[KJAD Column #3] Treating Kim like a king (It's the who rather than what with North Korea)

Treating Kim like a king

Dealing with North Korea means dealing with the personal pride and fears of an isolated, yet all-controlling king.

Dec 27,2017

Louis XIV famously said, “L’etat c’est moi,” in the 17th century. But he might as well have been describing North Korea in the 21st century. With North Korea, we have to keep in mind the irrefutable fact that the country, rather than a traditional socialist state, is closer to an absolute monarchy in which the state is synonymous with its leader Kim Jong-un. It’s a triumvirate in which the state, regime, and leader are all considered to be one and the same, especially in national security matters.

Dealing with North Korea means dealing with the personal pride and fears of an isolated, yet all-controlling king. Granted, the realpolitik of international relations does play an important factor even for North Korea, but it is interpreted and reacted through the heuristic lens of its reigning monarch. Therefore, no one except Kim can make any decision of national importance. If they did, it would be tantamount to treason. Any agreement, or even negotiations, without Kim’s explicit and prior approval and direction is always subject to a reversal or non-compliance, regardless of the merit of the dialogue.

This recognition is significant because it implies that the North Korean leadership’s reference point for its decisions would probably be based on how it may affect the persona of the leader, more so than strategic thinking about the future of the country as a whole. This actually gives the United States an insight into the type of leverage that would be effective in any eventual negotiations with the North Korean leadership. After all, in a monarchy, finding out what is most important to the king that is always the key to unlocking the gates of the kingdom.

This peculiarity can make negotiations easier because North Korea has no opposition, national assembly, press, or civil society. All North Korea needs to act is the decision by the Supreme Leader.

This is why it is crucial for U.S. President Donald Trump to personally engage with Kim — whether through a summit or some other means of direct communication — to have the latter directly and publicly express his commitment to whatever negotiating framework that the two leaders can agree on. Only then can his underlings work out the details to make it happen on the ground level.

In other words, the typical bottom-up approach that typifies the diplomatic negotiations process — in which the working-level diplomats hammer out the difficult details of a deal for an extended period of time and vet them with their respective superiors in secrecy, only to have their top leadership publicly announce it later with official blessing and aplomb — isn’t likely to work with North Korea. Any effective dialogue with the country will have to directly involve the top leadership from the beginning.

The Six-Party Talks failed precisely because its approach is reverse to what could work with North Korea: It sought to hammer out the details and then work its way up to a summit where the grand bargain would be finalized. The right order should have been to finalize the grand bargain with Kim himself on general terms and then work out the details. Notwithstanding the great work and perseverance by American working-level diplomats and track 1.5 participants, current and future engagements with North Korea will be ineffective unless this order is followed.

Kim Jong-un should be present in the beginning of the process to make any bargain stick with North Korea. And the only incentive that speaks to Kim’s political needs and absolute leadership status domestically would be a direct engagement with the leader of the Free World and primary enemy for the last 70 years. Direct engagement at the top level need not be a personal meeting between the two leaders. It would just have to be a meeting in which their two personally trusted envoys — who can be outside the normal channels of their respective bureaucracies — get together in person to exchange their leaders’ intent and willingness to explore negotiations. In other words, the engagement should be a personally driven process, not a bureaucratic one.

In fact, saving Kim Jong-un’s face through a direct engagement could induce him to strike an easier bargain because the symbolism of the relationship props up the credibility of Kim Jong-un to his domestic audience. He would have brought home even bigger political bacon than they had before: security and prosperity at the same time, guaranteed by the only superpower in the world.

This is how Kim would sell this to his people: The Kim dynasty looked America straight into the eye with great courage and undeniable righteousness, and America blinked first. Furthermore, presenting Kim Jong-un an opportunity to proclaim a meaningful historical place in the ethnography of the Korean people might be too tempting to refuse.

In the end, let Kim have his personal victory if it means a nuclear-free Korea and no more North Korean people suffering needlessly. The sooner, the better. That would be a true foreign policy and moral victory for America. The achievement is worthy of the oft-touted negotiating prowess of President Trump.

This is the third of the four-part series of Venerable Pomnyun Sunim’s views on North Korea.

*The author is a Buddhist monk engaged in humanitarian and human rights work in North Korea. He is also the founder and chairman of the Peace Foundation, a national security policy think tank located in Seoul. He can be reached at pomnyun@pf.or.kr.

