Sorry, Mr Kim. We've decided to go with the dead guy.

I've been meaning to write a post highlighting this story from NPR which asks if North Korea is changing or resisting change, but that will have to wait, because the big story is Kim Jong-un's job promotion.

Although I still hold out that there is considerable factionalism in the Pyongyang regime and that some of those coteries (Koteries?) are none too happy that a wholly inexperienced kid of twenty-nine has become the new Nepot Despot, there are clear signs that, outwardly at least, KJU's hold on power is solidifying.

What KJU lacks in congeniality he makes up for in congealment of power.

Of course, it helps when your political patrons behind the scenes are executing your would-be rivals right and left. Still, just as the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009 likely turned entire classes of people against the regime that they no longer saw as on their side, the killing of so many of the elite may give opponents a sense that they must kill or be killed. Or something like that. Since I don't know which faction is more likely to allow openness and reform, I'm not sure for whom to root.

Anyway, Kim Jong-un's position appears to have strengthened with his new title:

Kim Jong Un was named first secretary of the ruling Workers' Party, a new post, while his late father, longtime leader Kim Jong Il, was given the posthumous title of "eternal general secretary" at a special Workers' Party conference, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

Kim Jong Un's formal ascension, nearly four months after the death of his father, comes during a week of events leading up to celebrations Sunday marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, late President Kim Il Sung.

The centennial is a major milestone in the nation Kim Il Sung founded in 1948, and the streets were awash with new posters, banners and the national flag. Outside the city's war museum and the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium, women in traditional Korean dress gathered in clusters, practicing for this week's events.

Still, I think it's notable that he still has not been granted all the trappings of power that his father or grandfather had. I mean, he should have been named General Secretary, instead of giving his father that significant title in the form of an "eternal" position (Kim Ilsung is eternal president).

That's not just a blow to the ego, it's also a precarious situation. What does the First Secretary do that a General Secretary does (or does not)? Just as he was made a mere vice chairman of the Central Military Commission before his father's death, this is a half measure (or three-quarters) that may reflect a lack of solid backing.

(I think the point I'm making is even starker if you look through the KCNA website: all over the place, Kim Jong-il is the ch'ong pisŏ [총비서], as in ultimate secretary, whereas Kim Jong-un is merely che-il pisŏ [제1비서], as in the first secretary after the chief secretary, sort of like first runner-up in a beauty contest.)

Sure, he was made Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army a couple weeks after his daddy died, but it's not entirely clear how much power that affords him either.

Baby steps for the baby general.

Anyway, with the hope that the Western-educated Kim Jong-un might actually be a Gorbachev or a Deng Xiaoping in wolf's clothing, maybe a shoring up of support could be the best thing for North Korea in the long run. (I still think one could make a convincing case that Kim Jong-il himself may have been a mere figurehead.)

...

Dear Dead Leader

ORIGINAL POST BY iPHONE:
Holy crap! It's a Christmakkuh miracle! I turn on my phone after a six-hour flight to California, and my inbox is flooded with news reports and private emails informing me that Kim Jong-il is dead, and why haven't I written anything about it.

I'll write more on this when I get settled, but I'm guessing in the next days or weeks we will find out if Kim Jong-ŭn really is (or is not) The Kim Who Wasn't There™.

(from here and here)

UPDATED (TWO HOURS LATER):
Wow. Where to begin. I guess if you want the latest news, you can go to the Los Angeles Times or perhaps The Marmot's Hole. Everyone is asking what will happen next. The answer is, beyond Kim Jong-il receiving some sort of unending torture in an inner circle of Hell, no one really knows.

Right now, everyone is looking at Kim Jong-ŭn. And Kim Jong-ŭn is crapping his pants. He's not even thirty and he's supposedly been tapped to lead the country. Right.

If you don't already know how I feel, read this and follow the links that tell you all about The Kim Who Wasn't There. Although The Marmot's Hole is reporting that Kim Jong-ŭn was "named... as his father’s successor," I'll believe it when I see it.

Before I go any further, let me tell you of two posts I was working on but was waiting until vacation (which began today) to write. Bear in mind, they are going to make me sound very, very nutty. The first was going to be a follow-up to my original "The Kim Who Wasn't There" post, basically a similar analysis of how much the KCNA (North Korea's central news agency) actually mentions Kim Jong-ŭn, which is not much. I was timing the analysis for the week around the first anniversary of him being named co-chair of whatever committee it is that he's pretending to run.

