Tensions on the Korean peninsula are mounting, with North Korea preparing to dismantle sections of inter-Korean roads and accusing South Korea of drone incursions. These actions reflect Pyongyang’s increasingly hostile stance towards Seoul, which heightens the risk of instability in Northeast Asia. Beyond the immediate provocations, these developments also signal a deeper ideological shift within the opaque North Korean system. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is reviving his grandfather’s Marxist-Leninist principles as the regime confronts complex regional geopolitics and internal challenges. By returning to the ideological foundations laid by North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un seeks to reinforce his legitimacy and shield his regime from the fate of the Soviet Union.
In June, North Korean state television aired footage of a smiling Kim Jong Un seated at the back of a classroom at the newly established Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Cadres Training School. His fellow attendees weren’t ordinary students—they included senior party figures like Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui and Cabinet Premier Kim Tok Hun. The professor was teaching a lesson on the “fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism,” which included a lecture slide on “German classical philosophy, English classical political economics [and] French utopian socialism.”
This was no casual classroom moment for the highly secretive and tightly controlled state. In North Korea’s meticulously staged political theater, it was a blatant signal that Kim is reviving Marxist-Leninist principles and ideas. Coupled with recent media references to “communist traits” and a “communist future,” it is a harbinger of a strategic shift in the regime’s messaging. For Kim Jong Un, this move aims to reinforce the ideological pillars of his regime amid mounting domestic and international challenges.
The Central Cadres Training School, which opened in April 2024, prominently displays large portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx on its exterior—an unexpected shift, given that these portraits had been removed from Kim Il Sung Square in 2012. In 2009, the government had also officially removed all references to communism from its constitution. This recent revival of communist icons under Kim Jong Un marks a significant reversal of his father Kim Jong Il’s policies, highlighting a surprising ideological shift for the hereditary dictatorship. It suggests that Kim Jong Un may be seeking to reaffirm the country’s revolutionary roots and align more closely with traditional Marxist-Leninist beliefs, such as central planning and collectivism. This re-emphasis on communist imagery could also serve to solidify the loyalty of party elite and project an image of ideological linkage to the era of North Korea’s founding father, Kim Il Sung.
The question of whether North Korea can truly be considered a communist state has long been debated by specialists. During the Cold War, Kim Il Sung embraced Marxist-Leninist principles, including a commitment to class struggle and socialist internationalism. His rhetoric frequently invoked Marxist-Leninist concepts such as the dictatorship of the proletariat, anti-imperialism, and historical materialism. The official position was that Kim Il Sung successfully adapted Marxism-Leninism for Korea’s unique historical conditions as a divided postcolonial nation.
“Kim Jong Un appears to be reasserting the primacy of a collectivist ethos.”
However, the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the 1990s, coupled with Kim Jong Il’s emphasis on ethnic nationalism and nuclear-infused militarism, made the communist label increasingly problematic. While some scholars argue that North Korea is better understood as an ultra-nationalist, xenophobic regime, more comparable to Imperial Japan than to Soviet Russia, Kim Jong Un appears to be reasserting the primacy of a collectivist ethos over nationalistic fervor.
Simultaneously with the unveiling of the Marx and Lenin portraits at the Central Cadres Training School, party officials attending the 10th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee on June 30 were observed wearing lapel pins featuring the portrait of Kim Jong Un for the first time. While pins depicting Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il have long been a standard element of official attire in North Korea, this marked the first instance of Kim Jong Un’s image being displayed on badges at a high-level party gathering. This symbolic shift highlights Kim Jong Un’s rising prominence within the Kim family cult of personality and solidifies his status as equal to that of his father and grandfather. The simultaneous revival of communist iconography, coupled with the growing state media focus on Kim Jong Un’s personal image and the development of his own “revolutionary ideology,” points to an attempt to merge Marxian revolutionary themes with the consolidation of Kim’s own position within the regime’s dynastic lineage.
This high-level revitalization of communist themes has also hit the North Korean state media. Since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011, references to “communist” and “communism” in North Korea’s English-language and Korean-language media have steadily risen. In its propaganda output, the regime has emphasized upholding “communist traits” as a moral imperative for North Korean citizens. This terminology serves as a coded expression advocating for the maintenance of collectivism and social cohesion, even as markets have become increasingly integrated into the North Korean economy and the regime tries to combat the popularity of South Korean pop music and dramas. After recent flooding in rural regions, Kim Jong Un told a group of flood victims, “The rubbish ROK’s media are desperately slandering all the socialist benefits and measures taken by our party and government for the flood victims and also the communist traits displayed throughout the society, abusing them as a means of achieving some sort of internal unity and a type of demonstration.” This rhetoric reflects Kim’s broader strategy of intertwining Marxian principles of collectivism and solidarity with themes of nationalistic resistance against external threats.
This shift in North Korea’s official discourse is also reflected in policy changes. Kim Jong Un has increasingly embraced a top-down approach to economic development. Under the framework of his 20 x10 policy, Kim aims to establish hundreds of light industry factories in rural provinces, with the goal of promoting development in these areas to close the economic gap with urban centers. The re-centralization of economics is a shift away from Kim’s earlier initiative to give more power to local party officials and provincial administrations. The revenue from arms sales to Russia has likely strengthened the party center’s financial position, reinforcing its long-standing preference for maintaining tight state control over economic affairs.
Beyond the Marxist-inflected shifts in North Korean statecraft, the cultural sphere has also experienced a more heavy-handed approach from the Party leadership. Cracking down on so-called “anti-socialist” behavior among the population, the main newspaper in North Korea warned citizens in 2019 to not fall for the “foolish fantasies about capitalism” that caused the breakdown of the Soviet Union. In his 2018 New Year’s speech, Kim Jong Un called for a nationwide campaign to “tighten moral discipline throughout society, establish a socialist way of life, and eliminate all kinds of non-socialist practices.” Beneath the jargon, it appears that North Korean authorities are growing uneasy with the influence of the black market economy and the spread of South Korean cultural products on the country’s social fabric. While railing against capitalist individualism is typical for a socialist state, the extent to which party organs now invoke communism as a moral, rather than strictly materialistic framework stands out.
Within North Korea’s tightly controlled state pageantry and propaganda theatrics, symbols and discursive shifts hold greater importance than is the case elsewhere. The combination of North Korea’s opening of its borders after the pandemic, increased interaction with Russian authorities, and, most of all, the growing popularity of South Korean pop culture has loosened the party leadership’s total grip on ideological control. For a paranoid regime, ideology serves as a critical tool for disciplining the masses. In this context, the aggressive reassertion of Marxist orthodoxy suggests an attempt to reconsolidate North Korea’s ideological orientation.