Political Change in North Korea - Mapping the Succession
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STEPHAN HAGGARD, LUKE HERMAN, AND JAESUNG RYU
Political Change in North Korea
Mapping the Succession
ABSTRACT
During the succession from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un, North Korea witnessed
a revival of party institutions. However, the most distinctive feature of the transition
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was a succession of purges that replaced powerful figures from the Kim Jong Il era
with new loyalists. The system remains personalist, but with strong reliance on the
military and security apparatus.
K E Y W O R D S : North Korea, succession, authoritarianism, military, personalism
T HE FORMAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK or North Korea) parallel those in other communist systems, for
example, in the existence of a legislature (the Supreme People’s Assembly,
SPA) and a hierarchy of party institutions (Party Congress, Central Com-
mittee, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, as well as a party Secre-
tariat).1 However, North Korea’s political system is distinctive both in the
familial nature of political rule and the extraordinary concentration of power
in the hands of the leader. At the time of his death in 2011, Kim Jong Il was
concurrently General Secretary of the Korea Workers Party (KWP), a mem-
ber of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, Chairman of the National
S TEPHAN H AGGARD is the Krause Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of International
Relations, University of California, San Diego. He is the author with Marcus Noland of Famine in
North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (2007) and Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North
Korea (2011). L UKE H ERMAN is a domain expert on the public sector team at Dataminr in New York.
J AESUNG R YU is a research fellow and program officer at the East Asia Institute in Seoul. The authors
thank Aidan Foster-Carter, Michael Madden, Eddy Malesky, Patrick McEachern, Marcus Noland,
Dan Pinkston, and Susan Shirk for comments on earlier drafts. Emails: ,
, .
1. Names of North Korean institutions in this paper follow the English translation used by the
South Korean Ministry of Unification (MOU). Names of North Korean individuals follow the usage
of the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), the source for all data in the paper.
Asian Survey, Vol. 54, Number 4, pp. 773–800. ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. © 2014
by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/AS.2014.54.4.773.
773774 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
Defense Commission (NDC), and Chairman of the Central Military Com-
mission (CMC). Moreover, he was Supreme Commander of the Korean
People’s Army (KPA) with a military rank of Marshal of the DPRK. In
contrast to other communist systems,2 many of North Korea’s formal polit-
ical institutions did not really function or even convene. Rather, power was
exercised through informal networks centered on the leader.
Successions in such familial and personalist systems pose substantial polit-
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ical challenges for both incumbents and their successors.3 In the absence of
clear institutional arrangements for leadership change, how can incumbents
guarantee that their chosen candidate will prevail?
The short answer is that they cannot. New leaders must construct their
own bases of support, a coalition that will forgo challenges in return for some
quid pro quo in the form of policy, rents, or office.4 This observation has
sparked a new literature on the institutions of authoritarian rule that looks at
how controlled elections, legislatures, and parties can lock in support for
incumbent rulers and ‘‘coup-proof’’ the regime by deterring challenges. Such
arrangements have been called ‘‘power-sharing’’ agreements, as they are
assumed to credibly commit the leader to restraint vis-à-vis his followers.5
A Communist succession example would be the shift to a more encompass-
ing, institutionalized collective rule following Stalin’s death in the Soviet
Union.
But these arrangements come at the dilution of the ruler’s discretion and
do not capture fundamental features of personalist regimes. Alternatively,
personalist successors can create altogether new institutions, strengthen existing
ones that the new leader controls, or rely on informal, imperial court-like
2. Edmund Malesky, Regina Abrami, and Yu Zheng, ‘‘Institutions and Inequality in Single-Party
Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam and China,’’ Comparative Politics 43:4 (July 2011),
pp. 409–27.
3. Barbara Geddes, ‘‘Authoritarian Breakdown,’’ unpublished manuscript, Department of Political
Science, University of California, Los Angeles, 2004; Jason Brownlee, ‘‘Hereditary Succession in
Modern Autocracies,’’ World Politics 59:4 (October 2007), pp. 595–628.
4. Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, ‘‘Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of
Autocrats,’’ Comparative Political Studies 40:11 (November 2007), pp. 1279–1301.
5. Ibid.; Beatriz Magaloni and Ruth Kricheli, ‘‘Political Order and One-Party Rule,’’ Annual
Review of Political Science 13 (June 2010), pp. 123–43; Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian
Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Carles Boix and Milan Svolik, ‘‘The Founda-
tions of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions, Commitment, and Power Sharing in
Dictatorships,’’ Journal of Politics 75:2 (April 2013), pp. 300–16.HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 775
arrangements of trusted aides.6 These changes involve not simply the
accommodation of incumbents, but purges of them as well, and the
appointment and promotion of new loyalists. These arrangements might
also be understood as a form of power-sharing, and they do accommodate
certain corporate groups; we show that the Kim Jong Un regime remains
heavily dependent on the party, military, and security apparatus. But our
findings also suggest the fluidity of institutions in personalist regimes.
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Rather than institutions accommodating powerful stakeholders, they are
rather designed to assure the weakness, fragmentation, and insecurity of
followers.
We now have a number of detailed accounts of the hereditary succession
from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il.7 A central theme of these accounts is the
extended period of time during which Kim Jong Il was groomed for the
ultimate assumption of power at the time of his father’s death in July
1994.8 The succession from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un was much more
compressed and ad hoc, gaining momentum only after Kim Jong Il’s stroke
in August 2008. Kim Jong Un was not even identified as the likely successor
until early 2009. When Kim Jong Il died suddenly on December 17, 2011,
there were serious doubts about whether Kim Jong Un had adequate author-
ity to assume the country’s leadership.
