 Okay, so we're going to continue. Dr Park will now join me up here. He's going to present on the political economy of military first politics under Kim Jong-il. A topic very close to my heart. I, I think he has slides. So now Dr Park will present for between 20 and 25 minutes if he runs over time. John will bang his show on the table again. And then we will, we'll have our discussion and and questions from the audience. Take it away, Dr Park. My name is parking. I work at Korean Institute for National Unification Unification and my presentation is based on only my personal analysis. And my topic is North Korean political economy of military first politics. I start with conclusion. The military first politics between 1995 and 2011 was a unique period in North Korean, North Korean history, a most decentralized and most liberal period. The economy under the military first politics remained still the war making economy, taking advantage of increasing market transactions. And the necessity for mobilizing the bulk of resources for the military sector remained the highest purpose of managing the economy by the leader, albeit with different means and methods. Through weekend that weekend, the regime was powerful enough to be able to take care of directing directing the economy activities and financial flows to support the military sector. In tune with this purpose, the leader distributed rent opportunities among regime agencies, collected loyalty donations from them and made a revolutionary fund for investments in the regime's pivotal projects. And while the military sector was still under the control of the plans and principles, other parts of the economy were allowed or accepted to take advantage of commercial activities. In this regard, the foreign trading companies operated by the regime agencies have played a pivotal role in the expansion of neo-patrimonial rent capitalism, rigged with corruption, bribery and extortion and rent competition. The trading companies organized the vertical chains of entrepreneurial business for the production, collection, transport and export of the primary goods. And thereby open the protection from business opportunities for the semi-private entrepreneurs at the mid-low level hierarchy. The regime's internal security has taken care of any extravagance from spontaneity and bottom-up in contradiction to war-making and protection. This is my conclusion and I'll explain what this means. And my presentation is just rather more theoretical and conceptual. And I cannot read all the things and I cannot efficiently communicate with you, so you must rapidly scan its PPT. Yeah, historical institutionalism. I have said that the period of military first parties was a special period in North Korean history. And I can conceive North Korean history as a succession of several periods, several phases. And each phase is in a phase, a path-dependent logic of positive feedback applies. A phase is made of sub- phases of integration, consolidation, internal contradiction, critical juncture and replacement. The phase of military first politics between 1995 and 2011 replaced the preceding one of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il cold reign between 1974 and 1995 and was superseded by the one of party-centered rule under Kim Jong-un from the chair. Kim Jong-un's structure is different from Kim Jong-il's rule. Kim Jong-un's party-centered rule is different from military-centered rule during the Kim Jong-il period. We must differentiate. And yes, the periods of 1989, 1995 and 2009, 2011 can be regarded as intervening ones between phases or critical junctures. And outside-in approach. Outside-in approach means the geopolitical approach attaches great importance to the international system as the shape of states within North Korean states has been shaped by international relations around North Korea. Don't forget, North Korea is not a militarily weak but a small power surrounded by a middle, South Korea, and great powers, the United States and China, in a restrictive security condition. Yes, it's very important, restrictive security and condition. And North Korea must in general react and adjust itself externally, not only externally but also internally to serious security challenges. They are failed to reform, reorganize internal structure to be capable of react to outside security challenges North Korea would have disappeared. This is outside-in. Yes, the most important outside-in condition is inter-Korean enduring rivalry. The most important characteristic of this rivalry is that the impossibility of simultaneous security of the two Koreas. There are several reasons why the simultaneous mutual security impossible in the Korean peninsula. There are several problems. The desire to expansion and revisionism has been much stronger on the North Korean side. There is North Korea's small power and if current structure continues, as you see now, South Korea has risen, North Korea has declined. North Korea must not survive, crush this current status quo in the Korean peninsula. And the feeling of fear and vulnerability has been much stronger on the North Korean side. I just take notice that the desire to expansion and feeling of fear and vulnerability both are very, very strong in case of North Korea. Though the Iraq-U.S. coalition has been status quo oriented and security seeking, it had to like aggressor to deter and balance the aggression of North Korea. Top-down, outside-in and top-down, outside-in