The second was a bit more out of left field. I was actually sitting down to analyze how much Kim Jong-il travels to give guidance and how much that keeps him away from Pyongyang. I was doing this in order to suggest that — get ready for this — Kim Jong-il might be a mere figurehead himself. Wow, wouldn't that ever be a trip (literally and figuratively)?

Some, of course, might think that really it was one of the KJI doppelgänger doing all the guidance, but I was starting to wonder if KJI really had all the power we have supposed he did. After all, the guy apparently nearly died from a stroke two or three years ago, and then went through a long recovery. Just who the hell was his Edith Wilson, if he had one at all? Maybe, just maybe, the ruling generals or nappŭn nomenklatura (see how I did that?) sorta got together and formed a junta or an oligarchy or something.

And where would that leave supposed designated heir Kim Jong-ŭn? Maybe they really do need a figurehead. Maybe they need a uniting force and a source of legitimacy. Maybe they have decided that Kim Jong-il's only son who is not crazy or possibly gay but is a team player must be the figurehead.

And if that's true, then my speculation that Kim Jong-ŭn would end up wielding no real power is still true. Not that he (or his supporting faction) wouldn't try. But just what can a figurehead do? I have wondered aloud if Kim Jong-un could possibly be North Korea's Gorbachev. Maybe the English-speaking, Swiss-educated KJU might just have some ideas of his own about opening up the country, and even his nominal power might be just enough to nudge the regime in that direction.

It all comes down to China.
But ultimately, whether or not Kim Jong-un will be in power as a figurehead, a leader with real power, or none at all, will depend on China. In the past, I and others have spoken about the ominous prospect of China working to turn North Korea into Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Prefecture. China has a great deal of control over the DPRK and it does not want to relinquish it. It certainly does not want the Koreans to unify and have a US military presence at its backdoor.

And so China has been doing whatever it can to prop up the North Korean government. They started doing this during the Korean War and they've been doing it since. But lately they themselves have found the Pyongyang regime belligerent and unwieldy, even an embarrassment to Beijing. And don't think for a minute that China wouldn't give their blessing to even a transfer of power to a figurehead unless they had assurances that the post-KJI North Korea would be better behaved.

And here is where I'm actually kinda sorta glad that China is holding the reins (at least for the time being), because China has been prodding North Korea to follow a path similar to Deng-era China, and to integrate North Korea (economically at least) with China's northeastern provinces (i.e., a process I call the Manchurianization of North Korea).

North Korea has been opening in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. North Korea has brought in cell phone service, eventually becoming the world's fastest growing mobile market (more posts here and here). News reports said recently that they topped 1 million (in a country of about 22 million).

There are also things like Western-style coffee shops, television commercials for beer, and other trappings of the West as seen through Chinese eyes. In other words, China has lately been trying very hard to re-make North Korea in its own image.

And just what does all that mean? China does not allow a whole lot of dissent. Two decades after Tianamen Square, China is still authoritarian. And if North Korea follows a Dengesque path, you should expect North Korea to also be authoritarian as long as China is. Unless...

What if North Korea goes off China's game plan?
The only thing that could change the trajectory of North Korea being pulled toward Deng-era reforms that would bring it closer and closer to China would be unification. The question now is whether that can happen or not. The generals and the politicos in North Korea have no interest in giving up their own power and possibly risking arrest, imprisonment, and even execution which might result if North Korea allowed itself to be absorbed by a democratic South Korea. (I think there's a way to convince them while keeping that in mind, but that's another post for another time.)

But what if there is an uprising? What if Kim Jong-un just isn't cutting it as a figurehead or a real leader? What if the people have caught a whiff of the jasmine revolution and think now is as good a time as any to make a real change? Don't forget that in 2009 the regime dealt a body blow to almost everyone in the country — including many who had once felt quite loyal — with the Great Currency Obliteration. That has been, I believe, a real game changer in people's attitudes toward the regime, a moment where they suddenly realized, "These people aren't on my side."

