Must-Read! ‘The Natural Death of N. Korean Stalinism’

[Updated] With “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” Andrei Lankov, possibly the Western world’s single authentic North Korea expert, has just provided us with an impressive collection of empirical evidence to support his argument that the North Korean regime’s control apparatus is losing its grip (a big hat tip to Andy Jackson). Those whose interest in North Korea is inversely proportional to the availability of information about it will pore through this article, fascinated at the amount and quality of information. The picture he paints is of systemic decay, of a gargantuan apparatus of control so saturated with “subversive” information that it simply lacks the time and prison space to suppress all of it. With the exception of one small quibble I’ll get to later — the word “Natural” — Lankov’s conclusions are well supported by these facts. I read Bradley Martin’s book the way most men claim to read Playboy — for the interviews — but Lankov grasps the bigger picture.

Lankov’s most important point is that we should bypass the North Korean regime, which is dying and shouldn’t be saved, and engage the North Korean people, who are also dying, but who can in many cases be saved. On this, he is dead-on. Lankov makes a good argument that Stalinism is dead, but I’m dubious that the regime itself can die a gradual, “natural” death. Totalitarian regimes create intense social and political pressures, and North Korea’s semi-hereditary class system, highly selective and severe poverty, endemic corruption, and unprecedented grinding-down of its subjects’ every human aspiration makes Ceausescu’s Romania seem like the Netherlands. Add in the regime’s cultivation of a culture of violence, which it calls “sobak-ham.” This is an unstable mix indeed, and this regime has reacted to every threat to its stability by increasing the pressure until its security apparatus became saturated. Can a regime that created these pressures release them gradually?

Update: Having now read the entire piece, Lankov’s closing point is clearly his weakest. He makes a convincing case that North Korea’s northern border has turned porous in the earlier portions of the article. Given that, I had waited for some novel new suggestions about how to reach through it, introduce subversive new ideas, and yes, stimulate the local microeconomies without making a deposit into the rocket fuel fund. Unfortunately, you won’t read any of those.

Instead, Lankov rolls out the old idea of allowing U.S. businesses to establish themselves there. Lankov offers too few specifics to really understand what he’s proposing: what kinds of businesses? how big? how much state control is too much? what would they make or do? He doesn’t explain.

Nor does Andrei explain how to get past the North Korean government’s absolute veto power, its extreme suspicion about this very sort of capitalist penetration, and its history of generally ripping off investors and then telling them to pound sand. Been there, tried that.

Then there is the South Korean theory of market penetration, and if I read Lankov correctly, he concedes that this is much more of a windfall for the regime than for the North Korean people.

Again, Andrei Lankov probably knows North Korea better than any other man alive, and his piece is still very much worth reading. But it didn’t live up to the high expectations it had built in me by the time I reached its last few pages.