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A Communist, non-hermit, North Korea

Steve Brinson

The possum is not OK. Neither are we.
Location
Brooklyn (originally Houston)
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he/him
I've seen plenty of TLs featuring North Korea more or less as it is IOTL, and plenty of TLs that have it democratizing (and usually unifying with the South), but not many that have a North Korea more like Cuba or even Vietnam than its OTL self - still a more-or-less repressive single-party Communist dictatorship, but not a totalitarian monarchy cutting itself off from the world. I don't know why North Korea took the path that it did and the others didn't, so I'd like to pose the question to people who know more than me: when is the last time it was feasible for North Korea to be politically and economically more open than OTL while still remaining at least ostensibly Marxist-Leninist?

The most obvious turning point seems to me to be the Kapsan Faction Incident in 1967, an internal power struggle where other WPK members tried to challenge Kim's cult of personality and failed - but is it possible that the change could have happened later, perhaps even as late as the 6th WPK Congress in 1980, where Kim Jong-il was officially designated as his father's successor and Juche was made the official ideology of the nation? After all, it's easy to point to nepotism, nationalism, and the cult of personality as fundamentally undermining the project of a more open North Korean communism, but Cuba had all three (not to the same degree, of course - but on the other hand, that's easy to say in retrospect) and still managed to attain significantly different outcomes. Perhaps, for a PoD in between those two, Kim Yong-ju (Il-sung's younger brother and a more orthodox ML) could have come out ahead in the early-70s power struggle between the two? Conversely, does the fact that Kim and the cult of personality won both power struggles indicate that an earlier PoD would be necessary to root them out?
 
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Perhaps, for a PoD in between those two, Kim Yong-ju (Il-sung's younger brother and a more orthodox ML) could have come out ahead in the early-70s power struggle between the two? Conversely, does the fact that Kim and the cult of personality won both power struggles indicate that an earlier PoD would be necessary to root them out?
The problem for Yong-Ju was he was explicitly factional when most Communist Governments strongly dislike that thing. I think the best bet would have been Il-Sung dying in the early 70s (which is fairly easy, given how he was paranoid about getting operated for his calcium deposit it’s easier to see him ignoring other health problems and dying from it, it’s amazing how long he lived).

With the close ally, Soviet Union being lead by Brezhnev wanting a buffer from China, there more likely to support the Marxist-Leninist Yong-Ju over the more erratic and less rested Jong-Il.
 
This could open up the possibility of North Korea being a museum of Brezhnevism instead of Juche.

Or a Cuba like path.

Or a Vietnam or China like authoritarian economically reformist path

Any of the above would likely be a somewhat internally more relaxed and less bellicose regime.

The regime could still justify its unique existence by claiming more nationalist 'street cred' and patriotic authenticity for not hiding behind American troops and fairy tales about links to pre-war anti-Japanese resistance.
 
I feel like something to keep in mind is the unresolved division of the peninsula, unlike all those examples. NK is kinda condemned to remain a cold war front. It can't go to the same level of normalization as Vietnam because unlike Vietnam, it never won its own war.

It was also a lot more dependent on trade with the USSR than Vietnam ever was, which makes its position very vulnerable as the soviets decline.
 
I feel like something to keep in mind is the unresolved division of the peninsula, unlike all those examples. NK is kinda condemned to remain a cold war front. It can't go to the same level of normalization as Vietnam because unlike Vietnam, it never won its own war.

It was also a lot more dependent on trade with the USSR than Vietnam ever was, which makes its position very vulnerable as the soviets decline.

It still has China though too to fall back on.

For example. It is debatable whether nuclear weapons are a survival essential. If China considers North Korean separateness from a pro-American South Korea essential for China's own survival, then that is good enough insurance for North Korea's survival and the nuclear weapons program is a redundant deterrent. If North Korea genuinely believes it needs it as a defensive survival deterrent, it is kind of an insult to China, which protected them in 1950-53, and sa sign it believes China has become weaker, more cowardly, or more selfish than it was decades ago. Or it is a sign it wants nuclear weapons for more than defensive deterrent survival but for additional purposes, like to restore an option for offensive warfare against the south, or to extort resources from the south, Japan, or the larger world community.
 
It still has China though too to fall back on.

For example. It is debatable whether nuclear weapons are a survival essential. If China considers North Korean separateness from a pro-American South Korea essential for China's own survival, then that is good enough insurance for North Korea's survival and the nuclear weapons program is a redundant deterrent. If North Korea genuinely believes it needs it as a defensive survival deterrent, it is kind of an insult to China, which protected them in 1950-53, and sa sign it believes China has become weaker, more cowardly, or more selfish than it was decades ago. Or it is a sign it wants nuclear weapons for more than defensive deterrent survival but for additional purposes, like to restore an option for offensive warfare against the south, or to extort resources from the south, Japan, or the larger world community.

Why would North Korea trust China's commitment to this, especially when China will engage in detente with the west?
 
Why would North Korea trust China's commitment to this, especially when China will engage in detente with the west?

It was willing to, or had to, rely on the Soviets, even during periods of US-Soviet Detente in the mid-60s and 1970s.

The lack of trust means they believe China is cowardly or selfish and can't walk and chew gum at the same time. That's a credibility fail for China.

Clearly Japan and South Korea and Taiwan believe the US can support them against China and have trade and one degree of detente or another with China without the contradiction negating protection, so they think America, and they themselves, can walk and chew gum at the same time. Not sure why China couldn't.
 
