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WSJ had last Thursday(10.1) an excellent article/analysis on...

The Constitution of Kim Jong Il
North Korea codifies its extreme, nationalist regime.

The average North Korean doesn't know the country's national constitution well, but at least he has a solid excuse: Kim Jong Il keeps the working masses ignorant of the rights that are formally granted them, which include freedom of speech and demonstration. But just because Pyongyang's constitution is hardly worth the paper it is written on does not mean that alterations to it are beneath notice. For the ruling elite, its preamble and first few articles serve as a broad indication of the regime's ideological direction.

Which is why the latest version of the North Korean constitution, made public on  Monday(9.28) by the South Korean government, is worth paying attention to. Unlike earlier versions, it omits all mention of communism(*), while referring here and there to the "military-first" brand of socialism that has guided the regime since the mid-1990s. It also designates the National Defense Council Chairman—Kim Jong Il, of course—as "supreme leader" of the country. Last weekend a North Korean press representative explained to South Korean officials that Kim did not consider communism to be viable "as long as U.S. imperialism exists."

These changes do not reflect a sudden shift in policy. Despite the world media's tradition of referring to North Korea as a "hardline communist" or "Stalinist" state, it has never been anything of the sort. From its beginnings in 1945 the regime has espoused—to its subjects if not to its Soviet and Chinese aid-providers—a race-based, paranoid nationalism that has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. (This latter term was tellingly dropped from the constitution after the collapse of the East Bloc.) North Korea has always had less in common with the former Soviet Union than with the Japan of the 1930s, another "national defense state" in which a command economy was pursued not as an end in itself, but as a prerequisite for rapid armament.

North Korea is, in other words, a national-socialist(**) country—one lacking imperialist ambitions, to be sure, but one that must still be seen on the far right and not the far left of the political spectrum. The only thing that has changed over the past 15 years is the country's readiness to show its true colors to the world. Despite this, some foreigners continue to misinterpret the regime's sporadic efforts to regain total control over the economy in terms of an attempted "re-Stalinization." In fact it has made no serious effort to resocialize the enormous amount of property, including real estate, that has been amassed by traders and officials in the past 15 years. Nor has it stamped out open-air markets. Instead it tries to control and monitor these markets better, with a view to preventing the diversion of able-bodied workers from farms and factories, and stopping the trade in items stolen from state industry. In short, Kim wants to call the economic shots to maintain internal security and to pump as much money as possible into the army; Stalin doesn't enter into the equation, let alone Marx.

So far, the United States government has never been interested enough in North Korean ideology to look beyond Pyongyang's lip service to communism. An element of wishful thinking is involved, given that Washington wants the current nuclear stand-off to end as peacefully as the Cold War did. Perhaps this new constitution will finally make America realize who it is dealing with: a leader who derives his entire legitimacy from a pledge to maximize his country's military might. Kim is aware that he cannot disarm without committing political suicide. This unfortunately means that negotiations with Pyongyang, whether bilateral or multilateral, can never bear the sort of fruit that détente with the Soviet Union did.

Some in Washington have suggested that negotiations can nonetheless be an effective adjunct to sanctions, the hope being that the U.S. can chatter away with the Kim regime until it finally collapses from a lack of funds. But if North Korea is not a communist country, there is no reason to expect it to fold like one. Party propaganda derides the old Soviet Union for nothing so much as the way it went down "without a shot." With the Dear Leader's uranium centrifuges spinning every hour, running out the clock seems a very dangerous strategy indeed

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574445980801810944.html

* NK's constitution as revised in 1998 contained three references to socialism and communism, but the latest (April) revision did away with the word "communism" altogether. Already in 1992, North Korea promoted only the Juche 'ideology' by deleting  "Marxism/Leninism" from the document.

The 'Dear Leader' apparently explained the deletion of the word "communism" from the country's constitution. "It is difficult to comprehend communism. I will try to get socialism right," Kim was reported as saying by a spokesman for the state-run Minju Chosun magazine.

The spokesman was talking to S.K. reporters on the sidelines of inter-Korean family reunions in Geumgang-san. "This is the reason behind the deletion of 'communism' from the constitution," he said. "Communism is meant to be a one-class society where there is no distinction between exploiter and exploited(***), but that system cannot exist while American imperialism lasts(****)."

** 국가 "사회주의"/나치주의..

*** North Korean f...... BS!!! Communism, according to the M/L: the classless society without exploiters and exploited, whithout oppressors and oppressed...

**** But that system cannot exist while Kim Jong-il's national-"socialist" monarchy lasts!!!