These doubts were quickly laid to rest. While Kim Jong Il waited nearly
three years—a designated mourning period—to formally take on most of his
official titles, Kim Jong Un was named Supreme Leader of the country and
Supreme Commander of the armed forces less than a week after Kim Jong Il’s
6. On the last of these options, see Roger B. Myerson, ‘‘The Autocrat’s Credibility Problem and
Foundations of the Constitutional State,’’ American Political Science Review 102:1 (February 2008),
pp. 125–39.
7. Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim
Dynasty (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006); Jae Cheon Lim, Kim Jong-Il’s Leadership of North
Korea (New York: Routledge, 2009); Kenneth E. Gause, North Korea under Kim Chong-Il: Power,
Politics, and Prospects for Change (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger Security International, 2011). On the
succession from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un, see Jae Cheon Lim, ‘‘North Korea’s Hereditary
Succession,’’ Asian Survey 52:3 (March 2012), pp. 550–70.
8. Kim Jong Il served as head of the party’s Organization and Guidance Department before
ascending to membership in the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee. He also served as vice
chairman and then chairman of the NDC before ascending to Supreme Commander of the Korean
People’s Army, positions that gave him control over key military appointments. Even before his
father’s death in 1994, Kim controlled major centers of power and may even have been de facto ruler
of North Korea.776 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
death. He subsequently assumed all of the formal positions his father had
held at the Fourth Party Conference and SPA meeting in April 2012.9
In this article, we map the succession by examining how both the outgoing
and incoming leadership built support for the transition, and the implications
of these strategies for the nature of the new regime. In the first section, we
track the membership in three core political institutions—the NDC, the
Politburo, and the Secretariat—from the beginning of the Kim Jong Il era
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through mid-2013, the first year and a half of the Kim Jong Un era. We find
that as the succession process went into high gear after 2008, institutions were
revitalized and expanded to provide support for the new leadership in what
appeared an almost textbook example of power-sharing. The main benefi-
ciary of this expansion appeared to be the military.
In the second section, we look more closely at personnel changes in the
NDC and Politburo and among the top military and security personnel.
While the military’s overall representation did increase in both absolute and
relative terms, it did so in the context of significant purges and reassignment
of high-ranking military personnel that continued and even accelerated fol-
lowing the death of Kim Jong Il. Moreover, many of the ‘‘military’’ personnel
who benefitted from the transition were in fact civilians who had only
recently been promoted into the general ranks. These developments suggest
that both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un recognized potential challenges from
existing military and security elites and did seek to coup-proof the political
system. In contrast to the literature on authoritarian institutions, however,
this was accomplished not through power-sharing but through purges, the
appointment of new non-military loyalists, and the development of alto-
gether new lines of hierarchical control.
In the third section, we show that the succession was also accompanied by
the growth of an inner core of the elite holding ‘‘interlocking directorates’’ or
overlapping positions within formal institutions. We further explore the
composition of this informal power elite through an original dataset of both
formal elite rankings published by the regime and informal rankings based on
a compilation and analysis of all personnel who accompanied Kim Jong Il and
Kim Jong Un on their ‘‘on-the-spot guidance’’ (OSG) tours of North Korea
9. At the Party Conference, Kim Jong Un became first secretary (functionally equivalent to
general secretary), chairman of the CMC, and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. At
the SPA meeting, he became first chairman of the NDC (functionally equivalent to chairman). A few
months later in July, he also became a marshal of the DPRK.HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 777
from July 1994 through June 2013.10 The OSG data allow us to construct
continuous measures of informal elite status and to distinguish between elites
who have greater de facto proximity to the top leadership or are strategically
significant in the elite network from those who are more marginal, whatever
their official positions might be.
First, the analysis confirms that the number of individuals who are con-
sistently proximate to the leadership or show powerful network connections
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across groups is extremely small. Second, we find that Kim family members,
or those whose families were close to the Kim family, were more prominent
in informal than formal rankings under Kim Jong Il. Informal and formal
rankings under Kim Jong Un converged to some extent as close family
members and individuals with long-standing ties to the Kim dynasty such
as Jang Song Thaek, the husband of Kim Jong Il’s sister Kim Kyoung Hui,
and Choe Ryong Hae, widely seen as the regime’s second-most powerful
man, rose in stature. Both emerged as pivotal figures among the elite during
the succession period, holding positions that appeared to give them crucial
lines of control over the military and security apparatuses. However, the
dramatic arrest and execution of Jang Song Thaek in December 2013 and
the fall of Choe Ryong Hae in early 2014 showed how even family members
and close affiliates were not immune from the logic of personalist coup-
proofing through purges.
A final finding from our network analysis concerns the relationship
between the party and the military and whether there is an effort afoot under
Kim Jong Un to reassert party dominance. It is well-known that formal
rankings do not necessarily capture positions of power accurately; for exam-
ple, state officials tend to be overrepresented in official rankings when com-
pared to informal ones, playing roles as implementers of policy or holding
largely ceremonial posts. When we take into account the growing presence of
military officials with civilian backgrounds, the expansion of the role of the
military in informal rankings is also less pronounced. Some have argued that
these differences might be attributed to an effort to reassert civilian or party
control over a military and security apparatus that had grown in significance
10. From the first succession in 1994 through his death, Kim Jong Il undertook 2,131 OSG tours
accompanied by 233 people. From December 2011 to June 2013, when our analysis stops, Kim Jong
Un undertook 287 such appearances accompanied by 139 people. Our full dataset was derived from
the NKNews ‘‘NK Leadership Tracker,’’ available online at . All figures and table that follow are constructed by the authors from that data.778 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
under Kim Jong Il’s military-first politics.11 However, purges to date have not
been accompanied by a visible downsizing of the military or a substantial
diminution of officers’ representation among the power elite. These findings
suggest that despite the rotation of personnel, the new leadership remains
beholden to the military and security apparatus, which continued to play an
unusually prominent place in the North Korean political system when com-
pared with other Asian Communist systems. We conclude by considering the
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implications of these findings for the new literature on authoritarian institu-
tions, and for changes in the political system, the conduct of foreign policy,
and economic reform in North Korea.
