The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy.  This conversation with Dr. Jieun Baek – author of “Privileged but Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness” (Yale 2026) – is the 525th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Describe the key characteristics of North Korea’s elites.

North Korea officially rejects the idea that it has an elite class, yet it is one of the world’s most stratified societies. Its elites include Korean Workers’ Party cadres, intellectuals, senior military and security officials, and individuals personally close to Kim Jong Un. The traditional elite largely inherits status through favorable songbun [North Korea’s hierarchical classification system], family history, and proven political loyalty. A newer unofficial elite – the donju, or “masters of money” – derives influence from capital, markets, and connections.

These groups are not monolithic, but they share one defining characteristic: their positions help maintain the regime. In return, they may receive Pyongyang residency, superior housing and education, better food, prestigious employment and education, overseas opportunities, and access to luxury goods – European watches, imported cosmetics, pet poodles. 

None of this is discreet. The regime stages elite reward deliberately. When the Kyongru-dong neighborhood opened, officials framed the new housing not as a public good but as the deserved inheritance of those whose loyalty had earned them “the best of civilization.”

Yet every privilege is conditional. Elites must continuously demonstrate political reliability, professional usefulness, and personal loyalty to Kim. And the most privileged are also the most closely watched: privilege and surveillance rise together.

Examine why North Korean elites are “privileged but powerless.”

North Korean elites possess influence, wealth, and access unimaginable to most citizens, but they lack the most basic power over their own lives. They cannot safely criticize policy, organize independently, protect their families from guilt by association, or know whether today’s privilege will survive tomorrow’s purge. Even the most senior officials can be demoted, imprisoned, or executed without due process, like Jang Song Thaek in 2013.

Their proximity to power actually creates additional danger. Elites face intense surveillance, mandatory ideological activity, extractive “loyalty” contributions, workplace rivalries, and constant evaluation. Thae Yong Ho, the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect in years, put it with characteristic economy: “The closer you are to the Sun, the higher the chances you will burn.” Several escapees told me middle-ranking posts felt safer than the apex.

They may supervise institutions or control substantial resources, but they cannot challenge the system that grants those privileges. As one elite escapee told me, they are “disposable slaves to Kim Jong Un.” They are powerful downward, toward those beneath them, but powerless upward, before the Leader.

Analyze the correlation between North Korean elite “feigned fealty” and the erosion of elite loyalty to Kim Jong Un’s regime.

North Korean public life is a carefully directed performance. Elites attend rallies, recite ideological texts, participate in self-criticism sessions, and display intense devotion. But visible obedience should not be mistaken for sincere belief.

One interviewee described this perfectly through an anecdote. Inspectors would arrive at his home in white gloves to check the portraits of the Kim leaders, hunting for a speck of dust that could bring serious consequences down on his family. He cleaned those portraits, he told me, not out of reverence but out of self-preservation.

As depicted in the table below, “Feigned fealty” describes that widening gap between low inward loyalty and high outward loyalty. Many elites perform devotion because doing so protects their careers, families, status, and lives. This is preference falsification under extreme coercion: everyone plays a role, while few can know what others truly believe.

The gap appears to be widening under Kim Jong Un. Elite defections have increased dramatically; younger elites prioritize money, business, foreign study, and opportunities for their children over service to the Party; and many privately favor economic reform and greater access to information. The regime’s elaborate demands for loyalty reveal not confidence, but anxiety. A system sustained by genuine conviction is resilient. One sustained by surveillance, rewards, and fear may look stable until a shock exposes how shallow its support has become.

Identify the five options for North Korean elites with grievances.

Aggrieved elites have five primary options.

First, they can maintain the status quo and do nothing. This is the least immediately dangerous and most rational choice, but it allows resentment and distrust to accumulate beneath the surface.

Second, they can defect and seek asylum abroad. Defection is an unequivocal rejection of the regime, but it carries extraordinary risks for escapees and their families.

Third, they can erode the regime’s monopoly over resources by building alternative power structures. Markets, private food production, solar energy, informal finance, tutoring, communications, housing, and healthcare can gradually reduce dependence on the state.

Fourth, they can engage in dissent – from coded criticism and hidden transcripts, to use James C. Scott’s concept, and subtle defiance to clandestine information sharing or organized resistance.

Fifth, they can push for democratization and systemic reform. This is the most ambitious and dangerous option because it requires trust, coordination, and first movers willing to confront enormous barriers to collective action.

Assess the role of North Korean elite grievances in revealing the regime’s greatest weakness and its implications for U.S., European, and Asian policymakers and geopolitical strategists.

The regime’s greatest strength and greatest weakness are the same: its dependence on elites. Elites are its architects, administrators, financiers, enforcers, and protectors. The broader population can be controlled through isolation and terror, but the regime must continuously manage elites through a delicate combination of privilege, surveillance, and coercion. If elite allegiance fractures, the system’s foundation begins to crack.

Policymakers should therefore look beyond missile tests and leadership imagery to study elite incentives, generational change, defections, market activity, information consumption, and signs of preference falsification. They should avoid assuming that elite dissatisfaction will automatically produce reform; North Korea’s barriers to trust and collective action remain formidable.

They should also avoid inadvertently improving the regime’s capacity to reward loyalty. Hard-currency access, prestige projects, and engagement channels the state can capture are redirected into patronage for insiders. Sanctions design and diplomatic sweeteners deserve to be tested against that standard.

The United States, Europe, South Korea, Japan, and other partners should expand secure access to outside information, combining radio and portable media with technologies that circumvent censorship. North Korean escapees should lead content creation so that it is credible, tailored, and safe for intended audiences. Governments should also protect escapees, strengthen pathways for asylum, document elite testimony, and support decentralized economic and information networks that reduce the state’s monopoly over daily life.

Finally, strategists must prepare for multiple futures, including gradual liberalization, elite-led reform, succession instability, or sudden internal shock. North Korea may appear immovable, but a regime that requires constant performances of loyalty is revealing its fear: that when people are finally free to choose, many of its most privileged citizens may choose something else.

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