Well Begotten / North Korea’s Economic Development

North Korea often refers to its hostile relationship with South Korea. Even if they hate South Korea, North Korea must live well. Because, when that time comes, North Korea’s perspective will change. Because it is my parents’ hometown, I hope that North Korea, my enemy state, will prosper economically. The habit of economic growth will overthrow the habit of hostility.

 

For North Korea to pursue economic development

 

1. Develop underground resources

2. Legalize the informal marketplaces and revise the tax law and the Commercial Law

3. Expand social infrastructure such as roads and railways to ensure smooth communication in logistics

4. Establish a vocational technical school in Wonsan

5. Create an economic special zone and experiment with a market economy

6. Cherish even a small domestic market

6. Improve it into a Singapore-style political system

 

I have mentioned my back.

 

Although North Korea is in a very difficult environment, reform for economic development is worth trying. I discussed this issue with AI, and at first, AI told a difficult story based on North Korea’s realistic problems and negative historical data. However, I argued that British capitalism also grew by correcting its errors. And when I told the AI that trying and getting feedback are necessary for a goal, the AI gave a very positive response. That’s right. What causes failure is human negative thinking, and what makes us successful is human positive thinking.

 

For North Korea to generate economic wealth, the circulation of logistics must be active, and social infrastructure such as roads and railways must be built to support that circulation. To build social infrastructure, heavy industry such as cement and steel must be active, and for the development of heavy industry, electricity production must be increased. To increase electricity production, power generation facilities must be built, and these facilities should increase output in the following order: thermal power generation using lignite and other fuels, wind power generation and solar power generation that can be built gradually in small-scale units, and then tidal power or nuclear power generation once a certain level of capital has been established.

 

In fact, North Korea’s advantage in increasing its electricity production lies in another matter.Who could have known that North Korea, despite its relatively low economic level, would soon need a foundation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as data centers, with its large number of highly skilled workers.

 # Power First: A Dual-Track Path for North Korea's Economic Development

## The negativity trap, and the illusion of a single exit

Just as chronic negative thinking drains an individual's energy through rumination and stress, a nation can lose energy the same way. The moment a state defines the outside world as permanently hostile, the policies that follow from that belief — sealed borders, resources diverted to the military and to control — deepen the very isolation that confirms the original belief. North Korea's ideologies of self-reliance (*juche*) and a "powerful and prosperous state" sit squarely on this loop. What makes it different from ordinary national defensiveness is that this narrative is not a tactical posture held by a ruling elite; it is a fixed story imprinted on the population across generations, one that attributes scarcity to external enemies and redefines enduring that scarcity as a virtue. That structure is less a policy than a swamp — one three generations deep.

Does simply granting freedom solve this? Not straightforwardly. Weimar Germany showed that in a society already saturated with humiliation and despair, the machinery of free elections can become the very channel through which negative energy consolidates. Hitler did not seize power through a coup; he was elected. Freedom is not a medicine that automatically produces good outcomes — it is closer to a neutral instrument whose direction depends on who holds it.

But no unfree system has ever corrected that negativity on its own. North Korea has described itself, across three generations, as a benevolent parental leadership — the "father-leader" model. The results of that seventy-year experiment are already documented. The UN's 2014 Commission of Inquiry found that North Korea's human rights record amounted to crimes against humanity, and the famine of the 1990s killed anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million people (OHCHR 2014; HRW 2014). "Benevolent dictatorship" is not a fresh alternative for North Korea — it is the language the regime has already used to justify itself for seven decades, and the outcome is known.

## The realistic conditions and barriers for reform from within

Still, there is a more realistic path than sudden regime collapse or externally imposed democratization: reform led from within the existing power structure, along the lines of China and Vietnam. After Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party kept its political monopoly intact while opening the economy, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. North Korea cannot simply copy this path, for structural reasons. Deng was not Mao's son, so he could put some distance between himself and the errors of the Cultural Revolution; Kim Jong Un's legitimacy rests entirely on hereditary succession within the "Baekdu bloodline," so reform risks undercutting the very basis of his own authority. North Korea also faces a comparison China never had to reckon with: South Korea, the same people at many times the income level, sitting just across the border. And a large share of international sanctions is tied directly to the nuclear program, which binds the room for opening to an external variable the regime does not fully control. Reform attempts have not been entirely absent — the July 2002 economic measures, the Kaesong Industrial Complex — but fear of losing control has repeatedly pulled them back.

## Start with the domestic economy, but don't wait for perfect conditions

For this reason, formalizing the *jangmadang* markets — which already underpin much of ordinary North Koreans' livelihood — through tax and commercial law is politically less sensitive and more grounded in reality than pursuing external diplomacy first. But this is not a purely economic policy question. The 2009 currency reform was precisely an attempt by the regime to confiscate the wealth accumulated by market traders (the so-called *donju*, or "money masters") once that wealth came to be seen as a threat. The currency was redenominated at one-hundredth of face value with severe limits on the amount that could be exchanged, triggering runaway inflation and unusually open public anger; the official blamed, Pak Nam-gi, was executed (Wikipedia, "2009 North Korean currency reform"; PIIE; Al Jazeera 2010). That episode shows two things at once: markets have already put down roots too deep to reverse, and the regime will move to crush them the moment it feels threatened. For institutionalization to mean anything, what is needed is not simply a law on the books but a credible expectation that the state will not arbitrarily seize private property again.

