Choe Sŭng-min

His Excellency Choe Sŭng-min
File:Su Dou.jpg Official portrait of Choe Sŭng-min, taken in 1988
1st Chairman of the Supreme Council of Menghe
Incumbent
Assumed office 25 May 1988
Preceded by	Position created
2nd General-Secretary of the Menghean Socialist Party
Incumbent
Assumed office 23 July 1992
Preceded by	Go Hae-wŏn
Supreme Commander of the Menghean Armed Forces
Incumbent
Assumed office 25 May 1988
Chairman of the Interim Council for National Restoration
In office 1 March 1988 – 25 May 1988
Preceded by	Baek Gwang-hyun
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Personal details
Born	Choe Jun (최준 / 崔俊) (1939-12-12)12 December 1939 Gyŏngwŏn-ri, upper Chŏnro Province, Menghe
Died	200px
Resting place	200px
Political party	Menghean Socialist Party
Spouse	Ri In-hye (1965-1967)
Children	none
Parent	200px
Occupation	revolutionary aide-de-camp, military officer, statesman
Ethnicity	Meng
Military service
Allegiance	Menghe
Branch/service	Menghean People's Army (1963-1987) Menghean Army (1988-present)
Rank	Supreme Commander
Commands	Menghean Armed Forces
Battles/wars	Menghean War of Liberation Decembrist Revolution

This is a Meng name; the family name is Choe.

Choe Sŭng-min (Menghean Sinmun: 최승민, Menghean Gomun: 崔承民, pr. [t͡ɕʰwe̞.sɯŋ.min]; born 12 December 1939) is a Menghean politician who concurrently holds the offices of Chairman of the Supreme Council of Menghe, General-Secretary of the Menghean Socialist Party, and Supreme Commander of the Menghean Armed Forces. As the highest figure in the State, Party, and Military hierarchies, he holds absolute power in Menghe's political system, and serves as a de-facto supreme leader.

Choe began his career in the military, entering the Menghean Liberation Army during the War of Liberation. After a brief return to civilian life, he enrolled in the Menghean National Defense Academy in 1967, graduating into the Menghean People's Army. On December 21st, 1987, he led the Decembrist Revolution against Ryŏ Ho-jun's government, dissolving the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe and forming today's Socialist Republic.

Under the Interim Council for National Restoration, Choe was second in command to Marshal Baek Gwang-hyun, who had played a less prominent role in the events of December 21st but held a higher military rank. He ousted Marshal Baek in a self-coup on March 1st, emerging as the most important post-coup leader when the new government formed in May 1988. In the years that followed, Choe continued to expand his monopoly on political power, purging potential rivals and anyone suspected of loyalty to Ryŏ Ho-jun's ousted Populist faction. In 1993, he took direct control over the Menghean Socialist Party, cementing his position as an entrenched absolute ruler. During the late 1990s, he built a strong personality cult which emphasized his leading role in the Decembrist Revolution and the economic reforms that followed. This period coincided with the Disciplined Society Campaign, Choe's effort to reshape society in his image. By the mid-2000s, the intensity of Choe's personality cult had faded, and political power became somewhat more decentralized.

Early life

Choe Sŭng-min's father, Choe Jŏng-sŏk, was a mid-size landowner who employed tenant laborers, but in a relatively impoverished area of the country: Gyŏngwŏn-ri, Gangsŏng County, in upper Chŏllo Province near the city of Kaesan. As military service was the most promising route up the social ladder in the Greater Menghean Empire, he applied for the Imperial Menghean Naval Academy in 1933, but his application was turned down. He applied again in 1935, after the outbreak of the Pan-Septentrion War led to a surge in the demand for officers, and was accepted. After graduating in 1939, he married his fiancé, Pak Su-hyi, whom he had met in Sunju. That fall, while his wife was pregnant with his first son, he was summoned to a new post on the heavy cruiser Chobosan.

