Podcast with Jieun Baek, “Privileged But Powerless”
What do the people closest to power really think about the system they serve? That’s perhaps one of the most important questions one could ask about North Korea, still one of the world’s least understood countries.
Today, we’re joined by Jieun Baek, author of Privileged But Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness (Yale University Press, May 2026). She draws on in-depth interviews with North Korean elite escapees—from senior party cadres and diplomats to military officers and wealthy, politically connected figures—to explore a group often assumed to be secure, influential, and loyal. She finds that even those with access to better housing, education, overseas postings, and material comforts remain subject to a political system in which one misstep can have devastating consequences—not only for themselves, but for their families. We talk about what it means to be an elite in North Korea, why some people defect while others stay, and what elite grievances can and can’t tell us about the country’s future.
Privileged but Powerless was reviewed for the ARB in July by Francis P Sempa. You can read the full review here.
Jieun Baek is an author and scholar specialising in authoritarian governance, regime stability, elite political behaviour, and information access in closed societies, with a particular focus on North Korea and Burma. Her research draws on more than fifteen years of fieldwork and sustained engagement with hard-to-reach populations, including defectors, dissidents, diplomats, former officials, and individuals operating within and across tightly controlled political systems. She is also the author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society.