That does not mean markets should wait until perfect laws and trust are in place. Development has never actually arrived in that order. England's Glorious Revolution was not a designed institution put in place in advance; it was a corrective response to a crisis — the Stuart monarchy's arbitrary seizure of property. Britain's Factory Acts, likewise, were legislated only after the social costs of unregulated industrialization had already become a visible crisis. Deng Xiaoping himself described his approach as "crossing the river by feeling for stones." Constitutional protection for private property in China was not written into law until 2004 — twenty-six years after reform and opening began. Law did not lead the market; it followed it. So the real question is not whether every precondition is perfectly met in advance, but whether the system can absorb the frictions and crises that markets generate and turn them into the next round of institutional learning. What made 2009 so damaging was not the failure itself, but the fact that the failure produced no learning — the state simply reverted to where it had been.

## Industrialization from existing resources, and a precedent that already exists

North Korea holds the Musan mine, one of Asia's largest open-pit iron deposits, along with substantial anthracite coal reserves (Wikipedia, "Musan mine"; USGS Minerals Yearbook). A cement and construction-materials industry built on iron and coal is one of the few heavy-industry sectors North Korea can genuinely produce with low import dependence — and this is not a hypothetical proposal but a path already tested. In the late 2000s, the Egyptian firm Orascom modernized the Sangwon Cement complex in exchange for a stake in Koryolink, North Korea's first 3G mobile network (38 North 2021; PIIE). That is a real precedent for using a raw material North Korea can actually produce as leverage to draw in outside capital and technology.

## Electricity: the common bottleneck, and its vicious circle

Across every one of these paths, the bottleneck converges on electricity. North Korea's generation mix runs roughly 60 percent hydro to 40 percent thermal, and hydropower has a seasonal flaw: output collapses during the winter dry season, exactly when heating demand peaks (38 North 2023, "Defining the Landscape" and "Hydropower Stations and Policy"). Building up thermal capacity is the right direction in principle, but it runs into aging plants, the difficulty of efficiently burning low-volatile anthracite, and a circular bottleneck in which the rail lines and equipment needed to mine and transport coal themselves require the electricity that is in short supply. Wind is comparatively more accessible because it can be scaled up turbine by turbine, though turbines and grid-stabilization technology still have to be imported. Tidal power sits on genuinely strong natural potential — North Korea's west coast lies on the same tidal system as the Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station, the world's largest (Wikipedia, "Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station") — but tidal barrages are among the most capital-intensive forms of renewable generation per unit of capacity, putting them out of reach for now.

## A dual-track strategy: bulk baseload power and high-quality power in special zones

What matters here is that heavy industry and the knowledge economy need different qualities of electricity. Heavy industry is a question of sheer quantity; software and IT services depend instead on the quality of supply — freedom from blackouts and voltage fluctuation — and on international bandwidth. North Korea already has a meaningful pool of technical talent, trained at institutions like Kim Chaek University of Technology. The trouble is that much of that talent is currently channeled into identity-fraud remote employment schemes or state-linked hacking operations, a problem the U.S. Treasury and FBI have repeatedly flagged (FBI 2025; OFAC 2022; DOJ). Converting that capacity into a legitimate export industry requires decoupling it from that pattern first, or no foreign client will trust it.

An IT sector does not have to wait for the national grid to be rebuilt. In the 1990s, India concentrated reliable, dedicated power and connectivity in a small number of Software Technology Parks even while the national grid remained unreliable, and built a globally competitive services export industry inside those enclaves (STPI). North Korea has already run a version of this model itself: the Kaesong Industrial Complex operated on dedicated power and communications separate from the national grid (38 North 2024, "Kaesong Industrial Complex"). In other words, a nationwide buildout of bulk baseload power for heavy industry and small dedicated high-quality power-and-connectivity zones for IT are not mutually exclusive tracks — they can, and should, run in parallel.

## Conclusion: not a sequence, but a circuit

It is correct that electricity, as the common foundation underlying both heavy industry and the knowledge economy, deserves top priority. But rather than pursuing it as a single, sequential national megaproject, the more realistic course is to run two tracks at once: a slow, capital-intensive buildout of bulk baseload power, and a fast-moving track of high-quality power in special zones. If foreign currency earned quickly through IT — much as Orascom's cement investment was repaid with a stake in telecoms — can be recycled into financing the slower, more capital-hungry buildout of the national grid, that circuit, rather than waiting for perfect conditions, may be the most realistic way to actually get development started.

