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| File:December Tank.jpg A JCh-5B tank in the 24th Mechanized Division in the streets of Donggyŏng during the early morning hours of December 21st. | |||||||
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| Menghe People's Communist Party | Army Reformist Faction | ||||||
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Ryŏ Ho-jun Gang Byŏng-chŏl |
Choe Sŭng-min Baek Gwang-hyun | ||||||
This article is about the 1987 coup that brought Choe Sŭng-min to power in Menghe. For the warship named after this event, see Sibiwŏl Hyŏgmyŏng class aircraft carrier.
The Decembrist Revolution (Menghean Gomun: 十二月革命; Menghean Sinmun: 십이월 혁명; pr. Sibiwŏl Hyŏgmyŏng), also known as the Decembrist Coup and the 1987 Coup in foreign literature, is the common name given to a military coup that took place in the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe on 21 December 1987. During the coup, a nationalist faction of the Menghean People's Army successfully overthrew the Menghe People’s Communist Party, which had held power continuously since its 1964 victory in the Menghe War of Liberation. It was the third major coup Menghe had seen in the 20th century, the others being the 1927 coup that installed General Kwon Chong-hoon in power and the brief struggle of 1937 in which Kim Myŏng-hwan consolidated his role as Kwon’s successor.
The coup was motivated by a number of severe crises in Menghe, including the Menghean famine of 1985-87, ineffective economic policy, and a global trade embargo imposed in response to Menghe's illegal nuclear program. Ryŏ Ho-jun and his "Populist faction" (Minjungpa) were complicit in all of these crises, and their purge of political opponents during the perpetual revolution threatened surviving members of Sim Jin-hwan's "Progress faction" in the government and nationalist officers in the military.
The coup was initially planned for February 1988, but Major-General Choe Sŭng-min took the initiative ahead of schedule in order to avert a massacre of famine victims gathered in People's Square. In the early pre-dawn hours of December 21st, he led the 24th Mechanized Division into the capital and seized a number of government buildings, including the Hall of the People's Representatives, the headquarters of the People's Communist Party, and all state-owned TV and radio stations. Though the coup was disorganized at first, it was immediately greeted with popular support, and was completed the next day when Marshal Baek Gwang-hyun and the rest of the upper military leadership endorsed the coup and ordered their soldiers to support the transition of power.
After the fall of the MCPC, Menghe came under the control of the Interim Council for National Restoration, which was composed of the highest-ranking military officials behind the coup and a select group of Party sympathizers. During the council's five-month existence, Choe Sŭng-min emerged as the most powerful figure in the new government, granting himself the posts of Chairman of the Supreme Council and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The Socialist Republic of Menghe was formally established on May 25th, 1988, ending the transitional period and ushering in a period of economic reform and dirigist developmentalism.
For ideological reasons, the current Menghean government insists on calling the event a revolution (Hyŏgmyŏng), and stresses Choe Sŭng-min's role in criticizing Ryŏ's rule and initiating the takeover. Yet the events of December 21st are more accurately described as a coup d'état (Jŏngbyŏn), as the military was the main actor responsible for seizing power, and Choe was relatively low-ranking among the top officers.
Prelude
The coup of December 1987 was the product of many factors, both short-term and chronic. The Menghe People's Communist Party failed to maintain a monopoly on political thought, allowing the Army to remain a bastion of nationalism and conservatism, and Ryŏ Ho-jun's efforts to eradicate opposing factions in the Party only deepened opposition to his leadership. More immediately, food shortages and economic decline reached crisis levels in the mid-to-late 1980s. This provided Army officers with a rare opportunity to strike directly at the leadership.
Army conservatism
In the long run, the Decembrist coup can be traced back to 1958, when two rival factions in the Menghe War of Liberation signed the Sangwŏn Agreement in order to unite against the Tyrannian-backed Republic of Menghe regime. Under the terms of this agreement, nationalists in the officer corps would support the Menghe People's Communist Party as the country's political leadership, as long as the latter did not interfere in the promotion of officers and the training of soldiers. While the agreement allowed both groups to attain their main goal of a Menghe free from foreign influence, it preserved the Army as a sphere where the MPCP enjoyed only limited control.
