News podcast
