Suchergebnisse

Assesses the stability of Kim Il Sung's regime and possible scenarios for political change in light of recent developments in other communist countries.

OF ALL THE REMAINING COMMUNIST PARTY STATES THE Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would appear to have the most to fear from the 1989 democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe. The regime of Kim I1 Sung remains unmoved and unreformed, but is certainly not unconcerned about the events that have taken place among its former socialist bloc allies. To an outside observer the Pyongyang regime gives the impression of being almost frozen in time, with no real progress having taken place in either the economic or political spheres over the last twenty years. When the Ceauaescu regime in Romania crumbled amid bloodshed in the closing days of the 1980s, many analysts' attention turned in great expectation to the autocratic regime of the world's longest-serving political leader. The epitaph of the Kim regime was being prepared in earnest. Although the last twelve months have hardly been reassuring for the Kim Regime, communist party rule has been maintained and Kim's personal standing inside North Korea remains intact.

Following hard on the heels of Moscow's former satellite states in Eastern Europe, Mongolia is enacting the kind of political reforms that have seen the finale of communist party rule. Fully in keeping with M. Gorbachev's reform process, Mongolia is pursuing its own version of glasnost in order to bring about perestroika. Political and economic changes in Mongolia and the Soviet influence on these changes are sketched out and examined. (DÜI-Sen)