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## References

1. UN Human Rights Council, *Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea* (2014), OHCHR. https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-idprk/reportofthe-commissionof-inquiry-dprk

2. Human Rights Watch, "North Korea: UN Condemns Crimes Against Humanity" (Nov. 18, 2014). https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/18/north-korea-un-condemns-crimes-against-humanity

3. Wikipedia, "2009 North Korean currency reform." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_North_Korean_currency_reform

4. Peterson Institute for International Economics, "North Korea's Failed Currency Reform." https://www.piie.com/commentary/op-eds/north-koreas-failed-currency-reform

5. Al Jazeera, "N Korea 'executes' top official" (Mar. 18, 2010). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/3/18/n-korea-executes-top-official

6. 38 North, "North Korea's Cement Industry: Further Concrete Leads" (May 2021). https://www.38north.org/2021/05/north-koreas-cement-industry-further-concrete-leads/

7. Peterson Institute for International Economics, "Orascom in North Korea: Don't Leave Me Hanging." https://www.piie.com/blogs/north-korea-witness-transformation/orascom-north-korea-dont-leave-me-hanging

8. Wikipedia, "Musan mine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musan_mine

9. U.S. Geological Survey, *The Mineral Industry of North Korea*, Minerals Yearbook. https://pubs.usgs.gov/myb/vol3/2019/myb3-2019-north-korea.pdf

10. 38 North, "North Korea's Energy Sector: Defining the Landscape" (Mar. 2023). https://www.38north.org/2023/03/north-koreas-energy-sector-defining-the-landscape/

11. 38 North, "North Korea's Energy Sector: Hydropower Stations and Policy" (Jun. 2023). https://www.38north.org/2023/06/north-koreas-energy-sector-hydropower-stations-and-policy/

12. Wikipedia, "Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihwa_Lake_Tidal_Power_Station

13. Federal Bureau of Investigation, "North Korean IT Worker Threats to U.S. Businesses" (2025). https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/alerts/2025/north-korean-it-worker-threats-to-u-s-businesses

14. U.S. Department of the Treasury (OFAC), "Guidance on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Information Technology Workers" (May 16, 2022). https://ofac.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20220516_dprk_it_worker_advisory.pdf

15. U.S. Department of Justice, "Justice Department Announces Coordinated, Nationwide Actions to Combat North Korean Remote Information Technology Workers' Illicit Revenue Generation Schemes." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-coordinated-nationwide-actions-combat-north-korean-remote

16. Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, "About STPI." https://stpi.in/en/about-stpi

17. 38 North, "Kaesong Industrial Complex: A Tortured History and Uncertain Future" (Sep. 2024). https://www.38north.org/2024/09/kaesong-industrial-complex-a-tortured-history-and-uncertain-future/

18. The Diplomat, "Will Marketization Bring Down the North Korean Regime?" (Apr. 2017). https://thediplomat.com/2017/04/will-marketization-bring-down-the-north-korean-regime/

19. Wikipedia, "Jangmadang." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jangmadang

20. Douglass C. North, *Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance*, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

21. Ezra F. Vogel, *Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China*, Harvard University Press, 2011.

시작이 반이다 / 북한의 경제개발

북한은 한국과의 적대적인 관계에 있음을 자주 언급한다. 그러나 한국을 미워해도 북한은 잘 살아야한다. 그때가 되면 북한의 관점이 바뀌기 때문이다. 나는 내 부모의 고향이라는 이유로 적성국가인 북한이 경제적으로 흥하기를 바란다. 경제성장의 습관은 적개심의 습관을 쫒아낼 것이다.

 

북한이 경제개발을 하기 위해서

 

1. 지하자원을 개발할 것

2. 장마당을 합법화하고 세법과 상법을 정비할 것

3. 물류의 원활한 소통을 위하여 도로나 철도같은 사회간접자본을 확장시킬 것

4. 원산에 직업전문학교를 만들 것

5. 경제특구를 만들어 시장경제를 실험해 볼 것

6. 작은 내수시장이라도 소중히 할 것

6. 싱가포르형 정치체제로 개선할 것

 

등을 언급해왔다.

 

북한이 많이 어려운 환경에 있지만 경제개발을 위한 개혁은 시도해볼만하다. 이 문제에 관해서 인공지능과 토론해봤는데, 처음에 인공지능은 북한의 현실적인 문제와 과거의 부정적인 자료의 기반위에서 어려운 이야기를 하였다. 하지만 내가 영국의 자본주의도 처음에 오류없이 성취되었느냐고 반론하였다. 그리고 목적을 위해서는 시도와 피드백이 필요함을 인공지능에게 말하자 인공지능은 매우 긍정적인 답을 내놓았다. 그렇다. 망하게 만드는 것은 인간의 부정적인 생각 때문이고, 흥하게 하는 것도 인간의 긍정적인 생각 때문이다.

 

북한이 경제적인 부를 얻어내기 위해서는 물류의 순환이 활발해야하고 물류순환을 위해서 도로, 철도같은 사회간접자본이 만들어져야 한다. 사회간접자본을 만들기 위해서 시멘트나 철강같은 중공업이 활발해야 하고, 중공업발전을 위해서 전력생산량을 늘려야 한다. 전력 생산량을 늘리기 위해서 발전시설을 만들어야하고, 발전시설은 갈탄등을 이용한 화력발전, 점진적으로 소규모로 건축 가능한 풍력발전과 태양력 발전, 자본이 어느 정도 형성되었을 때 조력발전이나 원자력발전순으로 전력생산량을 늘려야 한다.

