North Korea 101: The History of North Korea
Watch The History of North Korea in Under 3 Minutes
If you want to go even further back, here's how North Korea came to be!
668 A.D: Ancient Korea
People have been living on the Korean peninsula since prehistoric times, slowly developing their own distinct culture and civilization. The Korean people were first united by the Silla Dynasty in 668 A.D. Since then, Korea has had to contend with the expansionist ambitions of its neighbors.
1910: Japan Colonizes Korea
In 1910, the Chosun Dynasty ended with Japan’s annexation and colonization of Korea. Koreans remember the Japanese colonial rule as a brutal experience. Resistance groups formed in Korea and China, mostly adopting leftist politics in reaction to the right-wing Japanese administration. Memories of the Japanese Imperial Administration’s oppression continue to haunt relations between the people of both Koreas and Japan today. Korea also began to modernize during this period, and the city of Pyongyang in particular became a vibrant center for Christianity and western culture.
1945: The Division of the Korean People
Following Japan’s defeat in 1945 the Soviet Union and United States agreed to split the post-war control of the Korean peninsula between themselves. On August 10, 1945 two young U.S. military officers drew up a line demarcating the U.S. and Soviet occupation zones at the 38th parallel. The divide should have been temporary, a mere footnote in Korea’s long history, but the emergence of the Cold War made this a seminal event. Seeking to ensure the maintenance of their respective influences in Korea, the U.S. and USSR installed leaders sympathetic to their own cause, while mistrust on both sides prevented cooperation on elections that were supposed to choose a leader for the entire peninsula. The United States handed control over the southern half of the peninsula to Syngman Rhee, while the Soviet Union gave Kim Il-sung power over the north. In 1948, both sides claimed to be the legitimate government and representative of the entire Korean people.
August 15, 1948
Syngman Rhee declares the formation of the Republic of Korea in Seoul, claiming jurisdiction over all of Korea..
September 8, 1948
Kim Il-sung declares the formation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Pyongyang, also claiming jurisdiction over all of Korea.
1950: The Korean War Begins
June 25, 1950
In 1950, Kim Il-sung attempted to unify Korea under his rule through military force, starting the Korean War. By far the most destructive and divisive event in Korean history, the war altered the life of almost every Korean person. Some historians claim that the U.S. military dropped more napalm on urban centers in Korea than Vietnam. The bombing campaigns reduced Pyongyang to rubble, and North Korea’s population was reduced by 10%.
July 27, 1953
Both sides eventually signed the armistice ending major hostilities in 1953. The DMZ (demilitarized zone) was established at almost the same position as the border before war broke out, separating millions of families caught on opposite sides of the border.
1953-1970s: Building a Stalinist State
From 1953 to the 1970s North Korea was considered by some outside observers to be a successful state. During this period, many North Koreans were actually better off than their southern brethren.
Kim Il-sung remodeled North Korean society along the lines of Juche—North Korea’s radically nationalistic ideology promoting Korean autonomy. The state-seized control of all private property and organizations. Officially, everything in the country, from businesses to the clothes on one’s back, belonged to the North Korean state. The regime rebuilt Pyongyang as a socialist capital and erected numerous monuments to Kim Il-sung, part of nationwide efforts to build a cult of personality to secure obedience by the people. The state took control of all media and restricted international travel. Kim Il-sung also worked constantly to centralize power under the Workers’ Party of Korea under his rule, and implemented a perpetual purge to rid the country of potential internal opponents to his rule.
Songbun
Massive inequalities began to emerge in North Korean society. The regime introduced the songbun system, which is still in place today. Under this system the entire population were sorted into different social classes according to one’s perceived loyalty to socialism and the regime. This classification determined the course of people’s lives. One’s songbun dictates the schools one can attend, the occupations one can be placed in, and even where one can live.At the time, the regime expelled around a quarter of the population of Pyongyang to the outer provinces for being of low songbun. For more on songbun, see this blog post.
The regime silenced anyone who opposed the system with extreme prejudice. Free speech became an offense punishable by imprisonment or even death. Worse, when one was arrested, up to three generations of their family would be sent to political prison camps. The regime instructed children to inform on their parents, and neighbors to inform on each other. Under these conditions, the North Korean people became fearful and distrusting of each other.
