Sim Jin-hwan
Sim Jin-hwan | |
|---|---|
 Sim Jin-hwan as First Secretary of Donghae Province | |
| 7th General-Secretary of the Menghe People's Communist Party | |
| In office 7 January 1971 – 24 June 1980 | |
| Preceded by | Sun Tae-jun |
| Succeeded by | Ryŏ Ho-jun |
| Full-time Politburo member | |
| In office 4 April 1964 – 7 January 1972 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 200px 2 March 1921 Haeju, Donghae province, Menghe |
| Died | April 30, 1984 (aged 63) |
| Resting place | 200px |
| Political party | Menghe People's Communist Party |
| Spouse | Bak Su-a |
| Children | Sim Yong-gi, Sim Un-hui |
| Parent |
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| Occupation | revolutionary, statesman |
| Ethnicity | Meng |
Sim Jin-hwan (Menghean Gomun: 沈進煥, Menghean Sinmun: 심진환, Heikkinen-Järvinen transliteration: Shim Chin-hoan; 2 February 1921 - 30 March 1984) was a statesman serving the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe. From 1971 to 1980, he was the General-Secretary of the Menghe People's Communist Party and the highest-ranking politician in Menghe, ruling the country between Sun Tae-jun and Ryŏ Ho-jun.
Unlike either his predecessor or his successor, Sim had a military background: he had served as a Lieutenant in the twilight years of the Pan-Septentrion War. Experience in the armed forces of the Greater Menghean Empire gave him a somewhat nationalist outlook, shared by some of his peers, but he was also a devoted Communist. During his time in office, he oversaw a major campaign to expand Menghe's industrial output, with central state-owned enterprises taking the lead. He also promoted a "military-first" policy, expanding and modernize Menghe's conventional armed forces while simultaneously initiating a secret nuclear weapons program.
Early life and early career
Childhood
Sim Jin-hwan was born in the city of Haeju, at the southern end of Donghae province, in 1921. His parents were petty artisans, and while their income was relatively meager, they saved up enough money to support his education, hoping that he would secure a more stable place in the still-modernizing country.
Military service
Initially he had expressed interest in becoming an engineer, but after Menghe declared war on Maverica in 1937, Sim became caught up in the nationalist fervor of the era. Shortly after turning 18, he applied to the Imperial Menghean Army Academy in Dongrŭng, hoping to become an Army officer. Like his peers, Sim Jin-hwan was inundated in the nationalist culture of the IMAA, but he also found his way into a covert communist reading cell, one of many which had emerged within the collectivist Army.
By the time Sim graduated as a 2nd Lieutenant in the spring of 1943, the tide of the war had decisively turned against Menghe. During his service in Maverica, he mainly oversaw his unit's steady retreat, but nevertheless climbed to the rank of Captain as attrition wore away at the upper ranks.
Insurgency
After Menghe's defeat, Sim Jin-hwan's unit was disbanded, but he managed to gather a group of loyal followers and retreat into the mountains of Pyŏngsu province. For several years, he served with the Sudŏk Resistance Army, a larger nationalist faction that had refused to lay down its arms after the surrender agreement was signed. By this time, however, his Communist views had grown more entrenched, and after a number of disputes with commanding officers, he departed to join the Menghe Liberation Army.
After arriving at the latter's temporary power base in Taehwa Province, Sim Jin-hwan forged a working relationship with Sun Tae-jun, who at the time was still at the fringes of the movement's inner circle. As Sun rose through the ranks, Sim rose with him, emerging as one trusted confidant among many. By the war's end in April 1988, Sim Jin-hwan was rewarded with a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, the innermost circle of the DPRM's political leadership.
Under Sun Tae-jun
While serving on the Politburo Standing Committee, Sim was simultaneously appointed First Secretary of Donghae Province, which at the time encompassed both North and South Donghae. This was a profoundly important appointment at the time, and it allowed Sim to build a stable regional power base. The Donghae region had inherited not only Menghe's prewar industrial base, but also much of the foreign capital brought to the country in the 1950s, and as a result of administering the area Sim Jin-hwan gained particular influence over economic policymaking - especially after Donghae's swift recovery from the wartime fall in output.
Nevertheless, the First Secretary was still more cautious in forging connections than some of his rivals. He played a key role in uncovering Jang Su-sŏk's factional plot, and he was quick to exploit it for his own benefit, casting Jang and his Northeastern allies as traitors-in-waiting. Among these "traitors-in-waiting" was Ryŏ Ho-jun, who would later clash with Sim more openly.
Sim's involvement in the Jang Su-sŏk affair earned him trust and praise from Sun Tae-jun, but it did not earn him a clear role as Sun's successor. Sun's leadership style was based on balancing authority among his next-tier subordinates, out of a concern that any one of them might attempt to overthrow him if allowed to grow too confident.
