Songun

Democratic People's Republic of Korea
This article is part of a series on the politics and government of North Korea
Constitution Juche  (state ideology) Songun  ("military-first" policy) Eternal President of the Republic Kim Il-sung
Workers' Party First Secretary: Kim Jong-un Congress (6th) Charter Central Committee (6th) Politburo Presidium Secretariat Central Military Commission Chairman: Kim Jong-un Organization and Guidance Department Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League
National Defence Commission First Chairman Kim Jong-un Korean People's Army Supreme Commander: Kim Jong-un
Government Cabinet Premier: Pak Pong-ju Judiciary Central Court Legislature President: Kim Yong-nam Presidium
Recent elections Parliamentary: 2003 2009 2014
Administrative divisions First-level Provinces Special cities Second-level Third-level Eup  (town) Dong  (neighbourhood) Ri  (village) Rodonjagu  (workers' district)
Foreign relations
Related topics Censorship Human rights Kim dynasty Korean reunification Propaganda Illicit activities Law (Enforcement • Security Ministry)
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Songun (or, alternatively, Sŏn'gun) is North Korean "military first" policy, prioritizing the Korean People's Army in the affairs of state and allocation of resources. "Military first" as a principle guides political and economic life in North Korea, with "military-first politics" dominating the political system; "a line of military-first economic construction" acting as an economic system; and "military-first ideology" serving as the guiding ideology.

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.^[1] 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.^[2] Songun is also the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the people's military over all other aspects of state and society.

History

The songun era began in 1960 when a young Kim Jong-il, together with his father Kim Il-sung, visited the Seoul 105th Guards Armored Division HQ in Pyongyang on August 25. It was the first of Kim Jong-il's many visits to various Korean People's Army installations across North Korea. August 25 is now a national North Korean holiday.

Songun did not appear as an official government policy until after Kim Il-sung's death in 1994. 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"^[3] 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.^[4]

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."^[5] 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.

Despite North Korea being the most militarized country in the world, with one of the world's most closely supervised state controlled media organs, this propaganda photo clearly shows KPA members out of step with each other during close order drill.

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."^[5] In foreign language publications, the translated term "army-first" substituted for Songun between 1999 and 2006, after which the Korean term has been used exclusively.^[6]

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.^[5] This is a role that traditionally, in communist societies, is assigned to the proletariat or, in China, to the peasantry. For North Korea, however, "only the army meets the criteria of loyalty, revolutionary spirit, cohesiveness, and esprit de corps".^[5] January 2004 saw another increase in the reach 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.^[5]

Songun has continued to expand in importance and is even now included in the ideological discussion of reunification with South Korea. The North Korean press stated: "[S]ongun politics is the guarantee that will secure the re-unification of the Fatherland."^[7] North Korea also credits songun with safeguarding the peace on the peninsula and claims that it is the only thing preventing the United States from attacking North Korea.^[8] Songun has become intrinsic to North Korea's domestic politics, foreign policy and decision-making, making a place alongside juche as a guiding principle of the regime.

Background

Songun is influenced by the Maoist doctrine of the military as a "great school". Through Songun, North Korea also repeats Maoist slogans from the 1960s such as: "learn from [the army]", "army-people unity" and "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". North Korea's aggressive nuclear rhetoric is also reminiscent of that of Mao.^[6]

Rationale

Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok meets Bill Clinton at the White House, October 2000

Two reasons have been offered as to why, after Kim Il-sung's death, North Korea shifted to songun as a major ideology. One strand of the debate points to North Korea's desire to increase its military strength due to its precarious international position.^[9] 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.^[1]

This argument also often points to the series of crises that befell North Korea in the early 1990s, beginning with the fall of its long-time ally the Soviet Union in 1991, followed by the death of Kim Il-sung (1994), several natural disasters, the North Korean famine and economic crisis, all before 1999. These also could have served as motivation for a new method of consolidation of power.^[10]

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.

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.^[1] 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.^[5]

Political implications

One implication of songun policies is that they not only worked with juche, the self-reliance ideal promoted by Kim Il-sung, but also replaced it as the central state ideology as Kim Jong-il consolidated his power.^[11]

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.^[12] 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.^[13]

Songun politics have also thrived on the ongoing nuclear crisis.^[14] 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.^[15] 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.^[16] 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 may be(come) willing to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Economic implications

"Military-first politics" originated with the attempt at recovery — the "Arduous March" — from the economic troubles during the famine that swept North Korea in the 1990s. In order to overcome the economic crisis, the army was expected to work at the forefront. The regime set a strategic goal of becoming "a powerful and prosperous nation" (kangseong taeguk) through military-first policy.^[17] Sergey Kurbanov, head of the Institute of Korean Studies of the University of Saint Petersburg, described in his Daily NK interview how the members of the nouveau riche in North Korea support the military-first politics in order to secure their wealth.^[18]

See also

• Juche
• Park Chung-hee
• Korean People's Army
• Guns versus butter model
• Militarism
• Conscription
• War economy

Notes

References

• Cheong Wook-Sik, "Military First Policy", presented at Washington Peace Network, Washington, D.C., April 19, 2007.
• Chun Mi-Young, "The Kim Jong Il administration's recognition of politics", KINU policy series, September 2006.
• John Feffer, "Forgotten Lessons of Helsinki: Human Rights and U.S.-North Korean Relations", World Policy Journal, v.XXI, no.3, Fall 2004.
• Alexander Platkovskiy, Nuclear Blackmail and North Korea's Search for a place in the sun: The North Korean Nuclear Program. New York and London: Routledge, 2000.