North Korea and Totalitarian 

Introduction

In the 20th century, some of the darker consequences of the industrial and political revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries appeared: industrialized slaughter and mass terror organized by powerful states against their own societies. Events such as the Holocaust, Stalin's terror, and China's Cultural Revolution challenged political scientists to explain how and why states could govern in such ways. Although the century ended with a wave of democratization in many parts of the world, different types of nondemocratic regimes that had been pervasive outside western Europe and North America persisted in smaller but still very significant numbers.

North Korea emerged in 1948 amid the chaos following the end of World War II. Its history is dominated by its Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, who shaped political affairs for almost half a century.

After the Korean War, Kim Il-sung introduced the personal philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance, which became a guiding light for North Korea's development. Kim Il-sung died in 1994, but the post of president has been assigned "eternally" to him (Juan, Pp. 122).

Discussion

North Korea is unambiguously a totalitarian state. An estimated 200,000 North Koreans are held under brutal conditions in remote forced labor camps called kwan-li-so. Citizens are deprived of the freedom to speak, to dissent, to assemble, to seek remedies for grievances. Perhaps worst of all, there is no freedom from fear — knowing that one can be imprisoned and tortured for minor trifles, sent to a kwan-li-so for being related to someone who displeased the state, or face a kangaroo court trial and possible public execution for a long list of political or economic “crimes” (Thomas, Pp. 32).

A totalitarian regime is one that successfully controls all aspects of society, abolishing the distinction between public and private, aspiring even to control the most intimate aspects of individuals' lives and thoughts. One objection to the application of the term in political science is that arguably such societies have not existed historically, even if regimes have aspired to such levels of control. If there have been totalitarian regimes, at most the term could be applied to the Third Reich, the Soviet Union under Stalin, arguably Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and possibly North Korea (Kirkpatrick, Pp. 27).

Some have objected to the term totalitarianism as theoretically empty, for instance on grounds that it is simply a particular instance along the spectrum of authoritarianism (Barber, 1969), while others want to apply it quite widely in recognition of the ambitions of many modern authoritarian regimes, even if they ultimately fall short of total management of society (Friedrich, 1969).

But one of many important contributions to the field by Juan Linz (1975) argued for a threefold distinction between totalitarian, authoritarian, and democratic regimes (setting aside anomalies such as sultanistic regimes), arguing that totalitarian and authoritarian were distinctive types of nondemocratic regimes rather than instances along a continuum. For Linz, the characteristics of authoritarian regimes that distinguished them from totalitarian regimes were the presence of limited political pluralism and either demobilization of the population or limited and controlled mobilization (Hobsbawm, Pp. 74).

Since Kim Jong Il's death was announced, many ...