Under the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe, most high-ranking officers in the Menghean People's Army were veterans of the Pan-Septentrion War, and had been brought up with the political ideals of the Greater Menghean Empire. These ideals were institutionalized in the Menghean National Defense Academy, where cadets learned that their main duty was to Menghe as a nation, rather than to the Party itself. Communist propaganda did not extend far into cadets' lives, and when it did, it was recast in a way closer to Sim Jin-hwan's "Progress" vision and Choe Sŭng-min's future ideology.
The officer corps staunchly opposed many of the policies Ryŏ Ho-jun implemented after coming to power, fearing that in the name of ideological dogmatism Ryŏ would undermine Menghe's capacity for survival - and, through the perpetual revolution, undermine Menghe's traditional culture. Throughout the DPRM's existence, younger officers (especially those of the MNDA 1 and 2 classes) circulated pseudonymous pamphlets criticizing Party decisions and praising traditional or nationalist values; if the Ministry of State Security attempted to investigate, high-ranking officers shielded the subordinates in question, invoking the Sangwŏn Agreement to override any attempts at political prosecution. In this way, the Menghean People's Army became a haven of political criticism in the midst of an otherwise totalitarian regime.
Yet through the early 1980s, the military quietly tolerated the new leadership. Their side of the Sangwŏn Agreement included a pledge of loyalty to Menghe's government, whatever government it may be, and a withdrawal from political affairs. Only after the Sangwŏn Agreement showed signs of eroding would they openly challenge Ryŏ's rule.
Internal divisions in the Party
Even deeper internal divisions existed within the Menghe People's Communist Party. During Sun Tae-jun's final years in office, the Party membership began dividing into two main camps: a "Progress faction" (Jinjŏnpa) under Sim Jin-hwan, which favored rapid modernization and central state control while preserving the collectivist underpinnings of Menghean culture, and a "Populist faction" (Minjungpa) under Ryŏ Ho-jun, which favored local work-unit autonomy and a shift toward a Communist society through the eradication of traditional thought.
As both camps vied for political influence, the ideological divide increasingly fell along organizational lines. The Ministry of Economic Planning and the Ministry of Transportation, for example, were staffed predominantly by Jinjŏnpa cadres, while the Red Pioneers of the Revolution (precursor to today's Youth Vanguard) and the Ministry of State Security (replaced by the Ministry of Internal Security) leaned toward the radical Minjungpa. The Menghean People's Army and its associated institutions generally leaned toward the Jinjŏnpa, but the Sangwŏn Agreement protected them from the outside political hiring of personnel.
From 1971 to 1979, the Jinjŏnpa held the upper hand, with Sim Jin-hwan as General-Secretary of the Party. Under his leadership, Menghe pursued a "military-first" industrialization policy, which the Minjungpa staunchly regarded as equivalent to capitalist exploitation. After Ryŏ Ho-jun came to power, he reversed many of these gains, switching to decentralized economic management under workers' communes.
Fearful that Jinjŏnpa sympathizers in other government agencies would attempt to overthrow him, Ryŏ initiated a "perpetual revolution" in 1982, mobilizing the Red Pioneers to attack revisionist, productionist, and traditionalist officials in the government's lower ranks while the Ministry of State Security purged the upper ranks. This deepened opposition between the two factions, bringing Menghe to the brink of civil war. It also ushered in a period of chaos and instability, as Red Pioneer activity decimated the ranks of government agencies. The military in particular opposed the Red Pioneers' attacks on government officials and historical sites, viewing them as treasonous rebellion.
Economic stagnation
One of the main ideological disagreements between the Jinjŏngpa and the Minjungpa concerned the proper approach to economic management in a Socialist state. The former, following the Federation of Socialist Republics, prioritized rapid industrialization and increased output under centralized state control. The latter, by contrast, argued that the long hours and elite management this system demanded were equivalent to capitalism, and accused the Jinjŏngpa of "productionism" - i.e., of focusing exclusively on production targets rather than a "communist work environment."
In line with these beliefs, Ryŏ Ho-jun attempted to pivot economic organization in a more mass direction, breaking up the country's centralized factories into smaller village-level production centers which would be managed collectively by workers and Party cadres. From an economic point of view, this move had disastrous effects, undermining economies of scale and adding new complications in the supply chain. Throughout the 1980s, both the quantity and quality of output plummeted for many key goods, and while reliable GDP estimates for the era are nearly impossible to find, the country is believed to have entered a prolonged recession, or at least a period of stagnation.
