Video recording of the first webinar from the Oral History Forum. The theme of the webinar explores how community identity, history, activism, and experiences are represented through oral history.

This article argues that elite purges in consolidated dictatorships have a different purpose and logic. Dictators, who have consolidated their position, seek to maximize the efficiency of rule by making the elite obedient through purges. For this purpose, dictators carefully select the purge target by considering various factors. To test this theory, the article examines the pattern of elite purges in North Korea based on an original individual-level dataset, which contains the personal background of 367 North Korean elites and their purge records between 1948 and 2019. Findings suggest that coup-proofing is not the only purpose of elite purges but that ensuring the leader’s political superiority is another purpose of elite purges in consolidated dictatorships.