김정은 정권의 정치엘리트 연구 : 승리연합 관리를 중심으로 = A Study on the Political Elite of Kim Jong-un's Regime: Focusing on the Management of the Winning Coalition

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study analyzed that the reason why the Kim Jong-un regime was able to overcome the unstable political situation since its inauguration and control the core group representing the Winning Coalition for maintaining the regime was because of the effective use of the Winning Coalition management strategy.
North Korea's political system is a complex form that mixes multi-layered dictatorship types, and is basically a dictatorship in which political power is concentrated in the leader and the party. However, the Kim Jong-un regime is evaluated as maximizing the leader's power while expanding the scope of the party's utilization. The study conducted by borrowing the concept of ‘cadres’ who actually play the role of elites in North Korea's political elites and defining the Winning Coalition, a small core group among the political elites that is absolutely necessary for maintaining the regime, as the Party Politburo.
Before defining the Winning Coalition of the Kim Jong-un regime, which is the core of the study, the prototype, formation process, and meaning of succession of the North Korean Winning Coalition were analyzed. The analysis results confirmed that the prototype of the Winning Coalition is the ‘leader-subordinate political elite’ armed with the ‘Juche’ ideology. Noting that the elites who were faithfully nurtured with the leader’s sole ideology through the establishment of the sole ideology system from the 1960‘s to the 1970’s were succeeded by the subordinate Winning Coalition, it was argued that even in the Kim Jong-un regime, a Winning Coalition that inherited power and wealth based on loyalty centered on anti-Japanese guerrillas, graduates of the ‘Mangyongdae Revolutionary Academy’, and high-ranking families inevitably emerged and helped the leader take power. After taking power, Kim Jong-un purged threatening forces to concentrate power, while reorganizing the Winning Coalition based on the pool of political elites loyal to the leader, and tied them together as a community of destiny to exchange loyalty and rewards. However, since the relationship between the leader and the Winning Coalition is not fixed, a management strategy is needed to continuously disrupt the internal balance of the Winning Coalition to gain the upper hand in the relationship with the coalition or to completely take control of the Winning Coalition. The reason the study expressed the management method of the Winning Coalition as a strategy is to reveal that the supreme power holder does not simply aim to maintain the status quo, but rather to actively exercise influence with a consistent direction and ‘take control’ of the Winning Coalition.
In relation to the management strategy of the Winning Coalition, the core of the change in the political system since Kim Jong-un came to power was found in the concentration of the leader’s power and the restoration of the Workers’ Party’s function, and the role of the leader, the source of all power, and the Workers’ Party, the highest political organization, was noted. Accordingly, it was argued that Kim Jong-un is utilizing the strategy of concentrating the leader’s power and the system governance strategy utilizing the party to manage the Winning Coalition of the regime.
The leader’s power is a progressive power that becomes complete when the leader’s position and role are established, and its essence is an unchecked and unlimited ruling act. Kim Jong-un formalized the succession structure at the 3rd Party Representatives’ Conference held on September 28, 2010, and became the new leader after Kim Jong-il’s death. Since then, Kim Jong-un has been concentrating the leader’s power through ideological and institutional measures to establish the leader’s position and role, and is forming a complete leader’s power. The power of the leader is an act of governance free from all constraints and responsibilities, and is effective in strengthening control by adjusting the members of the Winning Coalition and adjusting its size, and by solidifying the relationship of benefits and distributing human resources.
The core of the system's ruling strategy lies in the expansion of the leader's power. Kim Jong-un, who was an imperfect leader in the early days of his rule, focused on expanding his power through the party, a political organization with guaranteed legitimacy. To this end, Kim Jong-un normalized the functions and roles of the party, which had been formalized, to elevate the status of the party, and sought to integrate the party and the leader, thereby taking control of the party. The revision of the "10 Principles for Establishing the Party's Sole Leadership System" in 2013 was a major measure taken by Kim Jong-un to seize power in the party. Afterwards, Kim Jong-un was elected as the party chairman at the 7th Party Congress in 2016 and as the party general secretary at the 8th Party Congress in 2021, strengthening his power within the party and solidifying his integration with the party through the use of mixed ideologies. In the end, the party, which is subordinate to the leader system, expands the leader's power internally and encroaches the Winning Coalition into a controllable organization.