Nuclear program
On November 4th, 1984, Menghe conducted an open-air nuclear test at Naran Gacha, revealing a nuclear weapons program that had been kept a closely-guarded secret over the course of the preceding decade. Concerned that his domestic authority was at risk, Ryŏ Ho-jun had ordered the test as a way of winning international respect abroad and restoring political capital at home.
This decision backfired for two reasons. The first, and deeper, reason was that the Army staunchly opposed nuclear arms, owing to Menghe's own experience in the Pan-Septentrion War. General Yun Jin-hyŏk, a commander respected for his role in the Menghe War of Liberation, announced his resignation the day after the test, cuttingly reminding the political leadership that he had lost his family in the atomic bombing of Haeju. Over the following week, half a dozen other officers resigned in solidarity, as did a number of Party members. Choe Sŭng-min dedicated a full pamphlet to the evils of nuclear weapons.
This situation was compounded in December, when the Septentrion League, invoking the terms of the Septentrion Treaty Against The Proliferation of Nuclear Armaments, placed Menghe under a strict economic embargo until it agreed to disarmament negotiations. The FSR's diplomats moved in support of the measure, regarding Menghe as a rogue and unreliable ally. This compounded Menghe's economic problems, ending its access to foreign hard currency and cutting off the flow of oil and gas from Polvokia.
Famine and insurrection
The embargo following Menghe's nuclear program had another disastrous follow-on effect: after the inland wheat and southern rice harvests failed in 1985, Menghe was barred from importing food or accepting relief from abroad. During three years of drought, over 10 million people are believed to have starved to death.
The causes of the 1985-87 famine were both environmental and political. A particularly pronounced El Niño cycle during these years brought severe drought to southern and central Menghe, which normally depend on the summer monsoon rains for most of their precipitation. Yet the situation was intensified by a range of political decisions, including collectivization in 1983-85 and the perpetual revolution, which had severely impacted the Ministries of Transportation and Economic Planning. Ryŏ Ho-jun and Gang Byŏng-chŏl also made a number of specific decisions which reduced the flow of aid, denied the existence of the famine, and punished the communes which brought in the lowest harvests.
In May-June of 1986, Ryŏ's refusal to send additional aid provoked armed uprisings across the south and southwest. General Chang In-su, the commander of the Southern Military District, refused to suppress the uprisings, as he sympathized with the peasants' demands for food. In response, Gang Byŏng-chŏl took on emergency powers and dismissed Chang from his post, appointing Lieutenant-General Gwak Gi-yŏng in his place. This move not only violated the Sangwŏn Agreement, it also led to a violent bloodbath in villages which resisted, followed by a brutal purge organized by the Ministry of State Security.
The coup plot
By 1987, disturbed by the extent of the famine and fearful that the paranoid Ryŏ would purge the military leadership, the Menghean People's Army was solidly opposed to the Party's current leadership. A group of high-ranking officers organized a covert meeting on July 16th, where they discussed the possibility of overthrowing General-Secretary Ryŏ by force.
Even within the Army, however, there were still disagreements about what the coup's goals should be. A moderate faction, including many devoted Communists, hoped to resolve the situation with a simple change of leadership, by compelling an emergency within-Party vote to restore a member of the Jinjŏnpa to power. A more radical faction, which by then had coalesced around Choe Sŭng-min, argued that a thorough reworking of the government itself was necessary in order to restore Menghe to its rightful prosperity. Disagreements between the two sides hindered coup planning, though they never reached the same level of violence as factional disagreements in the MPCP.
In the end, the moderates ceded some ground, acknowledging that given the damage to the Jinjŏnpa faction after five years of upheaval, even a switch of the leadership would take time. After the coup, the military would set up a military committee which would manage the country in the interim period.
A tentative coup date was set for January 5th, when the Chairman was scheduled to leave the capital to tour the construction site at the Grand Ryongtan Dam. Elements of Major-General Choe’s 24th Mechanized Division, which was stationed in the dam area, would intercept the Chairman’s convoy en route and take him hostage. Immediately afterward, compromised officers throughout the Army would seize government buildings in all major cities, including the capital, and impose temporary martial law. With the Chairman in captivity and the Hall of the People’s Representatives under occupation, Marshal Baek Gwang-hyun would order the remaining military personnel to support the coup, and would lead a new provisional government built around a military committee of high-ranking officers.