 

사실 북한이 전력생산량을 늘리는 잇점은 또 다른데 있다.경제수준에 비해서 고급인력이 많은 북한이 빠른 시일내에 데이터센터같은 4차산업의 기반이 필요하게 될 줄 누가 알고 있겠는가.

전력이 먼저다: 북한 경제 개발의 이중 궤도론

## 부정의 늪, 그리고 유일한 출구라는 착각

개인이 만성적인 부정적 사고에 빠지면 반추와 스트레스 반응으로 에너지를 잃듯이, 국가도 비슷한 방식으로 에너지를 잃는다. 외부 세계를 지속적으로 적대적 존재로 규정하고, 그 인식에 맞춰 국경을 걸어 잠그고 자원을 군사와 통제에 쏟아붓는 순간, 그 정책 자체가 실제 고립을 심화시켜 원래의 믿음을 다시 확인시켜 준다. 북한의 자력갱생과 강성대국 이념은 정확히 이 순환 구조 위에 서 있다. 문제는 이 이념이 정권 엘리트의 대외 전술과는 달리, 주민들에게는 대를 이어 주입되는 고정된 서사라는 점이다. 결핍을 외부 탓으로 돌리고 그 결핍을 견디는 것 자체를 미덕으로 재정의하는 이 구조는, 한 세대가 아니라 세 세대에 걸쳐 국민의식을 가라앉혀 온 늪에 가깝다.

그렇다면 자유를 주면 해결되는가. 그렇게 간단하지 않다. 바이마르 공화국은 굴욕과 절망이 누적된 사회에서 자유선거라는 절차가 오히려 부정적 에너지를 결집시키는 통로가 될 수 있음을 보여준 사례다. 히틀러는 쿠데타가 아니라 선거로 집권했다. 자유는 긍정적 결과를 자동으로 만들어내는 약이 아니라, 누가 쥐느냐에 따라 방향이 갈리는 도구에 가깝다.

그러나 자유가 없는 체제가 그 부정성을 스스로 고친 전례는 없다. 북한은 3대에 걸쳐 스스로를 "어버이 수령"이라는 선량한 지도로 규정해 왔고, 그 실험의 결과는 이미 나와 있다. 2014년 유엔 인권이사회 조사위원회(COI)는 북한의 인권 실태를 인도에 반한 죄에 준한다고 규정했고, 1990년대 고난의 행군은 수십만에서 수백만 명의 아사자를 낳았다(OHCHR 2014; HRW 2014). "선량한 독재"라는 발상은 새로운 대안이 아니라, 북한이 이미 70년 넘게 자기 정당화의 언어로 써 온 것이며 그 결과를 우리는 알고 있다.

## 정권 내부발 개혁의 현실적 조건과 장벽

그럼에도 급진적 정권교체나 체제 붕괴보다 현실적인 경로는 있다. 정권 내부에서 스스로 개방을 이끄는 중국·베트남식 모델이다. 덩샤오핑 이후 중국 공산당은 정치권력의 독점은 유지한 채 경제만 개방해 수억 명을 빈곤에서 끌어올렸다. 다만 북한이 이 경로를 그대로 밟기는 어렵다. 덩샤오핑은 마오쩌둥의 아들이 아니었기에 문화대혁명의 오류와 일정한 거리를 둘 수 있었지만, 김정은은 백두혈통이라는 세습 정통성 위에 서 있어 개혁이 곧 자기 권력의 근거를 허무는 위험이 된다. 게다가 북한 국경 너머에는 같은 민족이면서 소득이 수십 배 높은 남한이라는, 중국이 겪지 않았던 비교 대상이 있고, 대북 제재의 상당 부분이 핵 문제와 얽혀 있어 개방의 여지 자체가 외부 변수에 묶여 있다. 2002년 7·1 조치나 개성공단처럼 시도가 없었던 것은 아니지만, 통제력 상실에 대한 두려움이 매번 개혁의 발목을 잡았다.

## 내수에서 시작하되, 완벽을 기다리지 않는다

그래서 외교 무대보다 내수, 특히 이미 주민 생계의 상당 부분을 떠받치고 있는 장마당을 세법과 상법으로 제도화하는 편이 정치적으로 덜 민감하고 현실에 뿌리내린 접근이다. 하지만 이것이 순수한 경제 정책은 아니다. 2009년 화폐개혁은 장마당에서 부를 축적한 상인 계층, 이른바 돈주의 경제력을 정권이 위협으로 느끼고 몰수하려 한 사건이었다. 화폐 액면을 100분의 1로 절하하고 교환 한도를 극단적으로 제한한 결과 극심한 인플레이션과 이례적인 공개 불만이 일었고, 책임자였던 박남기는 처형되었다(Wikipedia 2009 North Korean currency reform; PIIE; Al Jazeera 2010). 이 사건이 보여주는 것은 시장이 이미 되돌릴 수 없이 뿌리내렸다는 사실과, 정권이 위협을 느끼는 순간 언제든 짓누를 수 있다는 사실 둘 다다. 제도화가 의미를 가지려면 법 조문이 아니라, 국가가 재산을 임의로 몰수하지 않으리라는 신뢰가 필요하다.

