North Korean Politics of Regime Survival

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Budd 1 Liam Budd 260465022 Poli 349 Nov 21, 2013 North Korean Politics of Regime Survival Budd 2 When Kim Jung Un came to power, the regime he inherited was under the same plethora of systemic and domestic pressures that his father Kim Jong Il had faced since coming to power. He also faced the same task of consolidating power over the Korean Worker’s Party (KWP), the Korean People’s Army (KPA), and the National Defence Commission (NDC). For the past two decades North Korea has faced the dual pressures coming from the economic imperative to modernize and the maintenance profoundly revisionist and paranoid ideology and official doctrine that seeks to maintain absolute authoritarian control over the North Korean people. What was remarkable about the reign of Kim Jong Il was his ability to balance these two pressures and maintain his regime, considering that too much modernization via economic reforms and opening would effectively end the regime, and not enough would spell out the collapse of the regime. The ultimate question we face now is will Kim Jong Un be able to replicate the balancing act of his father to guarantee regime survival? Through an examination of significant policy changes and maintenances of Kim Jong Il as well as the current systemic and domestic conditions for the DPRK, this paper seeks to make sense of the balancing upon which regime survival hinges and make predictions as to the future of the Kim Jung Un era. Ensuring the security and survival of the DPRK regime starts with maintaining complete authoritarian control over its own general populace. Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind argue using regime stability theory that North Korea Budd 3 prevents popular revolutions through restrictive social policies, manipulation of ideas and information, and the use of force. By tightly restricting the “activities of
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