Kim Jong-il died at a time when there are already food shortages, and the bitter winter will only make it worse. This is a precarious time to be changing leadership. Beijing itself may not be able to control what results. The biggest thing they have going their way, however, is that much of the population lives in rural pockets that are kept from communicating with each other. If there is a North Korean Spring, à la the Arab world, it will only be because of some very diligent people risking their lives to bring the message to the masses wherever they are.

So, in conclusion, with 3.5 hours of sleep and having just come off six hours of flying, these are my thoughts. I still think Kim Jong-un's faction does not have his power solidified, and I think there's a good chance he will either be squeezed out or allowed to be merely a figurehead. China will continue to push for reforms that make North Korea more like Deng-era China, but a popular uprising could easily thwart their plans to integrate the DPRK more with the Northeastern Provinces.

What would a North Korean spring look like? How would China react? Could we get China to back off a bit by (a) agreeing to keep their port facilities at Rajin and (b) promising that the US military will not be stationed in any territory that had been the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?

So much to think about. And I'll probably rewrite a lot of this in the morning.

UPDATE FROM THE NEXT MORNING:
Before I start, I'd like to add a few links to other blogs, who are as interested in this story as I. Make no mistake: this is the biggest story of the year and, depending on how things go, possibly the decade. So here are links from the biggies that cover North Korea regularly: One Free Korea, and Daily NK (which is like a news service, so just go there and see all the KJI-related articles).

I will forgive Asiapundit brazenly linking to themselves, just because that's something I would do, too, so go to this link and read the Marmot's Hole-worthy post they put up (frankly, others doing that meant I didn't have to, and I could thus concentrate on my theses about what might happen in the future — hint: the answer is likely to involve continued Manchurianization). Roboseyo has some thoughts. If you know of any others I've missed, please feel free to provide them in the comments.

And soon we'll start hearing from the experts on North Korea, as well as the pundits who liken themselves as experts on North Korea. And then we'll have a new round of blog posts on people talking about how North Korea expert Selig Harrison is nucking futs (and possibly on the take?).

Now for a couple things I forgot to mention in my bleary-eyed post from last night.

First, a huge dollop of honesty: I may not know what the fudge I'm talking about. Nobody does. And five, ten years from now, a lot of us will consider ourselves lucky if no one was keeping score.

Some honest punditry.
But here's where I get a little more honest: I was completely wrong about what would happen with North Korea back when the elder Kim died, and if only I'd been blogging in the mid-1990s, you'd know that.

See, I've been a news junkie ever since late elementary school, when I delivered newspapers. And that plus our own connection to Korea meant my young self would follow news on North Korea long before Kim Il-sung kicked the bucket in 1994.

And I was confident back then that Kim Il-sung — who at that point had ruled the country for four decades — was the only thing in the way of unification. So my late teen self actually bet someone fifty dollars (where was my late teen self getting that kinda money? ) that within five years of the Great Leader's Death, the two Koreas would be unified.

How's that prediction working out for you, late teen kushibo? (Good thing the person I bet kinda forgot; for a teen, that was Romney betting money.)

And so this is just me being honest. I was optimistic and perhaps naïve, but the thing is we all were. But there were so many things we didn't account for, such as Kim Jong-il's own ruthlessness (seriously, the guy looked like some sort of fat Korean Bill Gates, and who could imagine Bill Gates being evil?), and China's own willingness to support evil in order to maintain a satellite state (we thought they got that out of their system in 1950).

So now maybe we're overcompensating. We think North Korea's "leadership" doesn't have the capacity to move beyond dynastic dictatorship, and we worry that North Korea's people can't do anything but cower in fear. And we now understand that China will do whatever it can to ensure that North Korea doesn't become part of the string of pearls the United States intends to use as a choker.

But are we overcompensating too much? (By definition, any overcompensation is too much.) Is North Korea something that even Beijing cannot tame enough to use for their purposes?

A bulimic state cannot stand?
And that leads me to the other thing I forgot to mention last night: the purges. Right now on Capitol Hill in the US, we've got the leaders of Freddie and Fannie up there talking about charges that they'd misled the public. Now imagine that they were in fear that they would be taken out back and shot, and their families rounded up. That's what happened with the guy who was the scapegoat for the botched currency reform.

And that's just one example. You move way up the ladder, having been noticed for your competence but patiently and obsequiously playing the sycophant, and then you risk losing it all on a whim to a bullet through the skull when you piss off the wrong person.

