Three Blind Men and an Elephant, Part II

Next is Time’s Donald Macintyre of Time Asia, who writes perhaps the best piece to emerge from North Korea’s propaganda disaster known as Arirang. I still don’t have time to give this piece the justice it deserves, but will give you the best grafs and urge you to read the rest on your own. His impressions of the cross-border trade couldn’t be more different when approached from the direction of Pyongyang:

Our group, Western journalists granted a rare visit to the North by Kim Jong Il’s secretive regime, would get no closer to this supposedly showcase example of economic reform. The government’s reluctance to show off anything that smacked of capitalism was symptomatic of an ominous new mood in Pyongyang. Recent baby steps toward reform and greater openness kindled a glimmer of hope that the North could be coaxed out of isolation. Now Kim, perhaps fearful that private enterprise and greater contact with the outside world would undermine his power, seems to have reversed course.

Macintyre finds significance in the North’s attempts to close down food markets and reconstitute the collapsed Public Distribution System (Andrei Lankov has also written on this), and sees more evidence of efforts to crack down on creeping capitalism:

Earlier this month, Pyongyang banned sales of grain in the country’s recently legalized farmers’ markets and announced a return to the old socialist system of government-controlled rice handouts. Private grain markets were just a stop-gap measure necessitated by a few bad harvests, according to the North Korean official in charge of our group, Choe Jong Hun. “Now we have a good harvest and we are able to feed ourselves,” said Choe. “There is no need to sell rice in the markets.”

Pyongyang’s politics are opaque even to long-time foreign residents. But the government’s attempt to wrest control of grain sales from private traders is widely seen as an attempt to reassert political control. One of the few slivers of freedom granted in recent years–the right to trade produce and household goods in the officially sanctioned farmers’ markets–has already engendered a modest change in mindset. But there have been indicators of greater repression since last year, when the government outlawed cell phones for the general public shortly after setting up a national network. This year, officials at state-run trading companies were ordered to stop sending e-mails to China and to use faxes instead, apparently because the authorities believe faxes are easier to monitor, according to Kang Chol Hwan, a defector and journalist living in Seoul. Now the regime is pressuring foreign aid workers to leave. “The country seems to be closing,” says a Western diplomat. “It is not going in the right direction.”

Could it be a case of one step forward, two steps back? Or the opposite?

Now for the part where Macintryre really nails why this is significant:

That bodes ill for the long-running effort to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-weapons programs. If the meandering six-party talks resume as expected next month, the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia will once again probe the North’s willingness to trade its nuclear arsenal for massive amounts of aid. But any such deal would necessitate an influx of more foreign experts– including weapons inspectors. If Pyongyang has decided reform and engagement with the outside world are too risky, the prospects for a settlement are bleak.

The closure of private grain markets is a step backwards for a country that uses food to ensure loyalty. When the economy tanked and food ran out in the 1990s, North Koreans were forced to fend for themselves to survive. Underground markets expanded and a fledgling entrepreneurial class emerged, particularly in the towns near the northern border where goods flow in from China. Grain sales were a critical slice of the new economy. The famine that killed an estimated 2 million people forced the North to accept food aid even from the West, including about $600 million worth from the U.S. over the past 10 years.
. . . .

[N]orth Korean visitors gush about the joy of living in a workers’ paradise. “Thanks to the wise guidance of the great leader, life has improved so much,” a soldier assures us. That may be true for members of the privileged élite, of whom we catch glimpses as they are ferried around town in Mercedeses with tinted windows. But how long will everyone else be willing to put up with rice rations and stale elevator music?

Clearly, Macintrye and Brooke reached very different conclusions about the trend in North Korea. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that Brooke’s piece reports from the confluence of North and South, where a highly controlled stream of outside revenue flows North, whereas Macintrye reports from further North that the quarantine process is mostly having its desired effect.

Now, watch Andrei Lankov destroy that fragile synthesis.