North Korea News Podcast by NK News - How North Korea’s Kim rulers manage elites to guarantee regime survival

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

North Korea’s ruling Kim family has orchestrated not one but two leadership successions during its over seven decades in power, and may well be preparing for a third. But the success of such transitions in authoritarian states is far from certain and depends in large part on how rulers manage the elites that compose their […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NK News website at nknews.org slash private dash feed. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetsut and we are recording this episode in the NK News studio on Tuesday, the 15th of July, 2025. I almost said 1925. That would have been wrong.

And I'm joined here in the studio by one returning guest and one new one. Dr. Peter Ward is a research fellow at the Sejong Institute Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy, and he holds a PhD from the University of Vienna. His research focuses on North Korean politics, censorship, elite dynamics, and authoritarian survival. Welcome back, Peter. Thank you. And our new guest is Dr. Edward Goldring, who is a lecturer in political science, comparative politics, at my first alma mater, the University of Melbourne.

His research primarily examines how autocratic regimes and leaders maintain their power. His main ongoing projects are on purges and succession under autocracy. So welcome for the first time, Edward. Thanks for much having me. So Peter, since we last spoke on the podcast, and I don't remember exactly when, it's been a few months, you've been impressively churning out rigorous academic output, some of it together with Edward Goldring, which is why I've got the two of you in the room together, as well as with one of our previous guests, Stephen Denny.

So today we'll be discussing some of that output. Let's start with a general opener that I want to hear both of your opinions on. In regimes like North Korea where power is deeply personal and succession is often opaque, how much of what we assume about elite control and stability of the system is just myth making, whether that be internal or external, and how much is actually measurable? Who wants to start us off? I mean these regimes are very opaque. We have measurement issues. We're gonna have measurement issues with anything we try and measure, by the way. There's very few things that you can just put a ruler up against and decide on,

you know, an objective measure. Public opinions, there's loads of things in public opinion that we can we can talk about when we say when we when we talk about measurement issues. With respect to North Korea specifically, and with personalist regimes more generally, we have to work with what we got. With respect to North Korea specifically and with personalist regimes more generally, we have to work with what we've got. And if we can't measure it, then there's actually very limited things we can actually say about it.

So we'll probably go into more detail about our own studies very soon. But generally, one has to work with what one has, even if it's far from perfect. Edward, you look at comparative politics. How do you compare things that are so hard to measure and to line them up against each other? Yeah, so I think the sort of first question, the way it was phrased, it strikes at the heart of like a methodological challenge when researching dictatorships in that they are opaque, which I think is what both makes them hard to research but also fascinating to research. Obviously I'm

biased. But for me, I think there often is lots of myth making, there often is lots of obfuscation. And so one of the practices that I'm quite keen on is waiting. And so for instance, in the work we've done, we- This is waiting with an E-I-G-H, not an A-I, correct? No, no, no, waiting, W-A-I-T-I-N-G, apologies, yeah. Because often it takes time for truth to emerge. And so, for instance, if we're collecting data, whether qualitative or quantitative,

we often won't go right up to the present day because often it takes time for a full picture to emerge. So whether it's myth-making or just getting a clearer picture of what's actually gone on, I think allowing some time to pass before doing any serious analysis is important. Now, that's tough for a media outlet like us because we want to have things out immediately. We don't have, you know, in the 24-hour news cycle, we don't have the patience or the time to sit back and wait, but that's the luxury of being an academic, I suppose. You can look at specific time periods which don't go up to the present day, as you say.

Yeah, 100%. And I think it's worth saying, in a completely non-sicophantic way, that academics doing research on autocracies, perhaps especially more than democracies, we're very not wholly dependent, but we rely pretty heavily, I think, on work done by journalists on opaque regimes. And I think there's been a tendency amongst some Western academics to focus especially on say reporting previously done by the New York Times or the Post, but actually looking at sort of broader range of media outlets across the world. Yeah, there's just a huge amount of valuable sources that academics mine, of course. Fantastic. So my colleagues in the next room are literally writing the first drafts of

history. Wonderful. All right, so let's start with this book that you have written together, Authoritarian Survival and Leadership Succession in North Korea and Beyond. It's just come out this year. Congratulations on your baby together, as it were. Thank you. Now in this book, you write that authoritarian leaders like Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-il build a successor's power base by promoting elites from outside their inner circle. Why does that strategy work and what makes it less risky than it sounds? Let's start with you first, Edward. Yeah, thanks. So first of all I'd say that it might not work and I think that's a really important point to make with regard to our book because in the book

all we seek to do is to identify what are the tactics with regard to elite management that dictators employ when preparing for succession and then after the succession has happened how do they consolidate power and that's something we we try at least in the last section of the book to highlight which is we've identified these tactics and in North Korea at least we've noticed them and it seems like they worked, given what happened with the two successions. But of course, to answer that question systematically, we'd need to go and look at data across dictatorships all over the world.

