Article - Xi Sets China on a Collision Course With History By MAX FISHER
Watch the latest Frontline, Secret State of North Korea (53:41), January 14, 2014:
After reading O'Neil and covering the video on N. Korea, answer the following:
As discussed in Chapter 6, non-democratic regimes use an array of mechanisms of political control to stay in power (e.g., coercion, surveillance, etc.). Discuss two means of political control used in N. Korea referencing this unit's materials.
Then respond YOUR OPINON TO THIS
"The Jong-Un administration uses powerful tools and political controls to force citizens to respect laws, adhere to political authority, and sacrifice themselves to obey all commands throughout North Korea. Although many citizens seem to listen to the policies and principles of the ruling regime, great injustices like poverty, unemployment, income inequalities, and limited food supply continue to plague the country. From this week's reading and PBS documentary, the two most persistent forms of political control used by the totalitarian regime in North Korea are co-optation, and coercion. Co-optation refers to the process of ruling regimes like the Kim family using state resources to provide benefits to key groups, organizations, or classes of citizens. This is often achieved through clientelism or corporatism (O'Neil, 2015, p. 188). Corrupt regimes will also use buy off the opposition to ensure they remain in power. In the short film, the Kim family is shown providing unique benefits, and shares some of state revenue with a elite group of North Koreans to guarantee they have the political support of the most wealthy in the state, which are obvious forms of co-optation (PBS Org., 2014). This also reduces any chance of another political family or candidate from emerging to challenge the Kim family.
Another type of repressive political control frequently applied by the Kim Jong-Un regime is coercion. Coercion is a political strategy that often invokes fear to dissuade opposition. This fear is perpetuated by different forms of violence like torture, murder, imprisonment, and surveillance (O'Neil, 2015, p. 188). North Korea uses a variety of political prisons to hold uncooperative citizens, which exposes them to a wide range of serious human rights violations like torture, rape, and murder. In terms of surveillance, cameras are used to watch the communities, and speaker systems are used to play pieces of political propaganda to disseminate positive messages about Kim Jong-un's leadership abilities. The surveillance tools impede North Korean citizens from getting any outside information form the Internet or news sources that may reveal the real factors or events that keep these citizens trapped in a cycle of oppression and poverty. The decades of injustice, inhumanity, and underdevelopment are sickening, and it will likely require assistance from international organizations, powerful state actors, and institutions to address and eliminate the Jong-un regime in North Korea permanently. I am not confident that a meeting of any kind between President Trump and Jong-Un will achieve anything in terms of getting him to treat citizens of North Korea in a more humane manner."