CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN NORTH KOREAN POLITICS | Edited by Adam Cathcart, Robert Winstanley-Chesters, and Christopher Green | Pacific Affairs

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN NORTH KOREAN POLITICS | Edited by Adam Cathcart, Robert Winstanley-Chesters, and Christopher Green | Pacific Affairs

BOOK REVIEWS, NORTHEAST ASIA
VOLUME 91 – NO. 4

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN NORTH KOREAN POLITICS | Edited by Adam Cathcart, Robert Winstanley-Chesters, and Christopher Green


Routledge Advances in Korean Studies, no. 36. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2017. xii, 153 pp. (Graph.) US$145.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-68168-2.


On April 27, 2018, the international media watched in awe as the two Koreas met to discuss peace on the peninsula—the first time in over a decade and the first time that a North Korean leader had stepped foot on South Korean territory since national division. Yet long-time observers of North Korea likely looked on with a bit less optimism. This is a third-generation, totalitarian state after all, one that has seemingly defied the odds and persisted with great continuity in dynastic leadership, despite recurring predictions of imminent change, upheaval, and even regime collapse. The question on everyone’s minds is: will North Korea be different this time?


In this context, Change and Continuity in North Korean Politics, edited by Adam Cathcart, Robert Winstanley-Chesters, and Christopher Green, could not come at a more fitting time. 

The book aims to elucidate what the editors call “North Korean parallelism”: how North Korea’s present strategies for change mirror the historical and nationalist narratives of its past. This parallelism, the book implies, is an intentional, calculated, and even logical strategy by North Korea’s governing elite. Through archival analyses of state documents, speeches, and news reports, the book traces how North Korea’s foundational narratives dating back to Kim Il-sung hold “the embedded political frameworks around which statecraft and governance under Kim Jong-un are enabled” (4). Although the most recent and notable developments in North Korea’s diplomacy, such as its participation in the Pyeongchang Olympics and series of international summits, occurred only after publication, the book nevertheless provides a rich lens through which to make sense of North Korea’s future developments.


Across nine chapters and through seven contributors, the book illustrates North Korea’s historical parallelism across various areas, from the politics of succession and power consolidation, strategies in economic and environmental development, and the ever-evolving construction of the Kim dynasty’s mythos and ideology. Each chapter is worth reading, but two themes stand out as particularly useful for understanding the current regime. The first is the national narrative around youth. When Kim Jong-un took the reins in 2011, many observers noted that his young age might be a source of political instability. But the chapters “Kim Jong-un syndrome” and “Hagiography of the Kims and the childhood of saints” point out how the North Korean elite have dealt with such a threat: by permeating a “North Korean notion that youth and leadership go hand in hand” (17). Kim Jong-un’s youth is framed as an advantage, and a natural streak in the Kim bloodline, by emphasizing Kim Il-sung’s own young age—a mere six years old—when he first felt the stirrings of revolutionary angst against Japan, and Kim Jong-il’s exceptionally young age when he first showed military prowess. The chapters document how such stories are constructed and injected into popular novels, cartoons, and official speeches. With this historical lens, the rather surprising stability under the grandson Kim, his seemingly odd choice of terminology in calling Trump a “dotard,” his investment in the Korean Children’s Union, and even his purging of Jang Seong-taek (Chang Sŏngt’aek) make more sense.


The second theme is the regime’s constant need for “revolutionary urgency.” This is a state that was born out of revolutionary struggle against an outsider. That this narrative is an integral part of the state’s identity becomes evident in how the theme appears across very different chapters, such as “Kim Jong-un and the practice of Songun Politics,” “Politics of Pollack: maritime development paradigms under the Kims,” and “Treasured swords: environment under the Byungjin Line.” What emerges is a regime that feels compelled to maintain a “fluctuating state of emergency, providing itself with just cause to coerce people into periodic ‘marches’ and ‘battles’…” (61), as if in fear of what might happen once it stops. This almost existential need for the next revolution suggests an explanation for North Korea’s cyclical pattern of missile tests that is as much about domestic politics as it is about projecting power outwards.


In sum, the book reveals the narrative arcs in the “political theatre” (116) that is central to North Korea’s continuity. What is critically missing, however, is the audience. Various authors at various points either concede that “reception is another matter entirely” (9) or explicitly limit the scope of analysis such that “[w]hether people actually internalized and reproduce in their own minds the revolutionary objectives of Songun does not concern us here” (55). But national and political narratives are only real to the extent that they are at least heard. Of course, North Korea is a case where data limitations regarding public opinion are serious. Yet there are other ways to gauge the publicity and practice of certain documents or doctrines that do not rely on defector surveys or interviews, much in the spirit of the penultimate chapter on hagiographies. The book’s central thesis that elite narratives matter would be more credible with a systematic effort across all of the chapters to link elite production and decisions to channels of mass dissemination or consumption.


To return to the opening question, the book suggests that the answer to whether or not North Korea will be different this time lies largely in understanding the baggage of its past. As the title aptly states, the question is not change or continuity, but how change itself is constrained by North Korea’s existential need for historical and narrative continuity. This book should be on the reading list of students of Korean politics and anyone who wishes to better understand why North Korean acts in the ways it does.


Aram Hur


New York University, New York, USA