MAPPING CHANGES IN THE CORE INSTITUTIONS
The emergence of personalism and the atrophy of formal institutions in
North Korea can be traced to purges of contending factions within the party
from the early 1950s through the mid-1960s.12 Following the 4th Party Con-
gress in 1961 (and the ad hoc Party Conference in 1966), only two more party
congresses were ever held under Kim Il Sung’s leadership (in 1970 and 1980).
Prior to the Central Committee Plenum convened in March 2013, the last
one had taken place in December 1993, just before the death of Kim Il Sung.
Following the purges, Kim Il Sung increasingly exercised power through
narrower, overlapping bodies that he chaired: the party’s Central Military
Commission (established in 1962 and elevated in 1982); the Political Com-
mittee (renamed the Politburo in 1980) and its Standing Committee; the
Secretariat (established in 1966); and a hybrid government-party body, the
Central People’s Committee (CPC), which was the central organ for day-to-
day management of the state.
Following his father’s death, Kim Jong Il did not immediately assume the
position of president or of General Secretary of the KWP. The Central
Committee remained moribund, and with the death of O Jin U in February
1995, Kim Jong Il became the sole member of the Standing Committee of the
11. Aidan Foster-Carter, ‘‘Party Time in Pyongyang,’’ 38 North, April 22, 2012, .
12. Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972), p. 611; Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung (New York: Columbia University Press,
1988), pp. 220–23; Andrei N. Lankov, Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 779
Politburo; this was clearly not a functioning institution! The SPA—the
formal government legislature—was not convened on schedule in 1995. Reg-
ular meetings did not resume until 1998, and when they did they were even
shorter and more perfunctory than they had been in the past, typically lasting
one or two days.
Kim Jong Il initially appeared to rule through ad hoc structures, or what
Bermudez has called ‘‘close-aide rule,’’ consisting of select members of the
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Politburo, the CMC, and the NDC.13 The party Secretariat also became
more important, because it included not only the functional departments
that oversaw the state apparatus but also powerful internal control bureaus,
particularly the Organization and Guidance and General Administration
Departments. The degraded cabinet, far removed from the centers of power,
was left to deal with the mounting economic catastrophe the country faced
during the ‘‘arduous march’’ of the great famine in the mid-1990s.14
Over time, the one body that did grow in formal significance was the
NDC. It began as a commission under Kim Il Sung’s CPC, a now-defunct
body tasked with formulating both domestic and foreign policy. The consti-
tutional revision of 1992 elevated the NDC’s status (Chapter 3, Articles
111–117), stipulating that the NDC was ‘‘the highest military leadership body
of state power’’ (Art. 111) and that its chairman ‘‘commands and directs all the
armed forces’’ (Art. 112). The strengthening of the NDC was a classic example
of personalism at work. It allowed Kim Jong Il to assume formal, indepen-
dent control over the military apparatus from his father, at the same time
allowing him to build a personal base of support through control over ap-
pointments both to the NDC itself and within the key ministries and other
institutions represented on it.
The CMC is an important grouping of high-ranking military personnel,
but because it concerns itself largely with military issues, we focus on devel-
opments in the three central political institutions at the top of the political
hierarchy: the Politburo (including standing, full, and alternate members);
the Secretariat; and the NDC. In Figure 1, we show the total number of
13. Joseph Bermudez, Jr., ‘‘Information and the DPRK’s Military and Power-Holding Elite,’’ in
North Korean Policy Elites, ed. Kongdan Oh (Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2004),
I-I to I-A-3.
14. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).780 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
figure 1. Total Membership in Core Institutions (%)
60
Secretariat
50
NDC
Politburo
40
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30
20
10
0
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
SOURCE : By authors.
members on each body from 1994 to 2013. Membership in each body for
a given year is as of December 31 of the year in question.
All of these bodies gradually shrank over the 2000s. While significant
turnover in membership occurred in 1997–98, after that point most of the
attrition through 2008 was age-related. These bodies became increasingly
gerontocratic, calling into serious question their deliberative significance.
During the succession, by contrast, all three core bodies expanded and aver-
age ages fell. In 1994, at the time of the first succession, the average age of the
three bodies was just over 68; by 2008 it peaked at nearly 80 in 2008—and
would have reached 82 were it not for deaths—before falling sharply to 73 in
2013.15 The fall in the average age is most pronounced in the Secretariat,
which after peaking at over 80 in 2008 fell to 68 in 2013.
The NDC was enlarged from eight to 12 members at the 1st Session of the
12th SPA in April 2009. The expansion of the Politburo is even more dra-
matic. In September 2010, the leadership convened a party conference, the
first major party assembly in 30 years, and increased the size of the Politburo
15. Although this decline is driven in part by the ascent of Kim Jong Un, who turned 30 in 2013,
his presence only changes the average age of each institution by about one year.HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 781
from 10 to 31. Some attrition followed over the next two years. But following
the death of Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un convened a second party conference
in April 2012 that restored the membership of the Politburo to its 2010 level.
Further turnover in the Politburo occurred at the Central Committee Ple-
num in March 2013, but membership was fairly steady at 32. The CMC also
grew from 12 to 19 members at the September 2010 Party Conference.