His son, born on December 12th of that year, was named Choe Jun (최준 / 崔俊), in keeping with his father's wishes. As the war began to escalate in this period, Choe Jŏng-sŏk's leaves became less and less frequent, but he wrote regular letters back to his wife. At home, Pak Su-hyi used her husband's stipend and officer status to hire a tutor for their son, and managed the family estate with her husband's elder brother, Choe Hae-sŏng. Tragedy struck in 1944, when the Chobosan was sunk in a surface action off the coast of Innominada. Choe Jŏng-sŏk, never found, was presumed dead. The economic situation on the home front added to Pak Su-hyi's hardship; skyrocketing inflation reduced her Military Widow stipend to a pittance and wiped out the value of her savings, and the conscription of Homeland Defense militia pulled more and more workers off of her farm at a time when new tools and machinery were impossible to come by.

At the time of Menghe's surrender in November 1945, Choe Jun was nearly six years old and his family was already facing serious hardship. The situation intensified under the Occupation Authority's campaign to remove "elite families connected to the old regime," a policy which the rival Kim family exploited to confiscate the Choe family's land and property. In a 2002 memoir, Choe Sŭng-min described the years from 1947 to 1958 as a period of prolonged hardship; his best friend, Han Ji-wŏn, died of hypothermia in February 1954, and his mother fell severely ill the same year.

In 1956, at the age of sixteen, Choe left his hometown to serve in the Communist-aligned Menghean Liberation Army, which had recently established a stable power base in Gangwŏn Province. By the time he had crossed the mountains to Wŏnsan, he was frail and sick as well as underage, and despite his protests the local partisans refused to allow him into their ranks. Purely by chance, however, General Baek Gwang-hyun was passing through the partisan camp at the time and heard news of the determined would-be recruit. Taking pity on the boy, General Baek upheld the judgment that he was unfit for front-line combat, but permitted him to serve as his personal messenger and aide-de-camp. This decision gave Choe close access to the upper ranks of the Menghean Liberation Army, and allowed him to begin forging a network of friends and allies who would support him in later years.

Under the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe

Return to civilian life

After Menghe's formal independence in April 1964, Choe Sŭng-min was released from service, but denied employment in the Menghean People's Army, as he had already completed service as a conscript. Dismayed, he returned to his hometown in Gyŏngwŏn-ri, where he learned that his mother had died in a counter-partisan search-and-destroy mission during the War of Liberation. The wealthy Kim family's fall from grace in the fires of the revolution at least allowed him to reclaim a portion of his family's former land; although Choe was born into an Upper Peasant background, he had solidly "Red" credentials due to his revolutionary service, and as such he enjoyed relatively high status in the village. He married his old childhood sweetheart, Ri In-hye, in 1966, and settled down for what looked to be a simple and comfortable life.

Six months later, tragedy struck again, as Ri In-hye contracted bubonic plague as part of the last major outbreak in Menghean history. No qualified doctors were available in the upper Chŏllo area, which remained isolated and impoverished; the medical college in nearby Kaesan had closed down in 1963, many of its students and staff fleeing the Communist advance. Unable to find treatment, Ri passed away on February 2nd, 1967.

Ri In-hye's sudden death came as a devastating shock to Choe, who contemplated suicide. According to fellow villagers, he confined himself to his house for two weeks, buying only the most basic supplies from a local courier boy. Before the end of spring, sadness gave way to determination: left with no ties to his hometown, he submitted an application to the recently re-established Menghean National Defense Academy. It was supplemented by a pledge of service written in his own blood. According to at least one account, the application was initially considered for rejection, but Baek Gwang-hyun personally intervened in order to ensure that Choe was admitted.

Menghean National Defense Academy

Choe Sŭng-min entered the Menghean National Defense Academy in the fall of 1967, as part of its second entering class in the post-war era (MNDA 2). There, he quickly gained a reputation as the most disciplined among disciplined recruits, performing as a "model cadet." Yu Se-yŏng, one of his MNDA 2 classmates, noted at the time that while many entering officer candidates arrived with a revolutionary or working-class attitude, Choe "actively modeled himself on the rigorous ideal of an officer in the Imperial Menghean Army, and even carried a portrait of Kim Myŏng-hwan in his dormitory, bowing to it every morning." He also had a framed photograph of his father in IMN uniform; though the two had only met intermittently, and while the younger Choe was less than 5, Choe Jŏng-sŏk was a profound role model for his son due to his determination to serve through the military and his selfless sacrifice aboard the Chobosan.

