‘Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.’

Reports the Australian:

An  underground resistance movement in North Korea, capable of smuggling out videos of executions and staging violent acts of defiance, has emerged as the Kim Jong-il regime faces international sanctions for testing a nuclear bomb.

Let’s contain our exuberance long enough to ask ourselves if it’s irrational.  Break this down into its components.  I do believe that  organized networks of guerrilla cameras, missionaries, and people smugglers  are  operating; that  they’re increasing  their reach inside North Korea; and  that  they have begun to influence how we (and how other North Koreans) view  life inside  North Korea.  Guerrilla cameramen have filmed  public executions (more), a labor camp, a starving soldier sent home to die, expressions of public dissent (more), recent  flood damage, food aid diverted by the military and sold in markets, and sick orphaned kids begging and dying in the streets.  Eventually, some of that footage resulted in the  documentary  “Undercover in the Secret State” (try this link for video).  Thanks to these groups — and  despite the  regime’s refusal to reform or liberalize —  North Korea’s once-opaque borders  are now merely translucent.

=========================================

The question of  armed resistance opens up many more questions.  The first is whether it really exists.  Let’s review the  available  evidence.

In one clash, North Korean border guards confronted three men creeping at night across the frozen Tumen River from China. In the ensuing fight, the intruders stabbed several soldiers and escaped, leaving a bag containing three guns, ammunition, a video camera and a telephone.

On the same night in late January, men reportedly opened fire on a frontier post at the town of Huiryeong, causing an unknown number of casualties before escaping.

Chinese witnesses and foreign diplomats say there have been repeated outbreaks of gunfire, usually at night, along the mountainous barren borderlands.

Lim Chun Yong, a former North Korean special forces officer who has defected, claimed four or five groups of an “armed resistance” were in the area.

I first blogged about  Mr. Lim  here, last year.   A few weeks later, after the Dong-A Ilbo reported on an alleged attack on a border post — just what Lim promised — I put up this post.  A few days later, the Daily NK added additional details.  The problem with those reports is that there’s no clear connection between any of them and organized resistance, including Mr. Lim’s organization.  Other equally plausible explanations for the sound of gunshots  include the execution of refugees, robbery by rogue soldiers, or plain old banditry.  There is plenty of cross-border smuggling now, and the danger of arrest  or loss of  merchandise  motivates smugglers to arm themselves and sometimes, to  shoot back at police.  Of course, there is an extensive history of resistance against the North Korean regime, so armed resistance is also a plausible explanation.  I just don’t think its connection to the incidents cited in this report has been proven.

A second problem is that historically, a resistance movement can’t really take root and move beyond isolated pinprick attacks without a broad-based  clandestine support network to provide food, money, shelter, recruits, and intelligence.  A network is also essential to propogate the movement’s views in the cities, towns, and villages, and to provide storage locations for arms, food, prisoners, and wounded guerrillas.  The framework for such a network might already exist.  The previous links document the establishment of a Christian underground that operates in concert with defection brokers and smugglers.  Whether that underground would cooperate with an armed resistance movement is an open question, however.  Then, there’s the question of how discontented North Koreans really are, and whether that discontent would translate to active resistance.  The Australian quotes Lim:

“The people say among themselves that the regime is worse than the Japanese colonists,” [Lim] was quoted by South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper.

It’s impossible to know for sure, but I do think the discontent is probably both wide and deep.  Exhibit A is this, from Andrei Lankov, who ought to be any serious Korea-watcher’s first stop.  Then, proceed to Exhibit B, Exhibit C, Exhibit D, and Exhibit E.  If 300,000 people risked their lives to cross the border only to conclude that the Peoples’ Republic of China is the land of free thought and bountiful wages, then Kim Jong Il has an image problem. 

When will this translate into action?  Some might consider the mass border-crossings to be an act of passive rebellion; they were certainly a case of voting with one’s feet, and they defied the threat of serious punishment.  But I mean active resistance.  The answer is that it will happen when the people have some hope that they can win, or when they feel that  desperate circumstances give  them no other choice.  For many, I suspect, rebellion begins with a crime of necessity or frustration.  Certainly the government has many advantages here:  a pervasive system of control, effective  isolation of the people from each other, and a monopoly on weapons. 