After Sun's death in 1969, there was a brief period of uncertainty in which competing factions struggled for primacy. Jang Sŭng-wŏn and Ji Nam-sŏn briefly held the post of General-Secretary, but held little power beyond there. Elected by the Central Committee on January 7th, 1971, Sim Jin-hwan promised major changes in the country's development, and was able to consolidate his position.
As General-Secretary
Industrialization effort
Sim Jin-hwan's interpretation of Communism and his future vision for Menghe were deeply influenced by high-modernist ideals. This perspective, present among some reformers during the Greater Menghean Empire but also influenced by Sim's observation of events in the FSR, held that Menghe's lagged development had burdened it with a rural population and a disorganized society, and that in order to catch up with the leading industrial powers, the Menghean leadership needed to reshape popular values and social organization in a carefully planned way that would maximize control and efficiency. Communist leaders who shared Sim's view formed a "Progress faction" (Jinjŏnpa) within the Party.
This high-modernist worldview shaped Sim Jin-hwan's plans for Menghe's industrial sector. His Second (1971-1975) and Third (1976-1981) Five-Year Plans were modeled after earlier industrialization efforts in the Federation of Socialist Republics, prioritizing steel, manufacturing, and chemicals. He also ordered the expansion of drilling on Menghe's minor oil reserves, in order to keep the Army and Air Force minimally supplied even if Polvokia cut off the supply of oil. At the core of this effort was Sim's famous slogan that "an industrial country is a modern country," and his concern that a primarily agrarian or rural Menghe would be unable to catch up with the great powers.
Within the new factories, many of which were meticulously planned by state officials or even by Sim Jin-hwan himself, high modernism extended into the lives of individual citizens. In almost all new facilities, workers lived in on-site dormitories managed by the enterprise itself, complete with cafeterias, recreation areas, and primary schools. Production was also highly regimented: perhaps inspired by his own Army experience, Sim called for a militarized mobilization of the workforce, abolishing weekends and extending the workday in an effort to maximize output.
Given Menghe's state of development at the time, "modern" organization did not extend far in practice. The population remained overwhelmingly rural, and with all investment concentrated in heavy industry, farmers saw few improvements in fertilizer use or mechanization. Indeed, Sim Jin-hwan's "favor the cities" approach led to higher and higher quotas for state grain appropriation, stirring resentment in rural areas.
Military-first agenda
Rather than prioritizing the civilian economy first, however, Sim Jin-hwan viewed national defense as the highest priority. Both his personal experience during Menghe's military defeat and his outlook on Menghe's geopolitical situation shaped this perspective. During the 1970s, both Polvokia and the FSR fell under more nationalist leaders, leading to a belief that Menghe would need to support itself in any major war. And with Dayashina, closely aligned with the GA, directly across the East Menghe Sea, the threat of war was urgent.
Under the slogan of Sŏngun (先軍/선군), conventionally translated as "military-first," Sim Jin-hwan placed a special priority on subsets of heavy industry that would be relevant to military materiel. One of the Second Five-Year Plan's early objectives was to manufacture all of Menghe's military equipment domestically, ending the need for imports from the FSR.
In order to narrow the technological gap between Menghe and its rivals, Sim ordered the expansion of Menghe's military research and development sector and the construction of new facilities capable of manufacturing quality optics and radar equipment, ordering the improvement of new tank models in the JCh-4 and JCh-5 series. For the most part, however, he expected to repel any invasion with overwhelming numbers, and also sought to expand production quantitatively in order to equip an army supported through universal conscription.
Involvement in Menghe's nuclear program
As part of his Sŏngun agenda, Sim Jin-hwan also authorized a domestic nuclear weapons program, which he believed would allow Menghe to move beyond its reliance on the FSR and establish itself as an independent great power.
Because the STAPNA agreement included a strict enforcement mechanism requiring signatories to impose economic sanctions against countries which violated the treaty terms, Sim ordered that the program be carried out in secret. Indeed, no announcement of the program was made to the general public, and scientists even tangentially related to the program were placed under close supervision. Once the program was completed, Sim hoped to maintain an aura of plausible deniability around Menghe's nuclear arsenal, creating just enough risk that GA member states would be unwilling to attempt a first strike.
Sim's involvement in the nuclear weapons program has been one of the most hotly debated parts of his legacy, especially as Haeju itself was subjected to nuclear attack in the 1940s. In a memoir compiled and published in the 1990s, he occasionally expressed misgivings about nuclear weapons' potential for indiscriminate destruction, but defended them as a necessary measure to protect Menghe's independence: "Any time I found myself doubting my course, I reminded myself of the humiliation of 1944, and the devastation that followed, which we are only now escaping... To allow a return to those days through lack of action would be the greater injustice."