Venerable Pomnyun Sunim 

Originally posted on Korea JoongAng Daily on December 27, 2017

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[KJAD Column #2] Don’t count on China (Why North Korea will never kowtow to China)

Don’t count on China

It is fundamentally misguided to think that North Korea will kowtow to external pressure, especially from China.

Dec 20,2017

In my meetings with U.S. officials and policy makers on North Korea, many seem to believe that the key to solving the problem lies with China. Their argument is that if China were to fully use its economic leverage on North Korea, the Kim Jong-un regime would succumb to Chinese pressure and have no choice but to change its behavior toward nuclear weapons. There are two problems with this reasoning.

First, the argument ignores the modern history of Northeast Asia that gave birth to the present North Korean regime. When analyzing North Korean behavior, it is critical to understand that North Korea was born out of the resistance against Japan’s occupation of Korea in the early 20th century.

Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, led a band of Korean independence fighters against Japan’s armies in Manchuria. The core ruling class that formed the North Korean government consisted of independence fighters from inside and outside the Korean Peninsula. Their descendants continue to make up the nucleus of elite support that Kim Jong-un enjoys today. Anti-imperialism is embedded into the country’s DNA.

However, anti-imperialism isn’t limited to Japan or the United States. In truth, the traditional hegemon of Korea has always been the various dynasties of China. While the threat of Japan has faded into history, the threat of a rising China has not.

Today, the North Korean leadership considers China to be the primary threat to regime survival. Despite paying lip service to their alliance, the Kim dynasty cannot afford to have any forces within the regime answer to foreign governments, especially China with its huge influence on North Korea’s viability.

This has always been the case. In August 1956, Kim Il Sung purged people he suspected of seeking to overthrow him with backing from the Chinese Communist Party. Soon afterward, Kim forced Mao Zedong to remove all remaining Chinese military presence — which had saved him during the Korean War — from North Korea.

His son, Kim Jong-il, was also quoted as saying that the Chinese should never be trusted. This underlying mistrust seems to be the reason behind the death of Jang Song-thaek and Kim Jong-nam, both of whom were suspected as China’s potential alternatives to the current leadership.

As such, allowing Chinese pressure, whether economic or political, to dictate the terms of North Korea’s national security goes against the country’s fundamental nature and self-interest of the current regime. A nation founded on anti-imperialism simply cannot allow an imperial power, even a nominally friendly one, to interfere in its own affairs.

This is not unique to North Korea. The relationship between Vietnam and China has similarly been driven by historical suspicions despite their shared socialist background. Any local leader seen as allowing interference from China will not remain a leader for long.

Second, even if we ignore the history and culture of a country and strictly take a transactional view of international relations, North Korea’s economic reliance on China is overblown.

Under the current leadership, North Korea has expanded food production by legalizing markets and private farming. As a result, food prices have been remarkably stable for the past five years. In fact, they have been lower in North Korea than in China.

On top of that, even if the tougher sanctions cause severe economic pains, could it ever be severe enough to convince the regime to surrender its nukes? Remember that North Korea survived famine in the late 1990s, when up to three million people starved to death. This is a nation that has been the most isolated, sanctioned and condemned in the past 60 years. Yet it still stands.

The international community cannot project its collective sensibilities onto its expectations of North Korean behavior. What we might consider a reasonable breaking point is not what the North Korean regime would consider a breaking point. What we might consider unbearable pain and isolation is not what the North Korean regime would think unbearable.

If we believe that economic hardships will compel such a nation to suddenly yield to pressure and behave as told — especially on something so critical as its autonomy and national security — then we are not thinking about this transaction correctly. It is fundamentally misguided to think that a nation born out of a traumatic and visceral reaction against external imperialist pressure would all of a sudden kowtow to external pressure, especially from China, the imperial power that victimized Korea over millennia. We would sooner expect to see a leopard change its spots.

This is the second of a four-part series of Venerable Pomnyun Sunim’s views on North Korea.

*The author is a Buddhist monk engaged in humanitarian and human rights work in North Korea. He is also founder and chairman of the Peace Foundation, a national security policy think tank in Seoul. He can be reached at pomnyun@pf.or.kr.

Venerable Pomnyun Sunim 

Originally posted on Korea JoongAng Daily on December 20, 2017

[KJAD Column #1] ‘America First’ and North Korea

‘America First’ and North Korea

The success of Trump’s current policy will mean China has dominant influence on the Korean Peninsula.