The coup
Actual events, however, soon set the coup planners off balance. Increasingly suspicious of opposition elements within the military, Premier Gang transferred Major-General Choe’s 24th Mechanized Division to the capital, hoping to keep a closer eye on the officer in preparation for a 1988 purge.
Another complication emerged from below. During the third year of the famine, hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of peasants had emigrated to the country's eastern region, where the drought had been less severe. The crowds of refugees, nearly all homeless, were especially large in Donggyŏng, the capital, with thousands gathered in and around People's Square at the heart of the city. Some local urban citizens, sympathizing with the famine victims, had joined them in the square to call for immediate famine relief, a risky move given Ryŏ's level of paranoia at the time. Yet given the size of the crowd, the Ministry of State Security was unable to clear the square on its own.
Acting under his personal discretion in Ryŏ's absence - the General-Secretary was on vacation at his private villa - Gang Byŏng-chŏl mobilized Army units around the capital in preparation for an armed crackdown, hoping to clear the square by force. His hope was that this would not only discourage public opposition to the regime, but also split the military’s opposition faction by severely discrediting one of its leading figures: tasked with leading the operation, Major-General Choe would have to either resign from his post, or end the day with blood on his hands. Sixteen other divisions in proximity to the capital had also been mobilized, and would close in from other directions to ensure that the crowd did not disperse only to return later.
Unwilling to carry out such a murderous order, but without time to consult with other coup conspirators, Choe decided of his own accord to initiate the coup ahead of schedule.
Choe's troops move into the capital
At 2:00 AM on December 21st, Choe Sŭng-min called a meeting with his leading officers and informed them of his plan. Tacit knowledge of a coup plot had been circulating among the Army's officer corps for weeks, and after some discussion, they agreed to follow their commander. In the tradition of the Imperial Menghean Army, Choe then demanded a suicide oath: if the coup were to fail, a very real possibility given its hasty preparation, all officers involved would fight to the death against security forces.
At around 4:45 AM, Choe summoned the soldiers of the Division to an emergency mass assembly. Armed with a megaphone, he gave a short speech revealing the coup plan to the enlisted personnel and calling on them to join the "revolutionary effort" to restore stability. He also claimed that the 24th Mechanized Division had been individually selected by Marshal Baek to lead the coup, and that the other divisions surrounding the city would promptly join them once key targets in the city had been seized. The plan was met with immediate support from the troops.
The soldiers of the 24th Mechanized Division boarded their transports at 5:30 AM, and began heading south toward Donggyŏng. As the column moved into the city, individual companies and battalions would fan out to seize key government buildings from a list which the original coup conspirators had prepared. At some point, either a turncoat within the Army's ranks or an observer near the main road reported the troop movement to the Ministry of State Security; but in the confusion of the event, they had reported that the force was arriving from the southwest, rather than the north. By the time this was clarified, Choe's troops were already within the city limits.
The first fighting broke out at the Yŏnjang District Police Headquarters. Misunderstanding their orders, which were initially to wait at a distance and seize the building only after the Party Headquarters had fallen, a company of soldiers abruptly assaulted the building, where active-duty officers were still on station. After a brief exchange of gunfire that killed two policemen and three soldiers, the local chief of police surrendered.
At 6:34, advance units of the 24th Division reached the North Gate to the Old City, where they found that State Security troops had parked a bus within the gate as a barricade. After a few minutes, one of Choe's tanks moved across the bridge to push the bus out of the way, at which point State Security personnel opened fire on the passing troops. Several soldiers were shot, including Bak Jŏng-chŏl, one of Choe's trusted lieutenants. Lacking armor-piercing weapons, the State Security personnel soon retreated, and the armored column rolled south along the Meridian Avenue. By this point, repeated outbursts of gunfire had awakened local residents, who rushed out to see what was going on. Many suspected that the tanks had come to clear the squatters from the public square, as Gang had initially ordered.
At 7:08, soon after the lead units had arrived outside the square but still half an hour before sunrise, Choe climbed on top of one of the tanks and, using a loudspeaker, gave a forceful but brief speech explaining that Premier Gang had ordered him to suppress the famine victims with lethal force, but that he could not bring himself to abide by such an order, and believed that it was evidence that the regime had lost its legitimate claim to the leadership of the country. He also stated openly that the famine was a product of misdirected policy, and that the perpetual revolution "ha[d] to be reversed." Gunfire from the Party Headquarters, on the south side of the square, interrupted him, and in an apparently unplanned move, one of the tanks fired back with its main gun, knocking a hole in the facade. Choe promptly ordered his troops, including one unit which had circled around the square, to storm the Party Headquarters, the Donggwangsan palace, and the Hall of the People's Representatives, which formed three sides of the square's western end. Intense gunfire followed, as State Security officers attempted to defend the buildings, with the Party Headquarters complex sustaining the most damage.
