The mid-1980s USSR offers the classic example of this strategy. When Gorbachev started the reform ball rolling in early 1986, glasnost was not meant to throw the doors open to free speech. Instead, it was intended to serve as an instrument of economic reform. By giving workers and managers space to talk about waste and corruption, glasnost was supposed to make the machinery of the planned economy run more efficiently, not to tear it down. The Soviet Communist Party ended up losing that gamble, but the fact that they attempted it at all illustrates that this scenario is a real possibility.
The ongoing thaw in Burma offers another example. Burma is rich in natural resources, and the value of those resources is currently high, but the country's ruling elite hasn't been able to benefit much from those assets because they've been locked up behind economic sanctions imposed by Western governments. The political reforms undertaken in the past year seem to have been carefully calibrated to encourage those governments to ease sanctions and encourage investment -- all without immediately threatening the regime's control. The end result is a process that will allow an aging generation of leaders to cash out their newly liquid assets and retire comfortably before the next wave of revolutionary fervor hits.
Might North Korea soon follow a similar path?
In contrast to Victor Cha's skepticism, Korea hand Andrei Lankov thinks liberalization is not out of the question. His observations of the latest doings in Pyongyang recently led him to conclude that "the start of a reform process is a real possibility." He cites proposed agricultural reforms that would mimic changes in China in the late 1970s and ruler Kim Jong-Un's public endorsement of an American pop-music concert in Pyongyang.
Other North Korea-watchers also saw a portent of reform in an abrupt shake-up of the country's military leadership in July 2012. Personnel changes are standard procedure for new leaders seeking to consolidate their authority, of course. But ousted Vice Marshall Ri Yong-ho was widely regarded as a hardliner, so his dismissal was also the sort of thing we might expect to see from a leader laying the groundwork for reform.
There is no question that North Korean regime's extreme repression has effectively quashed any organized popular opposition. According to recent reports from the U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, the country's gulags now hold as many as 200,000 political prisoners, and its security services have actually stepped up their surveillance activities since Kim Jong-un took power. As the International Crisis Group observed in a July 2012 report, "although many North Koreans are dissatisfied with the government, the barriers to collective action make it very risky and nearly impossible to organize any resistance... There is no civil society."
But there's another way to look at this. The absence of organized opposition and the dreadful reputation of DPRK's state security services actually give the regime more room to pursue partial liberalization in pursuit of economic revival. We're much less likely to see dictators gambling on reform in countries where there is a nascent opposition that stands a chance of becoming a threat -- and that certainly doesn't apply to North Korea today.
Many caveats come to mind, of course. If we're going to talk about prospects for political change in North Korea, for example, we also have to talk about China. Without political and financial backing from its more powerful neighbor, the North Korean regime would surely have collapsed years ago. This makes it hard to imagine a reform process starting without China's blessing, or at least its continued financial support.
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