The Transformation Of North Korea

He writes that the regime of Kim Jong Il is imploding as its Stalinist system has been slowly relaxing by the natural difficulty of keeping extreme political repression going. In the last decade, though, this process has accelerated as a result of economic collapse in 1991-95 and famine in 1996-1999.

The three big factors facilitating this process include:

Information: It used to be that people could only get their hands on radios, and that when doing military service. But now prosperous North Koreans can buy used DVD players and VCRs smuggled in from China. What they like to view are South Korean TV soap operas. These TV programs give the lie to the idea that 7 million South Koreans are unemployed and live in unimaginable poverty. In fact, North Koreans are non-plussed that South Korea is apparently richer than the border area of China—which looks pretty rich to them.

Economic System: When the Stalinist economy broke down the North Korean people had to develop an informal capitalist economy. It had all the bad features of informal economies everywhere including rapacious moneylenders and necessary bribes to officials. But people had to adapt or starve.

Diminishing Political Control: The economic crisis of the 1990s has led to the demoralization of the party cadre. Now they are willing to “turn a blind eye to certain phenomena, especially if monetarily rewarded to do so.” Anyway, since survival is achieved for most North Koreans by small-scale business activity, what’s the point of listening to powerless officials. The social hierarchy has changed too with formerly persecuted Japanese-Koreans and Chinese acquiring wealth and status through their foreign connections and businesses.

It’s an amazing story, and we will read more of it in the coming months and years.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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