Initial confusion
After the Party headquarters had been secured, Choe Sŭng-min ascended to the review balcony in front of the Donggwangsan Palace, where he gave a second, longer speech explaining the situation and listing the Army's motives. He claimed to be acting with the approval of Marshal Baek Gwang-hyun, though the latter still did not know the coup was ongoing, and that the entire army, "save for a few disloyal units," was united in its decision to overthrow Ryŏ Ho-jun. A camera crew brought in from the Menghean Central Television Agency filmed the entire speech, which would later be broadcast nationwide.
After standing by for far too long, the military forces of the country have decided unanimously that there is no other choice except to rise up and take action in the name of our fatherland. Ryŏ Ho-jun's thoughtless leadership poses a mortal risk to our nation and its people: he has thrown the political realm into chaos, strangled the country with incorrect policy, and allowed tens of millions of people to starve to death. Acting in the name of the fatherland, the military will set the nation upright again, and place it back on the path to national restoration, so that the Menghean people may once again enjoy greatness, prosperity, equality, stability, unity, and sovereignty.
— Choe Sŭng-min, 21 December 1987
Despite appearances, however, the coup was far from complete. After gunshots were heard near the Yŏnjang Police Headquarters and the North Gate, the Menghean Central Television Agency had time to interrupt its 6:30 morning news with an emergency broadcast warning that "rebel soldiers and reactionary traitors" were assaulting the capital. This carried on for almost ten minutes before Choe's soldiers, barricaded out of the inner building, managed to shut off power to the facility. This was followed by forty-five minutes of dead air, during Choe's push into the city and the fighting around the Party Headquarters. When the broadcast resumed, two officers in military uniform stood behind the desk, reading their own prepared statement, which was followed by footage from Choe's speech at Donggwangsan. Local state news agencies in other cities seemed divided about how to cover the story, especially amidst uncertainty about whether Ryŏ Ho-jun had been captured and whether other military units would participate.
A separate statement, released to foreign news agencies and to several embassies in the city, explained that the interim military government would agree to nuclear disarmament in exchange for food aid and resumed trade, and that Menghe would pursue a more cooperative foreign policy in the future. This statement described the intention of setting up a minjujŏgin jŏngbu, which foreign media translated as "democratic government;" the intended meaning may have been closer to "government in the name of the people." For several months thereafter, foreign governments and media agencies speculated about a "Menghean democratization," which on May 25th was proven incorrect.
In the hours after the speech and broadcast, fighting continued within the capital. Surviving Ryŏ loyalists had regrouped in the Ministry of State Security building, which Choe's mechanized troops soon surrounded and besieged. As it was shelled by tanks, the building's ninth floor caught fire, and by the end of the day its upper half had been gutted.
Hearing news of the fighting, the remaining Army divisions around the city prepared to move in, initially under the impression that the protests had turned violent. The 8th Mechanized Division marched on the capital, skirmishing with elements of the 24th Mechanized Division at the outskirts. After news of the true situation got out, the surrounding commanders were divided; most decided to support the coup, especially after being told that Marshal Baek had ordered it, but others opposed it. In the end, most other Army units in the area decided to neither support nor oppose the coup, but would wait for further orders from Marshal Baek.
Marshal Baek’s Endorsement
The upper leadership which had previously been involved in coup planning did not immediately declare its support for Choe Sŭng-min. Senior officials in the pro-coup moderate faction were appalled that one of their subordinates had defied orders and hijacked the plan for his own gain. On the other hand, all officers knew if the moderates crushed the fledgling new order and then carried out a coup of their own, they would run the risk of confusion and failure among the troops, and even success would cost them credibility with the general public.
Concrete action was also delayed by the stream of conflicting reports which were flowing out of the country's state-run television stations; the central channel, held by Choe's officers, was declaring the "revolution" a resounding success, but local channels outside the capital were denouncing it as a self-interested move on the brink of failure.
