The Kim family does have outsized influence, but the DPRK is not a hereditary monarchy. For example, the position of President, held by Kim Il-Sung, was abolished and split into multiple positions upon his death. This is why he is remembered as the “Eternal President.” As such, both Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have held different positions. Both have held high positions, for example Kim Jong-Il had the title of General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, a position held by Kim Jong-Un presently. However, this is not the whole story.

The DPRK has a much more distributed level of power, and the Kim family is both widely supported due to its influence, and yet is not the undisputed top-dog, so to speak. What’s more, the Kim family is so venerated precisely because the legacy of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is lived memory, imagine if Lenin had survived and raised his children as successors. It would be no wonder that the soviets would have elected his children, but it would not be a monarchy either.

Finally, class. Class is not a level of material wealth, but a relation to production and distribution. The DPRK is overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, administration is not a distinct class in and of itself but a subset of broader classes, same with intellectuals. What determines class is based on that key aspect, the Kim family does not own capital but instead recieves wages from the state. Kim Jong-Un is largely used as a symbol, one that is democratically elected and directly trained by his father for the position.

This is why it’s important to actually study the real systems at play, rather than coast on pre-formed opinions drilled into us about the DPRK from western media. The Black Panther Party maintained good relations with the DPRK, visiting it and teaching Juche to Americans.

From Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:

The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.

How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.

To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability

As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.

I highly recommend the book, it helps shed light on some often misunderstood mechanisms in socialist democracy, including the directly addressed fact that the DPRK's voting process includes single candidate approval voting.

Reposting the top comment of this thread which is really good: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/ahvu9h/is_north_korea_a_hereditary_dictatorship/

The fact is that Kim Jong-Un, and his father, and his grandfather, do not and did not hold the highest positions of power in the government. The de facto head of state in the D.P.R.K is currently Kim Young-Nam, who has held this position since 1998. The current position of Kim Jong-Un is as you said, as he previously held the position of Chairman of the National Defense Commission, which was altered in 2016 to better reflect the situation at hand with better organisation. Kim Il-Sung held the positions of Premier and President of the Presidium for a long time, though he did retire from the latter in 1983, being succeeded by Yang Hyong-Sop; this is unsurprising, as Kim Il-Sung was a incredibly competent and well-respected leader, and especially so among his own people. The fact is, influential positions have become more decentralised with each generation, as the power of the state becomes more distributed among the proletariat and in accordance with society, in a rather natural way that may, hopefully, lead to a complete withering way of the state in future, as other aspects, too, decline, assuming a defeat of capitalist powers simultaneously with the existence of the D.P.R.K.

Allegedly, Kim Il-Sung did suggest Kim Jong-Il succeed him, because Jong-Il had been instilled with a revolutionary ideology for his entire life. The rest of the party and the people are said to have agreed with this - through their usual discussions, one would assume - and so, Kim Jong-Il succeeded his father in some positions, whilst others were removed, split up and redistributed, or reassigned. That is why there is no longer a President of the D.P.R.K: The position was no longer necessary, and equivalent powers were to be divided among multiple roles.

On your point of their democracy: The decision of whom is elected is not done so with the ballot. The voting is done through open discussions prior to the ballot, comparable to the Soviet design, which could also be seen in Libya to some degree. After a common consensus is met through these periods of discussion, the vote is cast as a confirmation of this selection, hence the lack of negative votes for candidates; democratic centralism requires unity, after all, and so does a socialist state. You can find many posts here that touch on the matter. I recommend this for some more information.

So, in short: The D.P.R.K is not a hereditary dictatorship, with power being decentralised through successive generations, and the election of officials are made through common consensus as decided by mass discussions.

Hopefully that helps.

There are a couple different ways we could look at this.

Institutionally, there has been a general trend towards diffusion of power. Kim Il Sung was President, which like in the US, meant he was head of state, head of government, and commander in chief of the armed forces. After his death, those positions were split between multiple people.

From Wikipedia:

The functions and powers previously belonging to the president were divided between numerous officials:

The premier of North Korea;

the chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly;

and the head of the military, the chairman of the National Defence Commission (replaced by State Affairs Commission of North Korea) and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army.

These positions are currently held by Pak Thae-song, Choe Ryong-hae, and Kim Jong Un respectively.

[Reformatted for better legibility on Lemmy]

On the other hand, I would definitely consider the personality cult around the Kims to be a troublesome aspect of the DPRK's political culture, and I don't think there's really any way around that.

The reason it developed historically, however, is worth exploring. Prior to the Korean war, the Fatherland Front which made up the Revolution post WW2, was incredibly vibrant, with lots of parties and social cleavages outside of the Workers party being represented. After the Korean war, however, election results show a major rallying around the Workers Party, and the sidelining of other parties and organizations in the Fatherland Front.

The Korean war never truly ended, the US bombed the Korean peninsula so much that pilots complained there were no more targets, and people took to living in caves. So it's understandable why, despite ostensible attempts at diffusing power, that it's managed to centralize regardless. There's a historic desire for stability in the face of incredible adversity.

If we want to get really in the weeds about political economy, the DPRK's economic base is made up primarily of extractive industries, like mining, because the Korean peninsula's bread basket is in the south, and countries with primarily extractive industries tend to develop noted centralized power structures, compared to countries with more diverse productive industries.

So a Socialist country like Cuba, which has a more agricultural economy, allowed it to develop a more diverse economy, and thus it has a healthier political culture, by contrast.

All of that said, whatever qualms of critiques of the DPRK I may have, they had a Socialist Revolution, and have kept it going, which is more than I can say as a Socialist in the US.

And I think, if we care about the people of the Korean peninsula, we should want a formal end to the Korean war, a dismantling of the DMZ, an end to the US military presence and sanctions, and an internationally mediated set of talks between north and south, about what their future together might look like.

Those things would, I suspect, go a long way in helping establishing a healthier political culture in the DPRK, as well as dignified material benefits to its people, free from arbitrary restrictions

I appreciate the thorough replies from both you and @OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml

I guess the gist is that on paper the Kims are not the absolute ruling family in the DPRK. It just seems that way from the outside due to the veneration they have among their people. Every western power really does seem to think Kim Jong Un is fully the head of state there. So its hard to not think the truth is somewhere in between.

Even if they really are legitimately elected. The whole concept of a family lineage of power makes me uncomfortable. I feel the same way about the Kennedys, Bushs, Clintons, etc.