"I can't work under these conditions!" is what you want to scream, but that's a guaranteed trip to the salt mines. So maybe you just wait, bide your time, until the old man's son is dead, and then we'll retake the asylum and set things right. Right? Right?

Notice a resemblance?

I mean, we don't want to have to wait until the son of the old man's son is also dead, do we? Junior the First, if he really was in charge, was only interested in selling off the country and buying coke. Sure, he kept all of us in Pyongyang living large, but we were always living in fear of the boom coming down. Maybe if we get rid of his son, we can actually move toward being a normal country where we are still the elite. Right?

They've just got to be thinking that way up there. I mean, Junior Junior has no real knowledge of how to run a country. He's weak, and possibly as whimsical as his dad, and that's a recipe for disaster, right? Best to off the kid — or put him in a figurehead role — and move on. But will the powerful Kim Jongsuk (his aunt) allow for that? Maybe we need to wait for her to croak.

So what I'm getting at is that the generals and the top bureaucrats have a deeply personal incentive to not stick with the status quo. And that could upend whatever plans China has (or maybe bolster them, depending on China's plans and how they feel about Round 3 of a Kim Dynasty).

Okay, I'm starting to blab again. So many thoughts in my brain right now, and I need some breakfast.

(And say what you will, but the flood of tears for the Dear Leader that will be seen on video clip after video clip, some of them from deep human emotion and some of them crocodile, were exactly what happened when the Great Leader seventeen years ago. Do not be alarmed, do not be shocked, do not adjust your set.)

...

Reform in North Korea?

Could the return of a market-oriented planner be a harbinger for a reform-minded Kim Jong-un? From Bloomberg:

The former North Korean premier was reinstated as first deputy director of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, according to an announcement on state-run Central Broadcasting Station, Yonhap News reported Aug. 21.

Pak, 71, fell afoul of North Korea’s military and party hardliners three years ago over his efforts to push market- oriented reforms, according to the Yonhap report. His return may indicate the leadership is willing to test economic changes again, said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

“The North may be thinking that they don’t have a choice but to use more flexible policies to fix the economy,” Kim said. “Pak may have been emphasized within the North’s party as the hands-on person to fix its problems.”

Problems like this, I would imagine.

The ruling elite has got to be seeing the writing on the wall. Some may be looking to the demise of Kim Jong-il as a chance to set the country back on the right track, positioning the Brilliant Comrade to take on the role of North Korea's Gorbachev. Surely he'd like to star as the hero in Pizza Hut commercials someday.

NYT on the on-going misery caused by the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009

From the New York Times:

North Koreans are used to struggle and heartbreak. But the Nov. 30 currency devaluation, apparently an attempt to prop up a foundering state-run economy, was for some the worst disaster since a famine that killed hundreds of thousands in the mid-1990s.

Interviews in the past month with eight North Koreans who recently left their country — a prison escapee, illegal traders, people in temporary exile to find work in China, the traveling wife of an official in the ruling Workers’ Party — paint a haunting portrait of desperation inside North Korea, a nation of 24 million people, and of growing resentment toward its erratic leader, Kim Jong-il.

What seems missing — for now, at least — is social instability. Widespread hardship, popular anger over the currency revaluation and growing political uncertainty as Mr. Kim seeks to install his third son as his successor have not hardened into noticeable resistance against the government.

Deep-rooted disgruntlement over the obliteration of millions' life savings bubbling to the surface as public resentment? Not to toot my own horn, but... you don't say? Though I have to admit we're not yet at the tipping point. Obviously. And if what this part of the article says is true...

At least two of those interviewed in China hewed to the official propaganda line that North Korea was a victim of die-hard enemies, its impoverishment a Western plot, its survival threatened by the United States, South Korea and Japan.

South Korea’s charge that North Korea sank one of its warships, the Cheonan, in March was just part of the plot, the party official’s wife said.

“That’s why we have weapons to protect ourselves,” she said while visiting relatives in northern China — and earning spare cash as a waitress. “Our enemies are trying to hit us from all sides, and that’s why we lack electricity and good infrastructure. North Korea must keep its doors locked.”

