Atlas / Organisations / Juche
Juche
Kimilsungism · 1955– · North Korea · Communist / Dynastic · Held state power · coding confidence medium
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
National self-reliance under a hereditary leader treated as the source of all social life; military-first priority.
Economic model
Total state ownership and planning, near-autarky, chronic famine risk, unofficial markets tolerated.
Organisation of powers
Hereditary succession, songbun caste system, prison camps, no autonomous institutions of any kind.
Reading note
Ranks at or near the ceiling on authority, centralisation and exclusion while remaining nominally communist — a hereditary monarchy with a Marxist vocabulary.
Check a claim about Juche. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −10
At the floor. State ownership of everything, with unofficial markets tolerated because the ration system failed.
- ScholarshipThe public distribution system collapsed during the 1994–98 famine; jangmadang markets emerged and are now taxed rather than suppressed.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored +09
At the traditional pole: a hereditary leader cult and a hierarchical social order with no autonomous association.
- Programme textThe Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-Ideology System govern private conduct including speech within families.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +10
At the ceiling with hereditary succession, which no other communist state institutionalised.
- Documented act or statuteThree hereditary successions since 1948.
- Documented act or statuteThe songbun system assigns life chances by inherited political classification.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +10
At the ceiling: no subordinate authority of any kind.
- Documented act or statuteAll administrative units execute central plans; travel between provinces requires a permit.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +10
Coded at the ceiling on the strength of the inherited caste classification and racial-national doctrine.
- Documented act or statuteSongbun classification is inherited through the paternal line and governs residence, education and rations.
CH · Method and tempo · scored −02
Coded negative: the regime has been the established order for three generations and its doctrine is preservation.
- Programme textJuche is presented as a completed system requiring defence rather than as a programme requiring transformation.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
Countries
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Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.