What role does the military play in the North Korean political system and
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what role did it play in the succession in particular? The party nominally
exercises control over military appointments and has designed elaborate
checks and balances to assure that military institutions are under civilian
control.16 However, Kim Il Sung’s status rested on his role as a guerilla
fighter, and the military was a central pillar of his so-called ‘‘partisan’’ faction.
Despite—or because of—his lack of military experience, Kim Jong Il turned
to the military for support, and the militarization of the regime became even
more pronounced. This militarization was formalized with the introduction
of the so-called ‘‘military-first politics’’ (songun) in 1998.17
Figure 2 shows the share of military and security personnel in each of these
three bodies at the end of the calendar year.18 There is no observable change
in the military’s standings in the three bodies after the transfer of power from
Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il. But this is misleading because the NDC was the
central institution with which Kim Jong Il identified himself, and it showed
dramatically higher military participation than the Politburo and Secretariat.
The apparent pattern of reliance on the military is even more pronounced
during the transition from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un. The military’s share
of personnel increases not only in the NDC but in the Politburo and Sec-
retariat as well. By 2013, the Politburo was nearly one-half military personnel.
However, this increased institutional representation does not fully capture
16. These institutions include control over appointments and parallel ‘‘commissar’’ systems that
reach down the chain of command. In the North Korean case, the leadership has also established
complex and redundant parallel military commands that constitute effective checks on one another.
17. Han S. Park, ‘‘Military-First Politics (Songun): Understanding Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea,’’
Korea Economic Institute Academic Paper Series 2:7 (Washington, D.C.: Korea Economic Institute,
2007).
18. By ‘‘military and security personnel,’’ we mean figures who have been identified in print as
officers in the KPA at the time of their appointment, even if only promoted to high ranks after a non-
military career. We return to the distinction between those with long-standing military careers and
lateral appointments in more detail below. We therefore include security officials who hold military
ranks. Although security personnel obviously play distinct roles in the regime, many high-ranking
security officials previously held military positions.782 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
figure 2. Share of Military and Security Members in Core Institutions (%)
100
90
80
70
NDC
60
Politburo
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50
Secretariat
40
30
20
10
0
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
SOURCE : By authors.
the way in which the regime favored the military during the transition, which
occurred not only through the grant of formal political positions at the top
but through patronage as well. An important clue to this process is to be
found in the fact that the average age of the military in the core political
institutions has tracked the decline in average age of all personnel noted
above. This development reflects a phenomenon seen during the last succes-
sion as well: a surge in military promotions. Between 1991 (when he took over
as Supreme Commander) and the 1998 SPA meeting, Kim Jong Il promoted
a staggering number of officers. According to South Korean assessments,
1,023 of 1,400 general officers were turned over during this period.19 While
the numbers have not been as large since the current succession began in
earnest, there have been no fewer than seven waves of military promotions
during the transition period: four prior to the death of Kim Jong Il—in April
2009, April and September 2010, and April 2011—and four following it in
February and April 2012, February 2013, and February 2014.
Three preliminary conclusions emerge from our discussion so far. First,
the succession was accompanied by a revival and expansion of core political
institutions that had become moribund in the late Kim Jong Il period. Most
19. Gause, North Korea under Kim Chong-Il.HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 783
notable in this regard was the Politburo. Second, these changes of necessity
involved a generational shift through the recruitment of new and younger
faces, particularly in the Secretariat. Finally, the military appeared to be
a major beneficiary of the expansion of formal institutions, matched by major
promotions within the military itself.
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CHANGE AT THE TOP: THE NDC, THE POLITBURO,
AND THE MILITARY-SECURITY LEADERSHIP
A closer look at developments in the NDC, the Politburo, and at the top of
the military and security hierarchy suggests a much more tumultuous process
than is visible in the aggregate data showing a smooth rise in the military’s
role. If ‘‘power-sharing’’ was taking place, it was not through accommodation
of incumbents but through purges and the appointment of new loyalists.
We start with the NDC by considering the composition of the body at
three points in time: September 2003, following an SPA meeting that resulted
in the first personnel changes since the SPA meeting in 1998 (eight members,
five holding military positions and KPA rank); April 2009, when the body
was significantly expanded during the early phase of the succession to include
12 members (10 of whom held military rank); and April 2012, following Kim
Jong Il’s death and the fourth Party Conference, when it was reduced to 11
members (10 of whom held military rank). In each period, we identified the
formal position of all NDC members and then looked at four mutually
exclusive and exhaustive outcomes: (1) the position and the person occupying
it were unchanged from the previous period; (2) a new position was added;
(3) a position remained in the NDC, but the occupant of the position
changed; (4) the position (and its occupant) were removed from the NDC
altogether. This exercise allows us to track both changing institutional rep-
resentation on the body as well as shifts in the occupants of particular
positions.
Except for the inclusion of one provincial secretary, all of the personnel
sitting on the NDC in 2003 were connected with the military, the security
apparatus, or the military-industrial complex (for example, the chairman of
the Second Economic Committee, which oversees military production).
