How Has the Kim Family Held on to Power So Long?
The following content is adapted from North Korea 101, LiNK’s FREE online course that explains what's happening in North Korea beyond the headlines. Start learning today.
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“This question is fundamental. To understand where we are and where we might be heading, we have to understand where we’ve come from.” – Sokeel Park, LiNK CSO
The North Korean regime is the world’s worst dictatorship, an extreme remnant of 20th century authoritarianism that has stretched across eight decades and three generations of the ruling Kim family. The regime’s all-encompassing system of control constrains the North Korean people’s agency and potential, resulting in an enforced poverty which includes physiological, material, social, informational, and cultural deprivations.
It is not easy for dictators to maintain power for long. During the Kim family’s rule, the world has seen the rise and fall of dozens of other dictatorships. Through many periods of global change and internal instability, they’ve managed to maintain power not by sheer force or luck, but through an array of adaptive strategies. But when the media portrays Kim Jong Un as crazy or irrational, it undermines our understanding and approaches to try to undermine that dictatorship.
There is a formula to their approach, and if we can understand it, then we can counteract it.
The Four Ways Dictators Lose Power
Historically, the fall of dictators can be attributed to four factors. By looking at each of them, we can see how the ruling Kim family has strategically avoided these fates.
1. Military Defeat/International Intervention
An external country or force intervening and overthrowing a dictator through military defeat.
2. Elite Challenges
An internal challenge emerging from within the country’s top political or military circles, forcibly removing the current dictator by assasination or a coup d'état,
3. Popular Uprising
An internal challenge from below, where a mass movement forces a change in leadership. In some cases, parts of the elite may join the side of the masses.
4. Death in Office
The death of the current leader, opening up an opportunity for someone else to assume control and end the dictatorship or make significant changes.
Threat #1: Preventing Military Overthrow
To prevent an external power from overthrowing their dictatorship, the Kim family first needs a strong deterrent against military force. The vast majority of mainstream news coverage of North Korea focuses on one thing: nuclear weapons. Having nuclear weapons and being seen as potentially willing and able to use them is arguably the most effective way to deter a military intervention from the outside.
Second, the Kim family has strategically managed their relations with countries like the Soviet Union / Russia, China, the United States, and South Korea. They go back and forth between periods of warmer and colder relations, effectively balancing opportunities and risks to gain support while preventing too much external influence. It’s unlikely that the Kim family has ever really trusted any of these external powers, even those that are sometimes labelled as “allies”.
Threat #2: Preventing Elite Challenges
Historically, the position of dictator can be very tempting to others within the leadership’s orbit, from competing family members to senior politicians or military leaders. To prevent anyone from building too much power and becoming a threat, the ruling Kim family carefully manages elite politics, alternating between demoting, promoting, and purging top officials.
On top of that, cross-layered surveillance between different institutions also keeps potential challengers under surveillance and in check, and prevents any one person or group of people from launching a challenge for power.
Threat #3: Preventing Popular Uprisings
The next scenario that the regime must prevent is a popular uprising.
A common conception of North Korea is that if the people wanted to rise up and revolt, they would have, and so they must be brainwashed or bought into the regime’s ideologies. While the latter may be true to some degree, it's difficult to fully grasp the extent to which the government’s system of control deprives people of their agency and potential and prevents them from challenging dictatorial rule.
North Korea is the most closed country in the world. The regime has forcibly cut off North Koreans from the rest of humanity, which serves as the baseline for their control. This centers everything—social structure, daily life, resources, information—around the regime, and eliminates sources that could undermine or threaten their authoritarian rule.
Laying the Foundation: Kim Il Sung’s Half-Century in Power
Kim Il Sung was 33 years old when he was installed into power by the Soviet Union—very young in global politics at the time, when most leaders were in their 50s and 60s. This historical happenstance has ended up being a key factor in the longevity of the Kim family’s control.
From his rise to power in 1945 to his death in 1994 at the age of 82, Kim Il Sung had 49 years to mold North Korea’s politics and systems in his image. During this time, he laid the foundation for hereditary succession by:
- Centralizing power around this dictatorship.
- Building a cult of personality around himself and his direct lineage: propaganda and myth-making that legitimized the Kim family as the only North Koreans worthy to lead the country.
- Purging anyone who could have been an alternative leader.
