North Korea - Songbun
In North Korea, children inherit their parents’ status. In other words, children of criminals are also criminals. A system of perpetual discrimination on the ground of birth, akin to a caste-based system, has emerged in the DPRK. From 1958 to the late 1960s, North Korea classified all residents into three different groups: a loyal “core class,” a neutral “wavering class” and a politically unreliable “hostile class”. Residents were further divided into 51 subcategories. The categorization was based on one’s family’s activities during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea and the Korean War.
Perhaps the only touch of humor in this otherwise deadly business of ranking people according to Jangblln is the party's terminology for the chosen versus the unchosen—the "tomatoes" versus the "grapes." "Tomatoes." which are completely red to the core are considered worthy Communists; “apples" which are red only on the surface, are considered to need ideological improvement: and the "grapes" are considered hopeless.
Capitalizing on the traditional stratification of society, the North Korean Communists have aggressively reclassified a whole society according to their own criteria. Just as traditional Korean society was broken into four main classes (nobility, privileged peasantry, and slave or outcast), contemporary Communist society has developed along similar lines. The difference is that Kim stood the traditional order on its head.
During the Choson Dynasty, four distinct Confucian-based social strata developed: the scholar-officials (or nobility), the “middle people” (technicians and administrators subordinate to the scholar-officials), the commoners (a large group comprising about 75 percent of the total population, including farmers, craftsmen, and merchants), and the “despised” or base people at the bottom of society. To ensure stability, the government devised a system of personal tallies kept by the scholar-officials to identify people according to their status.
Kim Il Sung borrowed heavily from this Confucian system but upset the social hierarchy in a radical remaking of society, more in keeping with communist teachings and his personal experience as a guerrilla fighter. Because the only “good” people in the pre-1945 period, in Kim’s view, were factory workers, laborers, and farmers, they and their descendants were accorded privileged status.
The highest distinction went to the anti-Japanese guerrillas who had fought with him in Northeast China (Manchuria) prior to and during World War II, and then to veterans of the Korean War and their descendants. Next came the descendants of the pre-revolutionary working people and the poor, small farmers.
The regime also recognized the essential roles of intellectuals and professional workers in society. The symbolism of this is seen in the KWP’s insignia, which depicts a pen in the middle of the traditional socialist hammer and sickle to emphasize the relationship among the physical labor of workers and farmers and intellectual activities of the well educated. Kim realized that an educated population and skilled technicians were needed to rebuild the industrial bases that had been established in North Korea during the Japanese colonial period and destroyed during the Korean War. However, the knowledgeable people Kim favored were not the precommunist period literati but rather educated technologists who were useful to reconstruction and who were completely trustworthy and loyal to the regime. Education in the new Korea was supposed to remove the distinctions between intellectuals and the working class.
Two criteria determine status in North Korean society: songbun or class background and within the Songbun category, loyalty to the cult of Kim ll-song. An individual’s songbun is either good or bad, with various gradations within the two. In the Communist view the only "good" people in Korea in 1945 were factory workers, laborers, poor farmers, and those engaged in revolutionary struggle against the Japanese: these people and their descendants are the privileged class of today. Highest distinction goes to the anti-Japanese guerrillas who fought with Kim ll-song. Next are the veterans of the Korean war and finally the descendants of the pre-revolutionary workers and the poor small farmers. Together, these favored groups constitute some 30 percent of the population; the uppermost level, the ruling elite, is no more than 1 percent of the population.
Ranked below them in descending order — in what must be the most class-differentiated society in the world today — are some 47 distinct groups generally divided into those with acceptable songbun and those without.
Generally, North Korea‘s population can be broken down into three main groups. The preferred class (elite and privileged) is given every advantage. and with hard work its members can rise to the top. The middle 40 percent of the population—the ordinary people—hope for a lucky break, such as a good assignment in the military. that will bring them to the attention of party cadre and get them a better iob' they have no hope of a college education or a professional career. although membership in the party is still possible.