Marshal Baek gathered as many fellow plotters as he could at his residence in Ryonggyŏng province, hoping to gain their insight on a concrete solution, but due to regional lockdowns imposed by concerned police units and other delays in travel, not all could arrive. Negotiations lasted long into the night, with younger Sudae nationalists demanding immediate support and more conservative officials asking that the military buy time by waiting longer. It was only at 3:30 AM of the following day, nearly 22 hours after the coup itself, that Marshal Baek, initially reluctant, made a firm decision that the coup faction would stand united behind Choe's uprising. In his memoir, he confessed that although he personally disagreed with Choe's more radical aims, he had built close ties with the future Major-General during the Menghe War of Liberation, and could not bear to condemn the charismatic officer to failure and execution.
An official statement signed by the active and senior officials present at the meeting went out about one hour later, commanding all personnel of the Menghe People’s Army to take up arms in solidarity with Choe’s uprising in Donggyŏng. The majority of combat units obeyed the call, especially when Marshal Baek and his well-known peers – including several famous generals who had retired in protest but were now filmed back in uniform – appeared on television the following morning to reiterate their orders. By the end of the day on December 22nd, soldiers loyal to the "Decembrist Revolution" had seized control of the remaining provincial capitals, and were broadcasting their loyalty to the new leadership over captured state media stations. Late in the evening, they achieved their final goal, capturing Chairman Ryŏ from his country villa and bringing him before cameras to read a written statement acknowledging his surrender to the new leadership.
Aftermath
Interim Council for National Restoration
The military committee Choe mentioned in his morning speech did not meet actually convene until December 24th, when the selected members could all gather in the capital. Meeting in the upper chambers of the Donggwangsan palace, the officers renamed their cell the "Interim Council for National Restoration" (국가 유신 임시 회의, Gukja Yusin Imsi Hoeŭi). The council's official mandate was to oversee the country for a period of four months until civilian rule could be restored.
During this time, the Interim Council implemented some early but crucial reforms. It disbanded the Red Pioneers of the Revolution and the Ministry of State Security, which were closely tied to Ryŏ Ho-jun's Minjungpa, and rehabilitated allies of Sim Jin-hwan who had been imprisoned or internally exiled during the perpetual revolution. It also began the process of nuclear disarmament, in exchange for normalized trade relations with other countries, and assisted in the distribution of food aid and medical support to famine victims. One of its most significant accomplishments was the decollectivization of agriculture, which allowed farmers to return to the use of small household plots.
At the outset, Choe Sŭng-min only held a secondary position in the leadership; Baek Gwang-hyun, the highest-ranking officer on the council, took the post of Chairman. Dissatisfied with the pace of Baek's reforms, and wary of being pushed to the sidelines, Choe carried out a self-coup on March 1st, accusing Baek of supporting the military crackdown on rebellious famine villages and ordering his arrest. Wielding both popular support and a majority of votes among the remaining council members, he assumed the post of Chairman, as well as the military title of Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.
Socialist Republic of Menghe
On May 25th, 1988, the Socialist Republic of Menghe was formally established, complete with a new constitution and a revised government organization. The highest ruling organ was the Supreme Council, a body composed of the country's highest advisors and ministers, with Choe Sŭng-min as Chairman. The new ruling organization was the Menghe Socialist Party, which had been established on May 1st. At the outset, the Menghe Socialist Party was staffed by surviving members of the now-dissolved Menghe People's Communist Party, especially those from the Jinjŏnpa faction.
Fate of the old leadership
After the assault on the Party Headquarters, Gang Byŏng-Chol was found dead near a 3rd-story window with two gunshot wounds to the chest. It is not known whether he was caught by stray bullets or executed on the spot by military personnel; a popular conspiracy theory holds that he was gunned down by his own guards. In his 2AM briefing with officers, Choe had requested that Gang be captured alive so that he could stand trial.
Ryŏ Ho-jun was at his private villa in Musan when the coup took place. Already in a state of advanced paranoia at the time, he announced that he would carry on a new revolution from Ryonggyŏng province. After he began threatening his guards with execution, the villa's staff made the decision to subdue him. He was turned over to the military administration in the afternoon on the 23rd.
Caught at the center of the political jockeying for power in the Interim Council, Ryŏ's fate was delayed and suspended for several months, and only after the new government was established on May 25th did his hearing begin. A long, drawn-out show trial, it included testimony from a wide array of military and Party officials, as well as survivors of the famine and at one point survivors of the nuclear attack on Haeju. The trial's outcome was largely predetermined; in the end, he was sentenced to death, and executed on August 14th.
