| bibo:abstract |
Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. Reading between the Lines
Ⅲ. Key Characteristics
Ⅳ. Outlook and Implications
Ⅰ. Introduction
From the 8th Party Congress onward, North Korea’s official discourse has mostly focused on shaping a five-year plan that would guide the country’s domestic and foreign affairs until the next round of the Party Congress. The regime even mentioned a 15-year time frame to specify its long-term visions like “building an ideal powerful socialist state.” While public remarks from North Korea do not provide a full picture of the regime’s mid- t0 long-term vision, a series of official documents released by the North, including Kim Jong-un’s speech, his statements, and state media coverage of major gatherings of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and the Supreme People’s Assembly, would help explain the rough contours of the mid-to long-term visions emerging within the North Korean decision-making circle. Based on a detailed analysis of North Korea’s rhetoric on its mid-term and long-term goals, this article will explore what Pyongyang intends to achieve with such goals and how they will affect and shape the regime’s trajectory in the coming years.
Ⅱ. Reading between the Lines
The overall project report released at the 8th Party Congress is by far the most accurate source of information that provides the most up-to-date and clearly structured picture of Pyongyang’s mid-to long-term vision. The report repeatedly uses the ideological phrase, “full-scale development of socialism of our style,” which summarizes the overall message of the 8th Party Congress. Simply put, this is a phrase that fully encapsulates what the regime desires to ultimately achieve with its stated vision. Recently, Pyongyang has specified its goals across multiple domains, including economy, military, and foreign policy to shape a grand vision that will guide the country through the coming years and decades. It is observed that the phrase “full-scale development of socialism of our style” has had many variations over the years, like “socialist utopia,” “socialist fairyland,” and “socialist civilization,” which all carry the same message. A close examination finds that the idea of constructing socialism is a long-term vision that will extend more than five years into the future and continue to shape Pyongyang’s policy line for many years ahead.
In its widely-published documents, Pyongyang sets a time frame of 5 years and beyond for the country’s construction and SOC projects. As the country gears up for a nationwide expansion of major construction and housing projects, including the construction of residential buildings known as salimjip, the top leadership wants to send a message to its people that a wider housing drive would provide quality housing for all North Koreans regardless of where they live. A longer time frame would make this ambitious plan sound more realistic.
It should also be noted that the usage of the term “communism” has become more common in recent years. The term has been often used to enforce Pyongyang’s ideology on the people or to create stronger emotional bonds in North Korean society. It is also used to ramp up nationwide ideological campaigns designed to crack down on the selfish actions of individuals or organizations, often labeled as ‘selfish acts of privileged organizations’ by the central government. The term communism is also used to meet more ambitious goals, like restricting the influx of capitalist culture into the North and demanding an ever-greater display of ideological purity from the North Korean youth. With a stronger emphasis on communism, North Korea offers a critical review of its past open-door, reform-oriented policies that fueled the growth of the country’s private economy and the economic units and organizations earning foreign currency through private business activities.
North Korea’s official discourse presents “our state-first,” “people-first,” “self-reliance-first,” and “ideology first” as guiding principles, or a “practical ideology” that will underpin the Kim regime’s efforts to draw up a long-term vision. The regime has strived to give the impression that Kim Jong-un inherits his predecessors’ ideas and theories by stressing that his practical ideological line has deep roots in “Kim Il-sung-ism” and “Kim Jong-il-ism” named after the two leaders. Kim Jong-un unveiled Pyongyang’s mid-term goals across three policy areas at the 8th Party Congress, and to depict Kim as a figure carrying on his grandfather’s legacy, his regime is keen on highlighting the similarity between Kim Jong-un’s mid-term goals and the three principles of the Juche ideology formally suggested in the Kim Il-sung era. As announced at the Congress, Kim Jong-un’s stated foreign policy goal is achieving political autonomy in the era of a new Cold War. In the military domain, his goal is to bolster self-defense capabilities by completing nuclear buildup. His economic goal is to achieve a high level of economic self-sufficiency through the domestic production of raw materials and tighter cabinet control over the economy.
