Il Young Jeong
Senior Research Fellow_Institute of Social Science_Sogang University
Subject phrases such as “North Korea’s,” “North Korea is,” and “As for North Korea…” are frequently encountered in recent academic conferences and media reports dealing with the Korean Peninsula. These expressions have become familiar, yet they evoke a certain sense of discomfort. At some point, we grew accustomed to understanding the space of “North Korea” as a single, unified actor called “North Korea.”
This article criticizes the current tendency to place the space of North Korea into a black box and interpret it as a monolithic entity, and proposes restoring the research ecosystem on North Korea as a way to address this problem.
Two Wings for Understanding North Korea
The space we call North Korea is shrouded in secrecy. It is likely one of the most isolated countries in the world. What happens inside North Korea is revealed only under the Party’s tight control. The Workers’ Party of Korea has long dominated all broadcasting, media, and cultural and artistic sectors. Without its approval, not a single article, performance, or academic paper can be made public.
So how, then, can we analyze changes occurring inside North Korea? This is where North Korea scholars come in. They lift the veil obscuring the country and piece together fragments of information, like assembling a mosaic, to track shifts within the North. By examining official documents published by the authorities, they interpret policy intentions; through the testimonies of defectors, they analyze how everyday life for North Korean residents is changing and how state policies collide with the lived experiences of ordinary people.
Research on North Korea has developed by maintaining balance on two wings. One is the realist international-relations perspective, which treats North Korea as a single actor in global politics. The other is the approach commonly called “North Korea studies,” which seeks to interpret North Korean behavior by tracing the unique characteristics and internal changes of the society. I believe that only when these two perspectives are kept in balance can we truly understand North Korea. Yet this balance has collapsed. Why?
The Yoon Suk-yeol Administration Has Locked North Korea Inside a Black Box
Above all, the prolonged rupture in inter-Korean relations has turned North Korea studies into a field with “no future.” University departments dedicated to North Korea studies have disappeared, and young scholars who study North Korea full-time are vanishing.
The Ministry of Unification is the government body that should have the deepest understanding of North Korea. It has long provided policy support for the research ecosystem on North Korea and relied on that research to interpret internal changes within the North. However, with the arrival of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, the ministry became embroiled in debates over its very existence and began to shift in nature. Rather than seeking to understand North Korean actors or analyze social changes within the country, it became preoccupied with confrontation-oriented policies.
In July 2023, Kim Young-ho—an international relations specialist —was appointed as the administration’s second Minister of Unification, and a former diplomat from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took the post of vice minister. With these changes, research on North Korea rapidly contracted. Even the Ministry of Unification effectively placed North Korea into a black box and focused on hardline policies instead.
The following year, in 2024, a long-running program that had supported early-career scholars of North Korea for more than a decade was discontinued, and so-called “North Korea specialists” began disappearing from the policy-making process.
Swaying Back and Forth to the Words of Kim Jong-un and Kim Yeo-jong
North Korea still operates under an oppressive one-man, one-party dictatorship. Yet the era when Kim Il-sung, as the “brain” of the sociopolitical organism, controlled the entire society has passed. Since the 1990s, North Korea has no longer been the same country it once was, and since Kim Jong-un came to power, the system has experienced changes distinct from those under Kim Jong-il. Markets have emerged as an institutional force that competes with the state’s formal structures, and the wealth-holding class that has arisen from these markets has become an actor that cannot be ignored.
In a situation where the state rationing system has collapsed, ordinary North Korean residents—who must fend for themselves—can no longer be treated as passive subjects who simply obey whatever the leader commands. Even in North Korea, mechanisms exist that drive social behavior and change. Yet we have shut down the very window through which such mechanisms could be understood.
For example, in December 2023, when Kim Jong-un declared what he called an “adversarial, two-state relationship,” the government and political circles in the South fell into confusion over how to respond. Analysts pointed out that tensions could arise between Kim Jong-un and the older generation of elites and ideologues. What might have happened if our government had been able to read the internal shifts taking place in North Korea at that time?
In addition, since late 2023, prices and exchange rates in North Korea are believed to have risen sharply. Yet this, too, has scarcely been discussed in South Korean society or academia.
Looking back, both the government and the media in the South have repeatedly closed their eyes to internal changes within North Korea, choosing instead to move in step with the words of Kim Jong-un and Kim Yo-jong—zigzagging in response to every statement they made. Whenever Kim Ju-ae appeared on North Korean broadcasts, our society wasted time in unproductive succession debates. As a result, our understanding of the transformations within North Korean society has only diminished. This is precisely why we must restore the research ecosystem on North Korea.
How Can We Restore the North Korea Research Ecosystem?
In his Liberation Day address this past August, President Lee Jae-myung proposed a new era for the Korean Peninsula—one of peaceful coexistence and shared growth between the two Koreas. It remains a long road ahead. But this is not something to be rushed; rather, it requires deliberate and steady steps. As a start, why not reopen the “black box” into which we have placed North Korea and begin piecing together the scattered mosaic? Only by understanding the diverse changes taking place within North Korea—not just “North Korea” as a monolithic entity—can we envision a new inter-Korean relationship and the future of the peninsula.
A noteworthy exchange occurred during the Ministry of Unification’s National Assembly audit on October 14. Representative Lee Jae-jung of the Democratic Party emphasized the importance of North Korea research for understanding the country’s internal dynamics and unique characteristics, while also pointing to the alarming disappearance of university departments dedicated to North Korea studies. She stressed that “North Korea studies have the nature of a public good” and called on the government to take active measures to restore the research ecosystem.
The collapsed research ecosystem cannot be restored overnight. From a policy standpoint, the government must outline a long-term vision for rebuilding it and consider institutional support mechanisms. In the short term, alternatives must be developed to revitalize North Korea studies at universities. Above all, the government and academic institutions must work together to cultivate young scholars who specialize in North Korea and to provide them with a stable research environment.
In the medium to long term, it will be necessary to reform unification education in elementary, middle, and high schools so that students can study North Korean society more substantively. The current system—rooted in normative arguments for unification without genuine understanding of North Korea as a society and as the counterpart to unification—must be overhauled. Future generations need an education that allows them to study North Korea as it truly is and to envision the future of the Korean Peninsula for themselves.
*IL-Young Jeong is a Senior Research Fellow at Sogang University in Seoul. His key research interests include North Korea's social control system, inter-Korean relations, and peace on the Korean Peninsula.
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