In anticipation of the new Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which will take place in 2016 for the first time in over 30 years, we hear a lot of assumptions as to why Kim Jong-un needs this Congress and what is expected. We will present our forecast, while also explaining how all forecasts are made, especially in a situation of scarce information: there are no actual data on the domestic dealings of the Pyongyang elite, and therefore any discussions as to the “confrontation between the inner circle and military technocrats” are in fact speculative.
First, we would like to note that a serious analyst very rarely says that the event will or will not definitely take place – we deal with probabilities and try to predict a summarized vector, which is affected by a variety of factors, so any forecast for the future implies the probability that another trend will accrue, which, in turn, may or may not relate to His Majesty Chance.
Second, when a political analyst is faced with a very wide range of probabilities and has no further means of predicting the course of events, he/she takes the path of least resistance, using the “three scenarios” method. After all, for any situation, three versions of events can be pseudo-scientifically forecasted. One direction (say, positive), the opposite direction (say, negative), or no dramatic changes. In this case, there is a good probability that one of the forecasts will come true, and the analyst will be able to say,
“I told you so!” But a good analyst is able, in some cases, to give an honest and qualitative answer “I do not have enough data” and not engage into idle chatter and pulling theories out of thin air. “I know that I know nothing (but am monitoring the situation closely and waiting for developments).”
Therefore we will step away from the practice of idle chatter and instead try to reconstruct the facts, based on which forecasts can be made and the nature of forecasts identified.
Now back to business. The Party Congress differs from the Party Conference in that the former has a mandatory program, which lays the groundwork for a certain intrigue. The Party Congress should normally adopt program documents (the charter and the program itself; they may vary slightly, but at least they should be re-confirmed), and elect or re-elect the party leadership.
Some elements of the Congress can be accurately predicted. For example, that changes will be made to the charter, and that they will be linked with the fact that besides the eternal President Kim Il-sung there is the eternal General Secretary Kim Jong-il. It holds true de facto, but the program documents have to be amended via the congress, because, although the main post of Kim Jong-un is “the head of the State Defense Committee,” in the party hierarchy he is not a general secretary, but the first secretary.
In addition, certain personnel changes are expected. A lot of the party senior members have died or are very old and unlikely to fulfil their duties from a physical point of view. These people will probably be replaced. New people will be found. The intrigue is most likely in the new structure, whether it will be a moderate update, an 80-year-old replaced with a 60-year-old, or the onset of younger people, although not necessarily as young as Kim Jong-un.
During the enthronement of Kim Jong-il, there were the so-called “groups of three revolutions,” in which talented young people of the young Kim’s age had their break-in period in the party. The graduates of this group later became his support. However, Kim Jong-il was being introduced into the power for almost 30 years. The current leader did not have that much time, but we can see that, although some Western political analysts expected the 30-year old to be rather a ceremonial ruler fulfilling the will power of the elders, Kim has dealt with those more or less resolutely.
But the question is still there of how many young party workers focused personally on the young Kim there are. It is not clear, whether a special party enrolment was declared.
As for the changes to the program, it is obvious that they are long overdue. Of course, a document has to be created to describe the current view of the WPK and the DPRK in the world that changed since 1980. But there are two points of view here, which can be called bold and cautious.
Supporters of the bold interpretation believe that Kim Jong-un will proclaim a fundamentally new course during the Congress, which will be to a greater extent different from the course of his father and grandfather. The degree of such difference is usually determined by a political analyst’s fantasies and his/her political or ideological backgrounds, but usually implies that Kim will openly talk about reforms in the Chinese or Vietnamese style or come up with a constructive cooperation program with South Korea.
The following prerequisite is the base for such bold interpretations. Kim Jong-il could take more time for reforms, realizing that there was enough stability for his reign, but if the young Kim intends to rule the DPRK for the next thirty years, he is forced to change something before the situation gets out of control. Such specialists believe that “the top priority of the North Korean policy is to maintain the regime,” therefore this regime can actively change, just to stay afloat. Some analysts even expect that Kim will announce the readiness to cut the nuclear program, while keeping in mind the history of South Africa, where the regime had abandoned further nuclear development, when it became clear that the power of the white minority would collapse in the nearest future.
Supporters of careful interpretation point out that any head of the state is not fully autocratic. The actions of any leader of a country are similar to skiing down the slopes. He can perform various somersaults, but moving up the hill or sideways is not realistic. North Korea as a pretty tough ideocracy imposes additional restrictions. The grandson of Kim Il-sung and son of Kim Jong-il (and this is a very important part of his legitimacy) cannot do anything, that, in one way or another, would obscure or undermine the authority of those great rulers. This means that Russian or Chinese components of reforms, when the previous head of the country (Stalin or Mao) was accused of heresy, following which a return to basics was declared, are not available for him. Even the repressed Jang Sung-taek cannot be regarded as villain #1, although it is possible that he will be kept accountable for some of the current problems, and given the scale of his power and corruption, there will not be much exaggeration here.
We must also remember that Kim Jong-un takes his role as leader of the country very seriously. This makes him different from a comic-strip dictator, whose power is not responsibility, but the ability to enjoy his life. This means that a dictator, who puts his personal well-being first, always has the option to escape with the loot in a critical situation and keep a low profile somewhere far away from the new government, but Kim Jong-un does not have such an alternative. It also means that he must understand the situation well and exclude a possible future scenario, in which the reforms might cause processes out of his control. The young Kim understands the foreign policy context well enough, and can learn the lessons of both the former Soviet Union states, and “Arab Spring.”
Therefore, radical action should not be expected. Perhaps what has long existed de facto will be made official de jure. Probably they will come up with new names to explain the existing trends. But any declarative change of the course is very unlikely.
It will be possible to comment on that more specifically during the first few days of January, after the DPRK central newspapers publish the New Year’s speech by Kim Jong-un. It has become a tradition, and the speech by the leader of North Korea outlines the vision of the nearest future for the coming year and sets some objectives. Comparing this speech with the previous ones, analyzing the rhetoric, linguistic features, we can make a forecast for the coming Congress with greater probability.
Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D, Chief Research Fellow of the Center for Korean Studies, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.
