Can Gen MZ shake the regime?

The government must draw up its North Korea policies tailored for members of Gen MZ.

Kim Byung-yeonThe author is a chair professor of economics at Seoul National University. In a ceremony to celebrate last week’s completion of a new high-rise street built by “our inexperienced youth” in Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un praised their “wisdom and bravery.” A video released last month, titled “Friendly Father,” highlighted the image of Kim smiling radiantly while being surrounded by young people. But the leader also punished them heavily with three new laws strictly banning the young from mimicking the South Korean accent or watching or distributing South Korean dramas. If they violate the rules, they can be sentenced to death. Is the North’s Generation MZ so threatening to the regime? What implications does the existence of the generation have for our North Korea policy?

Gen MZ poses a big burden for Kim Jong-un. No socialist dictators have ever experienced such defiant youths. Until China’s reform and opening up in the late 1970s — or until the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s — the young generation was not that different from the previous generation. But the emergence of a young group armed with digitization, pragmatism, freedom and individualism affects even the secluded country across the border.

North Korea’s transformation is more dramatic than the rest of the world. While members of Gen M, born in the 1980s, suffered severe economic pain from the Arduous March when they were young, members of Gen Z, born in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, were exposed to outside information more since the evolution of makeshift street markets into decent ones. They knew more about South Korea from watching its TV dramas through USBs traded in the market and heard shocking news about the outside world from their parents dispatched overseas to earn money for the regime. Many of their parents chose to defect to the South in the face of their children’s vehement opposition to their return to the North.

The young defectors I met were quite peculiar. A man died his hair blond upon exiting from Hanawon, a resettlement education facility run by the Ministry of Unification. “I just came to the South because there’s no hope in the North,” he said. “My father also told me to go to South Korea if you really want.” A woman currently working at a company plans to start her own business. “My experiences and know-how from smuggling activities across the North-China border will be useful for my own business,” she said. “South Koreans appear more naive than North Koreans.”

What does data show about Gen MZ in North Korea? The Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University has been annually interviewing about 100 defectors who came to the South less than a year ago. The results of the interviews suggest that they are not particularly individualistic or capitalism-friendly compared to other generations. Rather, they showed a stronger allegiance to Kim Jong-un and the Juche ideology of self-reliance, not to mention their relative optimism about the sustainability of Kim’s regime. They also supported the North’s nuclear weapons possession more than other generations did when they lived in the North. That suggests the blind description of the generation as “a unique group” doesn’t make sense.

A dramatic transformation of the North’s Gen MZ requires some conditions. First, they should be informed of what’s going on in the outside world. In a survey of 660 defectors belonging to that age group, 53 percent said they were frequently exposed to South Korean culture while living in the North, while 47 percent were exposed to the culture once or twice or not at all. If the latter group was often exposed to South Korean culture, their support for capitalism increased by 13 percent. Support for capitalism from those in their 30s, in particular, rose by more than 20 percent.

Whether they engaged in market activities in North Korea also affects them, with 63 percent of Gen MZ saying they traded goods in the market. The experience lifted their support for individualism and capitalism by 10 percent and six percent, respectively. As market activities boost their sense of independence, it makes them prefer the market economy over the state-controlled economy.

Other generations’ consciousness also changed through market activities. But the change in Gen MZ is more threatening to the regime because they will live longer and also would take risks to change reality. Some 25 percent of them said they defected to the South to look for freedom. The share is three times higher than that of other generations.

The North Korean regime suppresses the “market, capitalism and South Korean culture” at the same time, suggesting the formation of a massive yet invisible battleground between the government and the people. Our government’s North Korea policy must focus on that. The government must draw up policies tailored for members of Gen MZ. It must let them dream of a future shared by South Korea and the rest of the world by delivering them objective facts about their own country and the outside world to help them grab opportunities for liberty and prosperity. Changing North Korea and denuclearizing the recalcitrant state also depends on it.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.