Who's running North Korea?

[xoxoxoBruce]

According to this article, Jang Jin-sung, formerly poet laureate for North Korea, claims it is the clandestine Organisation and Guidance Department, "the single most powerful entity in North Korea"

Jang Jin-sung, formerly poet laureate for North Korea, is one of its highest-ranking defectors and most vocal critics. A meteoric career that saw him also become chief propagandist in the United Front Department, engaging in counter-intelligence and psychological warfare against South Korea, he was also one of Kim Jong Il’s inner circle — a dreamlike life of privilege shattered when he found the bodies of famine victims lying in the streets of his home town.

Facing almost certain death for the crime of mislaying a prohibited text, he dramatically escaped to China in 2004 and defected to South Korea. Based on his insights from working in the elite, he argues that the official narrative of North Korea being run under the absolutist genius of the Kim dynasty and the Korean Workers Party, is a lie. Power was not harmoniously transferred upon Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 to his son, Kim Jong Il — instead Kim Jong Il had long before usurped his father with the support of the clandestine Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD), while Kim Il Sung spent his last years under virtual house arrest, bamboozled by his own cult, created by his son.

Kim Jong Il directed the OGD under his reign and he legitimised “every single policy and proposal, surveillance purge, execution, song and poem”, but upon his death in 2011, however, the bequest of leadership upon his son Kim Jong Un was solely symbolic; the OGD took charge. That year, Jang set up New Focus International to give insight and analysis to North Korea. This week he talked about the OGD as “the single most powerful entity in North Korea” to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea. His words were translated by NFI’s international editor, Shirley Lee, and the talk was chaired by Lord David Alton.

Could be, it's kind of hard to check on what's happening there.

[DanaC]

I can't decide if that's worse than the nutty son being in sole charge of the country or not.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I know what you mean, when it's a nut making decisions there's a 50% chance he'll screw himself. But this group sound like dedicated evil, with checks and balances that keep them from making that kind of mistake.

I'll never understand what drives them though. Sure they want power and to be one of the less than 700 people with internet access in North Korea. But they could move the country in a different direction which would still benefit themselves while not fucking the rest of their countrymen as badly.

Maybe it's like keeping an animal in a cage, while abusing it regularly, there comes a point where the fear of it getting out governs your every move.

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I'll never understand what drives them though.

Most of the leadership has never even been out of the country. They have almost no knowledge of the world other than from propaganda. This same concept so inspired Nazis to do what they did. And believe it was both good and right.

It goes right back to Zimbardo's tortute experiments in Stamford. Many (often a majority) only know what they are told to believe. Very few refused to up the voltage to dangerous levels as their victims screamed for mercy. Few learned how easily they could be decieved. Welcome to a whole country that brainwashed.

Which then begs a tough question. How does South Korea unite with the North as the two Germanys did? Difficult to believe a whole nation that brainwashed could suddenly accept a new reality.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Suddenly? No.

Eating regularly, suddenly, without being in the NK People's Army or however they style it? Much better.

Nourished and hence energized, they would then look around. Consider a future. Hmm and uh-oh.

Extensive wackiness would ensue, and both Beijing and Seoul would have to take the attitude that the north half of the peninsula is going to need to be treated like an asylum, and serious therapy will need to seep in over both borders and through every Yellow Sea port.

The place acts anything like Albania, there ought to be some extensive training in how to spot pyramid scheme frauds and other basic scams, which they would have no living memory of previously.