Young North Korean students watch fireworks celebrating the regime's founder Kim Il-sung's birthday on April 15, in this photo released by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. Yonhap

By Yoon Ja-young

For North Korea's young leader Kim Jong-un, his peers increasingly seem to be becoming his biggest headache. Having experienced a market economy and foreign cultures while growing up, unlike their parents, they don't think they owe anything to the regime.

"Just like South Korea, there is generation gap in North Korea. If the Korean War is the landmark in South Korea that divides the generation who experienced the war from those born after it, North Koreans regard the great famine in the mid-1990s as a similar milestone," said Seo Jae-pyoung, a director at the Association of the North Korean Defectors.

In the North young people in their 20s and 30s are called the "Jangmadang (market) generation." As children, the young generation which accounts for about 14 percent of North Korea's 25 million population, went through the worst famine in the country's modern history during which around 330,000 people are estimated to have died of starvation. The regime's food rationing system de facto collapsed and people had to earn money and get food from markets to survive. It accustomed them to the market economy while simultaneously diminishing loyalty to the party, which remained ineffective throughout the crisis.

"The older generation grew up on rations from the regime, but the younger generation grew up on rice purchased from the market. They think they didn't get any benefit from the regime's system. It is natural that there is huge gap between them in terms of loyalty, ideology and thoughts about the country's leader," Seo said.

Exposure to foreign culture

After the "Arduous March" to survive through the famine, the young generation also were exposed to foreign cultural content, including that from South Korea. According to Rep. Thae Yong-ho of the main opposition People Power Party, who was a North Korean diplomat to the United Kingdom before defecting to South Korea, some 70 percent to 80 percent of young North Koreans are estimated to have watched South Korean movies or dramas.

Southern cultural content certainly isn't bolstering their communist ideology.

"Many people watch South Korean drama, and more people also witness how much China has changed since its reform and opening. The younger generation came to recognize that North Korea is economically weak. They know about the people who fled to South Korea, and they know that those defectors are better off than they are," said Kim Yong-hwa, head of the NK Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea.

"Though they can't risk their lives to stand up against the regime, they know that they only get hunger in return for loyalty to Kim Jong-un," he said.

Born in 1984 and educated in Switzerland, the North Korean leader himself is an example of how young North Koreans can fall for outside culture. He was a friend of U.S. basketball star Dennis Rodman, and he took a picture with South Korean girl group Red Velvet when they visited Pyongyang for a performance.

Kim seemed to be headed toward reform and an opening up of the reclusive state when he first came to power. Prolonged sanctions coupled with COVID-19 and a string of natural disasters, however, are pressuring the regime to batten down its already shut doors. Now North Korea's control tower fears that the younger generation who lack loyalty and aspire to a new culture may spell the beginning of a leak in the regime's boat, potentially threatening its existence.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un takes a picture with representatives of the Korean Children's Union in this 2017 June photo released by the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party. Yonhap

The regime is thus strengthening the ideological education of its children, according to Seo.

"Shortly after Kim Jong-un took power, the regime came to emphasize ideological education for children. Just like the Sunday schools in church, they believe they should be taught from the time they are very young. The regime began holding large-scale events for the Korean Children's Union, showing them much interest and care," he said.

On top of ideological education, the regime is expanding a reign of terror through public punishment including the executions of power elites who didn't show enough loyalty or even just plain ineptitude, and behind this is Kim's concern over a potential crisis in his regime, according to Park Young-ja, a research fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification. The regime strengthened penalties on consumption of South Korean popular content, sentencing "offenders" to up to 15 years in labor camps, according to a South Korean National Intelligence Service report submitted to Rep. Ha Tae-kyung of the People Power Party.

Kim said in April that the culture of the young people is a critical problem that cannot be overlooked anymore as the fate of the party, revolution, country and its people are at stake. He ordered an inspection of young people's fashion, hairstyles, and the way they talk and behave.

However, Seo said it is doubtful whether this will work.

"The regime is working hard to prevent their ideological deviation as well as enhancing their loyalty to the regime. However, it is out of touch with reality. Young people aren't accepting those schemes as their parents did in the past."

Park noted in a report that famine is not what the regime fears.

"For at least the next five years, there won't be massive famine or death from starvation as seen in mid 1990s unless there is a series of massive natural disasters. It's because those who have grown up with the market economy in North Korea are now equipped with mechanisms for survival," she said.

"What the Kim Jong-un regime fears most is deviation among its people who have tasted money and freedom. It's time to note what survival strategies the North Korean people take against the regime's reign of terror."