... then we may still be a ways off. But I'm not sure I buy that, though. The currency obliteration is a mistake owned by the Pyongyang regime, and if they have a string of such incidents, the blame-the-outside-world excuse won't work anymore.

Bear in mind also that that's a party official's wife, and she may be more inclined to parrot the party line. But the fact that she is in China to earn money may be a harbinger of what I had warned of before: the local party officials who lost out in a big way because of the currency revaluation and who now feel less incentive to see the regime continue.

WaPo on North Korea's rubber-stamp parliamentary get-together

The Washington Post informs us that North Korea's for-decoration-only Supreme People's Assembly will convene today for its annual meeting. This is where the opaque DPRK typically reveals changes to the ruling elite. Pyongyang watchers are looking for signs of the DPRK leadership tipping its hand on plans for Kim Jong-un, son of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, to succeed him:

At last year's parliament session leader Kim Jong-il made his first public appearance after he was suspected of suffering a stroke in 2008. He appeared gaunt, with thinning hair and having lost his trademark paunch.

Kim, 68, does not always attend the annual sessions and when he does attend, he typically does not speak. Images of him in his state's official media over the past year have shown him in improved health.

Kim faced a rare crisis to his iron grip on power late last year when a botched currency reform sparked almost unheard of civil unrest, angering an impoverished public by raising prices and making it even more difficult to obtain already scarce food.

Kim has yet to reveal to the North Korean public his plans for succession in the state his family has run for more than 60 years.

Intelligence sources said the North's elite have been informed that he intends to anoint his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his heir.

Analysts will be looking to see if Jong-un, 26 and educated in Switzerland, is named as a member of the assembly, which would be a major sign he has been publicly moved into the ruling elite. They will also looking closely to see if there will be a purge of economic cadres because of the currency debacle.

It usually takes a few days for details of the meeting to filter their way out of the secretive state.

I hope trademarking that paunch wasn't a way to drum up cash for the regime. I think it was the Americans who invented it anyway.

Anyway, here are my thoughts, if you haven't yet read them, on the currency reform, which I have dubbed The Great Currency Obliteration of 2009.

Oh, how cool it would be if the rubber-stamp parliament decided not to wield the rubber stamp. One has to wonder if they're casting glances at each other, looking to see signs in the eyes of others that, "Oh, God, no, we can't hand over the country to a Gen-Y heir to the throne." Hijinks ensues.

(Seriously, maybe this would happen if they all get really, really, really drunk. In fact, I'll bet at least several coups were planned while high-ranking parliamentarians were highly inebriated, only to be forgotten in the haze of a hangover the next day. Sigh.)

[left: Fun fact... the Supreme People's Assembly lifted its logo from the Washington State Department of Water & Power.]

US Navy helps another North Korean ship avert a pirate attack

It must be true: I read it at Fox News.

Interestingly, the North Korean side apparently denied getting US help, so I'm in a conundrum about which fair-and-balanced news source to believe:

The U.S. Navy says it overtook a suspected Somali pirate skiff that tried to attack a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden.

A Navy statement issued Sunday says a security team aboard the merchant vessel Napht Al Yemen 1 repelled the Jan. 20 pirate attack without U.S. help.

The USS Porter stopped and boarded the pirate skiff later that day.

The commercial ship is Yemeni owned but sails under a North Korean flag.

The incident marked a rare example of the U.S. military aiding North Korea, a reclusive rogue nation.

I find it interesting, from a sociological-journalistic perspective, that these stories get the play they do in the English-language media. On the one hand, they are indeed newsworthy. But on the other hand, it seems to represent a deliberate attempt to re-humanize an enemy: While North Korean refugees are certainly seen as the human face of suffering, the leadership is depicted as wholly (and perhaps immutably) evil. Are the crews of North Korean ships part of the DPRK economic and political machinery, or are they North Korean citizens just trying to scrape out an existence?

Noland in the Wall Street Journal on Kim Jong-il's "fake currency reform"

The Wall Street Journal has a piece by Marcus Noland of the East-West Center right here in Honolulu. While he doesn't get too much into the possibility of widespread dissent that I and Joshua have discussed, he does provide a good overview of what the Great Obliteration of 2009 means from a political standpoint:

What occurred Monday in North Korea is different. Unlike a Turkish or Ghanaian-style reform, in which all citizens are encouraged to convert all their holdings of the old currency, the North Korean regime limits the amount of currency that can be converted. This renders excess holdings worthless, and has set off the frenzy this week to get out of old won and into anything else—dollars, Chinese yuan, physical goods—that will maintain value. Any economic "reform" also creates opportunities to parcel out benefits, as with a 2002 price and wage reform that favored the military.