Stagnation
By the 1970s, the initial gains of postwar reconstruction and modernization had dissipated, and Kim Il-sung’s ideologically driven governance failed to produce prosperity. North Korea was also highly dependent on trade and aid from the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, so when the economies of those countries began to decline it greatly affected North Korea’s economy. The people’s quality of life stagnated in the 1980s and began to decline until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, at which point the North Korean socialist command economy stopped functioning. Poor agricultural policies and environmental mismanagement increased vulnerability to extreme weather conditions and brought increasingly meager crop yields. To make matters worse, the regime had lost allies to fall back on when the economy failed. North Korea’s reserves were quickly running out. These were the circumstances the country found itself in when Kim Il-sung died in 1994.
Economic Collapse
Kim Jong-il took power in the post-Cold War era when North Korea was on the brink of disaster. Realizing the need to handle both external and internal threats, Kim Jong-il instituted a “military first” policy that prioritized the military and elites over the general population to an even greater extent than before. This policy made the coming crisis even worse for the average North Korean. Many North Koreans blame Kim Jong-il’s leadership for the famine. In reality, Kim Jong-il’s policies exacerbated a crisis that was long in the making.
The economic collapse and subsequent famine in North Korea had its peak in the mid-to-late 1990s. It is estimated that up to one million people died—roughly 5% of the population. Even many of those that survived suffered immensely. Starvation in childhood has stunted the growth of an entire generation of North Koreans. The North Korean government had to lower the minimum required height for soldiers because 145 cm (4 feet 9 inches) was too tall for most 16-17 year olds.
In Barbara Demick’s book “Nothing to Envy”, a North Korean doctor tells of how even she became desperately hungry. After fleeing to China, she discovered a bowl of food left out for a dog. Upon examining the white rice and generous chunks of meat, she concluded that “dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”
July 8, 1994
Kim Il-sung dies and his son Kim Jong-il takes over as leader.
Social Changes
The collapse of the command economy led to widespread social changes. The need for food drove the North Korean people away from the regime’s control, as when the government stopped providing food, the survivors found other ways to feed themselves. People foraged and sold anything they could to buy food at small, illegal markets that began to spring up, creating a process of bottom-up marketization. Some fled to China, leading to a wave of refugees from North Korea, while information about the outside world slowly began to flow back into the country. Some resorted to prostitution or crime. What was once a highly ordered and controlled society gave way to a disorganized and fluid society, with new independent paths to wealth and power for those who defied the regime and pursued the markets. These social effects would continue even after the worst of the famine had passed.
2000s: The People & Markets Prove Their Resilience
By the early 2000s, the people began to recover. The markets, which initially emerged as a survival mechanism, gradually grew to encompass a broader range of goods and services and became better established. The markets today are the major source of food for ordinary North Koreans. South Korea also adopted the “Sunshine Policy”, in which it gave unconditional aid to North Korea, and increased economic cooperation between the Koreas. Established in 2003, the Kaesong Industrial Complex just north of the DMZ was part of this policy and now allows South Korean companies to hire over 50,000 North Korean workers. China also gradually strengthened its economic relationship with North Korea, and today is by far North Korea’s most important economic and political partner. Nevertheless, ordinary North Koreans continue to face the severe challenges of chronic food shortages and grinding poverty, while their basic freedoms are curtailed by a repressive regime whose number one concern is staying in power.
Always uneasy about the growth of the markets, in late 2009 the regime made their most drastic attempt to restrain the markets to date: a currency reform aimed at wiping out private wealth. The resultant market disruption and rapid inflation reversed the people’s hard-won progress, and even regime projects were derailed. North Korean refugees have described this as a watershed moment in their diminishing belief in the regime, with anti-regime sentiment so strong that it even rose to the surface in some communities. It is now absolutely clear to the regime that the markets are a fact of life they must learn to live with.
December, 2011
Kim Jong-il dies and his son Kim Jong-un takes over as leader.
Now: The Third Kim Era
In December 2011, Kim Jong-il died and his son Kim Jong-un inherited control of the nation. Thought to be just 27 or 28 years old at the time of his succession, Kim Jong-un was largely unknown to the North Korean people as well as to the outside world. North Koreans that escaped the country in 2011 told us that there had not been a lot of propaganda about Kim Jong-un during that year. By contrast, Kim Jong-il was much better known to the North Korean people when he came to power in 1994.
In his first years in power, Kim Jong-un has implemented a new PR style that has portrayed him as a modern version of his grandfather, while purging, demoting and promoting regime officials to secure his power base. The new leadership also moved to crack down on illegal cross-border movement and the inflow of foreign media, increasing repression in the border regions and reducing the number of defectors who managed to make it to South Korea by almost half. Meanwhile, there have been signs of cautious experimentation with economic liberalization in order to adapt to the reality of the entrenched de facto market economy inside the country.