Within the Academy, this approach soon won Choe favor among his superiors. Under the terms of the Sangwŏn Agreement, then still in force, control of the Menghean National Defense Academy passed to the Nationalist faction among the officers, many of whom were veterans of the Pan-Septentrion War. While formally staying within boundaries set by the Menghean People's Communist Party, cadets' education also focused on nationalist themes, retelling the stories of military heroes in the last century and copying many training standards used under the Greater Menghean Empire.

Some biographers have argued that experience in the MNDA, especially in its earlier classes where veteran officers still exercised full control over training, was a deeply formative experience for Choe Sŭng-min and many of his fellow coup conspirators. In addition to instilling a strict sense of duty and diligence, MNDA experience brought a political message: that even with the People's Communist Party in control, the Army remained the backbone of the nation, and its soldiers and officers had a special responsibility to defend the nation's well-being.

Menghean People's Army

After the MNDA 2 class graduated in the spring of 1971, Choe Sŭng-min went on to serve as a First Lieutenant in the Third Army, which then, as now, was responsible for coastal defense in Menghe's southwest. Supported by personal connections with Marshal Baek, but also by a continuing reputation for strict obedience and rigid discipline, he steadily rose through the ranks of the expanding Menghean People's Army, becoming a Colonel in 1982.

In anonymous interviews taken during the 2000s, soldiers who served under Choe described his leadership as "strict, but not ruthless." He had high expectations for his troops, and ran relentless drills, but never ordered beatings of soldiers under his command, a practice which was formally outlawed in 1964 but remained commonplace among more conservative officers. During the 1990s, though not often thereafter, Menghean propaganda credited Choe Sŭng-min with pioneering advances in Menghean military doctrine, but most foreign scholars consider his actual tactical expertise to be fairly minor, especially in the absence of actual combat experience (Choe was not deployed on the Menghean incursion into Dzhungestan in 1969). Carl Teller, a major historian of the early Choe era, described Choe as "the ideal peacetime officer" - diligent, obedient, and able to pass review, if not combat."

In 1981, Choe Sŭng-min - then a Lieutenant-Colonel - had the opportunity to take part in a military mission to the Turov Pact countries. In his memoirs, he seemed particularly impressed with Chevrakia, the most economically and technologically advanced of the FSR's allies, and described his shame at seeing how far behind Menghe still lagged in its military equipment and quality of life. He attributed this difference to the Soviet and Chevrakian forms of Socialism, which incorporated some market incentives while remaining under state control.

Only after General-Secretary Ryŏ Ho-jun came to power, however, did Choe's view of the DPRM darken. In 1982, he began circulating a series of pamphlets under the pseudonymous name Suk Su-dŏk, in which he criticized Ryŏ's poor decisions - among them, the "eradicate old ways" campaign, the localization of economic production, the rolling-back of the Sangwŏn Agreement, and the country's nuclear weapons program. As the country spiraled into economic decline, Choe's writings gained especially strong popularity among a nationalist faction in the officer corps, who helped shield him from investigation efforts by the Ministry of State Security.

Rise to power

Main article: Decembrist Revolution

There is some disagreement over how important a role Choe Sŭng-min played in early preparations for the coup that would become Menghe's Decembrist Revolution. Official Menghean sources, and many of the co-conspirators who followed Choe to the new inner circle, assigned him a prominent role from the start, noting that although he was only a Major-General at the time, his pseudonymous writings were widely read and he had a strong reputation for disciplined loyalty to the country. Others, especially foreign historians, have argued that while Choe did have some importance in the pre-December conspiracy, he remained secondary due to his rank, and only emerged as the ringleader after he consolidated his power under the Interim Council for National Restoration.

