Songun
Encyclopedia
Sŏn'gun, often spelled Songun, is North Korea
's "Military First" policy, which prioritizes the Korean People's Army
in the affairs of state and allocates national resources to the army first. "Military First" has been playing many roles, including that of "Military First Politics", serving as a political system, that of "a line of Military First Economic Construction" acting as an economic system, and of "Military First Ideology" making it the new guiding ideology of North Korea.
Songun elevates the Korean People's Army within North Korea as an organization and as a state function, granting it the primary position in the North Korean government
and society. It guides domestic policy
and international interactions
. It is the framework for the government, designating the military as the "supreme repository of power." The North Korean government grants the Korean People's Army the highest economic and resource-allocation priority, and positions it as the model for society to emulate. Songun is also the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the military over all other aspects of state and society.
together with his father Kim Il-sung
went to a visit to the Seoul 105th Guards Armored Division HQ in Pyongyang, the first of many visits to various Korean People's Army installations all across the DPRK.
Songun did not appear as an official government policy until after Kim Il-sung's death in 1994, however. In 1995, "military first" policies were introduced as "a revolutionary idea of attaching great importance to the army" and as "a politics emphasizing the perfect unity and the single-hearted unity of the party, army and the people, and the role of the army as the vanguards" in the wake of Kim Jong-il's first military unit visit for that year. This was a slight shift from the government's previous guiding policy, Kim Il-sung's juche
, or self-reliance policy.
In 1997, an editorial published in Rodong Sinmun
, the North Korean Workers' Party official newspaper, stated: "Never before have the status and role of the People's Army been so extraordinarily elevated as today when it is being led energetically by the Respected and Beloved Comrade Supreme Commander." By this point, the People's Army had also become "synonymous with the people, the state, and the party." Together, all of this indicates not only the centrality of Kim Jong-il
to the songun ideology, but also its increasing rhetorical centrality to the state and society.
In 1998, songun began appearing in conjunction with other terms, including "military first revolutionary idea", "military first revolutionary leadership", and "military first politics", expanding the concept of songun into even more aspects of North Korean governance.
Songun became an even more prominent concept in January 1999, making its first appearance in the important New Year's Day editorial published jointly by all the major news organs of North Korea. The editorial tied songun with Kim Jong-il by declaring that he practiced military-first leadership, which is "one in which the People's Army serves as the main force of revolution and in which the unity of the army and the people helps to safeguard as well as build socialism
."
In January 2003, the New Year's editorial added military first ideology (songun sasang) to the pantheon of military first concepts. In December 2003, the "Essential Attributes of Military-First Politics" was published as a new vision of the driving force of the revolution in the quasi-Communist North Korea. It assigned the main force of the revolution to the Korean People's Army. This is a role traditionally, in Communist societies, assigned to the proletariat
or, in China
, to the peasantry. For North Korea, "only the army meets the criteria of loyalty, revolutionary spirit, cohesiveness, and esprit de corps." January 2004 saw another increase in the omnipresence of songun, as it was mentioned more frequently than any other word in the New Year's Editorial, and was used to describe everything from politics to Korea itself.
Songun has continued to expand in importance, and is even included in the ideological discussion of reunification
with South Korea
. The North Korean press stated, "songun politics is the guarantee that will secure the re-unification of the Fatherland." North Korea also credits songun with safeguarding the peace on the peninsula, and states that it is the only thing preventing the US from attacking the North. Songun has become intrinsic to North Korea's domestic politics, foreign policy, and decision-making, and has certainly taken its place alongside juche as a guiding principle of the regime.
This argument also often points to the series of crises that befell North Korea in the early 1990s, beginning with the fall of Communism and its long-time ally the Soviet Union
in 1991, followed by the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994, which was then trailed by several natural disasters and the North Korean famine
and its concurrent economic crisis, all before 1999. These also could have served as motivation for a new method of consolidation of power.
The second strand focuses on internal North Korean politics as the cause for the move to military first politics. When Kim Il-sung died, he left leadership of North Korea to his son, Kim Jong-il. At the time of his father's death, the most important position held by Kim Jong-il in the North Korean government was military, specifically second in command of the military. This left him with no choice but to use the Korean People's Army to consolidate his own power.
