Don't Believe Everything You Hear About North Korea
by Joe Pulcinella
Communism is crumbling in Korea according to the Asia Times.
The control on daily lives was lost anyway. What we have seen in North Korea over the past 10 years can be best described as collapse of what used to be rigid Stalinism from below. In the Soviet Union of the late 1950s and in China of the late 1970s, Stalinism-Maoism was dismantled from above, through a chain of deliberate reforms planned and implemented by the government. In North Korea the same thing happened, but the system disintegrated from below, despite weak and ineffectual attempts to keep it intact.
I am no expert and I am not saying that North Korea is a bastion of liberty but you've got to take it with a grain of salt when FoxNews paints a picture reminiscent of heavy-duty Stalinism. As with China, market forces make a return to communism very difficult as even the state operatives themselves see benefit in the participation in markets.
The growth of new markets also undermined some pillars of old North Korean hierarchy. Of course, many people who became affluent in the new system came from the old hierarchy - as was the case in most post-communist countries. Officials or managers of state-run enterprises found manifold ways to make an extra won. These managers often sold their factories' products on the market. But many hitherto discriminated-against groups managed to rise to prominence during this decade. The access to foreign currency was very important, and in North Korea there were three major groups who had access to some investment capital: the Japanese-Koreans, Chinese-Koreans and Korean-Chinese.
At any rate, it would seem that North Korea has no incentive to rattle sabers unless in response to undue pressure from Washington.