calls for top-down because the international relations could not determine the organization of internal state. The protection and the regime supporters' privilege demands top-down. The more the internal structure of inequality is rigid, extreme, politically determined, and defended at any cost, the greater the demand for top-down coerced intervention from the top. The economy in North Korea has been structured and operated in such ways as to serve these two purposes. Market expansion did not notify these two rules. And permanent preparation for war. Open is formation through revolution from outside by Soviet occupation and top-down also by Soviet occupation. North Korean state was more than fully mobilized for the impending war of aggression to the south in 1950. The three important years between 48 to 50, North Korean state was mobilized. North Korean state and society was mobilized and when a war structure, war-making structure is fixed, then this war-making structure will not change or decrease after the war. The inter-Korean rivalry after the Korean war played the same role of war in its impact on the subsequent state development in North Korea. The North Korean state has been permanently in preparation for war in peacetime and logically its economy was a permanently war-preparing, mobilizing economy. We should not forget this point. The North Korean economy has been a war economy and also during the period of Militia first politics. Extraction. The state-making can only be appropriately understood in this trillion connection between war-making, extraction, and state-making. And you understand then the dominance of hard-liner in North Korean history. The purge does always the soft-liner was purged because it is structurally determined, we can say, and the advancement of a leader-centric political system. In order to mobilize more than your capability, a centric system should be constructed, a quasi-totalitarian control of the society and individual by state, extremity in mobilization and ideology, the overblown party-state bureaucratic structure. These abnormalities or peculiarities could be explained by this logic of war-making, state-making, extraction, and protection of the supporters' privilege. The Songkwon system, Songkwon's principle applies not only to individuals but also any party-state unit in the party-state institutions. In North Korean, yes, we live in the, you can say, horizontal society. Any individual, any organization are pushing to be the same rights provided by the law. In North Korea, any unit is placed in a ladder of hierarchy, and there is a special unit of regime agencies. The party, the ministry of people forces the ministry of state security, the ministry of public security. They are the core class in the regime, among the regime agencies, and they are provided with a special rights. The Kingdom of Special Units, major regime agencies have their own group of enterprises and economic businesses. There were given permission to be organized under the three pretexts of self-support and self-financing for the regime's monumental projects and revenue creation for loyalty donation to the leader. The government's conglomerate of each special unit made itself an independent kingdom. These are core class in comparison to individual Songkwon and military first politics. The military first politics was inaugurated and carried out under simultaneous advance of three, as for North Korea, extraordinary conditions. First, external tension reduction under the condition of most disadvantages, relative power relations. Second, the weakening of the relative power of the leader and the center, how this elites and periphery. Third, the regime's grip on the population has been the weakest in this period in the history of North Korea. Only when we consider these three conditions, we can understand what has happened during this period. And the State Defense Commission, controlled by the leader, rose in his prestige, a lot of power and wealth opportunities above all the regime agencies, such as the Central Party, the Ministry of State Security, the Minister of Public Security and the Cabinet. The purpose was to implement the principle of priority resource provision to the military and defense research. This was the meaning of the economic policy during the military first politics. This is the highest purpose when Kim Jong-il managed economy during this period. This was the highest purpose. And the market in military first politics was hierarchically structured. It was a four-tier economy on the top, Kim Jong-il, on the second tier, trading companies. On the third tier, middle-level local business offices and private entrepreneurs. And the fourth tier, the producers. There is a very important Kim Jong-il's role to preside over the whole politically dominated business-like system and to assure its direction for regime preservation, to distribute business licenses while earning opportunities and to manage economic competition among regime agencies. Yes. The trading companies affiliated to regime agencies competed among themselves to obtain monopoly trade licenses from Kim Jong-il and concomitant political cover and protection from him. And for snatching export goods production businesses from other companies, they're under different regime agencies. There's a strong competition among regime agencies to get more rent opportunities from Kim Jong-il and to snatch other agencies from businesses. And the local business