What now for North Korea?
29/05/2009 3:29 pm
North Korea has a Christian past, but what of its future?
Modern Korean history is complicated by the way in which world superpowers have tremendously influenced the region. Powerful nations such as China, Japan, the Soviet Union and the US have had huge stakes in the area, and the two Koreas have been likened to a reed, tossed to and fro by forces greater than themselves.
Christian History
Christianity in Korea has made a positive historical impact. Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), was once known as the Jerusalem of the East. It became the centre of a vibrant Christianity, with many Christian schools, hospitals and social welfare programmes set up as a result.
The Korean church entered a new era when the Japanese annexed the nation in 1910. In order to gain the support of the church, the Japanese government was at first positive in its policy toward Christianity.
However, this gradually developed into a policy of oppression and hostility once Korea’s church became associated with the Independence Movement in 1919. (More than half of the signatories of the Independence Movement were believers.) The prominence of Christians among those brutally persecuted produced a strong link between Christianity and Korean nationalism.
Economic Impact
In 2004 it set up, in co-operation with the South Korean government, the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a place where medium-size businesses from the South established factories that used inexpensive North Korean labour.
This was originally a great success, but in May 2009 the DPRK cancelled agreements with the Seoul government and said that if they couldn’t accept this, the businesses should leave.
Some 38,000 North Koreans work at this complex, their income helping 150,000 people – which includes workers and their families. If businesses from the South do leave, this will have a very negative influence both on the North and on South/North relations.
Religion in DPRK
Although North Korea states that ‘the DPRK is a multi-confessional society with sizable Christian and Buddhist populations’, and that ‘all citizens of the DPRK enjoy full religious freedom under the Socialist Constitution’, the reality is somewhat different.
Because the DPRK is suspicious of any group that claims allegiance to any other leader than Kim Il Sung (1912-1974) and his successor, Kim Jong Il, Christians are not free to openly profess faith in Christ. As the underground church in North Korea grows, so it faces persecution.
Occupation and the 35th Paralell
In World War Two, the Allied forces declared war on the Japanese. Afraid that Soviet troops would occupy the whole Korean peninsula, the Americans proposed that the US and the Soviets divide Korea into two occupation zones. The 38th parallel was arbitrarily set as the boundary.
As the war came to a close, the Japanese handed over their authority in Korea to selected Koreans, who formed the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence. Empathising with some of the reforms of the CPKI, the Soviets chose not to intervene with the new government.
The Americans, however, refused to recognise the new government, and replaced it with the United States Army Military Government in Korea. America turned to the UN, asking it to supervise elections in Korea. The Soviet Union objected and refused entry to the UN commissioners into the North, so elections were held only in the South.
This led to the creation of two separate countries on the peninsula. On 15 August 1948, the Republic of Korea (ROK) was established in the South, with Syngman Rhee as its head. On 25 August 1948, elections were held in the North, and Kim Il Sung established the DPRK. By 1949, both the Soviet and the American armies had pulled out of their respective zones and the stage was set for civil war.
The Korean War of 1950-1953 – the scars of which have never been completely healed – is remembered by North Koreans as the war in which the US repeatedly bombed the North, leading to tensions which exist even today.
Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il
In the 1950s, Kim Il Sung moved toward self-reliance or ‘Juche’ and made himself ruler, ridding the country of opposition and consolidating his power by the mid-1960s. Kim’s emphasis until the 1970s on heavy industry and collective farming propelled the economy to success. During this period, the DPRK was better off economically than the ROK.
However, by the time Kim died in 1994, the country was in crisis – the severe food shortage of the late 1990s leading to some three million North Koreans dying of starvation. In addition to this, industrial output had by then declined by more than four per cent a year, causing widespread economic problems.
The DPRK refers to Kim Il Sung as the Great Leader. According to the constitution, he is the country’s Eternal President. North Koreans not only respect but admire and revere him. For them, Kim Il Sung remains the father of the nation. He not only provides everything the people need, but his ideas shape the country’s philosophical and political thinking.
The Great Leader’s son, Kim Jong Il, finally became the official head of North Korea in 1997. With the family’s dynasty now firmly established, the person who succeeds the 68-year-old Kim Jong Il will have to be a blood-relation, though which of his sons or relatives will become leader when he dies is as yet unclear.
Food and Disasters
Natural disasters, including floods in the 1990s and droughts in 1996, 2000 and 2001, led to failed crops and the loss of agricultural land. Things improved somewhat in the early 2000s when the DPRK received much food aid from South Korea, which was following a ‘sunshine policy’ with the North.
In 2008 this ended, when new ROK President Lee Myung Bak stopped the policy of giving free handouts without receiving concessions of any kind from the North. Then, in March 2009 the DPRK, which had also been receiving food from the US, abruptly stopped accepting this – leaving the people of North Korea hungry.
Reunification and the Nuclear threat
North Koreans believe that it is the American forces, in the name of the UN, which frustrate reunification. As long as the DPRK sees the US as a threat to reunification, it will probably view nuclear build-up as the only effective deterrent against America.
Indeed, as long as North Korea remains afraid of the US attacking it with nuclear weaponry, it’s unlikely it will ever denuclearise. This means, however, that despite North Korea desperately needing aid from other countries, the issue of its nuclear weapons programme will leave many nations unwilling to help.
Although some see the reunification of Germany as a model for what might happen with Korea, Germany never suffered through civil war. As long as the old guard of North Korea, who remember the atrocities of the Korean War, remain at the helm, the chance of peaceful reunification remains small.
Neither the DPRK nor the ROK wants to align itself to the political ideology of the other. Although officially the government in the South wants to help North Korea and work towards reunification, it knows that reunification will be financially costly.
While some young people would be happy to reunify on the North’s terms, others in the South are concerned about the ideology of the North. The majority, however, enjoy their prosperous lifestyle in the ROK and are not interested in giving it up for the sake of reunification.
Only a new generation of leaders in the DPRK and ROK will be open to coming together in a compromise or to the ideology of the other.
Pray for North Korea’s future; that the government will open the nation up to the rest of the world and that, in return, the world will give North Korea a fair chance.
Useful website:
www.english.chosun.com