When it came time for Kim Jong Il to assume power, and the Kim Jong Un after that, decades of preparation smoothened the transition.
Now, after three generations of the Kim family, it would be very difficult for anyone else, even among the upper elite, to try and take power. Even if someone did manage to depose the current dictator, they would have to contend with not just managing the power vacuum, but the ideological void left by decades of propaganda and mythmaking that surrounded the Kim family.
Without the legitimacy that had been set up by the Kims, a new leader would likely find it difficult to maintain power for long. This is something that North Korean elites understand, which further discourages any rival officials from challenging the current regime.
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Challenges of Freedom
Four North Korean defectors' experiences of resettling to South Korea.
It was the greatest country in the world. Sure, sometimes they saw people die from starvation and heard rumors of people disappearing into prison camps, but it was like that everywhere. At least that’s what they were told. But as foreign media started to spill into the country, they realized it wasn’t like that everywhere; they weren’t living in the greatest country in the world. A better life was out there and they knew they needed to leave to find it.
Every year, many North Koreans risk their lives to escape one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. They trek through jungles and over mountains, terrified of being caught and sent back. Once they finally reach freedom, they start over. New cultures, new opportunities, new challenges.
Here are four of their stories.
Ill Yong
Ill Yong opens Google Maps, trying to find a satellite image of his childhood house. This always makes him homesick. When he zooms in on his house, a blurry gray square surrounded by snow, he remembers the nearby waterfall and the summer days he spent playing there. But he also remembers how hard it was living in North Korea. His family listened to illegal South Korean radio every night but had to keep it hidden from friends and neighbors. If caught, they could have been sent to a political prison camp or even executed.
Ill Yong resettled to South Korea in 2009 and, even though his family was with him, starting over in a new country was challenging. The everyday moments took adjusting to. His first time at a buffet, Ill Yong was so overwhelmed by the massive amount of food that he just took a small bowl of rice. The first time he tried to use an escalator he was so confused about what to do that he jumped on at the bottom and then jumped off at the top. Ill Yong has now been in South Korea for nine years and is studying to become a Human Rights lawyer. A lot has changed since he first arrived (he now knows how to get on an escalator) but he still thinks about his old home in North Korea and hopes to see it again in person one day.
Noel
Noel came to South Korea in 2010 with a shy personality and a strong North Korean accent. She wanted to blend quietly into her new culture, but people constantly asked where she was from. School was also a struggle. In North Korea, she had dropped out after the first grade to stay home and help her mother. What she did learn at school was of little help in her new life. She was used to curriculum that focused on the Kim family. Determined to catch up, she began reading lots of books.
Noel is currently studying to become a writer and is no longer behind in school. Her new challenge is figuring out what to do with her freedom. Living in North Korea, she just followed the regime and did whatever she was told. It was the only option. Now, faced with endless choices, she knows that there is a responsibility that comes with freedom, and she wants to use it wisely.
Jessie
Jessie was overwhelmed. She was by herself in an unfamiliar country. So much was unknown: how to get around, where to study, how to make new friends, and even where to buy groceries. She wasn’t used to this new culture’s rules and norms. The first time she heard someone publicly criticize the South Korean president she was stunned. Freely expressing any negative thoughts about the regime was unheard of in North Korea.
Jessie now understands her new culture and loves her freedoms, especially being able to watch whatever dramas she wants without fear of punishment. South Korea has become her home, but she still longs for the day she can return to North Korea. Her parents have both passed away and she wants to go and pay her respects in person.
Geum Hyok
Geum Hyok stood by himself in an empty apartment wondering if he made a mistake. He had no friends and no family there to reassure him. Feeling lonely but determined to make a life for himself, he started classes at Korea University where he met people who were kind to him and checked on him regularly. Their friendship helped him not feel as lonely. Except for the couple times he was turned down for a job because they didn’t want to hire a North Korean, most people were welcoming to him. But what surprised him most was how many South Koreans didn’t know what was happening in North Korea. Geum Hyok didn’t blame them, he knew humans rights was complicated. But it was still disappointing.
Now, Geum Hyok is studying politics and diplomacy and enjoys having the freedom to do what he wants. He no longer questions his choice to escape but he does think about his loved ones still in North Korea. He especially misses his mother whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to in eight years. He is waiting for the day North Korea finally opens so they can be reunited.
