Interim Council for National Restoration
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Provisional Republic of Menghe 대멩 임시 공화국 / 大孟臨時共和國 Dae Meng Imsi Gonghwaguk | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987–1988 | |||||||||
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Flag | |||||||||
Anthem: Aegukka | |||||||||
| Location of Menghe in Septentrion Location of Menghe in Septentrion | |||||||||
| Capital | Donggyŏng | ||||||||
| Common languages |
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| Demonym(s) | Menghean | ||||||||
| Government | Military junta | ||||||||
| Chairman | |||||||||
• 1987-1988 | Baek Gwang-hyun | ||||||||
• 1988 | Choe Sŭng-min | ||||||||
| Legislature | House of People's Representatives (dissolved) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 21 December 1987 | |||||||||
• Self-coup of Choe Sŭng-min | 1 March 1988 | ||||||||
• Socialist Republic of Menghe proclaimed | 25 May 1988 | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
| 1987 | 3,032,657 km2 (1,170,915 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1987 | 363000000 | ||||||||
| Currency | Inminpye | ||||||||
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The Interim Council for National Restoration (Menghean Sinmun: 국가 유신 임시 회의; Menghean Gomun: 國家維新臨時會議; pr. Gukka Yusin Imsi Hoeŭi) was a military junta that ruled Menghe between 21 December 1987 and 25 May 1988. It was established in the wake of the Decembrist Revolution by a group of Army commanders who had toppled the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe, and it was formally dissolved on the same day that the Socialist Republic of Menghe was established. During this interim period, the country was formally known as the Provisional Republic of Menghe.
The Provisional Republic period was significant for two main reasons. Internationally, it opened a process of detente with foreign powers, especially the major developed economies in central Septentrion. While the Menghean People's Army was still fundamentally concerned about national security in the long term, they brought an end to the nuclear threats which had characterized the late DPRM, and suspended the flow of arms to violent insurgencies around the world. These concessions, paired with an initial expectation that the junta would eventually facilitate a transition to civilian rule and democracy, led many foreign countries such as the Organized States and Themiclesia to normalize diplomatic relations with Menghe and draw up bilateral trade agreements.
In domestic politics, the Provisional Republic period also witnessed significant power struggles within the Interim Council for National Restoration. The initial structure of the Interim Council reflected the military chain of command, with Marshal Baek Gwang-hyun serving as Chairman despite having played a secondary role in the coup. On March 1st, however, Major-General Choe Sŭng-min staged a self-coup that toppled Marshal Baek, and proceeded to install himself as Chairman and Supreme Commander. With this move, he re-established himself as the country's leader, though he would face lingering threats to his power until the early 1990s.
Background
The ICNR was born from a military coup which a faction of Menghean People's Army officers, led by Major-General Choe Sŭng-min, launched against the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe. Under the radical leadership of General-Secretary Ryŏ Ho-jun and his populist faction or Minjungpa, the Communist Party had embarked on a number of disastrous policies, which by the late 1980s had undermined the country's once-resurgent industrial output, thrown the political realm into chaos, and started a deadly famine in the south, west, and interior. Ryŏ's "perpetual revolution" suppressed any factional opposition within the Party, especially by former supporters of Sim Jin-hwan; but due to the protection offered in the Sangwŏn Agreement, it left the Army largely untouched.
Many senior officers in the Menghean People's Army had served in the Pan-Septentrion War, and still endorsed the nationalist ideology of the Greater Menghean Empire. Concerned that Ryŏ's increasingly erratic leadership posed a threat to the country's well-being, and fearful that the Army might soon be singled out for political purges, a cell of military officers began plotting a coup in 1987. Their initial aim was to assume direct control of the country for an interim period, in order to serve as a caretaker government until political power could be handed back to the progress faction formerly headed by Sim Jin-hwan.
Major-General Choe formally proclaimed the existence of an Interim Council for National Restoration on December 21st, 1987, minutes after his troops had seized control of the Party headquarters and while fighting was still going on elsewhere in the capital. At that time, the council itself was a fiction. Choe's improvised coup operation, carried out more than a month ahead of schedule, began without any of the other conspirators' knowledge, and it was only on the following day that Army high command declared its support. The council first convened on December 24th, in a conference room within the Donggwangsan palace, and its initial meeting was dominated by argument rather than agreement.