offices and producers. The backbone of the trading companies were the middle-level offices and semi-private merchants. They were an amalgamation of official protection and private capital and commercial talent. The local business were given official status such as the local office of the central trading companies and the private managers were given job titles of administrative or military ranks, depending upon the size of the business and the higher organization. The local business company is actually privately owned and privately managed, but they were given actual status by the higher organization and neo-patrimonial rent capitalism. The leader managed the rent opportunities are semi-privately. The major regime agencies were allotted monopolies and licenses for rents, which were to be realized through politically structured market mechanisms. The party-state units and officials were quasi-bestowed with quasi-licenses for rent. Yes, it will be corruption. It's an extortion mechanism. And it's a mechanism for redistribute surpluses so that this distribution of surpluses could be in tune with political hierarchies. If we are on the top of the system, then you get more revenues and you are on the bottom, then you must pay, always pay. So corruption is a mechanism of redistribute economic surpluses to the political hierarchy. The priority of political connection of productivity. The market is in this neo-patrimonial capitalism was a political market dominated by rent seeking pursuits. In this market, not productivity, but political connection determined who and which group owns money. The regime has been able to manipulate the market expansion, its structure and contents, and the level of its maturation. Yes, we arrived again. Perfect timing. Thank you very much, Dr. Park. Perfect timing, of course, and fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And Professor Gray, who is en route, will now act as discussant. Professor Gray will have 10 minutes, then we will have 14 minutes for the audience, and then we will go off and get caffeinated. Professor Gray, your 10 minutes starts now. Okay, thank you very much and thank you Dr. Park for that. Really interesting paper now I do. Of course I've read the paper and I and I and just to be clear, and you are quite upfront that it's a work in progress still. So, my comments won't be too harsh and I think what I'll do is just try to give you a few indicators where I think you might sort of like to develop the paper or improve the paper so it's in that spirit. I mean, I should just say, first of all, I think it's an ambitious paper, extremely ambitious actually, I think, and because I mean my summary of it is you're using historical institutionalism, you're using neo realist international relations as a theory and you're also using this kind of new for Barry and Charles to the end, war making and state making kind of argument. And that's that's a lot in itself, and then you're also explaining the history of North Korean state formation, and the, the nature of the political economy under the Kims on the era, which I think all those things together maybe feel that I mean that's really ambitious my liking is perhaps a bit, maybe you're trying to do too much in one paper and this could be actually be maybe two separate papers I think and that might sort of sort of make it a little bit easier to digest in one go so that's that's just a general suggestion. I mean for me I think, you know I was trying to sort of think well what is, what is the main argument here. What, you know what what what should I take away from this paper for me what I found most interesting I think was the, the application of Charles to these sort of war making state, state formation argument to the Kims on the era that I thought that was good and you're doing something very distinctive I mean I like the way that you do separate the North Korean economy into sort of three different sectors, the military security sector, which performs the function of war making and war making, and then you say there's the, there's the dictator and his supporter sector which performs the function of protection, you know using tillies concepts. And then there's the production sector but I wonder if that that separation of sectors in those way that way that is a bit, a little bit too simple and and I wonder if Charles to the himself would sort of accept that you could you could apportion these different sort of functions of the state to these different sectors because I think you know one of the important things is the sort of mutual dependencies between different sectors so you know for example you say the production sector is about extraction okay but that's also very much a part of the war making kind of function so I did sort of. I guess I was a little bit skeptical about this kind of separation of compartmentalizing of the North Korean economy and those in that way but you know that maybe that's that maybe that's. I mean that's that's maybe that's an interesting distinctive feature of the North Korean political economy but then I was thinking well could you do that with other states with the United States could you take the military industrial complex for example and say, well that's that's the war making part of the state and then divide it so but I'll come back in a moment to what I think is interesting about what you could draw out of the North Korean case that's actually could speak back to the theories that you're