Dear Comrade

Dear Comrade Leader, Episode 346

2.6 Power Stabilization ~ Economic leap forward: Hyundai Group’s North Korea defection, sovereign wealth fund, and Rajin three.

The picture above is the first barrel of North Korea’s first self-produced crude oil. [26]

The photo below is the historic Pyongyang McDonald’s 1st store.

Taking advantage of Korea’s leisurely pace – and taking advantage of the negligence of looking at it now – the Myeongcheon oil field, which had been exploring in collaboration with the UK since its inauguration in 1988, finally started full-scale production.

Older Wikipedias born in the 1980s may remember, but the shock that the South received at the time, who thought it was consolidating its victory in the regime competition, would have been comparable only if North Korea had declared its possession of nuclear weapons.

However, this shock was only the beginning, and after that, Kim Jung-hwan, as he called himself, began to transform North Korea at a frightening speed by fully demonstrating his ‘new economic leadership’ [27].

[26] The barrel is currently in the possession of the Industrial Development Hall of the Joseon Central History Museum located in Pyongyang.

[27] In fact, it was a transition to a market economy system and a mixed capitalist economic system, but it was a slogan often used during the transition period when the word capitalism could not be used openly right now.

A McDonald’s opened in Pyongyang, adults started to smoke Marlboro instead of cigars, and even children wanted Nike as a birthday present.

For the changes made by Kim Jeong-hwan during this period, see North Korea/Economics/History, Peony Holdings/History, Modern Group/History/After North Korea, etc.

As time passed, it became an opportunity to decisively change South Korea’s perception of North Korea’s economic growth and to deny reality, and at the same time, it also decisively changed inter-Korean relations, which were always conscious of each other but turned away from each other. became [28]

[28] Typically, the date of the collapse of the Seongsu Bridge coincided with the opening date of the Pyongyang Stock Exchange. Perhaps due to such a coincidental coincidence, there are still rumors about this incident, representing a conspiracy theory that North Korea installed a bomb on the Seongsu Bridge and destroyed it on the opening day.

It was the 1998 foreign exchange crisis and the subsequent great compromise between the two Koreas.

2.7. From a single development dictator to absolute authority: The Great Inter-Korean Compromise

For detailed circumstances and IF scenarios at the time, refer to relevant documents such as the foreign exchange crisis/background and the arguments of the foreign exchange crisis/IMF solution theorists, the inter-Korean compromise, and the attempted coup of the Ministry of National Security in 1998.

The photo shows Hyun Young-sook, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and then-elected President Ahn shaking hands at a ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Great Inter-Korean Agreement on February 8, 2018.

And the South’s intentional undervaluation of North Korea’s economic development had to come to an end after the Inter-Korean Grand Agreement, which marked the end of the tumultuous 20th century in the Republic of Korea and a new beginning.

[29] It was the incident that left the biggest impression on the Korean people’s mind that the economic gap between the two Koreas had disappeared, and it was a reminder that the specter of a military coup still haunts 10 years after the establishment of the civilian government.

In addition, it was an incident that caused tremendous changes in many aspects other than the economy, such as the division of the anti-intelligence agency into the National Police Agency’s anti-aircraft investigation division and the National Intelligence Service in charge of external intelligence investigations by giving the Yu Min-jung regime a justification for reforming the Ministry of Security and Security.

[29] Of course, this is not true, but only in a psychological sense. Even in 1998, nearly a decade after the transition, North Korea’s per capita income, wages, and assets were still nearly twice that of the South.

At the same time, this incident had a huge impact on the leadership of both South and North Korea, and it made the power of Kim Jung-hwan, who was a capable leader until then still young and who had not reached the absolute ranks of his father, Kim Il-sung, immovable.

In the midst of the foreign exchange crisis, the procession of South Korean migrants coming up to the North, where the economy is growing, losing their jobs and living base in the South in search of new opportunities. will be.

This was in contrast to the limited effect of giving South Korea’s former President Park Yi-sam the right to prevent banishment [30] (which only came into effect after 10 years) and the successor Yu Min-jung with Kim Jun-pil and the total abolition of the cabinet system and the new military president’s amnesty.

In any case, in this way, Kim Jeong-hwan, an unknown Baekdu bloodline, became an absolute being who made inviolable achievements, at least within the republic within 10 years of his inauguration.

[30] As mentioned above, only when the re-evaluation begins 10 years after the Great Inter-Korean Agreement. In 1998, the Korean public’s antipathy toward Park Yi-sam was ‘the worst racism since Lee Wan-yong’.

2.8 Challenges at home and abroad: Chongryon, the rise of the Thames River, and the increasingly deteriorating relationship with China.

2.8.1. The wind of democracy is fading prematurely.

The Korean Socialist Student Federation, Kim Jeong-hwan/Negative evaluation/Democracy suppression Recommended to read along with the relevant items.

– At that time, we thought that Kim Jung-hwan would be overthrown soon. In fact, it seemed like this at first. But when he was frustrated, he made a choice he shouldn’t have made. Asking South Korean compatriots to bring an army and invade their hometown… … Thinking about it now, I really regret it.