I feel like something to keep in mind is the unresolved division of the peninsula, unlike all those examples. NK is kinda condemned to remain a cold war front. It can't go to the same level of normalization as Vietnam because unlike Vietnam, it never won its own war.

It was also a lot more dependent on trade with the USSR than Vietnam ever was, which makes its position very vulnerable as the soviets decline.
This is true, but I suppose the counterpoint is Cuba. After all, Cuba is condemned to remain a cold war front by the US (it's not an outright war, but an embargo designed to destroy another country's economy is a hair's breadth away from war) and it's economy was also extremely dependent on the Soviet Union and collapsed when the USSR did. Heck, Cuba even had power transition from one family member to another. But Cuba is fairly normal.
 
The problem with this scenario is that unlike Communist Vietnam, which did reunify the country, or the People's Republic, which unified the entire country save for an island, the DPRK did not reunify Korea under its rule. That demonstrable failure is just the sort of thing that I think would radicalize a country. How do you avoid that?
 
The problem with this scenario is that unlike Communist Vietnam, which did reunify the country, or the People's Republic, which unified the entire country save for an island, the DPRK did not reunify Korea under its rule. That demonstrable failure is just the sort of thing that I think would radicalize a country. How do you avoid that?

South Korea demonstrably failed to unify the country too. It got extreme at times, but now it's settled on being extremely productive and entertaining.

Taiwan as ROC demonstrably failed to unify the country. It had some tumult, and has some political divisions, but it's not asshole-hermit land.

West Germany and East Germany went decades demonstrably failing to unify, and each got weird in their own way (99 Luftballoons, Sprockets), but also didn't do the crabby hermit.
 
South Korea demonstrably failed to unify the country too. It got extreme at times, but now it's settled on being extremely productive and entertaining.

Taiwan as ROC demonstrably failed to unify the country. It had some tumult, and has some political divisions, but it's not asshole-hermit land.

West Germany and East Germany went decades demonstrably failing to unify, and each got weird in their own way (99 Luftballoons, Sprockets), but also didn't do the crabby hermit.

None of those countries, though, were autarkic. All of them were deeply embedded in different alliance structures. Even an East Germany that had much the most disappointing performance of the four countries you name was still a world trading owner.

North Korea happened to be run by nationalist Communists who prized the unity of the claimed homeland above all other factors. Maybe if you get more internationalist Communists in from the start ... ?
 
Even an East Germany that had much the most disappointing performance of the four countries you name was still a world trading owner.
Amusingly much of the economic problems in the early 80s in places like East Germany was mainly down to heavy levels of borrowing from Western banks during the 70s to kick start a consumer based economy without any of the in between bits that allow a consumer economy to take form.

So part of the downfall of East Germany was down to it not being autarkic but being heavily in debted to Western Banks.
 
Amusingly much of the economic problems in the early 80s in places like East Germany was mainly down to heavy levels of borrowing from Western banks during the 70s to kick start a consumer based economy without any of the in between bits that allow a consumer economy to take form.

So part of the downfall of East Germany was down to it not being autarkic but being heavily in debted to Western Banks.

Indeed. The problem of how to make a Communism viable in a middle-income area verging on high-income status was one that never got solved.
 
North Korea happened to be run by nationalist Communists who prized the unity of the claimed homeland above all other factors. Maybe if you get more internationalist Communists in from the start ... ?
That might be a bit difficult since much of modern Korean politics was centered around the national question (naturally due to being made a Japanese colony).
 
It’s a fucking Alternate History dot com thread why in god’s name would you used that as a source ?

It's a useful summary adapted for alternate history purposes which directly cites its sources. I don't see why you wouldn't link to it instead of plagarizing or laboriously rewording it.

Park Hon Yong not getting purged would be a big factor imo. An interesting POD is if Park Chung Hee remains a Communist and decides to defect to the North to join the KPA. The Korean War still goes per OTL but afterwards a politically ambitious Park would be a domestic rival to Kim Il Sung's power.
 
The problem with this scenario is that unlike Communist Vietnam, which did reunify the country, or the People's Republic, which unified the entire country save for an island, the DPRK did not reunify Korea under its rule. That demonstrable failure is just the sort of thing that I think would radicalize a country. How do you avoid that?
Sometimes I wonder if a Korea reunified under Communist rule--perhaps because the US doesn't intervene in 1950--might have followed a similar path to that of reunified Vietnam, namely, after some years of hardline Communism, the rise of a pragmatic faction that maintains the formal trappings of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy while allowing the society and economy to open themselves up to the wider world. Although, even in that hypothesis, it would have taken longer for Korea than for Vietnam: OTL, it took until the mid-1970s for the North's command economy to start running out of steam, and even then it could sputter on for a while longer thanks to Soviet and Chinese support.
 
Sometimes I wonder if a Korea reunified under Communist rule--perhaps because the US doesn't intervene in 1950--might have followed a similar path to that of reunified Vietnam, namely, after some years of hardline Communism, the rise of a pragmatic faction that maintains the formal trappings of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy while allowing the society and economy to open themselves up to the wider world. Although, even in that hypothesis, it would have taken longer for Korea than for Vietnam: OTL, it took until the mid-1970s for the North's command economy to start running out of steam, and even then it could sputter on for a while longer thanks to Soviet and Chinese support.

That is my assumption, honestly.
 
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