The bottom 30 percent of the population are undesireables - all doors to advancement — the Army and higher education — are closed to them. They can expect little except assignment to a collective farm. a factory. a mine. or doing menial labor in a city other than P'yongyang. are treated like pariahs.
The top of the class is occupied by the “Baekdu bloodline,” the three-generation linage of the ruling Kim dynasty from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il and on to Kim Jong-un. The core group also has the so-called “Baekdu stem” or descendants of those who fought as partisan guerillas or as soldiers in the Korean War. They are mostly high-ranking officials of the government and the party.
The privileged class holds power and lives in wealth and honor. Its members are entitled to various benefits, including the right to enter the prestigious Kim Il-sung University. Former leader Kim Jong-il, his sister Kim Kyong-hui and the current leader’s sister Kim Yo-jong all studied at the university. The core class includes the ruling Kim family, descendants of peasant families during the Japanese colonial occupation. Anti-Japanese resistance fighters and families of soldiers who participated in the Korean War are also part of the highest caste level.
Together, they comprise the ruling class of the North Korean regime. The elite core class accounts for roughly 30 percent of the population and enjoys privileges in food rationing, housing, employment and education. Members hold on to their status and pass it down to their children, unless some grave crime is committed.
The next group down, the wavering class, makes up about 50 percent of the population. It consists of small-scale merchants, office workers and laborers. The bottom group or hostile class is reserved for those who have been branded as traitors or so-called “rebellious elements.”
The hostile class, also known as the complex group, includes capitalists, landlords, religious people and political prisoners. Their status was decided before and after the Korean War, and some 93-thousand ethnic Koreans from Japan were later added to this group. Members of the hostile class cannot join the military, since the party suspects they would take up arms against the regime.
North Korea’s lowest caste level, the hostile class, is blocked from engaging in normal social activities. These people cannot enter the Workers’ Party, no matter how smart or talented they are, and they can’t serve in the military. They are driven to difficult, labor-intensive work shunned by most other people, such as farming or mining. Of course, it is hard to marry and have a family in this low caste level.
Party cadre and security officials keep detailed records on everyone. documenting the degree of goodness and badness. in the late l940s and during the period immediately after the Korean war sangbun records were rather spotty and people were able to conceal the fact that their father 0- uncle or grandfather had been a landowner, doctor, christian minister, merchant, or lawyer. In the late 1960s, however, the regime began a series of exhaustive secret investigations. Since then the public security apparatus has periodically conducted additional investigations to the point where everyone now has been repeatedly checked. Records today are extremely accurate and complete.
Everyone in North Korea seems to have a fairly good idea of what their Songbun is, although official notice is never given. At every important juncture in life its effects are obvious: admission or nonadmission to high school or college, entry or nonentry into the Army admission or nonadmission to the party, approval or nonapproval for marriage, assignment to a job, or transfer into or out of the city or a collective farm.
Songbun appears also to be an important factor when considering the punishment for a criminal offense. When someone with higher songbun commits the same crime as someone with lower songbun, the one with the higher songbun will get the lighter punishment. When someone is sent to a detention centre by a security agency, what will be assessed first is the person’s family tree and background. If the individual comes from the core class (i.e. has higher songbun), then, regardless of the crime, the individual will be treated relatively well on the assumption that the individual had no intention of betraying the country. If the individual comes from a lower songbun, then the person is assumed to be “built” to do bad things, and will receive a harsher punishment. Just how good or how bad a person is viewed becomes clearer over time, with the more subtle changes in a career.
Those who had lived privleged lives in Pyongyang had been disturbed by the system‘s injustices. They resented those with better songbun being excused from volunteer labor on collective farms while they had to work 18-hour days. seven days a week. fer three or four weeks during the rice transplanting season: they resented others being able to vacation at government rest homes while they had not had a vacation in years; they resented those with superior soizgbuzi being given the honor of graduating first in their class, although others might have had better grades; and they resented those with good songbun being given choice assignments over better qualified candidates.
