Daily NK: Rising banditry in N. Korea
As respect for the law disappears and a regular market economy is not introduced in North Korea, the trend to earn money by any means ““ fair or foul – has dominated. For instance, even in the daytime soldiers or gangsters stop trucks and rob them of their freight. Such incidents are occurring frequently. [Daily NK, Yoon Il Geun]
Amid a number of reports of this kind, you have to wonder about the broader implications of groups of armed men roving the countryside with guns, operating beyond the reach of the law or flirting with mutiny. For most of them, the motives probably have more to do with survival than anything else.
At the same time, you can see the potential for such groups to develop a political consciousness if they begin sharing their loot with the local population in exchange for shelter. Such a symbiotic relationship inevitably draws a government response against the local population itself, pitting it and “its” fighters against the state.
See also: the rise of anarchy is also taking its toll on the North Korean rail system.
Update: Here’s another one for the Phase II file. Those of you who have read “Famine in North Korea” will recall that several years ago, the North Korean regime began squeezing the people to buy government bonds. As you might have expected, the people who want to cash those bonds are finding that they can’t get anything of intrinsic value for them.
What’s an oligarchy to do? If it’s an absolute last resort, you can expand the ruling class. And so the regime is now selling party memberships in exhange for its worthless junk bonds.
That’s more significant than it seems at first glance. This regime’s survival balances on an fragile system of preferences in the distribution of its resources, with an obscenely disproportionate share going to a trusted few. Expanding that ruling class dilutes the whole system of privilege and the ideological significance of party membership. It means social mobility, the dissolution of the songbun system, the replacement of loyalty with money, linking success with a financial incentive, and access to the levers of power by people who don’t conform to the ideological norms.
If that is true, factions can start a you suggest. The cracks in the regime are getting more apparent everyday.
If this does coincide with some political awakening and cohesion, then it could be very good for North Korea post collapse (and that would be great for everybody).
If it spirals up without some connecting, unifying political activity, then it will do much to make setting NK back on its feet even more difficult post collapse.
The only challenge I foresee the factions having is cross-town/county communication and organization. This may make uprisings not as effective as we hope they would be. I agree with Hwang Yang-jop that the army generally should make the first move, but how is that going to be possible if they preoccupy themselves with low-level thuggery ?
That’s the rub, though….
…is this stuff signs of growing opposition to the system that includes socio-political awakening…
….or is it more simply the rise of banditry and lawlessness?
Sometimes the two do not go hand-in-hand. We’ve seen many nations in different parts of the world evolve into warlordism or babarism and so on without political development (good or bad).
The growth of banditry in North Korea is significant no matter what. It shows the regime does not have the command of the people it once did, and we are far enough away from the worst days of the famine in the 1990s to believe that this is a trend that will not be reversed. It also gives hope that the regime will collapse sooner rather than decades later.
But, we really need to know (and try to help condition) whether this trend will be part of an eventual rebuilding of the society or shows that life post-collapse will be just as bad for North Koreans for many, many years to come….
And lastly……..it is HIGHLY ironic that the best chance to attempt to reverse the decaying situation of oppression of the people — as seen through the government’s inability to stop the growth in markets and in banditry, comes thanks to the reversal in US policy on North Korea.
Is that the legacy Bush and the State Department are hoping for?…
…..that at a time when the North Korean government was showing clear signs of losing its totalitarian hold on its people, we step in to give it material aid it needs desperately to regain that hold???
I think a key transition occurs when officers begin to permit low-level thuggery in exchange for a share of the take. That’s a major step toward warlordism, which is Phase III of collapse described here:
And trying to steer the growing disharmony within North Korea toward some political movement would be hard but something the US pretty much must do – because collapse of the North (some day) is a foregone conclusion.
We should be trying to condition it through covert supplies of information, political knowledge, and other items (like working with Christian groups already seeking to spread both spirituality and opposition to the tyrannical regime).
We need to locate those officers and regional government figures that show signs of corruptability and see if we can encourage them to thing long term.
We should try to win them over through hearts and wallets.
We should enrich them materially and try to convert them socio-politically.
There really is no way to avoid this unless we simply want to cross our fingers and hope the implosion isn’t of the worst case variety.
Warlordism in North Korea will be as dangerous as warlordism breaking out in Pakistan.
We have to at least attempt a conditioning of some of the North Korean people the collapse comes.