North Korea: A Political History
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When Kim Il-sung died in July 1994, North Koreans had never known anything else.
The 'Great Leader' had molded and controlled political and the economy for almost 50 years.
Cold war warriors
North Korea was formed on 9 September 1948 during the political confusion following the end of World War II.
Supported by the USSR, Kim Il-sung began a series of popular social and economic changes, including the redistribution of land and the theft of Japanese property.
This gave the communist party considerable backers, while simultaneously driving many of the skilled and richer parts of the population to South Korea.
The Korean War was the culmination of irreconcilable political and social differences between Soviet-backed North Korea and US-backed South Korea.
Neither the USSR, which had entered and occupied the North in 1945, nor the United States could bear the peninsula falling into the other's hands. The formal split of Korea in 1948 set the stage for a bloody war, which was to follow.
The Korean War lasted from 1950 to 1953, with devastating human losses and distancing relations with the Soviet Union, particularly after Stalin's death in 1953. This would be the precursor of the Cold War.
Self-supporting to Self-destructive
With support from the USSR not quite assured, Kim Il-sung in the 1950s, began a move towards isolationism.
Some industrial success and good economic growth occurred, but by the 1970s a combination of energy costs and a ever-widening technological gap with the west had defeated the strategy.
While other communist countries, including China, chose social and economic reform, the Korea kept the ideology of its economic policy putting rigid state controlled system, leading to increased problems, made exponentially worse by high levels of military spending.
In 1980, the North defaulted on loans, except from Japan. By the late 1980s gross national production was declining by more than four percent each year.
But even then Pyongyang refused to open the country to foreign investors or allow its citizens private enterprise.
Centers of Power
- Communist Korean Workers Party - Controls all aspects of government. All officials must be members
- Government - Led by the president and the Central People's Committee
- Supreme People's Assembly - The official legislature. Elected every four years but little actual power