using. So there's that so there's that. I would have found it a lot more, but easier to digest if you've been a bit more clear about what the state of the literature is on the Kim Jong-il political economy era, okay the the existing research, and then what you find to be problematic you did have one in your paper where you say that the North Korean economy has been analyzed as a relatively independent and autonomous entity from a pure economic perspective but I was quite surprised to read that because I mean, most works that look at the sort of the North Korean economy and by the nature of its economy you have to think about political economy right so I wasn't quite sure where that that pure economic perspective was. And, and it's it's an again I mean, of course, a lot of works on political economy use a perspective of methodological nationalism and take the nation state mainly as the container but when we look at North Korea of course we have to think about other other things the role of foreign aid in the 1950s, the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The impact of the rise of China so again I wasn't, I felt that that your statement there was perhaps not entirely fair to the existing research on this era so I'd like to hear a little bit more about being the shortcomings of the existing literature on the North Korean economy and then how you're contributing to that. And I also, I mean the paper itself is, I mean it's kind of two thirds theory, I think you have a really huge theoretical intersection now that that imbalance maybe because, as you said it's a bit incomplete it's but it means that you know I can't not talk about the theoretical contribution but I, but I, but I. I think there was a more general question that it gave rise to in my mind in the sense that I mean, historiography or something else but if you look at social science, studies of North Korea. It usually takes the form of, you know, we are sort of North Korean specialists, and we're interested in the empirics of what is happening in North Korea so, but then we go and we find some sort of Western social theory that we can use to shed I mean I think your paper was the same and you use that to shed light on the North Korean case. But I think there's another step that you can take is that what can you then take back from North Korea and to come back to the theory and then maybe sort of theoretical expectations, and I was just thinking, so for example in your paper you use a sort of near realist, you know, sort of Miersheimer kind of, you know, strategic dilemma kind of framework to explain inter Korean relations. So the theory is based on sort of the European North American experience right and it's near realism is understood to be this sort of timeless logic that dates back to the time of Thucydides and this kind of thing but when you look at the inter Korean relations it's quite, I think it's something else it's, it's, it is two states formally, but it's also two divided parts of a single nation. And so you might look at it from a say I'm not a constructivist but you might look at it and say well this actually shows quite different aspects because say for example South Koreans, they do look as not at North Korea as an enemy state but they also look at it as a kind of a kind of problematic long lost brother as well right you know I mean it depends where you are on the political spectrum in South Korea so I think in some sense when we look at the case of Korea, it also can sort of problematize these kind of ban theories that are derived in a completely different context to describe something quite else so I was a bit sort of sort of. Yeah, I was interested in that about what the case of North Korea or Korea can tell us about those original theories. So, I mean I have to say, you know, just by way of explanation you didn't focus on on that part in your presentation so but but I'm sort of speaking to the paper here just just by way of explanation. Now to get on to the, the details of your empirical sort of case study about military first politics. I was a little bit in your presentation but I was just kind of. I was a bit unsure what exactly your definition of military first politics is because that in itself is contested you can look at it as, you know, in line with North Korean discourse that it was about the increased influence of the military in the 1990s and actually play you know it's prestige got greater, or it could be much more kind of window dressing as a way to keep the military on the side but it was still basically a, a sort of Leninist party state or it remained so. I wasn't. What I guess what confused me is that a lot of the feet, I mean I really like your explanation of, I forget your term what was a neo patrimonial capitalism I thought that was a really great way of sort of capturing the nature of the North Korean political economy. But that it came into existence after the collapse of the economy in the early 1990s, but it's not the case that that's kind of continued now, but we've kind of moved on from military first politics in a way because when Kim Jong-un came to power. Because you know people talked about a return to the party right the party is being the, the, the, the sort of lead leading institution and now you hear about the sort of the negative, the cabinet is being the kind of economic headquarters, but your explanation, based on this kind of political building, it doesn't really explain the specificity of that particular era from, from, from, from my understanding because that the nature of the kind of political economy has, I think that means I need to stop. Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, okay. So, that's, that's, yeah, yeah, so so that's, that's kind of what I was interested in is, is then how to okay what, then what happened after the military first politics era. Because many of those features of the political economy still seem to be broadly similar. Okay, so some of that. And then the last thing. I just want to know a little bit about the, what do you think the policy of implications are of your analysis of North Korea, you know there's always this debate about, you know, you might come up with a peace agreement and then suddenly North Korea become a, you know, drop all its guns and become a peace loving nation and things like that right, which I guess in terms of the sort of tillion kind of war making state making I mean you could make a case for that. But nonetheless, you're also using different theoretical resources like near realism which would suggest that you know there's this strategic dilemma and we need to kind of sort of balance against North Korea and this kind of thing so yeah, maybe you could just speak about the policy implications, but I'll stop there have loads more questions but I think for the sake of everyone's patience and time and everything I'll stop. Thank you. Thank you very much for excellent discussion. And process gray, excellently summarized the problems, which I plan to sign. Yes, it's an excellent summary of what I think I should research in the future. But I have not yet all the answers. And I still searching for theories and empirical realities, how to formulate my thesis. It's not easy for all the theories combined to analyze to mobilize to analyze North Korea. Yes, but yes you have excellently summarized my problems. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So the floor is is yours. Does anyone have any questions for Dr. Park. About the property through your presentation, when you are talking about the three factors of the measure first policy, you suggest that under in that period, but the regimes. I think you as well as grip or control of the population was weaker than any other time. I wonder about that point. I mean, do you think that the regimes grip was weaker than it is now present. Yes, I have said that Mr. First politics, the period of the first politics is special period in North Korea. And I named, I mentioned three conditions. The Kim Jong-un, the regime Kim Jong-un regime has been was strengthened because of the success of the military first politics. And during the military first politics, North Korea gained more stability internal stability and North Korea had by time to develop missile and nuclear technologies. And so Kim Jong-un could take one offensive against the United States and against the South Korea. The offensive has started in 2009. And one of the offense, the one of the fronts of offensive is internal enemies, internal enemies to reverse back the power relations between the regime and the population. And the meaning of party party based politics on the Kim Jong-un is to reverse the the weekend power relations between regime and population. And I suppose he has succeeded. Kim Jong-un has succeeded. Kim's open integration of period succession in 2009 under Kim Jong-un's direction, North Korea began to construct border wall, barbed wire border wall between China and North Korea. And now there is no, yes, virtually no defectors from North Korea. Yeah, especially the COVID-19 has intervened. But the border wall construction, barbed wire border wall construction has completed recently in 2011 and chair. And yes, one of the most important regimes internal policy is to strengthen party grip on the population. Okay. Any more questions. Oh, please. One analysis that focuses purely on the kind of internal apparatus. I would have thought it would be much more instructive for us to examine the kind of permutations in play that come from Geosphere. By Geosphere, you mean the regional context or sorry. Oh, I guess penetrates the political system, you know, I mean, it seems to me that if you're going to be looking at the kind of internal dynamics of North Korea or Soviet Union, any of those other kind of interior states, and we're using these kind of capitalist molding structures to analyze them whether in state markets or whatever it came to be. Equally dynamic in terms of defining their internal self-images in itself, I don't know, perpetuation would be the impact on, you know, the power elite surrounding. I would have thought that we need to be examining that as much as we should be depicting the models. Okay, yeah. That's a comment, right, so I'm fair enough. Any more questions. You want to. My question seemed it feels like a slightly trivial question, but it's something that raised in my mind is what some things you're saying about the intense nature of the rent competition between the special units under, the military or the Ministry of Public Security or so. It raised in my mind. Do we have evidence that there have been violent confrontations within North Korea over these, these kind of licenses or whatever to to to take rent. We're talking about the specific parts, the specific parts of the state which are engaged in these most lucrative activities are also the most well armed and most well trained in violence. Was there violence