"Socialism Must Be Safeguarded Even If Life Is Harsh" Round-Table Talk of North Korean Defectors Who Served in People's Army

Editor's Note: Most young North Korean men in their late teens and early 20s serve in the military. Even without taking into account Pyongyang's "military-priority politics," they do constitute the pillar underpinning the regime today, and the central force that will lead North Korean society tomorrow. Under what circumstances do North Korean servicemen lead their barracks life, and what sorts of perceptions do they harbor about the reality of the North and South Korea? In an effort to seek answers to such questions and others, we've hosted a round-table talk of three North Korean defectors in the South who had served in the military.

Participants:

Kim Sung-min, 40: Officer at 620th Training Center, People's Army (capitan)
Byon Sang-ho, 40: NCO at 118th Brigade, 624th Unit (master sergeant)
Jang Chol-bong, 29: NCO at Civil Defense Battalion, 5th Corps (staff sergeant)

- Young North Koreans entering the military upon graduation from senior high school undergo a two to three month basic training at training centers run by corps or divisions before being assigned to individual units. Unlike their South Korean counterparts, who are given military serial numbers upon admission to recruit training centers, North Korean soldiers formally become military servicemen only after making pledges after completing basic training.

- They get interested in obtaining party membership in five to six years after enlistment. If one aspires to become a junior party official such as a guidance officer on discharge, it's essential to become a party member. Many servicemen became party members in the past, but it's no longer easy to get party membership since the quorum has been slashed.

- To become a party member, one has to win the favor of the unit's personnel officer or political guidance officer. Many methods are mobilized to achieve this end. One is to save a portion of one's own food rations for a period, and another is offer the officer pieces of cloth used for wrapping feet in the place of socks. Still another, used by children of privileged ranking officials, is to bribe the officer by helping him resolve his family problems or providing goods needed for the marriage of his children.

- Once admission to the party is granted, some servicemen, especially those coming from farming villages, coal and other mines, make desperate efforts to enter officers' school or college in order not to resume the life of their parents upon discharge. To successfully enter officers' school or college is harder than to gain party membership. Successful candidates are limited to two or three per company.

- In the military compounds, few know what's going on outside, because nobody tells them about the reality, especially something unfavorable. But we felt something serious was amiss when military units in or around 1994 received an order to secure side dishes on their own.

- Starving troops plundered farm produce indiscriminately for a while, harming the population seriously. To mend deteriorated military relations with the public, the authorities launched a massive drive to restore harmony between them.

- Servicemen are ignorant of the situation in South Korea and elsewhere, because the authorities control information so tightly and imbue them with the idea of socialism's superiority through ideological education. The People's Army is perhaps the most alienated group in the North.

- Looking at the South from the demilitarized zone (DMZ), we saw streams of motor vehicles in the daytime and electric lights in the night, shining as bright as daytime, scenes telling us the South's economic power is not as poor as we were told. If you look backward at the North, it's just pitch-dark without any sign of light.

- Despite the economic woes, a perception prevails in the military that socialism must be safeguarded. It's an outcome of controls on information about the outside world and ceaseless ideological education.

- Servicemen think unification must be achieved by all means. Once unification is realized, they think, they can live well. Some soldiers cherish a delusion that if the nation is unified, "We can eat rice produced in the expansive Cholla Province rice fields and meat soup."

- To achieve unification, the US troops must be pulled out of the South, they think, and so long as they remain stationed a war is inevitable. Whoever wins in a war, many servicemen favor a war. Such a sentiment arises from their dire living surroundings and exhaustion from barracks life.

- Enlisted men perceive that once a war breaks out, the North will turn out victorious, because they have long been so brainwashed. The authorities also brag, "We possess nuclear and chemical weapons as well. With them alone, we can win." But many senior North Korean officers think otherwise.

(Kim Kwang-in, kki@chosun.com )