Dec 13,2017

Back in April, President Trump characterized his North Korea policy as “maximum engagement, maximum pressure.” This was widely interpreted to mean that the United States would be more aggressive in seeking international cooperation — especially from China — to strengthen economic sanctions against North Korea while simultaneously seeking to engage the Kim Jong-un regime in talks about denuclearization.

While “maximum pressure” includes unilateral actions by the United States to target individuals and institutions that enable North Korea to continue developing nuclear weapons and missiles, China’s active cooperation is critical since it is, by far, North Korea’s biggest trading partner.

The policy of outsourcing resolution of the North Korea problem to China is bound to fail. Many have already articulated the reasons that international pressure and tougher sanctions won’t work, so I won’t repeat the familiar argument.

But what if the current North Korea policy succeeds? This is what should really worry the U.S. government.

Let’s imagine that the United States gets everything it wants: the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea. But the current regime’s legitimacy and status are inextricably entwined with the viability of its nuclear weapons program.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that nukes are the Kim regime’s raison d’être. Domestically, it cannot hope to survive if it’s seen kowtowing to American “imperialist” pressure. As such, denuclearization can only come about with regime change in North Korea.

Say regime change somehow magically happens without military conflict or a catastrophic implosion that leads to the chaotic splintering of North Korea. And assume that the new North Korean government agrees to denuclearize. What type of government would this be? In all likelihood, a pro-China one. After all, Beijing would necessarily have played a critical role in removing the Kim regime and replacing it with a government that wasn’t as recalcitrant.

A replacement North Korean government would require both financial and political, perhaps even military, backing from China. In the process, Beijing would have made sure that the new government answered to its bidding.

If this happens, South Korea will be forced to look to China for national security since China controls North Korea. Furthermore, with a tamed North Korea, what’s the justification for the continued U.S. military presence in South Korea? Eventually, there will be growing voices within South Korea, encouraged by China, to demand the withdrawal of American troops.

Worse, it’s an open secret that China wants direct access to the East Sea and North Pacific for its navy. Don’t be surprised if a Chinese naval fleet permanently parks off one of the northeastern ports in North Korea.

This will also make potential Sino-Russian naval military cooperation in the East Sea much easier to imagine, since Vladivostok is just a stone’s throw away. After all, if the United States, Japan and South Korea can conduct joint military exercises in the region, why not China, Russia and North Korea?

What will that do for Japan’s national security posture, and more importantly, where does this leave the American strategic posture in East Asia, arguably the most important region in the 21st century?

For South Korea, this means any hope of reunification will have to go exclusively through China. Note that South Korea’s trade volume with China is already two times greater than its trade with the United States, and it is bound to grow exponentially in this new situation. This means that South Korea will be increasingly dependent on China for its economic wellbeing as well as national security.

So the United States ends up with a North Korea that is, in effect, a Chinese puppet state and a South Korea that no longer needs the United States and is heavily dependent on China. Remember that this is the logical, best-case outcome from the standpoint of America’s current North Korea policy.

The success of the current policy will mean China has dominant influence and strategic positioning on the Korean Peninsula, with a reduced American role in Asia proper and its military relegated to Japan. I see how this is great for China’s growing hegemony in the region, but how is this good for America?

President Trump promised he would pursue an “America First” policy, putting national interests at the forefront in any dealings with foreign nations. This is not what’s happening here because the Trump administration has allowed itself to be convinced by manufactured urgency about the North Korean nuclear threat and has failed to re-examine the options strategically through the G-2 lens in which the United States and China are fiercely competing for primacy in defining the new world order.

There are better North Korea solutions that truly put America’s interest first and foremost, but they are only visible when you step back and examine the problem with a long-term strategic vision rather than the continuing myopia over the nuclear issue.

This is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees — America’s North Korea policy should be more than just a North Korea nukes policy. For the moment, unfortunately, the Trump administration’s current North Korea policy is more of a “China First” policy than an “America First” policy.

This is the first of a four-part series of Venerable Pomnyun Sunim’s views on North Korea.

*The author is a Buddhist monk engaged in humanitarian and human rights work in North Korea. He is also founder and chairman of the Peace Foundation, a national security policy think tank in Seoul. He can be reached at pomnyun@pf.or.kr.

Venerable Pomnyun Sunim 

Originally posted on Korea JoongAng Daily on December 13, 2017

[Announcement] NKT is discontinued until further notice

Publication of North Korea Today is discontinued until further notice. Past issues will be kept available for your use.