or do we have any evidence of such violence or was it all completely suppressed because they are all under the leader. Yes, the leaders grip on special units was weakened has been weakened during the military force politics. And one of the Kim Jong-un's purpose is to strengthen his grip on, on special units, the regime agencies and Kim Jong-un made a great push and demolish the power of the political power, the military, and he purged Jang Sung-taek, and he reorganized elite groups, what the, the, the relations between among regime agencies, the hierarchy of the regime agencies, usually the party, the parties on the top of the regime hierarchy. But during the military force politics, the military was on the top hierarchy. And Jang Sung-taek was purged because of this rent competition. Jang Sung-taek occupied a very lucrative C farm. And it is said that the, the rocket unit would like to take this C farm from Jang Sung-taek and the rocket unit talk to Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-un alive. Okay, you can take this C farm from Jang Sung-taek and Jang Sung-taek rejected and Jang Sung-taek was charged with, we can say treason. So in a sense the conflicts are always mediated by the need. Yes, yes. Rather than direct. Yeah, I can just show you other cases, more than this case. I think mergers and acquisitions, North Korean style have to go through the leader, you have to send up documents, you know, you're verified and be Jun's up your what's it called your ratified decision from the leader is what determines who controls the unit. Any more questions. And in some ways it also relates to the paper that you and Dr. Lenkov gave which is about state capacity within the context of what, you know, global histories identified as a neoliberal period. And, you know, the story of neoliberalism is one, there's many versions of it right sometimes it's a story of kind of ideological emergence and sometimes it's a story just I am that intervention. But there's also stories that focus on state capacity through new modes of technological intervention with the everyday. And so I'm actually, I really enjoyed this talk and I really enjoyed sort of a non Kim centric story of how the North Korean state is operating. But one of the things I wonder about is just how new modes of sort of technological interfacing with the public is changing how the state is operating over the course of these past couple of decades. And I'm not sure me those can dig this. So the technical basis of state capacity and how is it going to be smart. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. Yeah. Between the United States and Soviet Union, they compete with their last day. They carry out ideological competition. They compete also positional competition in the in the in the international relations, but they are a part between great seas. And they are totally different country. They have two countries as a different history and ethnicity is very different. In the two Korean case, they are contiguous. And they are in the logical system competition, they are positional competition. And they are, they are compete with sub, sub, subversion, subversion is very, very effective, efficient in the two Korean cases. Technology, yes, increase the capability of subversion. It may not be consciously carried out by South Korea, but North Korea, because of these technological developments of subversion. More fear, more vulnerable. And now they close any contact with South Korea and, and also any contact with other countries. I think with respect to state capacity in North Korea, the resource shock of the late 1980s and early 1990s is really, really important. Right. So when we talk about the collapse of trade with the Soviet Union and I mean the South Korean scholars have talked about this I really actually like it. North Korea was once upon a time of directed its rent seeking outside and it in the fall of eight. So it was the first rental regime was just basically acquiring free stuff from the socialist block or subsidized prices and then, you know, engaging in the socialist world at very substantive rates that were very preferential to the Kim family as it were Kim family regime and then you have this transition to the 1990s where rent seeking is primarily directed inwards because there's, yeah, which I find rather interesting. But with respect to technical capacity, I think it's actually very important point but I think we should take more expansive view of technology to not only include phones and physical technology but also ideas. I understand you, you understand this better than I do but anyways, but ideas so the, the North Koreans have, shall we say, rather sketchy understanding of how reforms might work I think from reading their literature and reading what they say internally as well. And their idea about how to regulate the market I would say is quite primitive as well. Even you know I said I've looked at their tax system and how it deals with foreigners and it does it is a bit more sophisticated than their internal tax system for how they deal with markets, but it's still pretty primitive. They seem to lack some of the fundamental modern technologies of state capacity, modern state technologies as it were, and technologies in an expansive sense techniques ideas etc. That's kind of what I wanted to add. Sorry, this is not my time that's when I'm talking quickly. No questions. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Happy time.