Moreover, the one provincial secretary was from Jagang, where much of the
military-industrial complex is located, and was believed to play a central role
in it. The expansion of 2009 brought in the seconds-in-command at three784 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
organizations that were previously represented but were particularly impor-
tant for the transition: the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces (MPAF),
the KPA General Political Bureau, and the Ministry of State Security
(MSS).20 But the list of positions added also included two high-ranking party
officials, including Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law and head of the KWP
Administration Department Jang Song Thaek. We return to his role in more
detail below, but it is worth noting here that the Administration Department
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has oversight of the MSS and the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS).21
If we look at the personnel changes in April 2009 and particularly April
2012, however, we see turnover in the occupants of a number of major military
and security positions represented on the NDC. By 2009, the heads of both
the MPAF and the MPS had been replaced.22 By 2012, there were further
personnel changes at the MPAF, the MPS, the KPA General Political Bureau
(KPAGPB), and the Secretariat of Machine-Building and Military Industry
Departments. By contrast, the two major party representatives survived these
reshuffles, including Jang Song Thaek.23
Turnover in top military and security positions is also visible in the Polit-
buro. Given that the Politburo has a more diverse membership, we look over
a longer time frame at representation from five mutually exclusive career
backgrounds. We recognize that subjective assessments are necessary where
individuals have moved between categories over their career: a more-
expansive definition of the military that includes military industry officials
and the internal security apparatus, party officials, central state officials
(excluding those economic backgrounds), economic officials, and provincial
officials (see Figure 3).
Using this definition, the increase in military representation starts earlier but
is equally if not more pronounced than what we see using a more restricted
20. The Ministry of Public Security is essentially the North Korean police force, responsible for
investigating basic crimes and maintaining social control. The MSS, on the other hand, is essentially
the secret police, responsible for monitoring political and economic crimes.
21. In 2012, the posts of vice minister of the MPAF and the MSS and deputy director of the KWP
Military Industry Department and KPA General Political Bureau were dropped. They were replaced
with more security-related positions (directors of the KWP Civil Defense and Machine-Building
Industry Departments and the minister of the MSS).
22. Kim Yong Chun and Ju Sang Song replaced Kim Il Chol (MPAF) and Choe Ryong Su
(MPS).
23. This turnover continued in April 2013 as Choe Pu Il and Kim Kyok Sik became members of
the NDC (replacing Ri Myong Su and Kim Jong Gak, respectively).HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 785
figure 3. Politburo Membership by Career Affiliation, 1994–2013 (%)
100
90
80 Military / Military
Industry / Security
70
Party
60
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50 State
40
Economic
30
20 Provincial
10
0
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
SOURCE : By authors.
definition. However, party officials and those with diplomatic backgrounds
jumped in significance in the ‘‘transition Politburo’’ as well. Who were the
losers? The change came primarily at the expense of state and, particularly,
provincial officials. The relatively weak representation on the part of officials
who concurrently hold provincial positions is an important contrast with the
Chinese political system, and reflects the much higher degree of centralization
of the DPRK political system. We also see a longer-term secular decline in the
relative weight of officials with an economic background, a finding that com-
ports with the observation that the economic reforms of 2002 were short lived
and were followed by a period of ‘‘reform in reverse.’’24
These changes can be seen in a more granular way by repeating the exercise
we conducted on the NDC, looking at the composition of the Politburo in
2010 and 2012 compared with their composition before the third and fourth
Party Conferences (September 2010 and April 2012, respectively). Among the
altogether new positions represented in the Politburo following its expansion
were the minister of the MPAF, the minister of MSS, and the minister of
24. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, ‘‘The Winter of Their Discontent: Pyongyang At-
tacks the Market,’’ Peterson Institute for International Economics Policy Brief 10–1 (January 2010),
at .786 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
figure 4. Turnover in Seven Top Military and Security Positions, 1994–2012
6
5
4
3
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2
1
0
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
SOURCE : By authors.
Public Security, as well as the chief of the KPA General Staff (KPAGS). By
2012, a total of 15 top party positions had also entered the Politburo (com-
pared with the composition before September 2010), including powerful
figures such as Jang Song Thaek and virtually all heads of the Secretariat
portfolios. On the military side, by contrast, we see turnover in the same
high-profile portfolios noted in our discussion of the NDC: at the MPAF, the
MPS, and the KPAGPB.
As this analysis of change in the core institutions has suggested, a substan-
tial share of the churning underway is taking place in the military and security
hierarchy. To make this point more directly, we looked at turnover in seven
key positions through the end of June 2013 (see Figure 4): minister of the
MPAF; minister of MPS; minister of MSS; chief of the KPAGS; chief of the
KPAGPB; chief of the Guard Command (GC); and chief of the Military
Security Command (MSC). The results are presented in Figure 4. Kim Jong
Il had only four ministers of MPAF in his entire 18-year tenure from 1994 to
2011: O Jin U (died in 1995), Choe Kwang (died in 1997), Kim Il Chol
(removed in 2009), and Kim Yong Chun (removed in 2012 by Kim Jong
Un). Only one minister of MPAF, Kim Il Chol, was actually replaced for
reasons other than natural death during Kim Jong Il’s tenure. By contrast, as
of mid-2013, Jang Jong Nam was the fourth minister of MPAF in Kim Jong
Un’s brief time in power, with other positions showing substantial turnoverHAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 787
as well. The interesting exceptions to the rule are the all-important GC and
MSC chief.25
Some of the turnover during the transition period reflects movement from
one high-ranking position to another.26 However, many of the other officials
on the list were either transferred to lower-ranking posts or removed alto-
gether for unspecified ‘‘illness,’’ a frequent euphemism for purges.27 By far the
most significant dismissal was that of Ri Yong Ho in July 2012. The son of Ri
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Pong Su, a partisan who fought with Kim Il Sung, Ri Yong Ho moved from
the critical position as head of the Pyongyang Defense Command to chief of
the KPAGS in February 2009. At the time of the third Party Conference in
2010, he was promoted to vice-marshal and ascended into the Politburo
Standing Committee, over several officers with more seniority. In official
rankings, Ri was fourth in the political hierarchy and was included in the
small group of eight persons who accompanied Kim Jong Il’s bier. The brief
announcement of his dismissal on July 15, 2012, referred to a Politburo meet-
ing called to deal with an ‘‘organizational issue’’ and explicitly stripped him of
all political positions due to ‘‘illness.’’ Ri’s replacement as General Staff chief,
Hyon Yong Chol, had nowhere near the heft of his predecessor.28 Moreover,
25. The GC has had only two chiefs since 1984 (Ri Ul Sol from 1984–2003, Yun Jong Rin since
then). The GC is like a beefed up Secret Service; it provides security for the Kim family and other
high-ranking government officials, among other duties (see Michael Madden, ‘‘Guard Command,’’
North Korea Leadership Watch [2012], at ). The MSC, responsible for monitoring the activities and loyalties of
military commanders, has only had three known chiefs since 1983, Won Ung Hui (1983–2004), Kim
Won Hong (2004–2009), and Jo Kyong Chol (2009-Present).
