Korea, North

Korea, North The northern half of Korea, established as a Communist country under Kim Il Sung on 9 September 1948. With help from the occupying Soviet Red Army, popular social and economic reforms had already been introduced by this time, including the nationalization of Japanese property, expropriation of large landholding estates, a land reform, and social reforms. This gave the Communist regime considerable popular support, especially among peasants and industrial workers. It had also led to the emigration of many skilled and propertied people to the US-controlled South, depriving the country of important knowhow. After encouraging a series of unsuccessful Communist insurrections in South Korea, Kim decided to attack it, thus precipitating the Korean War. The failure to achieve a victory, despite the heaviest of losses and devastations, led to a deep crisis within the North Korean Communist Party. Kim's position became even more difficult as a result of Stalin's death in 1953, and Khrushchev's subsequent attack on Stalinism (together with its implied personality cult) at the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1956.

Kim prevailed, with a departure from his policy of ‘learning from the Soviet Union’, and a new emphasis on self-reliance. The next two decades were marked by substantial economic growth, with rapid industrialization and the good use of its wealth in mineral resources, making the country economically relatively successful by Communist standards. Nevertheless, growth stagnated from the late 1970s, partly as a result of the oil price shock, and partly because of its inability to access technological advances in the world market such as computers (in marked contrast to its South Korean neighbour). Rejecting the example of Communist China, Kim refused to open the country to foreign investment, or even to encourage private enterprise at a time when state and party had reached the limit of their ability to mobilize society. During the 1980s, stability was maintained increasingly by an overwhelming personality cult around the ageing Kim and by the military, which in the early 1980s contained almost 800,000 soldiers (over 4 per cent of the total population).

Kim Il Sung's death in 1994 resulted in a struggle for his succession. While it appeared that his son, Kim Jong Il, had succeeded him, this was not officially confirmed by 1996. In a desperate attempt to overcome the country's economic problems, which resulted in food shortages and even famine, the country had to swallow its pride and accept the gift of rice imports from South Korea. Despite this, unofficial estimates suggested that as many as two million may have died of famine in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il continued to put vast financial resources into arms development, and in 1999 the North Koreans successfully fired a medium-range missile into the Pacific Ocean. The military programme was subsequently used as a bargaining chip in talks with South Korea and the United States, but after the election of George W. Bush, North Korea faced a much tougher line. As part of the new War on Terrorism, North Korea was assigned by the US President to be part of an ‘axis of evil’, together with Iraq and Iran. Under pressure from its major ally, China, North Korea opened itself to outside countries, accepting aid from the EU and taking up diplomatic relations with Italy, Canada, and other Western industrial nations. In 2002, North Korea was reported to have introduced far-reaching economic reform. This included the abandonment of rationing for basic foods and increases of wages and prices. Kim Jong Il continued to frustrate both South Korea and US hopes for a long-term improvement in relations, as in 2003 he admitted his desire to build nuclear weapons as a ‘deterrent’.