Ⅲ. Key Characteristics
The Workers’ Party of Korea revised its rules at the 8th Party Congress to hold the congress every five years. This five-year interval was chosen to normalize the “party-state” system, and most of the plans announced at the 8th Party Congress cover the time periods of five, ten, and even fifteen years. Among many plans articulated at the 8th Party Congress, the most high-profile ones are an updated five-year plan for national economic development; a five-year plan for the development of the defense science and the weapons system; and a five-year plan to build 50,000 apartments in Pyongyang. These plans identify detailed tasks to be completed by 2025, the year in which the next round of party congress will be held according to the revised party rule.
On top of proposing a series of five-year plans, Pyongyang has proposed a long-term roadmap that spans more than 15 years into the future. 15 years appears to be a rough estimate of the time needed for North Korea’s nationwide SOC projects – which normally require years of investments to be completed - to reach the country’s remote rural areas. Based on this timetable, the North aims to complete the nationwide expansion of its SOC projects before the 11th Party Congress which is expected to be convened in the mid-2030s.
Nevertheless, despite its latest efforts at clarifying the country’s policy direction, the North Korean regime does not say exactly when and how it will materialize its long-term plans that cover 15 years or more. Given this lack of clarity, it is reasonable to assume that the narratives around these long-term projects are in fact just a long list of goals the regime finds hard to achieve within a short time frame, but will likely consider pursuing in the distant future after successfully implementing its mid-term plans on a five-year interval over the course of the next 10 to 20 years. After all, Pyongyang’s long-term vision designed to span the next 30 years seems to be in line with its attempt to rationalize the current methodology under the assumption that the situation and predicaments facing the regime will remain the same.
However, this could also be indicative of the Pyongyang regime’s internal perception that such vision will likely be instrumental only for the time being. In other words, the Pyongyang regime seems to be certain that its mid-term strategic plan will be effective in addressing the critical developments anticipated by 2025. However, the regime also seems to be unsure as to whether the current situation surrounding North Korea will last for more than 15 years.
As the major terms used in North Korea’s discourse and policy documents indicate, one of the most striking characteristics of Pyongyang’s moves in 2022 is a clear similarity between the Kim regime’s policy and the CPC’s core policy line. Since this trend coincides with the North’s frequent mention of the so-called “socialist common identity” in its diplomatic discourse on China, it appears that Pyongyang is intent on showing off such similarity. A series of similarities between the two countries seem to stem from their long-term visions fundamentally different from those of capitalist economies that have achieved economic growth operating in the liberal international order. However, it could also be Pyongyang’s strategic maneuver designed to highlight such similarities by borrowing the CPC’s terms. In other words, the adoption of Chinese terms appears to be Pyongyang’s rhetoric aimed at strengthening its ties with Beijing in the face of the blocization of values between liberalism and counter-liberalism in the era of a new Cold War.
What’s mentioned above has specific implications for the Kim regime’s ability to steer state affairs. It appears that Kim Jong-un imitates or borrows Chinese concepts or his predecessors’ discourse as there is a limit to his regime’s ability to draw up an elaborate long-term vision for North Korea’s future path. It is undeniable that the Pyongyang regime’s efforts to conceptualize its ideology after Kim Jong-un’s ascension to power have faltered as his regime lacks the ability to sharpen the regime’s ideology with detailed and elaborate aspects compared to the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il regimes. Accordingly, the formulation of North Korea’s long-term vision in the Kim Jong-un era seems to be fraught with problems stemming from its habit of borrowing Chinese concepts or reviving past discourse from the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il eras without prudence, culminating in a flawed long-term vision for the country.
Ⅳ. Outlook and Implications
The Kim Jong-un regime’s reiteration of the country’s mid-to-long-term vision has much to do with its perception of the global political upheaval triggered mostly by the Russo-Ukranian War in 2022 and a series of policies made in the wake of the fluctuating situation. In the run-up to the Hanoi Summit in 2018, North Korea’s state media underscored the Kim Jong-un regime’s “creative and path-breaking” moves that depart from the traditional framework of “imperialism versus anti-imperialism,” using the phrase “bold diplomacy shaking the planet” going beyond that fault line. However, the collapse of the Hanoi summit in 2019 restored the framework of “the anti-U.S. bloc unite
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