And even in North Korea, we don't actually test, do they work? So why do they work? I would say, well, we don't know quite yet. Okay. But what makes it less risky than it sounds to actually promote elites from outside your inner circle? I mean, I think you've got to reckon with how dangerous the inner circle actually is, especially for the successor as opposed to the incumbent. So for an incumbent being surrounded by powerful potentates from the comprised there in a circle,

you know, in the North Korean case, it's, you know, with Kim Jong-il, it was a collection of generals in the KPA in the 2000s. These individuals were very, they leveraged a lot of organizational resources. They had control over different parts of the North Korean military and the North Korean state. They had networks of people who they could trust. They had expertise. They were very useful to Kim Jong-il. But those very same strengths could become serious threats to Kim Jong-un when he is, you know, a young and

inexperienced leader without his own group of supporters around him as yet. And the whole point is, by bringing in those outsider elites to build that support base for Kim Jong-un, the incumbent elites, those people who already had a great deal of power and great deal of experience and a great deal of organisational, you know, naus and resources at their disposal could be hitched against or could be, should we say, they're not going to be dispossessed, they're not going to be thrown in prison, although sometimes some North Korean elites are, but rather they're going to be partially displaced is too strong a word, but they're going to be offset, their power is going to be offset against so that they can't threaten the successor in ways they otherwise could.

If I may, our argument, it tries to highlight this as a more subtle, softer tactic than some of the more blunt tools that dictators have at their disposal. Blunt tools like, for example, a purge. Exactly. Sending someone to a farm or executing somebody. Yeah. So it's simply gently nudging somebody out of the way or perhaps, what's the word, promoting somebody to a position where they no longer have influence, something

like that? Exactly, yeah. And so for instance, maybe lots of officials have been around for a long time. Maybe they maintain prominent, I use the sort of word public in quotation marks, but so-called public facing positions in say the central committee. But maybe it becomes sort of say a retirement home where they seem to have a prestigious position but are they actually sort of an inner member of the kitchen cabinet as it were who's a key advisor to say Kim Jong-il at the time.

Okay a bit like I mean the answer to why it is that Kim Yong-nam has existed or has survived for so long through two successions right that he's been put in a position where he doesn't actually have any real power. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. Now, if I were to, I don't know, rephrase this idea of promoting elites from outside the inner circle, it just sounds like generational change, really, doesn't

it? That you're getting rid of the older people who are more established. You're bringing in newer people who are not yet established and then giving them power, you know, raising your own power as the new successor. No, that's definitely part of it. Absolutely. So do you see signs that Kim Jong-un is repeating this model to prepare for a fourth generation succession?

I don't think so yet, but this is an empirical question that we want to investigate further actually going forward. It looks like we're going to have enough data soon to start seriously considering it, but Ed, you did have a look a while ago. Yeah, so Peter's right. We've begun collecting the data, but we don't have enough yet, I think, to have a definitive answer on this. So in the book and the related article, one of the main sources of data we use from public facing events in North Korea. So looking at all the elites who attend these events. So when there's a funeral, for example, or a commemoration of Kim Il-sung passing or something like that, you look at who's there, what's their

rank order, that sort of thing. Who's carrying a coffin, that kind of thing. Yeah, like who's at these events, whether it's at a funeral or a visit to a water park, or a very topical one, or a factory, or whatever the event is. And so who's taking notes when the leader is giving on the spot guidance. Right, exactly. And then so we've collected data up to, I'm forgetting now, we're up to 2020, I think about a week. And so, yeah, in the book, we look at elite management, when the incumbent is preparing for succession and then elite management once succession has occurred. And so of course, the challenge of say, looking at it today is we don't, I would argue, I

don't think we definitively know yet whether we are in a period where Kim Jong-un is preparing for succession. Of course, we see a lot of speculation has been made in the last few years about Kim Jue. And Kim Jong-un's health and longevity. Absolutely, but I'm sure we all have opinions on that, but I don't think we have a definitive answer yet. No, no.

And this is again where the waiting comes in, yes? Exactly, yeah. In identifying who's at these events, sometimes the North Korean media is very helpful. They give lists, they say, you know, present, present were and, you know, for example, I remember going back and looking at the Rodong Shinmun of the day after Kim Il-sung's funeral and it actually published literally a list on page one and page two of everyone who was there, which is great, it's a gold mine for academics like you, but do you also use facial recognition software for when, for those occasions when the media doesn't give you these lists?

software for when for those occasions when the media doesn't give you these lists. to NK News, you can listen to full episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast Feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NK News website at nknews.org slash private dash feed.