This move is part of Pyongyang's broader effort to curtail the rise of market activities and the development of pathways to wealth—and potentially power—beyond state control. Participants in North Korea's bootstrap capitalism include everyone from laid-off factory workers to government officials who exploit their inside knowledge to deal privately in everything from grain to imported Chinese consumer goods.

For those who frequent One Free Korea, the rest is old hat, but it's important to remember the context in which this "reform" has come, one in which the government is doing whatever it can to rein in on the economic activities it cannot control:

The currency reform isn't the only way Pyongyang is trying to crack down on nonstate economic activity: The penal system increasingly is being used to control market-oriented activities, with the added benefit of facilitating predatory extortion.

Changes to the North Korean criminal code approved in 2004 and 2007 include expansive definitions of economic crimes that, if taken literally, prohibit a wide range of standard commercial activities. This includes up to two years of "labor training" for individuals convicted of engaging in "illegal commercial activities, therefore gaining large profits." The code also bars "illegally giving money or goods in exchange for labor." Capital punishment is to be meted out for "extreme cases" of theft of state property and for drug dealing, and increased punishments are prescribed for "illegally operating a business, such as a restaurant, motel or store."

Surveys of defectors suggest that the repressive apparatus of the state is disproportionately targeting those involved in market-oriented activities. Participants in market activities are more than half again as likely to be detained as other citizens.

One thing I wonder about, however, is whether or not the earlier green light given these marketplaces means that there are some in Pyongyang who differ from this hardline stance. And if those people are in power, maybe they will be in a position to step when/if the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009 leads to turmoil in the provinces that the hardliners can no longer control.

update on North Korean currency revaluation (Or, The Great Currency Obliteration of 2009, Day 3)

This is an important story and I've been watching it with great interest (before you go on, read this and then this). I must say that I was disappointed last night when I went to a gathering for Korea Peace Day 2009 (free food!) and found that virtually no one, except "M" who had gone with me, knew anything about it. More on that somewhat schizophrenic event in another post.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will guide you to the update by One Free Korea's Joshua Stanton (who calls it the Great Confiscation, though I prefer to call it the Great Obliteration, which goes to the heart of just wiping out the savings of people, and has more of a communist ring to it) as well as the links to Daily NK that he provided  (an excellent website that I should have added to my right-hand "Daily Breadth" column).

This first DailyNK post explains the rules that North Koreans first heard through public broadcasts. This second DailyNK post from the following day explains updated rules and the damage that they may have:

In the meantime, resident sentiment turned aggressive once the details of the proposed exchange became clear, and now the North Korean authorities have revised those details once again.

A source explained, “On December 1st at 10 A.M. an urgent meeting for cadres of Party and Administrative Committees was convened. As a result of that meeting, a new decree was released.”

“The maximum amount per household which could be exchanged in cash was initially set at 100,000 won, but overnight it increased to 150,000 won, then subsequently a new decree was handed down.”

“According to the new decree, the exchange rate is still 100:1 for 100,000 won, but now the authorities will only permit people to exchange the rest of the money at 1,000:1.”

As a result, if you take 200,000 won in cash to a bank, you get 1,100 won in new denomination bills. This emergency formula will do nothing other than destroy the fortunes of the people.

Another source reported that in the jangmadang practical trading had ceased, although rice was still on sale from traders dealing in the product from home. The price of a kilogram has apparently skyrocketed to 30,000 won in old denomination bills, a 15-fold increase.

Wealthy merchants generally do their business in Yuan or U.S. Dollars, so the harm to them is not so serious. At the other end of the scale, low end traders who live from day to day will not be hit too hard for the simple reason that they don’t have much cash.

However, people in the middle classes who have tended to hoard paper cash at home are facing a fatal beating.