Next, the effectiveness of the Winning Coalition management strategy was analyzed. The five principles of maintaining dictatorship advocated by ‘Mesquita’ through the theory of the electoral college were used as an analysis framework and applied to real politics in connection with the Winning Coalition management strategy.
As a result of applying the analysis framework, it was confirmed that Kim Jong-un is implementing most of the principles necessary for maintaining dictatorship targeting the Winning Coalition. He is minimizing the size of the Winning Coalition and maintaining it at an appropriate size according to needs by utilizing the leader's power, and has expanded the size of groups that can replace the Winning Coalition. He also selectively distributes goods by guaranteeing opportunities for privileges and bribery to the Winning Coalition. In addition, he concentrates goods that were previously dispersed to special organizations through the system governance strategy and controls the flow by utilizing the party. It was also explained that the manipulation of collective leadership symbols through the party conference and personnel policies such as lotteries serve as appropriate and sufficient compensation for the Winning Coalition.
Finally, based on the research results, when looking at the stability of the Kim Jong-un regime, the leader and the Winning Coalition are becoming fixed in a subordinate relationship that cannot change the pay-and-take relationship, and this relationship is expected to have a positive function in stabilizing the regime. This means that the Winning Coalition, a group that can threaten power, no longer has political competitiveness, and it can be evaluated that the Kim Jong-un regime is transitioning to an established dictatorship that is not threatened by the Winning Coalition. However, there are also negative factors for regime stability. In particular, the military is a powerful group that can cause cracks in the entrenched relationship with the leader, and the shift in national strategic priorities centered on nuclear weapons and missiles can cause dissatisfaction and conflict among the conventional military that is excluded from change. In addition, the influx of external information and resources promotes dissatisfaction and resistance to the system, and increasing popular resistance is one of the factors of regime instability that can weaken the solidarity between the Winning Coalition and the leader.
In conclusion, it can be evaluated that Kim Jong-un succeeded in taking control of the Winning Coalition through the Winning Coalition management strategy, which has increased the possibility of maintaining power stably. However, there is always a possibility that a rift will arise between Kim Jong-un and the Winning Coalition due to external stimuli such as internal threats by the military and information inflow.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 제1장 서 론 1
• 제1절 연구의 목적 1
• 제2절 연구의 범위 및 방법 6
• 제3절 선행연구 검토 10
• 제2장 이론적 배경 16
• 제1절 엘리트 이론 및 독재정치 이론 16
• 1. 정치엘리트와 승리연합 16
• 2. 독재정치 유형 구분 20
• 제2절 북한정치에 적용 26
• 1. 북한 정치엘리트와 승리연합 26
• 2. 북한 독재체제 규정 31
• 제3장 김정은 정권의 승리연합 규정 36
• 제1절 북한 승리연합의 형성 37
• 1. 승리연합 형성 과정과 원형질 37
• 2. 김일성ㆍ김정일 정권의 승리연합 44
• 제2절 승리연합 원형질의 계승 48
• 1. 계승과 특징 48
• 2. 계승의 함의 51
• 제3절 김정은 정권의 승리연합 구성과 특징 55
• 1. 승리연합 구성 55
• 2. 승리연합 역할과 특징 60
• 제4장 김정은 정권의 승리연합 관리전략과 평가 65
• 제1절 승리연합 관리전략 65
• 1. 전략의 구성 66
• 2. 전략의 기대효과와 목표 75
• 제2절 관리전략의 실효성 79
• 1. 분석 틀 구성 및 적용 79
• 2. 관리전략이 승리연합에게 미치는 영향 94
• 제3절 김정은 정권 안정성 전망 97
• 1. 안정화 요인 97
• 2. 안정화 저해 요인 99
• 제5장 결 론 106
• 참 고 문 헌 111
• ABSTRACT 119