-Didn’t democracy finally come to North Korea? It’s a bit late, but in the end you won, didn’t you?

– How did we win? It’s not that we won liberal democracy with our own hands, it’s that Kim Jung-hwan said he picked it up, take it, I gave up and threw it away. This is not a victory between the Hakchongryon and us, but the general secretary, no, Kim Jeong-hwan won and ran away.

(2017, excerpts from interviews with Hakchongryon refugees at the time of KTBC’s ‘Now I Can Speak’.)

In the 21st century, as General Secretary Kim Jung-hwan entered his fifteenth year in power, physically in his 40s, the most important concern in the Republic of Korea as well as in South Korea was the succession structure of Kim Jeong-hwan.

In fact, Kim Jung-hwan himself was in his 40s at the time, still in his prime, but his father Kim Il-sung also named his son Kim Jong-il as his successor and began to solidify the succession structure around that time. It was a wave of people and information, that is, democracy.

In fact, the influx of South Koreans with the same language and culture, and above all, the overthrow of the military dictatorship and experience of democratization, quickly aroused a desire for freedom in North Korean society, and the existence of the Korean Socialist Student Federation, the Hak Chongryon, was quickly created. It was.

However, unlike the Korean movement, the Hakchongryon was intellectually and thoroughly crushed in just three years by a ruler named Kim Jeong-hwan, who had already thoroughly learned the process of democratization in South Korea.

For the specific process, refer to Hakchongryun/Classification, Kwanliso No. 23, Kyungsu Lee/Lifetime[31].

[31] Currently, this person and the document ‘2006 Kim Dae-bouting Incident’ have been protected by continuous vandalism presumed to have originated from North Korea’s Pyongyang IP.

2.8.2. The middle-income trap that started with the Chinese financial crisis, capital power challenging political power.

2001 Shanghai terrorist attacks, China-Afghanistan war, see supra.

By the time Kim Jung-hwan faced and tackled challenges from home, China, his ally, was also suffering a historic measles.

This was the great socioeconomic unrest caused by the China-Afghan War and its aftermath, which cost more than $2 trillion in warfare alone, resulting in the widespread prevalence of Afghan heroin in Chinese society, but nonetheless one of the goals of the war. The stability of the western empire, which was one, could hardly have been brought about.

And after Jiang Zemin, who had been responsible for the failed war, was forced to step down, Sino-DPRK relations under the newly established Xi Jinping-Boshirai joint government were far more antagonistic than before, so to speak, into a Cold War state. [32][33]

In the end, after the establishment of a more adventuristic, dogmatic, and opportunistic government than Xi Jinping, Bo Ji-rai’s sole government was established. For the final result of this confrontational relationship, see ‘The War in North Manchuria’, which will be described later. [34]

[32] In fact, as North Korea’s economic weight grows and its influence on northeast China grows, many view that this confrontation should happen someday regardless of diplomatic routes.

[33] In fact, as can be seen in the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture/History section, Kim Jeong-hwan did not use some supernatural power to subjugate the Korean-Chinese to the North Korean side, but ‘in the background of the times when the national power of the republic itself became stronger in inverse proportion to that of China, the North Korean authorities’ It was possible because the entry policy was added,” Kim Yong-geon, chairman of the standing committee, said in his autobiography.

[34] Searchable by the Chinese name ‘Yanbian Civil War’.

2.9. The Thames River and the bad relationship with Lee Young-bak.

Whatever the intentions of the political leaders, North Korea and China were already closely linked economically, similar to the current Korea-Japan relationship, and as much as the difference in economic weight between the former and the latter, the North Korean economy is inevitably greatly affected by China’s economic situation. there was no

Therefore, no matter how superhuman leader Kim Jeong-hwan was, he could not stop the wave of the real estate crisis that began with the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 from hitting North Korea. It arose in large numbers during this period.

[35] Hongwon Land, North Korea’s first casino accessible to Koreans, which had previously taken a firm stance on the gambling industry, also opened at this time.

And for the first time, when political power revealed the lack of food, clothing and shelter for the people, they took advantage of the opportunity to expand their power in both the private and public sectors. It was Lee Young-bak who was sent as their representative in the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party, the holy land of political power in the Republic.

– People who know everything.

(Lee Young-bak, chief secretary of Pyongyang City, met with executives of modern construction who had worked in the past at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new West Pyongyang Station.)

For the myth of a modern construction salaryman and the iron man of the Republic, how this meeting ended in a bad relationship, and how the power structure within the Workers’ Party was reorganized in the meantime, see Kim Young-il.

2.10. The biggest challenge, the Yanbian civil war broke out.

On the surface, it was the struggle for independence of the Korean-Chinese autonomy that started as a protest against election fraud, but four years after the end of the war, it was the first proxy war in Northeast Asia that took place in 70 years, when everyone acknowledged that the North Korean army, as well as the South Korean and American troops, were behind it. (Proxy War).

A number of factors overlapped and overlapped, including North Korea’s consistent pro-US line, such as the simultaneous accession of the two Koreas into the Pacific intelligence community, the establishment of a quasi-subordinate state in Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture, and the assassination [36] of the deputy head of the Labor Party’s organizational leadership department, Jang Song-thaek.