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Updates

We thought it would not take too long before NKT comes back, but it was easier said than done. Unfortunately, GoodFriends USA and the headquarters do not plan to resume publishing the newsletter any time soon. In the meantime, GoodFriends has focused on helping North Koreans resettle in their new communities in South Korea. Both the headquarters and GoodFriends USA continue to make efforts to help better the human rights situations in North Korea. Hopefully, we will be able to update you with possible plans for the newsletter and other developments.

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North Korea Today Will Come Back with a New Look

North Korea Today Will Come Back with a New Look

Good Friends has entered the eighth year since it first published North Korea Today, a weekly newsletter dedicated to delivering the voices of North Korean people.  When we began the newsletter, the focus of international and domestic media was on the North Korean top leader and his regime, and little attention was paid to ordinary people in North Korea.  We, at Good Friends, thought listening to the voices of North Korean residents and helping let them heard was a way to contributing to the peaceful reunification of  two Koreas.  Therefore, we have focused our work on the daily lives of North Korean people and disseminated how much internal change North Korea was undergoing.  

Meanwhile, the inter-Korean relations and the surrounding international circumstances have substantially changed as well as the Korean people’s perception of unification.  Now we need to take this transformative momentum and turn it into an opportunity for peaceful reunification and new development of the nation.  The role of North Korea Today needs to change as well.  That said, we will suspend publication for a short period of time and come back with a new look.  

We deeply appreciate your continued attention and support.  Thank you, and see you soon.

North Korea Today No. 465 July 25, 2012

[“Good Friends” aims to help the North Korean people from a humanistic point of view and publishes “North Korea Today” describing the way the North Korean people live as accurately as possible. We at Good Friends also hope to be a bridge between the North Korean people and the world.]

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Military-Officers Arrested Last Year by Storm Troopers Imprisoned at the Defense Security Discipline Center

Many Return after Ideological Correction in Discipline Centers of the Defense Security Command

Officer Inmates are Able to Survive Thanks to Family Visits

Soldiers' Families are "Not even aware of their sons being sent to Discipline Centers"

Defense Security Command Orders: “If anyone attempts escape, shoot to kill”

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Military-Officers Arrested Last Year by Storm Troopers Imprisoned at the Defense Security Discipline Center

     Most of the military officers who were arrested last summer by the Storm trooper Command that swept through Ryangang Island and North Pyongan Province were sent to the discipline center of the Defense Security Command. At the time, security officers and policemen, as well as senior military officials, battalion commanders, company commanders, and platoon leaders were arrested at the border areas. They were arrested for illicit trafficking, river-crossing offenses, and anti-socialistic behaviors, and were investigated by the Defense Security Command.

The people who were able to elude imprisonment with enormous bribes and avoid being sent to the re-education center were instead sent mainly to the discipline center of Defense Security Command. In general, after spending 3 to 6 months in the discipline center, some people either went back to their hometown after being expelled from the Party and their jobs, or were reinstated to their job if their ideological remodeling is approved after evaluation. Offering more money to the Defense Security Command makes it easier to be reinstated.

Last year, however, the personnel were changed due to the new leadership, and so people were punished irrelevant to the gravity of their offense. A Central Party officer stated that among those arrested people from the Storm trooper's investigation, in general the main targets of the replacement operation were sent to re-education centers, while the rest were sent to the discipline center.

Many Return after Ideological Correction in Discipline Centers of the Defense Security Command

     A discipline center of the Defense Security Command is located in Kumya County, South Hamgyong province. It is a place which is directly managed by the Defense Security Command and where people are either reinstated after having undergone an intense ideological correction, or discharged into society after deinstitutionalization. Many people from National Border Patrol Headquarters-affiliated border patrol units, such as brigades, battalions, companies and platoons, go there after having been caught smuggling or exposed helping people cross the river. Besides them, convicts who, during their general military service, hurt farmers while stealing their produce, or convicts who have committed robberies in the mountains go there as well. Since the goal is the rebuilding of ideology, the time share devoted to ideological studies is large. In each work detail, an instructor with the rank of major is stationed who instructs the center’s inhabitants and oversees the labor. Days are a repetition of all-day labor from 4.30 in the morning until 9 o’clock in the evening, with 30 to 40 minutes of mealtime. After finishing the evening meal at 9 pm, political ideology is taught until 11.15 pm, the main content of the lessons being the greatness of The Great Leader Kim Il-Sung and Comrade Kim Jong-Il. Due to this repetition of only getting to bed after midnight and having to get up at 4.30 am, they all suffer greatly. There are many cases where high-ranking officers, in contrast to private soldiers, are rehabilitated. Whether it is because of this treatment is unclear, but they tend to display more enthusiasm for the ideology education lessons than private soldiers. Young non-commissioned officers aged 18-20 are generally reinstated in case the commanding officers of their units put in such a request.