Course of events
Diplomatic opening
One of the new government's most immediate tasks was to lift a comprehensive trade embargo which had been imposed in response to the country's nuclear weapons program. At its inaugural meeting, the Interim Council agreed to dismantle the country's nuclear arsenal in exchange for immediate resumption of normal economic and diplomatic relations. To expedite the process, they allowed inspectors from the Septentrion League to enter Menghe's uranium enrichment facilities and weapons assembly sites in order to oversee disarmamant. In exchange, they called upon the Septentrion League to lift the embargo against Menghe, and issued a plea for famine relief.
Themiclesia was one of the first countries to respond. On New Year's Day, 1988, a "friendship train" carrying food aid departed Kienk'ang along the Trans-Hemithean Railway, bringing the first major relief to Sunju and the surrounding areas. Over the following months, the emergency freight service continued, adding in volunteers and medical supplies: many of the famine victims were so emaciated that they could not digest solid food. Other countries contributed aid as well, and domestically the Menghean People's Army mobilized its own soldiers to distribute supplies into rural areas.
In the course of the relief campaign, the military leadership also signaled that it was willing to continue Menghe's economic opening in the long term.
Decollectivization
For the members of the Interim Council, it was not sufficient to accept temporary food aid; the inefficient system of communal production had to be abolished. Yet there were still disagreements over how to go about this. Choe, himself the son of an upper peasant family deprived of their land, ardently supported a return to private plots but opposed any reform which would allow large landlords to dominate the agricultural sector.
After some debate, the Interim Council for National Restoration issued the Provisional Law on Rural Land Use. This law stated that the responsibility for tilling communal land should be divided up among individual heads of household, with a limit on the amount of land any one household could till. Implementation proceeded quickly: by the beginning of the spring planting season, about 60% of all land under cultivation was privately run, and by 1990 that figure would be close to 100%. Methods for land distribution differed, with some villages returning to each household's pre-1982 plots and some allowing residents to draw straws for equally sized plots.
Subsequent revisions to the Fundamental Law on Land Use would specify land-ownership limits in greater detail, and in 1990 town and village governments would adjust the size of individual household plots to account for differences in soil quality. But all revisions retained an important provision: formal ownership of rural property still lay with the County government, which reserved the right to confiscate land or re-distribute plots.
Early economic reform
While official histories credit the Interim Council with launching Menghe's process of economic reform, its policies outside of agriculture were largely improvised. Most members, including Choe, still followed the economic ideas of Sim Jin-hwan's Progress faction, believing that large state-owned enterprises were the key to higher productivity.
Concerned over rural shortages, however, they decided to pass an interim reform legalizing small private enterprises. The Emergency Law on Petty-Bourgeois Economic Activity, passed on January 10th, allowed individual persons to buy and sell selected categories of goods for personal profit as long as they did not hire anyone else.
The law's original intent was to ease crippling problems with distribution by allowing peasants to ship any surplus agricultural yield to the cities and distribute it once there. Surviving transcripts of council meetings, and the law's wording itself, suggest that the leadership saw this as a purely temporary measure and intended to absorb private entrepreneurs back into the planned economy once initial shortages receded. None of them expected how forcefully the private sector would expand after the law's passage. By the time the First Five-Year Plan began in 1990, the leaders of the Socialist Republic were forced to accept the existence of a small private sector at the base of the economic system, and in time they would reverse their original plans and legalize larger types of "small business."
Self-coup of March 1st
Interim name and symbols
During his immediate post-coup speech on the balcony of the Donggwangsan palace, Choe Sŭng-min proclaimed that the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe was formally abolished, but he did not specify the formal name of the government that would take its place. Combined with ambiguous and inconsistent messages from the leadership in the post-coup chaos, this led to a brief period of ambiguity as to the formal status of the country.
Only on its second day of meeting, December 25th, did the members of the Interim Council formally agree to refer to the interim administration as the "Provisional Republic of Menghe" (대멩 임시 공화국 / 大孟臨時共和國, Dae Meng Imsi Gonghwaguk). Council members agreed that they would establish a new, permanent government at the end of the interim period, but there was still disagreement on what that government would be called, how it would be structured, and when it would be formed.
Other confusion related to the country's flag. With the move to abolish the Democratic People's Republic and its national symbols, the old red-and-green DPRM flag fell into disuse, but while the Interim Council did take steps to organize a flag design competition, it did not select a new flag until the Socialist Republic of Menghe was established. As a largely improvised measure, government buildings and Menghean diplomats began using the flag of the Menghean People's Army, which soon emerged as the de facto flag of the Provisional Republic - even though it was never legally proclaimed as such.