Indeed, this is what I've been saying all along; yesterday I noted that the authorities have, in one fell swoop, wiped out the means which millions had used to scrape by and survive. Millions will be hit and hit hard, and, as Joshua suggests:

But I suspect that for many North Koreans, this will shift them from “disillusioned” to “dissenting.” This will create a rebellious predisposition among many North Koreans, although that’s a predisposition that will go unharnessed until an effective opposition movement takes shape.

a similar sentiment similar yesterday, specifically that in addition to all those who find that they are closer to the tipping point of death (i.e., the point where they and their loved ones are clearly more likely to die if they do nothing than if they do something), we now have all "those middle-level party cadres who run the show outside of Pyongyang [who] suddenly have a lot less stake in keeping the regime going."

I'm not a political scientist per se, with my post-baccalaureate academic in Korean Studies as a general field and with social mechanisms and public health in a more specific field. So while I'm ill-equipped to argue against the political theory that Joshua mentions above (i.e., that the anti-government or even anti-KJI sentiment "will go unharnessed" in the absence of an effective opposition movement), I can offer up my own theories of social mechanisms that may emerge.

I really do think the tipping point of death is a good working theory here (it's elaborated somewhat in yesterday's link, midway through). Mass famine today will be greeted differently from mass famine in the mid-1990s, when there was considerably less exposure to the outside world, including a buoyant South Korea and all its pop culture and success, an increasingly affluent China right across the river, and no more Great Leader but instead a Dear Leader who's increasingly seen as inefficacious.

This could alter perceptions of the tipping point of death if rumors spread like sparks on the dried-out tinder of the starving populace in the coming months. If these rumors seem to weigh down the "likelihood of death if you do nothing" side of the equation, they bring more people to the tipping point, but they may just choose escape (but, that could lead to a Vollerstenesque implosion modeled after the collapse of East Germany twenty years ago).

But if rumors spread (like, say, there's a store of food in such-and-such location), that supports the "likelihood of survival if you do something" while locally increasing the numbers enough that the "likelihood of death if you do something" seems to diminish.

In other words, movement (but not "a movement") at the local level that could contribute to a critical mass of dissent, whatever point that is. That critical mass itself may have been reset as local party cadres have seen the rug pulled out from under them. To put it another way, at what point will they become East German border guards who do not shoot at people trying to get over the wall... or into the storehouse, or out of the prison, or whatever.

There are, it seems, different critical mass points that can be reached. If Dr Norbert Vollersten is right, then a massive and quick exodus of people from North Korea into China (or Russia?) could lead to the political chaos that forces change from Beijing or enervates Pyongyang so greatly that political change is forced from within. If Pyongyang loses control of the provinces town by town and county by county, the same Beijing- or Pyongyang-driven outcome could be the same (but perhaps with considerably more bloodshed, depending on when Beijing or Pyongyang steps in).

One wonders also what role the travel pass system will play. Will dissent be contained in individual counties and provinces because the people there can't easily go beyond their own region's borders, or will disgruntled cadres and soldiers themselves just say "screw it" to those rules and allow the freedom of movement (perhaps with a price) that Pyongyang is trying to stop?

Forgive the disjointed babble. There is so much going on and I'm trying to absorb it all while at the same time write something meaningful about it based on the thoughts I've had swirling in my head. For now, it's best to echo what Joshua says, "It's difficult to say where we go from here and no one should pretend to know."

The value in trying to predict things in this way is to try to gain some bearings and make some sense of it, and it's good to hear different viewpoints. But in the end, the same people will be both right and wrong about their predictions, including me.

Is North Korea's currency revaluation the straw that will break the people's back?

I'm going to start with an important observation: In one fell swoop, Kim Jong-il has just wiped out the means of thousands or even millions to scrape by.

In yesterday's news links I highlighted the North Korean government's recent currency move, which essentially was the issuing of new bills in exchange for old bills, with the new currency effectively lopping off two zeroes at the end. Thus 1000 won of the old KPW is now 10 won of the new KPW. [UPDATE: According to AP, this is apparently the first revaluation since 1959; new notes had been issued in 1992, as noted by commenter hyh below, but that was a 1:1 swap, so technically it wasn't a revaluation (though such semantics might make little difference if you can't convert all your money).]

This move was as much about reining in uncontrolled "black-market" elements of the underground economy as it was about preventing North Koreans from getting carpal tunnel syndrome from writing the numbers in those two extra places when they fill out a bank slip.