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of other individuals were indirectly complicit in Ryŏ's "crimes," in particular the policies that intensified the famine of 1985-87. Initially, the Interim Council granted amnesty to all but the highest-ranking officials involved, as they had inherited a vast state apparatus and needed qualified people to run it. Over the course of the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, Choe Sŭng-min carried out a "rolling purge" of his enemies and rivals, usually barring them from public office but in some cases handing out prison or death sentences. He also reconstituted many of the old agencies which had been disbanded under the Interim Council, including the Youth Vanguard to replace the Red Pioneers and the Ministry of Internal Security to replace the Ministry of State Security. Historian Carl Teller argues that one of the main lessons Choe Sŭng-min derived from the coup was the importance of maintaining institutional control across all areas of the government, including the Party and Military.
Militarist legacy
According to historian Carl Teller, the nature of the military coup was deeply rooted in the culture of the Menghe National Defense Academy. Cadets, especially those in the first few classes, were taught to view the military as a "shield of the nation" with a special duty to protect its well-being, even if that meant defying the incumbent government. Chu Ye-jun, one of the academy's leading instructors, had taken part in the 1927 coup that brought Kwon Chong-hoon to power, and constantly related this experience back to his students.
The fact that the current regime came to power in a coup also deeply influenced its future character. The ideology of the new state stressed nationalist and military virtues, frequently invoking such terms as discipline, austerity, self-sacrifice, and unity. The country's economic policy followed a dirigiste rather than laissez-faire model, reserving a central role for the state and based on the idea of mobilizing the entire country to raise economic output.
The regime's military origins also led it to be skeptical of genuine liberal democracy. From the beginning, Choe and his inner circle believed that they had been entrusted with the duty of saving the nation, and Teller argues that their imposition of a meritocratic selection and promotion system for administrative officials drew not only on Menghe's past civil service examinations but also on the military idea that officers should be promoted based on command ability. The experience of the factional era also poisoned the word Minjung ("the masses") in Menghean political rhetoric, creating an association with Red Pioneer mass action groups and leading Choe to favor, subtly at first and later openly, a system of class cooperation.
Current depictions
Even though the events of 21 December 1987 more closely resembled a coup by a faction within the military, the Menghean government still insists on referring to the event as a Revolution. It also claims that the famine victims and their sympathizers within the square joined the soldiers in seizing control of the capital's buildings, which according to more comprehensive histories of the event did happen in some areas around the square but was much rarer than propaganda depictions suggest.
State propaganda has also stressed the moral underpinnings of the coup, calling on all citizens to follow the "Decembrist Spirit" which stresses unhesitating loyalty to the correct moral course of action - a description which, itself, is based on embellished histories that stress the spontaneous nature of Choe's decision to march on the city center.
Every year on the anniversary of the event, the Menghean government hosts an honorary ceremony in the city of Donggyŏng at People's Square, now renamed Heroes' Square. Currently, this takes the form of a torchlight formation procession in the hours before sunrise, followed by speeches by important government officials and survivors of the event. To aid in celebration, the period from the 21st to the 23rd is a public holiday. This period also includes the winter solstice, Dongji, which is a traditional feast day. At the height of Choe Sŭng-min’s personality cult in the late 1990s, some government officials proposed extending the public holiday to include the Chairman’s birthday on the 12th. Choe is said to have personally dismissed the idea, on the basis that an eleven-day public holiday would interfere too much in administrative duties and labor hours.
In 1988 and 1989, the government also held a large military parade on the anniversary of the Revolution, but in 1990 the Menghean government decided to move the main parade to National Day on May 25th, the anniversary of the country's founding, when the weather is warmer. In the first several ceremonies, the event also included a re-enactment of the soldiers’ and protesters’ assault on the palace, but the government discontinued this in 1995 due to concerns about safety (and a fear that it might be encouraging a second revolution against the established regime). The revolutionary re-enactment was nevertheless briefly revived in 2012, for the 25th anniversary of the event, complete with tanks firing blank shells at the perimeter of the square and uniformed troops rushing the old Party Headquarters.
The Party Headquarters itself has been converted into a museum of Menghe's history, focusing mainly on the era from 1947 to the present. The damage to its facade has been preserved as a reminder of the Revolution, though there is discussion of a plan to build a glass enclosure around the facade in order to better protect it from the elements.