그렇다고 완벽한 법과 신뢰가 갖춰진 뒤에야 시장을 열어야 하는 것은 아니다. 발전은 원래 그런 순서로 오지 않는다. 영국의 명예혁명은 사전에 설계된 제도가 아니라 왕실의 자의적 재산 침탈이라는 위기에 대한 사후적 교정이었고, 공장법 같은 노동 규제도 산업화의 부작용이 사회문제로 터진 뒤에야 뒤늦게 만들어졌다. 덩샤오핑 스스로도 "돌다리를 두드리며 강을 건넌다"고 했다. 중국의 사유재산 헌법적 보호는 개혁·개방이 시작된 지 26년이 지난 2004년에야 명문화됐다. 법이 시장을 이끈 게 아니라 뒤따라간 것이다. 그러니 관건은 완벽한 사전 조건이 아니라, 시장이 만들어내는 마찰과 위기를 체제가 다음 단계의 제도로 흡수할 수 있느냐에 있다. 2009년의 실패가 뼈아픈 이유는 실패 자체가 아니라, 그 실패가 학습으로 전환되지 못하고 원점으로 되돌려졌기 때문이다.

## 자원에서 시작하는 산업화, 그리고 이미 있었던 선례

북한은 아시아 최대급 노천 철광산인 무산 철광과 상당한 무연탄 매장량을 갖고 있다(Wikipedia Musan mine; USGS Minerals Yearbook). 철과 석탄을 결합한 시멘트·건설자재 산업은 수입 의존도가 낮으면서 실제로 뽑아낼 수 있는 몇 안 되는 중공업 분야이고, 이는 추상적 제안이 아니라 이미 검증된 경로이기도 하다. 2000년대 후반 이집트 기업 오라스콤은 상원시멘트를 현대화하는 대가로 북한 최초의 3G 통신망인 고려링크 지분을 가져갔다(38 North 2021; PIIE Orascom). 실제로 뽑아낼 수 있는 원자재를 지렛대로 외부 자본과 기술을 끌어들인 전례가 이미 있는 것이다.

## 전력이라는 공통분모, 그리고 순환고리

이 모든 경로에서 병목은 결국 전력으로 수렴한다. 북한의 발전 구조는 대략 수력 6, 화력 4의 비중인데, 수력은 겨울 갈수기에 발전량이 급감해 난방 수요가 가장 큰 시기에 가장 취약해지는 계절적 결함을 안고 있다(38 North 2023, Energy Sector: Defining the Landscape; Hydropower Stations and Policy). 화력을 보강하는 방향은 타당하지만, 설비 노후화와 무연탄의 까다로운 연소 특성, 그리고 채탄·운송에 필요한 철도와 장비 자체가 다시 전력을 필요로 하는 순환고리 문제에 부딪힌다. 풍력은 모듈형으로 소규모부터 늘려갈 수 있어 상대적으로 접근 가능하지만 터빈과 계통 안정화 기술을 수입해야 하고, 조력은 세계 최대 규모인 시화호 조력발전소와 같은 서해 조수 체계에 위치해 자원 잠재력은 크지만(Wikipedia Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station) 단위 용량당 건설비가 재생에너지 중 가장 높은 축에 속해 당장 감당하기는 어렵다.

## 이원화 전략: 대용량 기저전력과 특구형 고품질 전력

여기서 중요한 것은 2차산업과 4차산업이 요구하는 전력의 성격이 다르다는 점이다. 중공업은 절대적인 전력 "양"이 관건이지만, 소프트웨어 산업은 정전과 전압 변동 없이 안정적으로 공급되는 "질"과 국제 인터넷 대역폭이 관건이다. 그리고 북한은 이미 김책공업종합대학 등에서 길러낸 상당한 기술 인력을 갖고 있다. 다만 그 역량의 상당 부분이 신원을 위장한 해외 원격 취업이나 국가 배후 해킹 조직과 얽혀 있어, 미국 재무부와 FBI가 반복적으로 경고해 온 문제이기도 하다(FBI 2025; OFAC 2022; DOJ). 합법적 수출산업으로 전환하려면 이 문제부터 분리해야 신뢰를 얻을 수 있다.

나라 전체 전력망을 완성하기 전에도 IT산업을 먼저 키울 방법은 있다. 인도는 1990년대 전국 전력 사정이 열악한 상태에서 소프트웨어 기술단지에만 안정적인 전용 전력과 통신망을 집중시켜 국제 수준의 서비스 수출산업을 키워냈다(STPI). 북한도 개성공단에서 특구에만 별도의 안정적 전력과 통신을 공급하는 방식을 이미 써 본 적이 있다(38 North 2024, Kaesong Industrial Complex). 즉 전국 단위의 대용량 기저전력 확충(중공업용)과 소규모 특구의 고품질 전력·통신(IT용)이라는 두 궤도를 병행할 수 있고, 병행해야 한다.

