ROMANIA and North Korea A Comparative Study on the Communist Dictatorship

Abstract

North Korea and Romania share many similarities but also differences in their dictatorships. First of all, we can observe the difference in their ‘external circumstances’ and ‘differences between Eastern and Western values: represented by ‘collectivism and individualism.’ In addition, religious oppression in North Korea has been much more severe than that in Romania in late ’80s, and in North Korea the idolization of its leader has been successfully carried out through the exhaustive indoctrination. In contrast, freedom of religion was tolerably allowed in Romania. So that most Romanians used to go to church covertly during the communist era. And the idolization of Nicolae Ceauşescu was not also successful as in North Korea because it was unfit for the European values: individualism. Eventually, North Koreans who have Asian sentiments and values seem to be somewhat different from Romanians who have an inclination toward individualism. Anyhow, North Korean’s acceptive attitude of the idolization and the clan dictatorship seems to be different from that of Romanian. It is perhaps derived somewhat from the horror by the terror politics to exterminate three generations of family. While there have rarely been the social resistances in North Korea, such moments existed occasionally in 1970s thru 1980s in Romania though not so hard as in the other Eastern European countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Through it is hard to forecast the change of North Korean regime as of now, we can suppose following three scenarios: 1) Kim Jong-un regime continuance, 2) ‘Romanian-style’ collapse, 3) ‘Chinese-style’ open-door system. According to the estimated data of the reunification of North and South Korea by The Presidential Council for Future and Vision in 2010, 322 billion dollars is required for gradual reunification and 1.14 trillion dollars for radical reunification. German authorities on unification sector forecasted that - “It takes at least one generation to complete unification. The reunification of North and South Korea, with a greater difference, will be a bigger challenge than that of East and West Germany.” In July, 2010, Ulrich Blum, the head of Halle Institute for Economic Research, said that - “The situation between the South and the North Korea these days differs greatly from that of Germany at that time. The population size and GDP per capita of East Germany was respectively about 20% of those of West Germany. Nowadays, however, population size and GDP per capita of North Korea against South Korea are 40% and 5%, respectively.”