Lee Seop-gi/After North Korea, 2014 Jang Song-thaek assassination allegation, North Manchurian War/Background, /Development See the relevant document.

[36] To this day, however, the Labor Party has denied the assassination. It is theorized that Jang Seong-taek, with Chinese support, tried to launch a coup to overthrow Kim Jeong-hwan and establish Kim Jong-nam (see item), but failed and was removed while in exile to China.

2.11. Triumph, and come down when you clap.

The photo shows Kim Jeong-hwan giving his resignation speech at the old Kim Il-sung Square and the current Daedongmun Square in October 2018.

A whopping 1.6 million people gathered in and around the square at the time, and it is said that as many as 10 million people watched the real-time broadcast of the retirement ceremony. [37]

After a miraculous victory, Kim Jeong-hwan abandoned his title as a victory leader and stepped down from power on his own.

Some have left the republic and is currently serving as a professor at Georgetown University in 2020, breaking all expectations that he might become the central progenitor of a hereditary dynasty that is maintained from generation to generation under the halo of his father, like the Lee Kuan Yew family in Singapore.

– From now on, I will live only as a father of one daughter, not as the father of the people of the thirty-six million people of the Republic.

To this day, both North and South Korea have responded to various love calls to somehow bring the former general secretary back into politics, even in an advisory role for unification or at least an honorary position, so there seems to be no room for a return to politics in any way, at least for the time being.

[37] For reference, on the day of his retirement ceremony, when it became known that Kim Jung-hwan was boarding a flight to the United States from Yonggang International Airport, people flocked to the departure hall of the airport to see the final appearance of the general secretary, and the flight was temporarily suspended (…)

3. Junghwan Kim/Evaluation

This document is being discussed in the discussion forum of the document due to frequent revisions or controversy. Please refrain from modifying the content of this framed article.

An item describing the evaluation of Kim Jung-hwan, North Korea’s supreme leader and general secretary for 30 years.

3.1. positive evaluation

3.1.1. Abandonment of heredity, and consequently the introduction of democracy.

-Then I, ‘People Kim Jeong-hwan’, will leave. Goodbye.

(Kim Jung-hwan, exactly 30 years after he took office, at his retirement ceremony in 2018.)

Although there was much debate over the use of the word ‘abandonment’ as neither ‘end of hereditary system’ nor ‘transfer’, it was ultimately concluded that ‘abandonment’ was the most appropriate description in this document.

Whatever the process, it is undeniable that the fact that this wiki can now be accessed, written and edited by wikis in the former North Korea is due to Kim Jung-hwan’s decision to give up his dictatorial power and return it to the people. because there wasn’t

He struck the world in the back of the head to the last minute, announcing retirement, free elections, and transition to democracy at the highest point, at the best moment, when everyone expected to rule permanently.

No matter how negative the dictatorship persists, at the time when reform and opening up, economic growth, victory and territorial expansion were successful, even if he showed his hidden daughter to the masses, he said, ‘The succession of the republic will continue to be led by our Kim family. Everyone would have had to admit that there would not have been much resistance even if he said that.

Nevertheless, Kim Jung-hwan abandoned hereditary inheritance, even the ‘one-party dictatorship of the Workers’ Party of Korea’, which the executives would have suggested as a compromise, and chose democracy. [38]

[38] Considering that neither hereditary nor one-party dictatorship is acceptable to the Republic of Korea in the 21st century, no one can object that Kim Jung-hwan is the greatest contributor to unification in the end.

Only he knows what kind of psychology was behind his decision, but it’s really strange to think about how he was rated as a ‘leader who experimented with the state’ when Bush met him more than 30 years ago. it can’t be

3.1.2. Total acknowledgment and reflection on the invasion.

See “2016 Pyongyang Peace Declaration”.

Indeed, Kim Jung-hwan’s permanent blackout rights (bold font).

No matter how critical of Kim Jung-hwan, scholars and personalities can only praise this declaration as ‘a bold and pioneering determination that will go down in history’.

However, there are some who are critical of this too, and there are those who see that political calculations have been made that force Korea to guarantee his stable retirement at the point in time when he has already decided to retire without hereditary succession. [39][40][41]

[39] At the time, the North, who had virtually won the battle, had no reason to bring up the discussion of unification first, so this political performance made the South, who felt a kind of debt to Kim Jeong-hwan, become a central point and symbol of the unification discussion. This means that it has no choice but to guarantee the stable retirement of

[40] In the future, or even ten years from now, if a power to downgrade Kim Jong-hwan’s authority emerges from within North Korea, it will inevitably lead to political confrontation with the former North Korean supporters of Kim Jong-hwan as well as the South’s supporters of unification.

[41] So, anti-unification opponents in the North are already accusing them of ‘selling the Republic’s Gangsan to South Korea to buy their own comforts for old age’.

For the impact of the declaration on the unification process, refer to the ‘historical/political background/north side’ of the ‘Wikipedia/Unification of the Korean Peninsula’ section, which has been continuously updated as a long-term project on the wiki from 2016 to the present.