## 결론: 순서가 아니라 순환

전력이 2차산업과 4차산업 모두를 떠받치는 공통 기반이라는 점에서 최우선 과제라는 판단은 옳다. 다만 이를 하나의 거대한 국가 프로젝트로 순차적으로 밀어붙이기보다, 시간이 걸리는 대용량 기저전력 트랙과 빠르게 결과를 낼 수 있는 특구형 고품질 전력 트랙을 동시에 굴리는 편이 현실적이다. 오라스콤이 시멘트 투자의 대가로 통신 지분을 가져갔던 방식처럼, 빠르게 움직이는 IT 트랙에서 나오는 외화가 느리고 자본이 많이 드는 전력망 트랙의 재원이 되는 순환을 만들 수 있다면, 그것이 완벽한 조건을 기다리지 않고도 발전을 시작하는 가장 현실적인 길일 것이다.

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## 참고문헌

1. UN Human Rights Council, *Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea* (2014), OHCHR. https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-idprk/reportofthe-commissionof-inquiry-dprk

2. Human Rights Watch, "North Korea: UN Condemns Crimes Against Humanity" (2014.11.18). https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/18/north-korea-un-condemns-crimes-against-humanity

3. Wikipedia, "2009 North Korean currency reform". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_North_Korean_currency_reform

4. Peterson Institute for International Economics, "North Korea's Failed Currency Reform". https://www.piie.com/commentary/op-eds/north-koreas-failed-currency-reform

5. Al Jazeera, "N Korea 'executes' top official" (2010.3.18). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/3/18/n-korea-executes-top-official

6. 38 North, "North Korea's Cement Industry: Further Concrete Leads" (2021.5). https://www.38north.org/2021/05/north-koreas-cement-industry-further-concrete-leads/

7. Peterson Institute for International Economics, "Orascom in North Korea: Don't Leave Me Hanging". https://www.piie.com/blogs/north-korea-witness-transformation/orascom-north-korea-dont-leave-me-hanging

8. Wikipedia, "Musan mine". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musan_mine

9. U.S. Geological Survey, *The Mineral Industry of North Korea*, Minerals Yearbook. https://pubs.usgs.gov/myb/vol3/2019/myb3-2019-north-korea.pdf

10. 38 North, "North Korea's Energy Sector: Defining the Landscape" (2023.3). https://www.38north.org/2023/03/north-koreas-energy-sector-defining-the-landscape/

11. 38 North, "North Korea's Energy Sector: Hydropower Stations and Policy" (2023.6). https://www.38north.org/2023/06/north-koreas-energy-sector-hydropower-stations-and-policy/

12. Wikipedia, "Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihwa_Lake_Tidal_Power_Station

13. Federal Bureau of Investigation, "North Korean IT Worker Threats to U.S. Businesses" (2025). https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/alerts/2025/north-korean-it-worker-threats-to-u-s-businesses

14. U.S. Department of the Treasury (OFAC), "Guidance on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Information Technology Workers" (2022.5.16). https://ofac.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20220516_dprk_it_worker_advisory.pdf

15. U.S. Department of Justice, "Justice Department Announces Coordinated, Nationwide Actions to Combat North Korean Remote Information Technology Workers' Illicit Revenue Generation Schemes". https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-coordinated-nationwide-actions-combat-north-korean-remote

16. Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, "About STPI". https://stpi.in/en/about-stpi

17. 38 North, "Kaesong Industrial Complex: A Tortured History and Uncertain Future" (2024.9). https://www.38north.org/2024/09/kaesong-industrial-complex-a-tortured-history-and-uncertain-future/

18. The Diplomat, "Will Marketization Bring Down the North Korean Regime?" (2017.4). https://thediplomat.com/2017/04/will-marketization-bring-down-the-north-korean-regime/

19. Wikipedia, "Jangmadang". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jangmadang

20. Douglass C. North, *Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance*, Cambridge University Press, 1990. (제도경제학의 신뢰 구축·재산권 관련 고전)

21. Ezra F. Vogel, *Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China*, Harvard University Press, 2011. (덩샤오핑의 점진적 개혁 노선 관련)

War and Fool Ivan / Russia

A long time ago, I studied the behaviors of young people and the elderly at various workplaces. From the perspective of violence alone, young people possess an inherent, passionate violent drive, while the elderly—especially older men—possess an inherent violence aimed at replenishing the physical and mental energy they had been depleting. Especially in Korea, the divided situation and the military culture only added to that aspect.

