North Korea reforms? Hopes dashed after parliament session

North Korea appears on the verge of major economic reforms but reluctant to announce them while food shortages mount in the most severe test of leadership since Kim Jong-un assumed the titles of power earlier this year.

Experts offered that view after the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly failed to adopt long-awaited laws Tuesday that would have guaranteed greater incentives for farmers to produce needed food for the North’s underfed people.

“Everybody is eager to see the economy getting better,” says Bernhard Seliger, an economist from Germany who was in North Korea last week advising the government on agriculture and other economic issues. “They don’t want to tell so soon what they are doing.”

The need for agricultural reform confronts North Korean leaders with the challenge of how to ram through radical economic reforms in the face of powerful entrenched military and party leaders opposed to sweeping change. A basic question is whether Kim Jong-un will be able to reverse the pattern.

The answer may not emerge right away. The Supreme People's Assembly meets twice a year at most, and the government may announce reforms piecemeal to avoid creating controversy. Change, when it comes, is likely to be a surprise – revealed perhaps by appointments and dismissals of key figures.

“In the economic sector, there have been positive signs that North Korea is undertaking changes,” says South Korea’s unification minister, Yu Woo-ik. “Whether North Korea has the capability of undertaking change or will allow changes to be achieved is another matter.”

The most urgent area in need of change, says Mr. Yu, is “public welfare” – a term that encompasses the problem of feeding the North’s 24 million people. At the same time, he says, “Kim Jong-un’s regime is still endeavoring to stabilize the basis of power.”

That’s one way of saying that Kim Jong-un, surrounded by a tight-knit circle of advisers led by Jang Song-thaek, husband of the younger sister of his father, Kim Jong-il, who died last December, faces huge problems in consolidating his power and following through on reform.

“Stabilization of the economy is a core task in order to stabilize the North Korean regime,” says Yu, a former professor. “For a young leader to succeed will need significant efforts.”

Reform already under way?

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