What is known is that Major-General Choe played a pivotal role in the 1987 coup as it actually unfolded. After his 12th Tank Division, stationed near Donggyŏng, was ordered to suppress protesting farmers in People's Square, Choe refused, knowing that compliance would lead to a massacre. In the pre-dawn hours of December 21st, he moved his troops toward the center of the city, but instead ordered them to seize control of Communist Party headquarters and related political buildings. With this improvised act, he moved the coup timetable ahead of schedule without waiting for the approval of higher officers, and quickly emerged as its de facto leader.

After the so-called "revolution," Menghe fell under the leadership of the Interim Council for National Restoration, a temporary body composed of the leading officers involved in the initial coup plot. Formally, this body was led by Marshal Baek Gwang-hyun, the highest-ranking officer among the conspirators. Despite their close relationship and past history in the War of Liberation, beneath the surface Baek and Choe soon fell into a tense struggle for political supremacy. Baek believed that his seniority in age and rank entitled him to the higher leadership position, while Choe, who had won greater public recognition for his role in the events of December 21st, feared that he was being sidelined amidst a return to the pre-coup order. The two also disagreed on the direction of the post-coup government, and in particular whether it was better to implement radical changes to the political and economic system or simply to restore the surviving members of Sim Jin-hwan's faction.

Tensions within the Interim Council came to a head on March 1st, 1988, when the headstrong Baek, impatient with Choe's constant resistance and feeling betrayed by his former loyal aide-de-camp, ordered his troops to arrest Choe Sŭng-min for insubordination. Informed of the plot as it developed by an MNDA 2 classmate in Baek's inner circle, Choe pre-empted the Marshal by organizing the composition of a news editorial excoriating Baek for his tacit approval of the suppression of the Chŏllo peasant uprisings in 1986. The day before Baek's arrest order went out, the state-run Labor Daily newspaper published the article as a front-page feature, and Choe ordered an investigation into the matter. This left Marshal Baek in an uncomfortable position; both the remaining Council insiders and the public at large suspected him of orchestrating a self-coup to oust a widely popular revolutionary leader and prevent an investigation into his role in the famine. Chang In-su, the General famously stripped of his post after refusing to suppress the uprisings, weighed in against Baek, still resentful that the latter had not come to his aid in 1985. In defiance of Marshal Baek's orders, soldiers from the 24th Mechanized Division gathered outside the Donggyŏng residence where Choe Sŭng-min was staying to prevent his arrest, and crowds of protesters returned to People's Square to express their support for the Major-General. Outright opposition soon boiled over in the Interim Council itself, as even neutral and Baek-leaning officers accused the Marshal of abusing his power to eliminate one of their own.

Aware that he had been outmaneuvered, Baek Gwang-hyun ordered his soldiers to stand down later in the afternoon, and resigned from his post as Chairman of the Interim Council. Three of his co-conspirators did the same, under pressure from Choe's soldiers. The remaining Council members held a special session immediately afterwards, unanimously electing Choe Sŭng-min as the new Chairman. Thus, while Marshal Baek had intended to eliminate one of his own rivals, his effort backfired: by the end of March 1st, Choe had emerged as the de jure leader of the Interim Council for National Restoration, with an even greater reputation among the officers and the general public.

The new government of the Socialist Republic of Menghe, formed on May 25th, 1988, gave Choe broad-reaching powers as Chairman of the Supreme Council. He also held the newly created post of Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, a replacement for Chairman of the Military Advisory Commission. Even so, it would take another five years before he fully consolidated his power as Menghe's "supreme leader" - a process which involved popular reforms such as the decollectivization of agriculture, targeted purges against DPRM loyalists and potential rivals, and a direct takeover of the Menghean Socialist Party.

Leadership

Consolidation of power

Choe Sŭng-min emerged in 1988 as Menghe's official head of state, but behind the scenes he remained something of a first among equals. Despite his abrupt promotion to Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, he was still the youngest member of the Supreme Council, in a culture that assigned great importance to seniority. He also faced a number of political rivals, including Go Hae-wŏn, the General-Secretary of the Menghean Socialist Party; Chang In-su, the General who had refused to suppress peasant uprisings during the Menghean famine of 1985-87; and Ro Gwang-hyi, a former colleage of Sim Jin-hwan who retained support among Jinjŏnpa loyalists.