 

The problem is Russia’s elderly, who have not stopped even after completely crushing Ukraine and Russia. There are statistics that more than 500,000 young people in Russia have already been killed. The elderly Russians, who think of the glory of the former Soviet Union, do not spare the young. Some people think it is merely a disaster caused by President Putin, but what became the political backdrop behind it is the consciousness of the Russian elderly, shaped through their experience of World War II and the communist superpowers. They were writing their own Legend of the Galactic Heroes without sparing the lives of the young people who would bring the nation to life in the future.

 

With the lament, “If only the old folks would come to their senses, there wouldn’t be war...,” I began a discussion with the AI. Artificial intelligence tells me not to lump an entire generation together and blame it.So soon the conversation connected to the works of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and Dostoevsky, which I like. Even in high school, I secretly read The Brothers Karamazov in class and longed for Russia, but now it seems to have become a country full of bad people.

Russia's Ivan the Fool

— The War in Ukraine, the Psychology of Old Age, and What Russian Literature Already Warned Us About

Lee Hyung-chun · A conversation with Claude · August 2026

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Foreword: Why "Ivan the Fool"

In Tolstoy's folk tale Ivan the Fool, a kingdom with no weapons and no money — ruled only by honest labor and simplicity — ends up prospering. The kingdoms of Ivan's clever brothers, built on swords and gold and the drive to conquer, destroy themselves. Tolstoy's point was unambiguous: greatness built on force and conquest ends in self-destruction.

Today's Russia looks like it is walking the very road the fable rejected — the brothers' road. This piece began as a look at the current state of the war in Ukraine, and grew, over conversation, into an inquiry that reaches from the psychology of Russia's aging hardliners all the way back to a diagnosis Russian literature itself made a hundred years ago.

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1. The Front: Stalemate and Escalation at Once

As of August 2026, the front line itself is close to stalemate. Russian forces continue offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Donetsk, but confirmed territorial gains remain minimal, while Ukrainian forces have managed small counterattacks near Sloviansk. What has escalated sharply, instead, is the missile and drone campaign against the rear. July was the deadliest month for civilians since May 2022, and the July 2 strike — 31 killed, over 100 wounded — was the single largest attack of the war. Reports that North Korea has deployed missile troops and ballistic missiles to Russia coincide with this intensification.

On the diplomatic track, the Trump–Zelenskyy relationship has visibly warmed, with talk of jointly producing Patriot interceptors and reviving negotiations — but this has not translated into an actual ceasefire or peace agreement.

2. Putin: Between an Intelligence Officer's Caution and Hardliner Pressure

Putin's thinking is not simple. The information control and threat-assessment instincts of a career KGB/FSB officer run through his entire governing style. At the same time, he shows clear signs of military and economic weakening: an estimated half a million casualties, domestic discontent over fuel shortages, the loss of allies like Venezuela and Hungary, and a scaled-down Victory Day parade. In May, he even paired conciliatory language — "the matter is coming to an end" — with agreement to a temporary ceasefire.

The most recent trend, however, points the other way. Seeing a gap in Ukraine's air defenses as an opportunity, Russia has intensified missile strikes rather than negotiating. Compounding this, hardliners — ultranationalist oligarchs like Konstantin Malofeev and siloviki factions — are pressing Putin to halt talks, order full mobilization, and even prepare tactical nuclear options. Observers note that if Putin were to visibly back down, this hardline bloc could brand him a traitor. In other words, Putin's range of choices is constrained less by his own caution than by how tightly the power blocs around him are bound to Soviet nostalgia and imperial narrative.

3. The Psychology of Old Age: The Gap Between Textbook Serenity and Reality

Textbook accounts often portray old age as a natural convergence toward wisdom and detachment. Clinical and field observation frequently shows the opposite: as people become aware of declining physical and cognitive capacity, they often grow more rigid about retaining control, or display "compensatory dominance behavior" — ostentatiously exercising whatever authority remains to them.

This drive toward dominance tends to split into two paths. One is overt — pushing through physical presence or hierarchy, strongly seen among older men from military backgrounds such as the Marines. The other is covert manipulation — leveraging guilt, disguised concern, or a sense of relational obligation, a path chosen by those without the physical force to push through directly. The methods are opposite; the goal is the same — drawing a fading sense of significance and control from someone else. Call it, as this conversation did, "energy vampirism."

Rather than generalizing this as a universal feature of aging, it is more precise to see it as most pronounced in people whose identity has compressed into a single narrative of past glory. Russia's hardline older men fit this condition almost exactly: for the generation that lived through the Soviet collapse and the humiliations of the 1990s, the myth of victory in the "Great Patriotic War" and the memory of superpower status are the last remaining proof of their own significance.

4. Why Kill the Young: Russkiy Mir and the Problem of Legitimacy

Friendly exchange with Ukraine alone could produce something functionally close to reunification — yet the Kremlin's hardliners insist on forced annexation. Their logic isn't framed as naked conquest but wrapped in the self-narrative of "Russkiy Mir" (the Russian World) — the idea that Russian speakers, Orthodox culture, and former Soviet territory form a single civilization whose defense is inherently defensive, not offensive. A security narrative casting NATO's eastward expansion as encirclement is layered on top. Even overt conquest gets repackaged, in its own telling, as survival.