Additionally, in order to keep control of the government, Kim Jong-il would need to secure his support base within the Korean People's Army. This line of argument points out that Kim Jong-il deliberately chose to sideline other aspects of the government in order to assert the primacy of the Korean People's Army. This included abolishing the Central People's Committee, the state presidency, and sidelining the North Korean Administration Council.
The ascendency of the Korean People's Army concerns South Korea, and ties into the debate over the Sunshine Policy
, its most recent vision of Korean reunification. Given North Korea's insistence that songun will facilitate reunification, it is difficult to tell what they expect in the future from South Korea, whose government is not at all supportive of songun policies, going so far as to outlaw websites within South Korea that promote North Korea's military-first ideas.
Songun politics have also thrived on the ongoing nuclear crisis. For the United States
, given that its primary concern is the denuclearization of the peninsula, the concept of military-first politics and ideology is a troubling one. Songun also seems to fit very well with the possession of nuclear weapons, and can be seen as a way of making such weapons central to the government's guiding ideology of self-governance. This leads to the concern that, the longer military-first ideology guides the North Korean government, the less likely it will be that the United States will be able to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program
. A similar concern is that North Korea could perceive attempts at denuclearization and normalization of affairs with the United States
as a threat to the primacy of the military within North Korea and, thus, a threat to songun ideology, a fear which puts into doubt the idea that North Korea is actually willing to give up its nuclear weapons program at all.
regime. The Kim Jong-il regime has strategically aimed at "A Powerful and Prosperous Nation" (kangseong taeguk) through "Military First" policy. Sergey Kurbanov, head of Institute of Korean Studies of University of Saint Petersburg, described in his Daily NK
interview how the members of the nouveau riche
in North Korea have the will to keep the Military First politics in order to secure their wealth.
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
's "Military First" policy, which prioritizes the Korean People's Army
Korean People's Army
The Korean People's Army , also known as the Inmin Gun, are the military forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Kim Jong-il is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and Chairman of the National Defence Commission...
in the affairs of state and allocates national resources to the army first. "Military First" has been playing many roles, including that of "Military First Politics", serving as a political system, that of "a line of Military First Economic Construction" acting as an economic system, and of "Military First Ideology" making it the new guiding ideology of North Korea.
Songun elevates the Korean People's Army within North Korea as an organization and as a state function, granting it the primary position in the North Korean government
Government of North Korea
The North Korean government is the executive branch of the state, according to the Constitution of North Korea. In practice, the highest decisions are made by the National Defence Commission of North Korea which is led by its Chairman Kim Jong-il....
and society. It guides domestic policy
Politics of North Korea
The politics of North Korea take place within a nominally democratic multi-party system within the framework of the official state philosophy, Juche, a concept created by the founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il-sung, and his son and successor as leader, Kim Jong-il. In practice, North Korea...
and international interactions
Foreign relations of North Korea
The foreign relations of North Korea are often tense and unpredictable. Since the Korean War armistice in 1953, the North Korean government has been largely isolationist, becoming one of the world's most authoritarian societies...
. It is the framework for the government, designating the military as the "supreme repository of power." The North Korean government grants the Korean People's Army the highest economic and resource-allocation priority, and positions it as the model for society to emulate. Songun is also the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the military over all other aspects of state and society.
History
The songun era began in 1961 when a young Kim Jong-ilKim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, birth name Yuri Irsenovich Kim born 16 February 1941 or 16 February 1942 , is the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea...
together with his father Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung was a Korean communist politician who led the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death...
went to a visit to the Seoul 105th Guards Armored Division HQ in Pyongyang, the first of many visits to various Korean People's Army installations all across the DPRK.