26. For example, Kim Won Hong moved from Military Security commander to become minister
of MSS, and Kim Jong Gak moved from first vice director of the KPA General Political Bureau to
minister of the MPAF.
27. Among those effectively demoted were Kim Kyok Sik, former chief of the KPA General Staff,
who was removed and assigned command in the Western Region; Kim Yong Chun, former minister
of the MPAF, who became director of the Party Civil Defense Department, a significant downgrade;
and Kim Il Chol, demoted to first vice minister of the MPAF and retired a year later due to age,
despite the fact that some older officials kept their positions. Among those removed for ‘‘illness’’ was
Minister of MPS Ju Sang Song. A member of both the Politburo and the NDC, Ju was replaced by
a stalwart Kim supporter, Ri Myong Su. However, Ju was seen recently at events marking the 60th
anniversary of the Korean War armistice, an indication that he may have actually been ill. A wide-
ranging purge of the MSS included Vice Minister Ryu Kong; rumors suggested that as many as 30
Ministry staff had been executed.
28. Hyon Yong Chol had been promoted to a four-star general before the September 2010 Party
Conference—he was head of the VIII Army Corps—and was made a full member of the Central
Committee. But he was ranked only 83rd on the Jo Myong Rok funeral committee list in November788 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
Hyon himself was replaced relatively quickly by Kim Kyok Sik in May 2013,
reportedly becoming commander of V Corps.
In addition to purges, there is evidence of another mechanism that has
been used to control the military: promotion of non-military figures to high
military positions and ranks, particularly in positions that exercise political
control within the military.29 The most important example of this phenom-
enon appeared in changes in the leadership of the KPAGPB, which is respon-
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sible for maintaining political loyalty in the military. From 1995 to 2010, when
he died, this post was held by Jo Myong Rok, a career military man and one
of Kim Jong Il’s main military confidants. Following Jo’s death, the post was
vacant for nearly one and a half years; the Bureau was run by second-in-
command Kim Jong Gak. However, the post was eventually filled by a civil-
ian, Choe Ryong Hae. Choe was the son of Choe Hyon, a guerilla who
fought with Kim Il Sung and a former minister of the People’s Armed Forces.
Choe Ryong Hae served in the military relatively briefly in the 1970s but did
not have a significant military background. Nonetheless, before the Septem-
ber 2010 Party Conference, Choe was elevated to the general ranks as a pre-
lude to his appointment as head of the KPAGPB in April 2012.
To get a sense of how widespread this phenomenon of ‘‘civilian military’’
personnel might be, we looked more closely at the career paths of the military
members of the Politburo at three points in time: (1) immediately following
the third Party Conference in September 2010, which reflected the last
Kim Jong Il Politburo; (2) after the fourth Party Conference in April 2012;
and (3) after the Central Committee Plenum of April 2013. The change in the
military membership of the Politburo during this period involved two deaths
(Jo Myong Rok, Kim Jong Il); two dismissals (Ju Sang Song, U Tong Chuk);
and the addition of six new members at the April 2012 Party Conference (Ri
Pyong Sam, O Kuk Ryol, Ri Myong Su, Hyon Chol Hae, Kim Won Hong,
and Kim Jong Un). In addition to the case of Choe Ryong Hae noted above,
KPA military ranks were granted to two other sitting Politburo members who
had served but did not have military careers (Pak To Chun and Ju Kyu
Chang). This brought the total of these ‘‘civilian military’’ personnel on the
-
2010 and 77th on Kim Jong Il’s funeral committee, in short, within the top military ranks but by no
means a member of the regime’s inner core.
29. Foster-Carter, ‘‘Party Time in Pyongyang"; Alexandre Mansourov, ‘‘Part I: A Dynamically
Stable Regime,’’ 38 North (December 17, 2012), .HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 789
Politburo to five. If we include Kim Jong Un, this is exactly one-third of total
military appointments in the body. This ratio stayed roughly the same after
the Central Committee Plenum in March 2013 through mid-year, as two
military figures were removed (Kim Jong Gak and Ri Myong Su) and three
added (Choe Pu Il, Kim Kyok Sik, and Hyon Yong Chol).
In sum, while the military and security apparatuses expanded their formal
representation during the succession, the transition also saw significant
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purges at the top of the military ranks. Moreover, the apparent expansion
of the military role occurred as new party officials were brought into existing
institutions. Trusted party loyalists have been promoted to high military
ranks and to positions related to political control of the military in particular.
These developments are confirmed by looking more closely at both formal
and informal rankings of the political hierarchy. These measures suggest an
effort to reassert party control, but in the context of continued dependence
on the military and security apparatus.
RANKINGS AND NETWORKS: MAPPING THE INFORMAL
POWER STRUCTURE
In the previous two sections we focused on formal institutions, but it is
unclear whether such institutions matter in personalist authoritarian systems.