Behind a facade of national unity, Choe carefully moved to eliminate the remaining threats to his power. He began by placing close allies and former subordinate officers in control of key ideological posts, including state media, which trumpeted Choe's role in the Decembrist Revolution and the return to household agriculture. He also organized the Inspect the Ranks Campaign, a sustained effort to identify unrepentant members of Ryŏ Ho-jun's camp and remove them from public office. These moves still had strong support from his inner circle of rivals, who shared the goal of rooting out Populist-faction hardliners and drumming up public support for the new regime.

In September 1988, the special tribunal created to investigate Marshal Baek's crimes found him guilty of tacitly allowing the Chŏllo peasant uprisings to proceed, and of conspiracy to overthrow a fellow Council member. The latter crime was punishable by death, but Choe Sŭng-min intervened and commuted his sentence to life under house arrest, allegedly in a show of mercy for his former mentor. This move temporarily reassured officials who had grown concerned about Choe's ambitions, and set the tone for the expanded purges which would follow.

Moving cautiously at first, Choe Sŭng-min steadily expanded the Inspect the Ranks Campaign to draw in higher-ranking officials, including some whose connection to Ryŏ was only indirect. In 1990, he orchestrated the arrest of over a hundred high-ranking government officials, claiming to have broken up a "Reactionary cell" which had infiltrated the government. In their place, he appointed his own trusted allies, including a large number of MNDA 2 ex-classmates. For more entrenched rivals, he relied on other approaches; General Chang In-su, another popular hero, was pressured to retire in 1991 on account of his advanced age, and shortly afterward the National Assembly passed a law requiring that officers of General-grade ranks retire after turning 72. Choe's faction promoted this reform on the basis that it would prevent the military leadership from becoming senile, but its most important political effect was to free up a string of command and administrative positions in the coming years, displacing DPRM veterans and bringing in younger reformists.

These shakeups in the government staff narrowed down the scope of potential rivals to Ro Gwang-hyi. The former Vice Chairman of the Politburo under Sim Jin-hwan, he had been imprisoned in 1982 for his "productionist sympathies," and Choe himself had arranged for his release after the revolution. Initially the two men worked together, with Ro appointed Vice Chairman of the Supreme Council in 1988. Ro, having been forced out of power prior to the coup, needed a way to edge back into a position of influence, and Choe initially needed his endorsement in order to ensure the support of Jinjŏnpa supporters in the Communist Party. Yet by the early 1990s, Ro Gwang-hyi had shifted to an economically conservative stance, criticizing Choe's pragmatic swing toward pro-market reforms and the legalization of small private enterprises. These standoffs persisted until October 1992, when Ro was abruptly arrested on charges of exploiting the reform-era pricing system to enrich himself through the sale of plan-allocated goods on the market. Once again, state media sided overwhelmingly with Choe, revealing in dramatic terms Ro's hypocrisy in criticizing the widely successful reforms even as he engaged in corruption and embezzlement. Whether the charges were exaggerated remains unclear; such "dual-track resale" was widespread in the early reform period, and few officials in economic management positions could claim to have been innocent.

With the fall of Ro Gwang-hyi, Choe Sŭng-min emerged as an established autocrat, with no remaining rivals who could challenge his decisions or threaten to overthrow him. To complete his consolidation of power, he took over the position of General-Secretary at the Second Party Congress in May 1993, easily winning the nomination vote after Go Hae-wŏn announced his plans to retire. Foreign observers recognized this vote as the final step in Choe's consolidation of power, granting him virtually unchecked control over the State, Party, and Military through his three concurrent positions.

Personality cult

Main article: Choe Sŭng-min's cult of personality

After consolidating his power, Choe Sŭng-min moved to capitalize it by developing a powerful cult of personality. This was most notable in the wake of the Second Party Congress, which cemented his control over Party teachings, but even in the late '80s state media already presented idealized accounts of his role in the Decembrist Revolution and the privatization of agriculture.