Songun did not appear as an official government policy until after Kim Il-sung's death in 1994, however. In 1995, "military first" policies were introduced as "a revolutionary idea of attaching great importance to the army" and as "a politics emphasizing the perfect unity and the single-hearted unity of the party, army and the people, and the role of the army as the vanguards" in the wake of Kim Jong-il's first military unit visit for that year. This was a slight shift from the government's previous guiding policy, Kim Il-sung's juche
Juche
Juche or Chuch'e is a Korean word usually translated as "self-reliance." In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , "Juche" refers specifically to a political thesis of Kim Il-sung, the Juche Idea, that identifies the Korean masses as the masters of the country's development...
, or self-reliance policy.
In 1997, an editorial published in Rodong Sinmun
Rodong Sinmun
Rodong Sinmun is a North Korean newspaper and the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, published by the Rodong News Agency. It is the most widely read newspaper in the country...
, the North Korean Workers' Party official newspaper, stated: "Never before have the status and role of the People's Army been so extraordinarily elevated as today when it is being led energetically by the Respected and Beloved Comrade Supreme Commander." By this point, the People's Army had also become "synonymous with the people, the state, and the party." Together, all of this indicates not only the centrality of Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, birth name Yuri Irsenovich Kim born 16 February 1941 or 16 February 1942 , is the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea...
to the songun ideology, but also its increasing rhetorical centrality to the state and society.
In 1998, songun began appearing in conjunction with other terms, including "military first revolutionary idea", "military first revolutionary leadership", and "military first politics", expanding the concept of songun into even more aspects of North Korean governance.
Songun became an even more prominent concept in January 1999, making its first appearance in the important New Year's Day editorial published jointly by all the major news organs of North Korea. The editorial tied songun with Kim Jong-il by declaring that he practiced military-first leadership, which is "one in which the People's Army serves as the main force of revolution and in which the unity of the army and the people helps to safeguard as well as build socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
."
In January 2003, the New Year's editorial added military first ideology (songun sasang) to the pantheon of military first concepts. In December 2003, the "Essential Attributes of Military-First Politics" was published as a new vision of the driving force of the revolution in the quasi-Communist North Korea. It assigned the main force of the revolution to the Korean People's Army. This is a role traditionally, in Communist societies, assigned to the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
or, in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, to the peasantry. For North Korea, "only the army meets the criteria of loyalty, revolutionary spirit, cohesiveness, and esprit de corps." January 2004 saw another increase in the omnipresence of songun, as it was mentioned more frequently than any other word in the New Year's Editorial, and was used to describe everything from politics to Korea itself.
Songun has continued to expand in importance, and is even included in the ideological discussion of reunification
Korean reunification
Korean reunification refers to the hypothetical future reunification of North Korea and South Korea under a single government...
with South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
. The North Korean press stated, "songun politics is the guarantee that will secure the re-unification of the Fatherland." North Korea also credits songun with safeguarding the peace on the peninsula, and states that it is the only thing preventing the US from attacking the North. Songun has become intrinsic to North Korea's domestic politics, foreign policy, and decision-making, and has certainly taken its place alongside juche as a guiding principle of the regime.
Why Songun?
Two reasons have been offered as to why, after Kim Il-sung's death, North Korea shifted to songun as their primary ideology. One strand of the debate points to North Korea's desire to increase its military strength due to its precarious international position. In this sense, songun is perceived as an aggressive, threatening move to increase the strength of the North Korean military at the expense of other parts of society.This argument also often points to the series of crises that befell North Korea in the early 1990s, beginning with the fall of Communism and its long-time ally the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1991, followed by the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994, which was then trailed by several natural disasters and the North Korean famine
North Korean famine
'The North Korean famine was a famine in North Korea which began in the early 1990s...
and its concurrent economic crisis, all before 1999. These also could have served as motivation for a new method of consolidation of power.
The second strand focuses on internal North Korean politics as the cause for the move to military first politics. When Kim Il-sung died, he left leadership of North Korea to his son, Kim Jong-il. At the time of his father's death, the most important position held by Kim Jong-il in the North Korean government was military, specifically second in command of the military. This left him with no choice but to use the Korean People's Army to consolidate his own power.
Additionally, in order to keep control of the government, Kim Jong-il would need to secure his support base within the Korean People's Army. This line of argument points out that Kim Jong-il deliberately chose to sideline other aspects of the government in order to assert the primacy of the Korean People's Army. This included abolishing the Central People's Committee, the state presidency, and sidelining the North Korean Administration Council.