It is more likely that power is exercised through informal networks that cut
across institutions. Both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un have held virtually all
top leadership positions in the core party and military institutions, but the
phenomenon of ‘‘interlocking directorates’’ is not limited to the two leaders
and became more pronounced during the succession. We can get a sense of
these interlocking directorates by comparing the number of positions in all
three core political institutions as well as the number of discrete individuals
occupying them. In 2008, there were 26 total positions in the three core
political institutions, but significant overlap meant these positions were
held by 19 people (i.e., many were members of both the Politburo and
Secretariat or Politburo and NDC). By 2013, the number of discrete in-
dividuals holding positions had increased to 33, a significant widening of the
number of major players. But the number of positions increased to 56,
a much more substantial increase in positions than in the number of elites
holding them. Taking a closer look at these interlocking directorates, we see
that only three individuals—Kim Jong Un, Choe Ryong Hae, and Pak To790 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
Chun—had positions in all three institutions as of December 2013. But by
mid-2013, almost every member of the Secretariat was also a member of the
Politburo, and save for one person, every member of the NDC was as well.
In this section, we draw on a dataset designed to get at the informal power
structure and how it has changed over time. The data consist of several
different rankings of the political elite in three separate periods:
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the ‘‘late Kim Jong Il period,’’ from the beginning of 2005 through his
August 2008 stroke, when his health problems become more pressing;
the ‘‘high transition’’ period from September 2008 through the death of
Kim Jong Il in December 2011, when the incumbent leadership devel-
oped a strategy for the transition;
the dawn of the Kim Jong Un era through the end of June 2013.
First, the dataset includes a compilation of several official rankings based
on appearances at public events or participation in ad hoc bodies such as
funeral committees. The placement of officials on these official rosters is
clearly not random; they have long been used by analysts as a means of
tracking the political hierarchy. We consider five such political rankings: one
issued prior to Kim Jong Il’s stroke, and thus prior to the succession process;
three during the ‘‘high transition’’; and one from the Kim Jong Un era.30
However, there are several features of these formal rankings that raise
serious questions about their validity as a measure of the locus of power
within the system. First, it is possible that some individuals in the formal
rankings have largely ceremonial positions that do not reflect participation in
decision-making or control over significant material and organizational re-
sources. The second disability of these rankings is that they are ordinal. Yet,
the personalist nature of the system and the analysis of ‘‘interlocking direc-
torates’’ both suggest that power is highly concentrated at the top. The
individual who occupies position 10 on an official funeral list is not simply
30. For the late Kim Jong Il period, we use the Yon Hyong Muk funeral committee from
October 2005. For the ‘‘high transition period,’’ we use the 15th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s death
(July 2009); the Jo Myong Rok funeral committee (November 2010, immediately following the first
party conference); and the Kim Jong Il funeral procession (December 2011), which can be seen as
capturing the political status quo at the time of his death. For the post-Kim Jong Il period, we use the
visit to Kumsusan Memorial Palace in April 2012. This event falls after the 100-day mourning period
but before the purge of Ri Yong Ho; it thus plausibly reflects the first unveiling of a new pecking
order under Kim Jong Un.HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 791
half as important as the person who sits at position five, but perhaps very
much less so.
In order to address these issues, we have generated data on the informal
power structure by coding all individuals who accompanied Kim Jong Il and
Kim Jong Un on their OSG tours during the three phases of the transition we
have identified: January 2005-August 2008, during which time 423 events
took place; September 2008-December 2011, 696 events; and January 2012-
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June 2013, during which time Kim Jong Un undertook 287 events. The fact
that someone accompanied Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un does not necessarily
mean that they have power or even ‘‘face time’’ with the leader. But the
appearance data have the benefit of frequency. Unlike the formal rankings,
we have nearly 1,400 events at which the top leaders appeared with en-
tourages, a total of 232 individuals during the Kim Jong Il periods and 73
more during the Kim Jong Un visits. It is unlikely that those individuals who
frequently accompany the top leader are inconsequential or without access.
To the contrary, these tours absorb a substantial amount of time and occupy
a significant place in the leaders’ overall schedules. It is likely that these tours
overrepresent the influence of the propaganda apparatus, because they are
designed to present the public face of the regime; we see some evidence of this
fact. Nonetheless, the OSG tours should be seen as a kind of traveling
political institution in their own right.
Because of the frequency of appearances, we are able to construct indices
using social network analysis that measure standing with somewhat greater
precision than an ordinal ranking can do. Network analysis has become
a burgeoning intellectual tool in the social sciences, from sociology, political
science, and economics to organizational studies, sociolinguistics, and even
biology; it has also been deployed to analyze the North Korean political
elite.31 Networks are ultimately nothing more than individuals—or nodes—
and the connections (‘‘edges’’) among them. These connections may take the
form of communications, contacts, and exchanges of various sorts, including
economic ones. For North Korea, these flows within the network are not
visible; the only connections we can measure with any assurance are appear-
ances with the leader. But these can be used to generate rankings of proximity
31. Jeong-hyun Lee, A Study to [sic, of the] Social Network [of] Power Elites in North Korea (Seoul:
Korea University Press, 2009); Kyo-Duk Lee, Soon-Hee Lim, Jeong-Ah Cho, Joung-Ho Song, Study
on the Power Elite of the Kim Jong Un Regime (Seoul: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2013).792 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
to Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un and position within the elite network made
up of the OSG entourages.