North Korea’s history is far from over. In fact, it may be entering its most interesting phase. The people are becoming increasingly empowered and the grassroots changes spreading across North Korean society are steadily increasing the people’s physical and psychological independence from the regime, making the system as it is currently structured unsustainable. We cannot know the pathway that North Korea’s change and opening will take, but change and opening will happen, and the future of North Korea will be increasingly driven by the North Korean people themselves.
North Korean Refugee Stories: Meet Yoon Suk
Yoon Suk has vivid, happy memories of growing up in North Korea. She was raised during a time when state-socialism was relatively functioning, and the government could provide basic necessities to its citizens. She remembers wearing beautiful nylon (a highly-sought after fabric back in the earlier days of North Korea) uniforms with bows and red, patent-leather shoes to school. She also had a passion for the arts and performed frequently on stage. But as she grew older, the shine in her shoes began to fade and the hunger in her belly began to grow.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea lost crucial sources of subsidized trade and aid and the North Korean economy crashed. It was during this time that Yoon Suk got married, but what should have been a happy time in her life ended up being far from it. The regime’s mismanaged agricultural and environmental policies were confounded by harsh weather, plunging the country into a severe famine that lasted for years. Yoon Suk and her husband struggled to survive on the meager rations they received—and they were not alone. During this period, an estimated one million people died from starvation, while many of those who survived suffered immensely.
Yoon Suk, knowing that she had to do something to keep her family alive during the most difficult years of the “Arduous March,” turned to the jangmadang—small, illegal markets where people sold and traded anything they could for food. Yoon Suk was like many North Korean women in this new reality, abandoning her traditional role for market activities. Unfortunately, running her modest merchant business was more challenging than she had anticipated and she struggled to keep it afloat. As the situation grew worse, she discontinued her business and looked for other ways to support her family, which had grown by two with the birth of her sons. It was during this time that she learned that life might be better in booming China.
As recently as three decades ago, Chinese people were on average poorer than their North Korean neighbors. But China’s economic reforms have produced wealth and opportunities that are the envy of nearly all North Koreans today. Since North Korea’s economic collapse, which lead to unprecedented cross-border movement and inflows of Chinese goods and media, North Koreans have gained a painful awareness of just how far their formerly impoverished Chinese neighbors have come.
But it’s extremely risky for North Koreans to escape their country. The North Korean regime makes it illegal to leave without explicit permission and if Yoon Suk was caught trying to escape, or caught in China and sent back, she would be punished severely. Yet, the opportunity was too great to pass up and she fled for the first time in the mid-2000s.
Once she arrived, alone in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, Yoon Suk was sold to a Chinese man as his bride. China’s lack of marriageable women, particularly in rural areas of the northeast, creates high demand for female North Korean refugees like Yoon Suk. Without legal status and no protection from the authorities, these women are often kidnapped by sex traffickers and sold, sometimes for as little as $200.
Even though she was now living with a Chinese man, Yoon Suk still wasn’t safe from the watchful eye of the Chinese authorities. North Korean refugees’ well-founded fear of persecution if repatriated means that they should be protected under international refugee law. However, the Chinese government labels them as “economic migrants,” so they can forcibly send them back, as per their agreement with the North Korean regime. Yoon Suk was caught by Chinese police not even a month after arriving and was forcibly repatriated back to North Korea. There, the authorities sent her to a prison camp, where she was abused, beaten, and starved.
After all she had gone through, Yoon Suk was still undeterred from finding freedom outside of North Korea. She escaped again to China shortly after her release from the prison camp. She was sold off three times by traffickers, again under the pretense that she was going to be given work. With the last husband, she had her beautiful daughter.
Yoon Suk wanted to give her daughter a better life, and knew that would not be possible in China. Without the proper documentation, her daughter would have difficulty even going to school and would be denied the opportunities available to other Chinese children. Yoon Suk and her daughter escaped China together through Liberty in North Korea’s network and are now on their way to safety in South Korea.
Yoon Suk is excited for the life and opportunities that lie ahead of her. She’s a talented cook and wants to explore the option of obtaining a culinary certificate in South Korea. She also has high hopes for her daughter, who loves art just like her mother did as a young girl, and wants to enroll her in dance and painting lessons. Yoon Suk’s greatest wish is to reunite with her two adult sons someday. She often dreams about appearing on TV to send a message to her sons, showing them she’s alive and well.
Thank you for helping supply the funds for Yoon Suk’s rescue. Your efforts have changed her life and have provided the opportunity for her to enjoy her new LIBERTY.
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