Deng Xiaoping and the DPRK [2]

I am flying back to the U.S. in about 24 hours, so it will be a few days before I update this blog again. I have a few thoughts I’d like to add, however, about Deng Xiaoping and North Korea before I go. I have been thinking about this topic quite a bit over the past several days, but I have not been able to create a cohesive narrative that guides Deng’s relations with North Korea through the normalization of ties with South Korea in 1992 yet. This undoubtedly is this point of rupture so to speak, the point at which my friend’s statement that Deng is despised in North Korea becomes absolutely true.  But I did discover one document that dates from 1984 that I’d like to begin to discuss. The analysis below is preliminary, but I found the document to be interesting enough to post this now rather than wait and refine my thoughts as I come across more information.

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Kim Il Sung and Deng Xiaoping were self-described friends. Kim was able to present himself as an authoritative source on Deng’s policies and the situation in China because of this friendship. As he told Erich Honecker in 1984, “I have been friends with Deng Xiaoping for a long time. As you know, he was exiled three times during the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping paid me an unofficial visit for my 70^th birthday in April 1982 to introduce Hu Yaobang to me as the new Secretary General of the Communist Party of China.” Later in the conversation, Kim again pointed out that “I am [Deng’s] friend” to highlight that he, unlike other leaders in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, could be a trusted source on developments in China.

Kim thus became a courier between China and the USSR in the early 1980s. Kim sought to defend Deng’s unpopular policies and instill confidence in him among the socialist allies. Kim feared the worst if Sino-Soviet relations did not improve, but he was confident that there were good opportunities for amends to be made. And while Kim emphasized it was the new coterie of leadership in China at that time, personified by Hu Yaobang, who sought a sea change in Sino-Soviet relations, he still insisted that Deng was lobbying for an improved relationship with the Soviet Union:

Hu Yaobang has gathered a lot of new people around him….Hu Yaobang himself is still very healthy; he is smart, his theoretical knowledge is good, and he has also made a thorough study of Marxism. Deng Xiaoping works more from behind the scene, but he also believes that they have to develop relations with the Soviet Union. He is the only one of the old functionaries who is still there. I am his friend. In the past the Chinese castigated the Soviet Union as social imperialists. They don’t do that any more.

But what about China’s relationship with the U.S. and Japan? This was a sticking point. No one was sure what to expect out of US-China relations and what China was hoping to gain. When the issue was raised in Kim’s conversation with Honecker, we can again see Kim coming to Deng’s defense. But, more importantly, we also begin to see breaking points between Deng and Kim. In the midst of his defense, we see a glimpse of Kim beginning to question his friend and what his goals are in seeking relations with the US:

The only objective of these relations is to obtain developed technology and credit from Japan and the US. Deng Xiaoping is said to have stated in the US that the arms build-up in the US is good for peace. I don’t know if that’s so. This is the first time I have heard of Deng Xiaoping expressing a sentiment like this.

As Kim continues, he more or less criticizes Deng’s policies of reform and opening and developing relations with the west. He describes an urgency for socialist countries to improve relations to China because reform and opening has left China vulnerable to colonialism. Beyond that, what if China was to abandon socialism? What would become of North Korea’s security situation?:

Kim Il Sung said that he believed that all socialist nations should work toward creating trust between the Soviet Union and China. No new mistrust must be permitted to arise. I have told our Soviet comrades that I believe that the goal of our Chinese comrades is to put Socialism in China in order. They don’t want a conflict. I think it is important that China wants to open the gate to socialist nations in the interest of socialist modernization. We should not oppose that. Why should we leave the important Chinese market to the capitalists?

The old generation of leadership in China is dying out. We should show the new generation an opening. If we leave China to the capitalists, there is the risk that China will become a quasi-colony again. We should not close the door in China’s face.

Because of our position—the length of our border with China, confrontation with the US and Japan—what we are most afraid of is that China will not stick with socialism. There are 1 billion people in China. We have to make sure that they follow the socialist path rather than some other path. We have to focus on drawing them toward us.

Ultimately the picture this document paints is that Kim Il Sung was at pains to accept the path his friend, Deng Xiaoping, was charting in 1984. While Kim defended Deng to Honecker, he laid out plainly the risks of opening and reform and Kim’s hesitations towards it.

A series of events occuring between 1984 and 1992 undoubtedly had significant influence on Kim’s views of China and Deng– the purging of Hu Yaobang, normalization with the Soviet Union, the Tiananmen Square incident (note, Zhao Ziyang was in North Korea in May or June 1989 but was called back when the situation began to look grim, end note), the collapse of the Soviet Union, etc. Ideally these will be topics of further discussion soon enough.

Source: 

• “Memorandum of conversation between Erich Honecker and Kim Il Sung, 31 May 1984.” Limits of the “Lips and Teeth” Alliance: New Evidence on Sino-DPRK Relations, 1955-1984. Ed. James Person. March 2009: 63-67.

Tags: Deng Xiaoping, Erich Honecker, Hu Yaobang, Kim Il Sung, Sino-North Korean relations, Soviet Union