Besides fostering resentments of this type, the songbun system has crippled incentive, ambition, and hard work. The privileged have a feeling of guaranteed success in life, whether they work hard or not: the nonprivileged have a sense of futility that eventually kills any incentive to work hard and do well.
If the songbun system is as important to upward mobility as current information suggests, it will be a major impediment to economic progress. The govern ment seems to have begun to recognize this problem in recent years, particularly in trying to motivate that middle 40 percent of the population from which the regime draws most of the working force and the majority of the armed forces. While offering no hohe for change in social status, it has begun to offer some material incentives to increase productivity and to sustain a higher level of worker commitment and output.
The regime has done little, if anything, to motivate the bottom third of the population. Lacking any hope of significant advancement, people with bad songbun tend to act the way the party describes them: lazy. mistrustful, and sometimes obstructionist — in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy; many have been relocated to remote areas.
In denying social advancement to such a large segment of the population, the regime has created a situation in which people have good reason to be dissatisfied with their lot in life. They can hope for nothing more for their children than what they have received; and although there is some chance for improving their material standard of living, there is no way for them or their children to move up the social ladder, to obtain a higher education, to choose their own job or place of residence, or even to marry outside their class.
The potential for opposition from those so openly discriminated against is difficult to assess, but it clearly has been one of the reasons for the regime‘s preoccupation with “anti-reonlutionary sentiments." Propaganda constantiy decries elements hostile to the regime's programs and projects a level of security consciousness excessive even in such a controlled environment. Reports of anti-regime activity that occasionally reach the outside world suggest the regime‘s concern is warranted.
In this respect, the society that Kim created represents a significant break from traditional Korean society, where the privileged class, the scholar-officials, were a meritocratic elite who gained their positions through educational achievement. Talent was a necessary, although not always a sufficient, prerequisite for getting into the core elite. Influential family connections also helped to obtain high official positions but not to the same extent as in contemporary North Korea.
It would seem that the system breeds discontent at all levels, except perhaps at the very highest level. Competent people constantly find themselves working for people who are their inferiors in knowledge and intelligence. They see incompetent people, trusted by the party because of their good songbun, getting ahead while the more competent are blocked from advancement on account of their songbun. People may be secretly admired for their own worth despite their lower status in life, but being held in good repute by others is no substitute for being deemed politically reliable by the party.
Workers with a good family background neglect their work but are still promoted while workers with a poor family background do not work hard because there is no hope for promotion. Thus, among its other evils, the songbun system is, by its very nature, antithetical to the industrialization process, which prospers when people are promoted on the basis of merit, rather than class background or ideology. The ever-widening economic disparity between North Korea and South Korea would seem to bear this out.
But there are cracks appearing in the caste system. The rise of market forces has provided new opportunities to the people of North Korea. North Korea’s socialist economy began to collapse after severe famine and economic hardships in the mid to late 1990s. As a result, markets gave rise to a new class of wealthy but politically uninfluential individuals. These days, the US dollar and the Chinese yuan have become more powerful than the local currency in the North. In this sense, social status is being reorganized.
Markets have flourished in border areas such as Sinuiju and Chongjin. Many high earners there are from the lowest caste level, the hostile class, including ethnic Koreans from Japan. They probably learned business skills from their parents or channeled their grievances at the system into money making endeavors.
Whatever the reasons, rich individuals are elevating their status. They can be admitted to Kim Il-sung University if they donate somewhere between 30 to 50-thousand dollars. In this way, a growing number of North Korea’s newly rich are making efforts to achieve better academic and social recognition. It’s no exaggeration to say that the previously fixed social ladder in North Korea has begun to crumble.
In line with increasing individual economic activities since the 2000s, North Korea has seen some upward mobility. However, North Korea’s status system continues to create a highly regimented society. It remains to be seen how much longer this can be sustained as new money and information flow into the country.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