Political implications
One implication of songun policies is that it is not only working with juche, the self-reliance ideal promoted by Kim Il-sung, but also replacing it as the central state ideology as Kim Jong-il consolidates his power. Some point to the policy as a sign that the government is crumbling, and could soon collapse.The ascendency of the Korean People's Army concerns South Korea, and ties into the debate over the Sunshine Policy
Sunshine policy
The Sunshine Policy was the foreign policy of South Korea towards North Korea until Lee Myung-bak's election to presidency in 2008. Since its articulation in 1998 by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the policy resulted in greater political contact between the two nations and some historical...
, its most recent vision of Korean reunification. Given North Korea's insistence that songun will facilitate reunification, it is difficult to tell what they expect in the future from South Korea, whose government is not at all supportive of songun policies, going so far as to outlaw websites within South Korea that promote North Korea's military-first ideas.
Songun politics have also thrived on the ongoing nuclear crisis. For the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, given that its primary concern is the denuclearization of the peninsula, the concept of military-first politics and ideology is a troubling one. Songun also seems to fit very well with the possession of nuclear weapons, and can be seen as a way of making such weapons central to the government's guiding ideology of self-governance. This leads to the concern that, the longer military-first ideology guides the North Korean government, the less likely it will be that the United States will be able to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program
North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
North Korea has declared that it has nuclear weapons and is believed by many to have nuclear weapons. The CIA assesses that North Korea also has a substantial arsenal of chemical weapons...
. A similar concern is that North Korea could perceive attempts at denuclearization and normalization of affairs with the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a threat to the primacy of the military within North Korea and, thus, a threat to songun ideology, a fear which puts into doubt the idea that North Korea is actually willing to give up its nuclear weapons program at all.
Economic implications
"Military First" politics originated with an attempt at recovery from economic troubles during the famine that swept North Korea in the 1990s, known as the Arduous March. In order to overcome the economic crisis, the army is expected to work in the forefront. North Korea's "Military First" is comparable with South Korea's military-led administration during the Park Chung-heePark Chung-hee
Park Chung-hee was a Republic of Korea Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979. He seized power in a military coup and ruled until his assassination in 1979. He has been credited with the industrialization of the Republic of Korea through export-led growth...
regime. The Kim Jong-il regime has strategically aimed at "A Powerful and Prosperous Nation" (kangseong taeguk) through "Military First" policy. Sergey Kurbanov, head of Institute of Korean Studies of University of Saint Petersburg, described in his Daily NK
Daily NK
The Daily NK is an online newspaper focusing on issues relating to North Korea. The site, run by opponents of the North Korean government, is based in South Korea and regularly reports stories from inside North Korea via a network of informants inside the country.Founded in December 2004, the Daily...
interview how the members of the nouveau riche
Nouveau riche
The nouveau riche , or new money, comprise those who have acquired considerable wealth within their own generation...
in North Korea have the will to keep the Military First politics in order to secure their wealth.
External Links
- Songun Politics of Kim Jong Il - an official North Korean work explaining the policy.
See also
- JucheJucheJuche or Chuch'e is a Korean word usually translated as "self-reliance." In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , "Juche" refers specifically to a political thesis of Kim Il-sung, the Juche Idea, that identifies the Korean masses as the masters of the country's development...
- Park Chung-HeePark Chung-heePark Chung-hee was a Republic of Korea Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979. He seized power in a military coup and ruled until his assassination in 1979. He has been credited with the industrialization of the Republic of Korea through export-led growth...
- Korean People's ArmyKorean People's ArmyThe Korean People's Army , also known as the Inmin Gun, are the military forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Kim Jong-il is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and Chairman of the National Defence Commission...
- Guns versus butter modelGuns versus butter modelIn macroeconomics, the guns versus butter model is an example of a simple production possibility frontier. It demonstrates the relationship between a nation's investment in defense and civilian goods. In this example, a nation has to choose between two options when spending its finite resources...