Studying Civil Society in North Korea

CFR recently published my report on South Korean civil society and the U.S.-ROK alliance.

Civil Society North Korean-style :)

But my attention this week has turned to civil society in North Korea. Civil society in North Korea?!? Well no, its probably non-existent. But  a map of DPRK which locates where market activity is taking place and where humanitarian organizations operate exists. I wonder if the map might help researchers a) locate where one could go to look for potential early signs of things like trust, social capital, or civil society at the local level and b) compare this to other comparable regions in DPRK without the presence of market activity, aid agencies, etc..... it would be a natural or field experiment of sorts to see whether market activity or foreign presence has helped create social networks outside of government control. One could test basic concepts such as the relationship between market activity and social capital (i.e. whether market exchanges facilitate social capital and trust). My wife tells me economists think the relationship is reverse: social capital helps facilitate market exchanges. The larger point, however, is whether market activity or long term foreign presence helps create pockets of civil society in North Korea. Such a study might also lead us to examine the degree of  internal support for the regime as well as issues related to governance in a post-unification, post-transition scenario. 

Obviously the obstacles to such a study are enormous without real access into North Korea. It's not like I could handout survey questions. But there might be other ways of studying social capital. The World Bank has some practical suggestions. And there seem to be plenty of books and articles on measuring and finding social capital. For instance, one study linked cell phone ownership and social capital in Africa...something which might be plausible to examine in North Korea's future with two million cell phone subscribers (mostly in Pyongyang) through Koryolink - an Egyptian venture into the DPRK telecom industry. Rumors have it that there might be a second company entering the market. According to a Nautilus Report, DPRK's IT sector is growing with the mobile industry having "crossed the Rubicon."

One thought was the idea of using market activity as a proxy for civil society. It may be possible that in the unofficial markets, trust between the sellers and customers is the core of what enables market to run. It's hard to make transactions that could potentially throw you in jail if you don't trust your counterpart who might report you to authorities for engaging in illicit trade. On the other hand, I've heard some horror stories about market activity promoting rent-seeking behavior, corruption, and greed in DPRK and in pockets of China (the exact opposite of social capital!).

Finally, it's possible that social capital may take on an entirely (North Korean) bent which may not be easily observed. Would the concept of social capital in North Korea exist in the same way it does in other parts of the world? My discussions with defectors and NGO workers is that North Koreans have a hard time trusting anyone after having lived under a watchful regime where even family members become informants. Marc Howard's Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe raises some of these challenges for Eastern Europe (the article length version in Journal of Democracy is here). But living under decades of juche (self-reliant) ideology may present a whole different set of challenges for the growth of civil society in North Korea.