r/PoliticalScience • u/Regular-Hour5358 • 2d ago
Question/discussion Is North Korea really a monarchy?
Hi Reddit!
I don’t have any formal training in political science, I just am kind of interested in the subject. To me, an uninformed observer, North Korea looks a lot like a new monarchy, but everywhere I look online they call it a “hereditary dictatorship.” My question is…why??
According to North Korea’s constitution, the effective leader of the country is the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, and that role is meant to be fed by elections and served in terms of 5 years. However, since 1957, power has only ever really been held by three successive members of a single family: the Kims. Despite the fact that the country’s constitution nominally puts power in the hands of the Politburo, the Kims have managed to amass a degree of power that’s more or less absolute. Most people seem to describe this as a hereditary totalitarian dictatorship achieved through a one-party state.
Monarchy is a form of government in which power is concentrated in a single head of state, a monarch. Monarchies can be absolute (like Saudi Arabia) or constitutional (like the UK), hereditary (like most monarchies around today) or elective (like the Vatican). As I understand it, their main uniting characteristic is that the state is not just controlled by but embodied in a single individual, as articulated by Louis XIV when he said “l’état, c’est moi.”
For the purposes of comparing with North Korea, let’s look at the Holy Roman Empire. The HRE was an elective monarchy, but it was often functionally hereditary or at least dynastic. This happened most famously under the Habsburgs, but also under the Ottonians, Salians, Hohenstaufens, and Luxembourgs. In each of those cases, the dynasties did not control the state through simple succession; they did so through constant reassertions of their wealth and power that either won over the Prince-Electors or forced their hands.
The Kims, too, are frequently maneuvering to reassert their own power and ensure dynastic control of the state. If anything, their elections seem to be more of a sham than those of the HRE ever were. At least the Prince-Electors had real power, unlike
the WPK, which has been basically totally suborned. And as for the question of embodying the state, while it’s true that North Korea may not have a European-style divine right of kingship per se, I think the role the Mount Paektu bloodline plays in the Juche ideology serves a similar purpose. Not that there haven’t been plenty of monarchs across history who have ruled in the absence of a formal divine right, mind you.
So political scientists out there, can you help me understand what the differences between North Korea’s hereditary dictatorship and a true monarchy are? Despite these superficial similarities, why do so many people seem to insist that North Korea isn’t a monarchy? Is it the existence of term limits on paper, even if the elections are a total sham and those limits therefore don’t exist functionally? Is it the lack of a title equivalent to King or Emperor? If tomorrow Kim Jong-Un announced that he would henceforth be known as Gugwang, but everything about the function of the state remained exactly the same otherwise, would that make North Korea a monarchy? How do we decide where this line gets drawn, and on what side should North Korea really fall?
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u/Shade861861 2d ago
Operates like one, their leaderships positions is inherited within the Kim blood line only which is known as the “Kim Dynasty” basically “House of the Kim’s”, just like other former (absolute) monarchies, the Russian Tsar house of the Romanovs, they could only be inherited within the bloodline. Their form of government matches an absolute monarch similar to the Russian Empire which was an autocracy, but it’s recognised as a republic.
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u/HeloRising 1d ago
Monarchy, generally speaking, often rests on what we call the divine right of kings - the king is king because god said so. The hereditary nature of power is also usually openly guaranteed.
Another common element of historical monarchies is they often weren't totalitarian. We like to think of a king's word being law but that wasn't always the case and often there was a caste of nobles and lords that held power comparable to the king that the king needed to keep happy in order to retain their throne lest the nobles rise up and overthrow the king.
If you want to really press specifics, the biggest difference is the religious justification that exists for monarchies that isn't necessarily there for totalitarian dictatorships. While some dictators (the Kim family included) often use religious or quasi-religious justifications for being/staying in power, that's not the sole reason for them being there.
North Korea does include a fair bit of mystical storytelling with respect to the Kim family as a way to justify why they're in charge but the idea that the leader of a nation should be selected by god/heaven isn't present in North Korean society. It's not like someone else could suddenly get the mandate of heaven and the North Korean population would swing support to them.
You could say that's a distinction without a difference and I'd say "Welcome to politics."
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u/Regular-Hour5358 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hereditary succession certainly wasn’t always guaranteed in historical monarchies—the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Roman Kingdom were all elective, just to name a few European examples.
But more to the point, my understanding was that the formal Divine Right of Kings only really was codified in the 16th or 17th century, and was also very specifically European. At that point there had already been centuries and centuries of European monarchs who functioned kind of as glorified warlords. And then if we’re going to expand the idea of the divine right to include any spiritual/religious dynastic claim to the throne beyond the formal European Divine Right of Kings (China’s Mandate of Heaven, West Asian/Eastern Mediterranean deifications of rulers, etc.) then I don’t see why we wouldn’t view the Mount Paektu bloodline the same way. If anything the Paektu ideology sounds quite a bit closer to the European Divine Right than, say, the Mandate of Heaven, and nobody would argue that ancient China wasn’t a monarchy.
The divine bloodline ideology in combination with the subordination of electors gives off a very Habsburgian vibe.
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u/HeloRising 1d ago
Hereditary succession certainly wasn’t always guaranteed in historical monarchies—the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Roman Kingdom were all elective, just to name a few European examples.
No, in practice it wasn't guaranteed but the intent was always there and (generally) codified into law as the expected practice. That isn't the case with North Korea.