The historical answer is cold: a leadership that believes abandoning this narrative would collapse its own legitimacy has, in practice, paid for that belief with hundreds of thousands of lives. Nostalgia is only the raw material; forging it, again and again, into a weapon for holding power is a choice made by those unwilling to let go of power.

5. How Lives Are Spent: A Structural Problem, Not Just Materialist Ideology

Russia's "meat assault" tactics lay bare a practice of treating soldiers as expendable. But tracing this only to Communist materialism doesn't hold up well. Imperial Russian forces were already notorious for mass frontal assaults in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I — well before the Bolshevik Revolution. Communism, if anything, simply added an ideological gloss — sacrifice of the individual for the collective — on top of a pattern that already existed.

More structural causes are usually cited: a long history of treating a vast population as a strategic asset; an extremely centralized command culture that grants junior officers almost no latitude (in contrast to Western "mission command" doctrine); an information-controlled system where mass casualties struggle to generate opinion strong enough to threaten the regime; and a corruption-riddled procurement system where cheap manpower is, in practice, cheaper than investment in precision weapons and training. Even the recent shift — sending small infantry teams on foot instead of expensive armor, now that drones dominate the battlefield — is simply an adaptation within the same calculus: machines are spared, and people remain the cheapest resource.

6. Russian Literature Already Warned Us

Remarkably, Russian literature diagnosed this entire pattern a century ago. Raskolnikov's "Napoleon theory" in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment — the division of humanity into ordinary people and "extraordinary" individuals entitled to transcend moral law — nearly mirrors the self-justification of today's Kremlin hardliners. The narrator of Notes from Underground shows how a man with no real power but an inflated sense of pride vents his unrecognized self-regard in twisted ways — an exact portrait of the "small heroes" psychology this conversation kept circling back to.

Tolstoy offered the opposite voice. In War and Peace, he relentlessly dismantled the great-man theory of history itself, portraying even Napoleon as a single point swept along by history's vast currents. Late in life he moved toward a Christian anarchism that rejected state violence outright — a stance that would later influence Gandhi. In other words, Russian culture has, from the start, contained both a sharp critique of the person intoxicated by a small heroic narrative, and the very narrative the Kremlin is now enacting at national scale.

The question posed by Legend of the Galactic Heroes — is it justified for the nameless many to be consumed so that one man's heroic story can be completed? — compresses all of this into a single sentence. The work's answer is unambiguous: however compelling the hero, a structure in which the many are sacrificed for that story is itself the problem.

7. Closing

Ivan the Fool's kingdom prospered with no sword, no gold — only working hands. His brothers' kingdoms, built on conquest and display, destroyed themselves. What Russia's hardline elders are holding onto today is not Ivan's wisdom, but the road his brothers walked — the road of finishing one generation's unfinished heroic story with the lives of the next.

---

References

1. Al Jazeera, "Putin's 'illusion of victory:' Russia ramps up missile attacks on Ukraine" (Aug 18, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/18/putins-illusion-of-victory-russia-ramps-up-missile-attacks-on-ukraine

2. Al Jazeera, "Zelenskyy and Trump discuss Patriot deal and reviving Russian peace talks" (Jul 28, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/28/ukraines-zelenskyy-hails-good-meeting-with-trump-at-white-house

3. Al Jazeera, "Putin suggests Russia's war on Ukraine 'coming to an end'" (May 10, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/10/putin-suggests-russias-war-on-ukraine-coming-to-an-end

4. Atlantic Council, "With Putin visibly weakened, now is the time to back Ukraine." https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/with-putin-visibly-weakened-now-is-the-time-to-back-ukraine/

5. Critical Threats (ISW), "Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 5, 2026." https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-5-2026

6. National Security Journal, "Putin Is Being Cornered by His Own Hardliners — and the Plan They're Pushing Him Toward Crosses the One Line Left." https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/putin-is-being-cornered-by-his-own-hardliners-and-the-plan-theyre-pushing-him-toward-crosses-the-one-line-left/

7. SOFREP, "Russia's 'Wave-Style' Assault Tactics in Kursk: A Brutal Nod to History." https://sofrep.com/news/russias-wave-style-assault-tactics-in-kursk-a-brutal-nod-to-history/

8. Newsweek, "Russian soldier describes Russia's use of 'meat assault' tactic." https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldier-describes-moscows-use-meat-assault-tactic-1839375

9. Al Jazeera, "Russian weapons, tactics seen in Ukraine are shaping Myanmar's civil war" (Mar 24, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/24/russian-weapons-tactics-seen-in-ukraine-are-shaping-myanmars-civil-war

10. Leo Tolstoy, Ivan the Fool (Иван-дурак, 1885)

11. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Война и мир, 1869)

12. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание, 1866)

13. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Записки из подполья, 1864)

14. Yoshiki Tanaka, Legend of the Galactic Heroes (銀河英雄伝説, 1982–1987)

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Compiled from a conversation between Lee Hyung-chun and Claude, August 2026.