Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Stephen Haggard, Marcus Noland, and the East-West Center released a new report this week on changing political attitudes in North Korea. While repression and human rights atrocities continue in North Korea, the report explains that Kim Jong Il’s regime is receiving increasingly open and negative criticisms by its own people. In fact, according to the report, North Koreans are seeming to shift accountability for the country’s economic collapse from the United States and foreign imperialism to the North Korean government, demonstrating either a significant shift away from North Korea’s juche ideology/propaganda or an increasing ability and comfort in expressing negative reviews of Kim Jong Il’s leadership.
Haggard and Noland posit that increasing resistance against Kim Jong Il’s regime, however slight, may be attributed to: the recent deaths of more North Koreans due to food shortages; increased access to radio, television, and internet; continued failure of the North Korean government to provide food and economic opportunity for its people; continued repression; increasing participation in private economic activity and small markets where North Korean citizens can meet and converse with slightly less government surveillance; and recurring waves of food insecurity since North Korea’s devastating famine of 1998. While the 2008 sample of 300 North Korean refugees living in South Korea has its weaknesses – namely, size, and self-selection -, there remains little statistical data or analysis on the attitudes of North Koreans living under Kim Jong Il’s repressive regime.
Click here to access the East-West Center’s full report.
Click here to read the Washington Post’s coverage on the report.
