Changes to the State-Society Relationship in North Korea Under Kim Jung-il

Abstract

In the analysis of the 'socialist' countries, conceptualising the relationship between state and society has raised a number of problems. The most significant has been ascribing a meaning to 'society' through which the social system can be described and analysed sufficiently apart from and distinct from the machinery of the state as to be meaningful. If society has no readily observable system of organisation or independent sources of movement and change beyond that which is provided by the state, an account of the state-society relationship becomes simply an account of the state and its dynamics.