The first measure we use to draw out the informal hierarchy is a ranking
based on the sheer frequency of appearances, expressed as the share of meet-
ings that the individual in question attended. In principle, this measure is
bounded by 1 if the individual attended every OSG appearance—which only
the leaders did—and 1/n, where n is the number of events considered. A 1/n
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score denotes appearance at a single event only. The entire population of
individuals accompanying the leader during each period is simply ranked on
the basis of frequency of accompanying either Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un,
from those most commonly present to the individuals appearing at only one
event.
Such measures of sheer frequency of appearances capture access to the
leader and visibility. But they do not fully capture the position of the indi-
vidual in the entire network of those accompanying the leader. How and to
what extent is any individual connected with others? We considered several
basic measures of what network analysis calls ‘‘centrality’’ including degree,
closeness, and betweenness. Simple Spearman’s rank order correlations
between these three centrality concepts revealed that they were very highly
correlated, even perfectly so for some periods.32 However, we report here
rankings based on the ‘‘betweenness’’ measure of centrality: the extent to
which any given person is strategically positioned between two other indivi-
duals in the network of those accompanying the top leadership. Our assump-
tion is that higher betweenness scores indicate a more central position in the
flow of communication, information and resources.33
Figure 5 provides information on the distribution of betweenness network
values. The figures simply graph the rank of each person who attended any of
these OSG tours, from those with the highest betweenness scores (.162) to the
32. Depending on the time period and whether the measure is calculated with or without the
leader, these correlations range from .81 to 1 and are consistently significant at the .05 level.
33. Technically, betweenness centrality quantifies the number of times a node acts as a bridge
along the shortest path between two other nodes; in this case, it measures the extent to which any
given individual (node) is the ‘‘link’’ across the multiple appearances of any other two people
attending OSG tours. Calculating betweenness does not require a complete network (meaning that
one can reach everyone else in the network) as long as there is an intermediary between two others.
However, if there is more than one intermediary that connects the same two individuals, calculation
is based on the probability of one person linking through either one of the two structurally identical
intermediaries to reach the other.HAGGARD, HERMAN, AND RYU / POLITICAL CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA 793
figure 5. Informal Elite Rankings, Betweenness Score Distribution
0.18
0.16
2005–08 2008–11 2011–13
0.14
0.12
0.10
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0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
SOURCE : By authors.
lowest (0). We calculate these rankings for each of the three transition periods
defined above. In all three periods, we see a pattern of a very small number of
individuals with very much higher scores, and a rapid decay in position as you
move down the hierarchy. This suggests that power—at least by these mea-
sures of proximity to the leader—is highly concentrated at the top, confirm-
ing our observation about ‘‘interlocking directorates’’ in formal institutions.
A second finding is that the correlation between the formal ordinal rank-
ings and these informal measures of power is surprisingly weak.34 Further
analysis shows that this discrepancy is caused largely by an overrepresentation
of state officials in the official or formal rankings. In the pre-succession period
(2005–08), state officials accounted for 47.4% of the top-30 elite when
measured by formal rankings, but only 20% if ranked by betweenness scores
and 16.7% based on frequency of accompanying Kim Jong Il. This discrep-
ancy persists during the ‘‘high transition’’ period (2008–11) as well as the post-
Kim Jong Il period (2011–13).35
34. The Spearman correlation coefficient between the formal rankings and the betweenness
measure is .28 in the first period, falls to .02 during the second period, and rises to .51 in the third
period but is only significant at the .05 level in the Kim Jong Un era.
35. In the high transition period, state officials constituted 21.4% of the top elite but only 10% in
rankings generated by frequency of accompanying the top leader and the betweenness rankings. For794 ASIAN SURVEY 54:4
table 1. Institutional Identity of Top Elite (Top 30 by Official Rankings, Frequency,
and Betweenness Measure Rankings, %)
Formal Frequency Betweenness
2005–08 2008–11 2011–13 2005–08 2008–11 2011–13 2005–08 2008–11 2011–13
Party 26.3 46.4 48.3 53.3 53.3 43.3 50.0 53.3 43.3
Military 21.1 25.0 31.0 23.3 26.7 40.0 26.7 30.0 43.3
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State 47.4 21.4 17.2 16.7 10.0 10.0 20.0 10.0 6.7
Provincial 5.3 3.6 3.4 6.7 6.7 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.3
SOURCE : By authors.
NOTE : Numbers may not sum to 100 because of omission of other categories or uncategorized individuals.
A third finding from this exercise concerns the balance between the
military and party officials in the top elite during the transition. In line with
the evidence presented above of an effort to incorporate—and coopt—the
military, we see a comparable increase in their share of the top elite on both
formal and informal measures. For example, the military accounts for 21.1%
of the top elite on official rankings in the pre-transition period, but this rises
to 25% and 31% in the ‘‘high transition’’ and Kim Jong Un periods; these
trends are even more marked using the frequency and betweenness scores.36
However, if we redefine the military to include only those officers with
military careers, taking out those who entered the military laterally through
promotions to general ranks, the rise of the military becomes much less clear,
and indeed party personnel seem to be the ascendant actors. Table 1 tells this
story clearly, showing that the representation of the party has by no means
been diminished during the transition.
These developments can be seen in more detail by ‘‘naming names’’:
focusing in on those at the very top of the formal and informal rankings.
When we do so, a fourth finding emerges very clearly. We observe the rapid
ascent of family members to positions that exercised substantial control over
the political, security, and even military hierarchy: Jang Song Thaek and Kim
-
the Kim Jong Un period, state officials make up 17.2% of the top elite in formal rankings, 6.7% in
rankings based on betweenness scores, and 10% based on frequency of accompanying the leader.
36. The share of the military in the top elite using the frequency measure rises from 23.3% to 26.7%
and then 40%; using the betweenness score rankings, it rises from 26.7% to 30% and then 43.3%.You can also read
