To understand the changes that North Korea is currently undergoing we would be well advised to look back and “study the classical, prereform system, for that is the only route to a thorough understanding of the problems, crises, and vicissitudes met with by the socialist reforms, and then of the state of affairs and the problems as the postsocialist transition begins.” (Kornai 1992: xxvi). Furthermore, treating North Korea in an isolated way as a special case would be both wrong and misleading. In this paper, I will explore the general characteristics of state socialism as witnessed in the Eastern Block and in particular their relevance for agriculture and contrast them with the specific case of North Korea, relying heavily on the analysis provided by Kornai (1992). Based on this theoretical framework, the reasons for the relative functioning of the North Korean agriculture over the last decades will be discussed, as well as the new circumstances that made a continuation of the old approach impossible and demanded a policy change. A discussion of the various options for reform will be followed by a reality check considering a sufficient likelihood of regime stability as one precondition for a top-down reform process. Finally, I will analyze the actual reform measures and their future prospects.

This study analyzes the dynamic historical relationship between socialist reform and traditional Confucianism in the process of North Korean state formation. From the period of liberation to the 1970s and afterwards, the North Korean state tried to integrate the entire society by initiating a “domestic revolution” policy through the use of organic metaphors. Through the domestic revolution policy, the counter-socialist traditional kinship community and institutions and their economic and cultural bases were destroyed. However, even in the midst of institutionalized state reform, the cultural tendency of individual family groups was dominated by the basic principles and values of traditional Confucianism. This means that the domestic revolution policy in North Korea faced the disparity between the socialist ideal and cultural reality. Thus, the North Korean socialist regime began to accept the basic principles and reality of residual traditional Confucianism, and utilized them more actively through the mechanism of inclusion and exclusion. It accepted the logic of filial piety with the emphasis on the state’s predominance, and it accepted tacit gender inequality in familial patriarchy even though it mobilized women to participate in social activities with the socialist slogan of gender equality. This ideological strategy of the state and social cultural transformation in North Korean state formation was possible due to the roots of traditional Confucianism in Ch’ung-Hyo (loyalty and filial piety) and patriarchal rights. Through in-depth interview methods and ethnographic archival analysis, this study will explore the historical changes between socialist reform and traditional Confucianism in North Korean state formation.