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Hyperventilating over Chinese Food and North Korea |
| | -- By JosephLu - 27 Feb 2009 |
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> | I have revised this paper as part of the second-paper assignment. |
| | Introduction: The Code |
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< | The Penal Code of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is draconian in its definition of crimes and assignment of corresponding punishments. Compared to many systems of criminal law in the world, the North Korean one violates conventional principles of legality and proportionality. As what seem to be fair and accurate representations of the general character of North Korean criminal law, “grave offenses” of the Penal Code will be briefly described here, and discussion will then move to a more theoretical comprehension of the severity of North Korean criminal law. Particularly, this paper will argue that North Korea’s criminal law system represents the pathology of the DPRK state, but hides the pathology of the North Korean people. |
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> | The Penal Code of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is draconian in its definition of crimes and assignment of corresponding punishments. Compared to many systems of criminal law in the world, the North Korean one violates conventional principles of legality and proportionality. As what seem to be fair and accurate representations of the general character of North Korean criminal law, “grave offenses” of the Penal Code will be briefly described here, and discussion will then move to a more theoretical comprehension of the severity of North Korean criminal law. Particularly, this paper will argue that the hyper-draconian nature of North Korea’s criminal law system unconsciously perpetuates a disparity within the system: the Penal Code and actual sentencing procedures reveal the psychology of the state, but conceal the psychology of the governed. |
| | In the case of a grave offense, possible penalties range from life imprisonment in a reform institution to capital punishment. Grave offenses include leaving the DPRK multiples times without proper authorization, meeting with foreigners without proper authorization, and returning to the DPRK with the intention of becoming a Christian missionary. |
| | This symbolic vision is unsustainable. But the state seems to have yet another goal, that of propagating appearances of the sustainability of this vision. The state wants to make it seem possible to the North Korean people and the rest of the world that, because of the infallible governance by the state and the superior faculties of the people, the endpoint of the Penal Code’s self-negation is near, if not already here. And the state does this by discreetly spiriting away those convicted of crimes to far-off labor facilities and reform institutions (read: prison camps). In essence, these convicts are removed from the people’s visible realm. In effect, the Code still aspires to symbolically negative itself. |
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< | Drawing a line between the pathology of the state and the pathology of the people
C. Oliver Robinson offers the possibility that the “criminal law represents civilization’s pathology.” In its generality, this statement, as applied to North Korea, would mischaracterize the relationship between criminal law and society’s pathology. At its assuming altitude, Robinson’s statement would miss the particular texture that the pathology of the state and the pathology of the people must be discussed separately in order to comprehend North Korean society in a meaningful way. |
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> | The disparity between the psychology of the state and the psychology of the people |
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< | The DPRK’s criminal law system reveals the pathology of the state |
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> | The DPRK’s criminal law system reveals the psychology of the state |
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< | Pathology can be defined as the “scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.” A community’s pathology, then, is the people’s collective definition of normal, deviations from this standard, and how the community negotiates these deviations. More generally, and perhaps more usefully, a community’s pathology is how the community defines itself and how this definition evolves over time. |
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> | A community’s psychology is the people’s collective mental personality and how this personality evolves over time. While the Penal Code may accurately represent the psychology of the community that comprises the state, the Code conceals the psychology of the community subject to the state’s control. |
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< | While the Penal Code may accurately represent the pathology of the community that comprises the state, the Code conceals the pathology of the community subject to the state’s control. The state’s fetish for high intimidation and deterrence to perpetuate an almost irrational regime of absolute control reflects an (impossible) ideal of political perfection that has been conflated with the standard of normality. Deviations from this standard, then, are savagely condemned to incentivize the subject-people’s own fetishization of the state’s artificially constructed “value” of normality. The way that the state negotiates deviations, then, can be comprehended primarily not as the pathology of things that are wrong with society in general, but as things that are wrong with the state, particularly its intense fear of dissent. The state’s insistence on high intimidation and deterrence, then, is a reaction to an acutely self-conscious insecurity that defines the state’s personality. |
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> | The state’s fetish for high intimidation and deterrence to perpetuate an almost irrational regime of absolute control reflects an (impossible) ideal of political perfection that has been conflated with the standard of normality. Deviations from this standard, then, are savagely condemned to incentivize the subject-people’s own fetishization of the state’s artificially constructed “value” of normality. The way that the state negotiates deviance, then, can be comprehended primarily not as things that are wrong with society in general, but as things that are wrong with the state, particularly its intense fear of dissent. The state’s insistence on high intimidation and deterrence, then, is a reaction to an acutely self-conscious insecurity that defines the state’s personality. |
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< | The DPRK’s criminal law system conceals the pathology of the subject-people |
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> | The DPRK’s criminal law system conceals the psychology of the subject-people |
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< | This regime of easy convictability, on the other hand, conceals the people’s pathology because high intimidation and deterrence serve to suppress and conceal those indexes that show a community’s pathology. Precisely as the state desires, no one does anything “wrong” because everyone is too afraid. And if someone does, she is disappeared. These deviances that would reveal things that are wrong with the people are invisible, and any private, non-legally enforceable deviances that would represent the people’s pathology are not expressed so that they may contribute meaningfully to the conversation about criminal law and pathology. If any pathology can be articulated, it would be defined by the people’s patriotic love for the state—which most likely is not the people’s true personality. The Code’s model of high intimidation and deterrence intimidates and deters so well that it drives into the invisible realm those features of the subject-people that might represent their true pathology, their collective personality. |
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> | This regime of easy convictability, on the other hand, conceals the people’s psychology because high intimidation and deterrence serve to suppress and conceal those indexes that show a community’s psychology. Precisely as the state desires, no one does anything “wrong” because everyone is too afraid. And if someone does, she is disappeared. These deviances that would reveal aspects of the people’s mental personality are invisible, and any private, non-legally enforceable deviances that would represent the people’s pathology are not expressed so that they may contribute meaningfully to the conversation about criminal law and psychology. If any dominant psychological condition can be articulated, it would be the people’s patriotic love for the North Korean state—which most likely does not reflect the people’s true personality. The Code’s model of high intimidation and deterrence intimidates and deters so well that it drives into the invisible realm those features of the subject-people that might represent their true psychology, their collective personality. |
| | Conclusion: Keeping up and more |
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< | Maybe the people’s pathology, though unrepresentable by a regime after all created by the state for its own purposes, nonetheless exerts a private and powerful force that might one day do more than “keep up” with the state’s idealized personality. |
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> | Maybe the people’s psychology, though invisible in a regime after all created by the state for its own purposes, nonetheless exerts a private and powerful force that might one day do more than “keep up” with the state’s idealized personality. But until this happens, politicians and academics’ uncertainty about how the DPRK’s criminal law system works in detail rises to the level of uncertainty discussed in this paper about the psychology of the governed. And perhaps, for now, conversations about North Korean criminal law and North Korean society’s mental personality—while useful—are rightfully constrained, by not just uncertainty, but also the more pressing demand for conversations about the physical conditions of the governed. These conversations, however, would be most constructive outside of the academic parlor and instead, on the ground among those positioned to provide direct material relief for North Koreans. |
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- I think Robinson is irrelevant here. The disagreement over whether the criminal law is the pathology of the civilization
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