At Choe's own direction, state propagandists refrained from making excessively grand or supernatural claims, instead working to build a more plausible narrative connecting Choe Sŭng-min to the country's successful policies. The narrative link was especially strong in the realm of economic development, with Choe receiving the bulk of the credit for the dramatic rise in living standards that took place after 1988. Some of these appeals have drawn on historical themes, comparing Choe Sŭng-min with well-regarded historical figures such as Emperor Taejo of the Yi dynasty.

While foreign intellectuals have generally derided Choe's personality cult as exaggerated and blatantly propagandized, it has gained very real support among the Menghean population. This is especially true in rural areas, and among freshly minted members of the emerging middle class. Remarking on the durability of Choe's support, political scientist Robert Immelman noted that "[a]ny Menghean citizen born long enough before 1987 to have experienced the hardship, shortages, and turmoil of this period would have seen an almost incomprehensible change in the national economy during their lifetime, with the divergence taking place soon after Choe Sŭng-min came to power... it is hard to exaggerate the impact which this transformation had on people's views of the new leadership, and the extent to which belief in the 'Choe myth' has survived to the present."

Decentralization

On July 14th, 2002, a group of high-ranking officials met with Choe Sŭng-min in private to confront him about the excesses of the Disciplined Society Campaign. In the "July discussion" that followed, Choe initially accused his counterparts of refusing to comply with a central intiative, but he was unwilling to threaten arrest and dismissal against a group that included some of his most trusted advisors and subordinates. In the end, he conceded to them that the strictly enforced campaign was having counterproductive results, and agreed to let them scale it back.

At the Fourth Party Congress in 2003, Choe Sŭng-min announced an end to the Disciplined Society Campaign, under the covering excuse that it had succeeded in reshaping popular morals "at the foundational but not the superficial level." In a more open bow to his inner circle, he also introduced the "three ups and three downs" (samsang samha) principle. According to this principle, ideas and proposals from the general population would filter up to the Party staff, then to the central administrative organs, and finally to the Supreme Council, which would deliberate on them and formulate policy while taking them into account; after making a decision, the Supreme Council would pass this down to the central administrative organs, the Party staff, and the general population for implementation. Choe framed this approach as a core component of "Menghean-style democracy" (Mengguk-tŭksaek minjujuyi), which combined the respective strengths of centralized authority, technocratic specialization, and popular input.

Another marked retreat on Choe's part followed Menghe's disastrous involvement in the Ummayan Civil War, which brought it to the brink of open conflict with neighboring Maverica and Innominada and brought little in the way of strategic advantage. Choe's first response was to order deep-reaching reforms of the military's command structure and offensive doctrine with the aim of creating a more competent fighting force. In the process, he delegated extensive authority to Marshal Jŏng Tae-ho, the Supreme Commander of the Army, and High Admiral Wu Hyŏng-jun, the Supreme Commander of the Navy, both recent appointments who had previously won renown for their doctrinal writings and planning work. The resulting 2005 military reforms set the Menghean armed forces on the path to improvement, but at a cost to Choe's authority: both Jŏng and Wu took deliberate steps to edge the Supreme Commander's influence out of their respective branches, believing that excessive political interference was one of the reasons the Menghean military had performed poorly in previous years. Choe Sŭng-min had little choice but to comply with their resistance, as the Maverican and Innominadan military threats demanded a competent force.

Consistent with these trends, the 2008 Fifth Party Congress saw a further embrace of "Menghean-style democracy;" the words "consensus," "harmony," and "collective (leadership, governance, etc)" appeared more frequently in Choe's opening speech here than in any of his other Party Congress events. The Fifth Party Congress also included longer speeches by other leading officials, including Kim Pyŏng-so, the recently-appointed Vice-Secretary of the Party. Increased attention to Kim at and after the event, as well as his ascent to two high-ranking posts, led many observers to identify him as Choe's presumed successor, a marked contrast to Choe Sŭng-min's earlier practice of preventing any single official from being able to claim second-in-command status.