But more to the point, my understanding was that the formal Divine Right of Kings only really was codified in the 16th or 17th century, and was also very specifically European.
Formally codified in the 16th and 17th centuries but it was how monarchies traditionally operated for a very long time prior to that. Monarchies in non-European contexts also generally included something that we would recognize as the divine right of kings as a justification for leadership.
And then if we’re going to expand the idea of the divine right to include any spiritual/religious dynastic claim to the throne beyond the formal European Divine Right of Kings (China’s Mandate of Heaven, West Asian/Eastern Mediterranean deifications of rulers, etc.) then I don’t see why we wouldn’t view the Mount Paektu bloodline the same way.
The divine right of kings asserts that a ruler is specifically chosen by god and the Mandate of Heaven functions similarly.
North Korea's idea of the Kim family being born of Mt. Paektu is an assertion that the family themselves are divine figures, stopping juuuust short of calling them gods.
A closer analogy would probably Ancient Egypt where Pharaohs were seen as gods themselves, descended from gods and as such granted the right to rule mortals. North Korea is more secular so they lack that kind of language.
What it boils down to more than anything is that element of secularism that North Korean conceptions of leadership are built around. The Kims have mystical qualities about them as does their purported background but they stop short of being overtly religious in nature. North Koreans believe (though I think it's arguable that most North Koreans don't actually truly believe) that members of the Kim family can shoot fifty hole in ones at golf or never need to use the bathroom but they don't believe that they can pray to the Kim family and their prayers will be heard.
You could argue that without the origin point of Communism, North Korea would just be a straight out monarchy with all the religious trappings thereof but for Communist secularism. I wouldn't wholly disagree with that.
Again, I realize this sounds like a distinction without a difference but you're getting really into the weeds of the taxonomy of political science. There's going to be a lot of arguments about "bird like lizards" vs "lizard like birds."
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u/Regular-Hour5358 1d ago
To your first point, the dynastic succession certainly was never codified into the law in the HRE, they just suborned the Prince-Electors and asserted a divine right, not unlike how the Kims have suborned the WPK and assert their own bloodline which, if not fully divine, is at least predestined to rule Korea. If we’re talking intent, I’d say the intent is ABSOLUTELY there that the Kim dynasty will rule the DPRK indefinitely, even if it isn’t written into law—again, much like the Habsburgs in the HRE.
And then what you’re describing at the end there—revering deeply but not praying to the head of state—sounds quite similar to ancient China, which nobody would deny is a monarchy.
But I think another part of the issue here is that the very ideas of “divinity” or “religiousness” are INCREDIBLY culturally relative. The idea of being selected by god or the heavens means something completely in Baroque Europe vs Zhou Dynasty China, because the Abrahamic religious vs. secular divide simply doesn’t map onto pre-Confucian China. I totally think you could make the argument that the Paektu bloodline does amount to something analogous, even if it doesn’t necessarily fit the precise European mould of a Divine Right because its origins are so fundamentally different.
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u/HeloRising 1d ago
I think the distinction between "mystical" and "religious" is relevant even across cultural lines. It is possible to believe something/someone has supernatural qualities without specifically believing the that thing is "divine."
But I think another part of the issue here is that the very ideas of “divinity” or “religiousness” are INCREDIBLY culturally relative. The idea of being selected by god or the heavens means something completely in Baroque Europe vs Zhou Dynasty China, because the Abrahamic religious vs. secular divide simply doesn’t map onto pre-Confucian China.
That's a fair point but it's worth keeping in mind that some elements of "divinity" tend to hold true across most cultures and the attitudes we see reflected at the Kim family tend to fall more on the "mystical" side rather than a belief that they are gods in their own right or selected specifically by a divine entity.
Kim Il Sung's Juche ideology makes room for what you might call a quasi-spiritualist idea about leaders (to which he neatly fit) but it stops short of calling these people "divine." The Soviets had similar concepts (albeit much less influenced by religion) around heroes of labor - the idea that the belief in the ideology of Socialism (or Juche in the North Korean case) can make one better.
It's that thread of secularism that, I would contend, makes North Korea not really fit the mold of a strict monarchy which is usually characterized by more explicitly religious justifications.
If you want a regional comparison, look at Imperial Japan which was an acknowledged absolute monarchy wherein the Emperor was considered a genuinely divine figure.
I totally think you could make the argument that the Paektu bloodline does amount to something analogous, even if it doesn’t necessarily fit the precise European mould of a Divine Right because its origins are so fundamentally different.
The problem I see with that comparison is, again, going back to the difference between "divine" and "mystical."
Believing that your leader is selected by a divine entity deliberately versus your leader just being a very extraordinary person with a mystical background are two separate beliefs with different ideological underpinnings.
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u/imjustfine77 19h ago
More like a military dictatorship and autocracy
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u/Regular-Hour5358 17h ago
I know that’s how they’re often described, but again, with the advent of hereditary succession and a quasi-spiritual bloodline, how is that materially different from a monarchy?
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u/turkicjuche 2d ago
pure slop got right out of the mouths of human rights amnesties and radio free asias
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u/LothorBrune 2d ago
It's not a monarchy because it is not engraved in law that the next in kin (next in kim) to the current autocrat shall be the ruler. It's just... how it is.
It's the same way that Florence, for example, wasn't a monarchy while under the control of the Medicis, despite their obviously clannic system. To be a proper monarchy, you have to accept the premise of it.
And then ignore it when a rich magnate or powerful warlord manage to subvert the system, but still.