Final years
Power struggle with hardliners
The policies of Sim Jin-hwan's "Progress faction" soon alienated a self-described "Populist faction" (Minjungpa) within the Party. Led by Ryŏ Ho-jun, these officials chafed at the force with which Sim had implemented industrialization, and at the fact that rural peasants were worse off than they had been at the start of his term. In particular, many in this group argued that industrial labor under Sim's militarized mobilization was as oppressive as industrial labor under bourgeois profiteers, labeling it "state capitalism" - a term which subsequently became a political anathema in Menghean politics.
In 1979, Ryŏ and several other hardliners gained enough support in the Party's Central Committee to win election onto the Politburo Standing Committee, a move which Sim Jin-hwan had opposed. During this period, industrial policymaking ground to a halt, consumed in sometimes violent arguments between top Party leaders.
Removal from power
What happened next is somewhat disputed. According to the subsequent Ryŏ administration, in May 1980 Sim Jin-hwan visited Marshal Baek of the Menghean Army at his personal residence and inquired about the possibility of a self-coup to dissolve the Central Committee and remove Ryŏ and his allies from power. Baek refused, calling the plan treasonous, but Mun Dŏk-su, a Party cadre who saw Sim leaving, later asked Marshal Baek what had happened, and on hearing the story passed the news on to the Party leadership. After Choe Sŭng-min came to power, he initiated a new investigation which concluded that Ryŏ's allies had fabricated the entire account. Some historians have expressed doubt about the credibility of Choe's post-coup "investigation," which unfolded simultaneously with Ryŏ's trial and sentencing, and surviving Party leaders have given contradictory accounts of whether a Sim-Baek meeting ever happened and what they discussed.
Regardless of the actual events, Ryŏ Ho-jun promptly organized a show trial against Sim Jin-hwan, accusing him of treason. Whatever his script in the show trial may have been, however, Baek soon drifted off of it, stressing that while Sim had expressed frustration over the political deadlock, he had never seriously inquired about a self-coup. Conflicting accounts by screened witnesses and factional sympathies among the leading saminju threw the trial into chaos, until finally Sim was removed from his post and sentenced to house arrest on "suspicion of treasonous intentions."
Retrial and death
Ryŏ Ho-jun was never content with house arrest, however, especially as Sim Jin-hwan's "Progress faction" retained a sizeable minority of support among the Party leadership. When mobilizing the Red Pioneers in April 1982, Ryŏ identified "productionist revisionism" as the largest threat to the Menghean Revolution, a direct charge against Sim Jin-hwan and his remaining supporters.
In response, the Red Pioneers began organizing "Popular action sessions" against suspected revisionists, including Sim Jin-hwan himself. The former General-Secretary was repeatedly dragged from his house for public criticism in May and June of 1982, and again in August and September, and subjected to "Revolutionary retrials" in which he was forced to admit to involvement in a self-coup plot, "betrayal of the working class," and at one point espionage for New Tyran. In one session, he was beaten so heavily that both of his legs were broken. Ryŏ Ho-jun, apparently entertained by this development, ordered that the immobile Sim Jin-hwan be carried around the country in a basket for special denunciation at rallies.
Denied medical care and given little rest, Sim's physical and mental health soon deteriorated; witnesses note that at several of the later rallies, he did not appear conscious when carried on stage. Unsettled by the increasingly macabre spectacle, some of Ryŏ's allies petitioned in November to end Sim's tour of popular action sessions and return him to house arrest. His further petitions for medicine and treatment still went unnoticed, however, and on March 30th, 1984, he passed away in his residence.
Legacy
After the Decembrist Revolution, the new Menghean government under Choe Sŭng-min ordered that Sim Jin-hwan be posthumously rehabilitated, and struck all treason charges against him from the record. The new Chairman himself is said to have had a particularly positive view of Sim's leadership, often contrasting it favorably with Ryŏ's time in office.
A larger debate has centered on the question of whether Sim's industrial and military reforms, if implemented without interference, would have succeeded in generating sustained economic development similar to Choe's economic miracle. Choe himself remarked in 1988 that "despite a promising start, we have been delayed ten years, and set back ten years more [i.e., under Ryŏ]." Indeed, his initial plans for economic reconstruction closely resembled Sim's, in part because he relied heavily on surviving members of the "Progress faction" when building his new national government.
Yet while Choe eventually changed course from state-centric development to market mechanisms and private enterprise, Sim Jin-hwan had insisted throughout his time in office that all economic activity be centrally planned and carried out by state-run enterprises. Economies of scale, even where present, did not resolve the many inefficiencies of centralized allocation and price determination, and some political economists have argued that if Sim's form of development had continued much longer, it could have set Menghe down a long-term collision course with stagnant growth and difficult industrial reform.
Today, Sim Jin-hwan's ashes are enshrined in a family tomb in Haeju, and his residence while serving as First Secretary has been preserved as a museum.