Analysts and observers have disagreed on the extent to which the events between 2002 and 2008 brought about a genuine reduction in Choe's political power. Amelia Dunn claims that by the end of the Fifth Party Congress, Menghe had returned to a status of "contested autocracy," in which Choe was no longer able to make important decisions without the approval of other key elites. A similar theory portrays an ongoing transition toward institutionalized decision-making, in which formal rules and procedures serve as constraints on both Choe and the other members of his inner circle. Prominent political scientist Victor Kowalski disagrees, instead asserting that "Choe Sŭng-min's power is now sufficiently entrenched that he can comfortably delegate tasks, solicit input, and strengthen the MSP's institutional structure without fearing that rival cliques will perceive this as weakness and edge him off the throne. There are, quite simply, no rival cliques capable of contesting his authority in any meaningful way."

Economic reform

Main article: Economic reform in Menghe

Ideology

Economic policy

Choe Sŭng-min's economic policies are difficult to classify on the conventional right-left spectrum. The core imperative of his time in power was, and still is, economic development - epitomized in such slogans as "build up the economy" (gyŏngje-ŭl jŭngganghae) and "enrich the country, strengthen the military" (buguk gangbyŏng). In the 1990s and 2000s, this grew into an approach some foreign scholars termed GDP-ism," in which government officials were rewarded and promoted based primarily on their ability to generate economic growth.

Given that Menghe entered the late 1980s as a socialist state with a planned economy, Choe's economic reforms involved a relative shift toward economic liberalization: allowing markets to naturally determine prices, converting state-owned enterprises into semi-private Jachi-hoesa, and decollectivizing agriculture. Choe also oversaw and defended a campaign to roll back "work unit socialism," dissolving job security and welfare benefits for hundreds of millions of workers, and outlawed the formation of independent labor unions.

At the same time, however, Choe Sŭng-min opposed laissez-faire economics in his personal writings and official policymaking, and insisted on maintaining a dirigiste role for the state in the new economic order. He regularly invoked military discipline and selfless austerity to criticize excessive displays of material wealth among the emerging elite, especially during the 1990s and 2000s, and in 2015 he pushed through comprehensive tax reform which imposed a heavily progressive income tax and a 40% inheritance tax on large estates.

Many scholars of comparative politics have identified Choe's economic order as a quintessential developmental state or developmental dictatorship, in which strong but indirect state control over the economy is used to mobilize the whole society for economic growth. A few have even suggested that the Menghean term Sahoejuyi (사회주의 / 社會主義), as used by Choe Sŭng-min and the Menghean Socialist Party, is better translated through its literal meaning of "society-ism," a corporatist ideology in which all social classes must cooperate for the well-being of the nation. Critics of the Menghean regime, especially those in Maverica, contend that Choe's economic ideology is a disguised form of fascism or "national-socialism," in which production is organized for the benefit of the nation-state or even the Meng ethnicity.

Nationalism

Few among Choe Sŭng-min's supporters and detractors would contest that he was an ardent nationalist, a trait strongly influenced by his service in the War of Liberation and his time in the National Defense Academy. Indeed, his economic policy was strongly informed by a sense, shared by many of his contemporaries, that Menghe had fallen behind its rightful place as the hegemonic power of the Eastern Hemisphere and needed to expand its economy and military in order to restore the geopolitical balance that had existed before 1508. In speeches and writings, Choe referred to this project as the Path of National Reconstruction.

There is greater disagreement on the degree of continuity between Choe Sŭng-min and earlier Menghean nationalist leaders Kim Myŏng-hwan and Kwon Chong-hoon. Under veteran Army officers in the National Defense Academy, Choe was undoubtedly trained in the attitudes of the former Imperial Menghean Army, and many in his generation felt deep humiliation and resentment over Menghe's defeat in the Pan-Septentrion War. Some of Choe's former MNDA 2 classmates, speaking anonymously in recent years, have asserted that he showed a strong attachment to the Greater Menghean Empire and its former leaders, including Kwon Chong-hoon, who is currently portrayed somewhat negatively in official Menghean accounts of the war.