A report by Blaine Harden in today's Washington Post, however, indicates that the effect may be even wider felt than even the North Koreans themselves expected:

Chaos reportedly erupted in North Korea on Tuesday after the government of Kim Jong Il revalued the country's currency, sharply restricting the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and wiping out personal savings.

The revaluation and exchange limits triggered panic and anger, particularly among market traders with substantial hoards of old North Korean won -- much of which has apparently become worthless, according to news agency reports from South Korea and China and from groups with contacts in North Korea.

The sudden currency move appeared to be part of a continuing effort by the government to crack down on private markets, which have become an essential part of the food-supply system in chronically hungry North Korea.

In recent years, some market traders have stashed away substantial amounts of cash, while establishing themselves in profitable businesses that the government struggles to control.

But under the rules of the new currency system, the wealth of these traders has largely disappeared, unless it is held in Euros, dollars or Chinese yuan.

[UPDATE: The chaos or revaluation is also covered at WSJ, New York Times, Reuters, UPI/UPI, AFP, Yonhap, Korea Herald, Chosun Ilbo, and BBC. Yonhap also has a helpful chronology of North Korea's past currency reforms.]

Let me make it absolutely clear: This is some serious stuff. North Koreans under Kim Jong-il largely just do what they can just to survive in the Stalinist state, and for many that may mean engaging in black-market activity. Or even just relying on those who engage in black-market activity, like the private markets that sell food. If these things dry up or dissipate, so too do their odds of making it into next year diminish. This is a grave turn of events.

To me, the tipping point for revolution in North Korea is when a critical mass of people in the DPRK realize that they are more likely to die if they do nothing than if they try to do something. That critical mass is hard to reach, though, because the fear of the authorities imprisoning or wiping out your entire family based on your actions as an individual complicates the calculus of that tipping point of death: You have to figure out at what point your entire set of loved ones are more likely to die if you do nothing than if you do something, and that gets into far murkier math.

Moreover, for many North Koreans who have reached that tipping point of death, doing something may mean simply leaving the country altogether, as hundreds of thousands have done. As they leave, North Korea as a whole becomes further and further from that critical mass (though a sudden exodus of people, à la Dr Norbert Vollersten, could itself contribute to a critical mass of a different sort which has the same outcome of regime collapse).

But the currency revaluation may have revalued the death tipping point calculus as well, and I wonder if this one event may be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back, a catalyst that changes the game for so many people in such detrimental ways — and at the beginning of winter to boot — that the tipping point of death becomes more clearly in sight.

To give you an idea of how bad this is for people who had hoarded the old KPW, the restrictions on how much cash can be converted are draconian:

According to two web-based groups with sources in the North, that limit was set Monday at 100,000 won, which at current black-market rates amounts to just $40. All North Korean currency that individuals possess in excess of that amount becomes worthless, under the revaluation.

Amid widespread protests, the limit was slightly raised to 150,000 won (about $60) in cash and 300,000 won ($120) in bank savings, according to DailyNK, an online news organization that has informants in the North.

"I worked like a dog for two months for the winter, but the money became useless paper overnight," a resident of Sinuiju, a city that borders China, was quoted as saying on the web site of Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid organizations with informants in the North.

North Korea and its Chinese benefactors may be trying to play down the chaos (Xinhua blithely reports that "state-run shops were closed Tuesday as sales staff posted new prices on goods") but they may have unleashed the furies of the people, with ends that they themselves did not foresee and cannot control.

North Korea, from the bottom up, is in for a long winter.

UPDATE 1: Joshua at One Free Korea has an excellent analysis of this same issue. Commenter mike v suggested that you (the reader) look into you pocket and see if you have $40. If you do, then "you are richer than anyone in N. Korea after they exchange their old currency for new currency." True that. Unfortunately, I don't have forty bucks in my wallet. I'm a starving grad student whose money is tied up in Seoul real estate.

And this got me to thinking: Unless there have been behind-the-scenes provisions for connected people to exchange considerably more than the $40 or $60 limit, then those middle-level party cadres who run the show outside of Pyongyang suddenly have a lot less stake in keeping the regime going.

UPDATE 2:
I have further written on this topic at this post. Further updates can be found by clicking on this category.