Officer Inmates are Able to Survive Thanks to Family Visits

     One of the advantages given to officer inmates but not allowed to regular inmates is monthly visit by their family. According to the visiting regulations family visit is allowed only once every 6 months for soldiers, but the monthly visit is allowed solely for the officers. Some of the officers previously served in Border Defense Headquarters, who have good business skills can even receive food brought by visitors to supplement their meals. These people can receive these benefits by bribing the visiting room duty officer with money that was earned at the border area. However, this is only true for one out of ten people, and most officer inmates survive on corn power their wives bring to them once a month. The food at the discipline center consists merely of a powdered corn cob porridge and diluted seaweed soup with salt water; or sometimes bean-paste soup and pickled radish are available. Because of this scantiness, many people suffer from malnutrition. Medicine is not available when people become unwell; hence the family’s visit is desperately awaited. Since inmates normally do not receive any medical treatment, their wives, parents, or siblings bring them general medicine such as anti-diarrhea remedies, cold medicine, and fever reducers along with food. The medicine, although given to the trainees by their family, does not go directly to them. Instead, the visiting room duty officer takes it and transfers it to the foreman of the working unit, and then the foreman keeps it until the recipient makes a request. The family members always prepare cigarettes to offer the duty officer or the guard for ensuring the safe delivery to their husbands or sons without getting into trouble. Food and medicine are generally delivered well, but other items from a visit are not easily approved for delivery.   

Soldiers' Families are "Not even aware of their sons being sent to Discipline Centers"

     Unmarried noncommissioned officers (NCOs) or soldiers caught for crimes related to the Military and the People such as stealing farm crops or filching money from passersby normally do not have any friends or family members visit them in prison. Those who fall sick and die or become depleted due to malnutrition are usually these NCOs or soldiers. In Discipline Centers one cannot comfortably be sick. This is because if they are on sick leave for one week, their discipline training period is extended that extra week. All, with one goal of getting out of the Discipline Center as soon as possible, try to complete work days even on days of illness. If looked over by an armed and picky officer, one cannot work slowly or inefficiently even when sick. A concerned person expressed it this way: "One does not know how harsh the workload is unless they experience it. Towards the end of last year, a laborer went to work even when he was excreting bloody urine and died a short while later. Those who helplessly lose their lives are normally the Discipline Center members with a punishment period of a year or longer. The families of high ranking officers come to visit often, but the families of NCOs or normal soldiers cannot." To a question asking about the family ordinary soldiers must have, he replied "the military unit does not notify the family. How would the family come visit if they are unaware their children are in the Discipline Centers in the first place?" Patients with acute diseases with a small chance of survival are recommended by the military hospital to be sent home, but the approval of the decision itself takes around 3 months, so many of the patients die in that waiting period.

Defense Security Command Orders: “If anyone attempts escape, shoot to kill”

     The labor intensity at the discipline center for the Defense Security Command is much higher than other that of other discipline centers. There are no breaks during working hours. To use the restroom, one must pair up with another person in order to prevent the individual from running away. In case one does succeed in escaping, the other person’s training period is extended for another year. The system makes it so that everyone is constantly monitoring each other and places mistrust within individuals. Those caught while escaping receive a 10-year sentence at the Re-education Center. To prevent escapees, the supervisor and team leaders perform roll call or call out numbers every 15 minutes. Everyday work and especially migrating work is overseen by safety personnel from squadrons or platoons of the Defense Security Command with armed surveillance. An average group of 50 workers are monitored by an armed seven-person safety squad at all times. The Defense Security Command Training Center has a concrete fence five to six meters tall. At night, a searchlight and four machine guns keep watch at the fence. Because of the tight security, almost no one dreams of escaping. Furthermore, after a command to shoot and kill any runaways was passed down, no one has dared any attempt to run. Gang fights and assaults are next on the list of top concerns of the labor training center. Because these men are trained soldiers, fights within the trainees lead to serious violence. Conflicts arising from differing opinions result in disciplinary punishment upon a group and ten days of extended training.