In contrast to General Kwon, however, Choe promoted a peaceful (if still militarized) approach to reconstruction, characterized by a long-term focus on development. In his first diplomatic meeting with foreign leaders, he reassured the world that Menghe did not and would not lay claim to any territory beyond its existing borders, with the notable exception of Altagracia. Choe Sŭng-min has also repeatedly stressed that "national restoration" is first and foremost an economic project, and that he would not embark on the same kind of aggressive expansionism which Kwon and Kim had favored - a promise which did not stop him from intervening in Innominada during its political crisis.

Choe has also formally declared his opposition to racial supremacism, including claims that the Meng are ethnically superior or that they deserve a privileged role in Menghean governance. After Menghe entered the Ummayan Civil War and experienced a resurgence in Siyadagi secessionism, he also ordered blanket censorship of Shahidophobic speech, or any other expression which "seeks to undermine pan-ethnic brotherhood." Some biographers attribute this to Choe's service in the Third Army, where he commanded and worked alongside Argentan and Uzeri soldiers, or to a pragmatic strategy of drawing the Southwestern Minorities into a more inclusive Menghean national identity. Nevertheless, many critics contend that Menghean cultural supremacy and anti-Western biases remain prominent subtexts in Choe's rhetoric, never openly stated but frequently implicit.

Titles and terms of address

Menghean is a language which gives great importance to honorifics when addressing a social superior. As such, any time Choe Sŭng-min is addressed directly, his name must be followed by the suffix gak'ha (각하 / 閣下), equivalent to the Themiclesian klak-ghra’ and the Dayashinese kakka. Gak'ha may also be used by itself in address. In Tyrannian, gak'ha is usually translated to "His Excellency," which conveys roughly the same rank of respect. Thus in foreign policy documents and diplomatic meetings, the proper Tyrannian term of address would be "His Excellency Choe Sŭng-min," or "Your Excellency" in direct address.

When referred to in the third person, Choe's surname or full name is almost always followed by one of his titles (e.g., Choe Sŭng-min (dae)wŏnsu, "(Supreme) Marshal Choe Sŭng-min") or (Choe yijang, "Chairman Choe"). When such titles are used in isolation, they generally receive the formal suffix -nim, i.e. (dae)wŏnsunim, yijangnim. Choe Sŭng-min dongji ("Comrade Choe Sŭng-min") has appeared in some contexts, most notably patriotic songs and propaganda posters, but in general "comrade" is considered an insufficiently formal term of address and it is not used in news announcements or official documents. "Marshal" was his most widely used title from 1993 to the mid-2000s, after which "Chairman" once again became dominant; he has held both posts continuously since 1988.

A 2007 foreign book The Choe Sŭng-min Personality Cult enumerated the following list of titles and epithets which had been used over the previous twenty years:

• Choego-Saryŏnggwan (Supreme Commander)
• Choego Suryŏngnim (Supreme Leader)
• Danggwa Jŏngbuwa Gundae-e Suryŏngnim (Leader of the Party, State, and Army)
• Widaehan Suryŏngnim (Great Leader)
• Inmin-e Guwŏnja (Savior of the People)
• Jogug-e Gangchŏl-e Suhoja (Steel-Willed Guardian of the Fatherland)
• Chinaehanŭn Yijangnim (Dear Chairman)
• Bulsechul-e Suryŏngnim (Unparalleled Leader)
• Jogug-e Gyŏngje Gijog-e Sangjing (Symbol of the National Economic Miracle)
• Jongyŏnghanŭn Yijangjim (Respected Chairman)
• On Nara-e Hyangdosŏng (Guiding Star of the Whole Nation)
• Hyŏgmyŏng-e Yŏngung (Hero of the Revolution)
• Dangjungang-e Jungang (Center of the Party Center)
• Sahoejuyi Mirae-e Hyangdosŏng (Guiding Star to the Socialist Future)
• Gukga Jaegŏngilsang-e Jidoja (Leader on the Path of National Reconstruction)
• Inmin-e Taeyang (Sun of the People)
• Jichil jul Morŭnŭn Gaehyŏkja (Tireless Reformer)
• Midŏg-e Gwigam (Paragon of Virtue)