=====================================

Can the government isolate such a movement from a source of external supply?  One factor few have considered is the length and ruggedness of North Korea’s two coasts.  Out of curiosity, I google-earthed the harbors, and noted that the North Korean navy keeps many small patrol craft in  nearly all of them.  Still, other long sections of coast are nearly undefended, and one must suspect that not all of those patrol craft could be crewed, fueled, and maintained if they were suddenly pressed into heavy service.  The land border with  China is also porous (see also previous links).

The constant traffic of traders and escapees along the 1400km border has eroded regime control to the point where clandestine goods and ideas now thrive in the frontier provinces.

Smuggled mobiles allow North Koreans to make calls on Chinese networks by capturing their signals at the border.

Because there are no barriers to telephoning South Korea or the US from China, they can talk to family members and enemies of the regime.

….

People smugglers and black-marketeers are rife. Chinese sources said some North Korean border guards could be bribed to turn a blind eye.

When the rivers freeze or dry to a trickle, it is almost impossible to seal the frontier. Chinese travellers report that in some areas North Korean officials are too nervous to go out at night and military reinforcements have been brought in from politically reliable units.

Clearly, then, North Korea isn’t the ideological vacuum it was five years ago.  If videotapes and DVD’s can get in, then it’s conceivable that  printing equipment, ammunition, preserved food, and demolition charges can get in, too.

====================================

So is  a violent and organized resistance movement a good thing?  Yes, but only under these bleak circumstances — a democidal and increasingly dangerous status quo  with no  peaceful alternatives —  and under certain conditions:  the  movement’s objectives must include the reunification of  Korea under democratic conditions, and  its methods must eschew the targeting of those who are not a part of the regime’s machinery of oppression.  The practical concerns with the latter condition are obvious for people who have been as brutalized as the North Koreans.  Brutality is what they know.

Then, consider how  the North Korean regime will react.  It will slaughter entire villages, deport innocents to the camps wholesale, spray poison gas, cut off food supplies, and generally do  whatever it takes to crush any act or thought of dissent.  In practice, brutality yields short-term benefits and long-term costs for governments that  fight insurgencies.   Such tactics  didn’t save the Soviet Army from defeat in Afghanistan or the French from defeat in Algeria, although they did manage to inspire correspondingly brutal tactics from the other side.  Their main effect was to drive neutral civilians into the arms of the resistance.  One could hope that our government’s support could moderate that brutality on the part of the resistance, but only to a limited extent.  We could, for example, support only those  groups whose tactics were  relatively humane.  We could  also supply such groups  with equipment to counter the most ruthless  tactics.  The most important weapon we could provide to the resistance might well be food.  With access to food supplies, the resistance could counteract the government’s likely attempts to deny it to suspected resistance supporters.  Smuggling in food in quantity would be a logistical challenge, though not an insurmountable one.

But the hard truth is that this would be bloody.  Many people will die, and as always in insurgencies, most of those who die will be innocent bystanders.  This is an awful choice, one made more awful by the consequences of tolerating the status quo:  this government is already at war against its people … unilaterally.  Best estimates are that around  2 million North Koreans died between around 1994 and 1999, and we know that their deaths were at the least preventable, and at the worst engineered.  That’s as many people as died during the entire Soviet-Afghan war, which lasted from 1979 to 1989. 

From an American perspective, there’s another set of hard truths we must face:  the  risks associated with  the status quo or a continuation of our current policy.   Left to his devices, Kim Jong Il will eventually sell some horrific weapon to a terrorist,  or  to someone else who will sell or give it to a terrorist.  You don’t need to take my word for it:

The United States should consider the danger that we could transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, that we have the ability to do so.

— North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-Gwan, April 2005

If it’s not obvious by now  that we won’t talk Kim Jong Il out of his WMD’s, then you’re probably not capable of grasping this at all, and another 10 years of pointless talks will be equally unpersuasive.  We can’t really stop him from selling them, either,  although we should certainly do our best until a more  permanent solution can be effected.  Other means won’t solve the problem, either:  an invasion would be  a catastrophe, gradual reform shows zero prognosis for success, and wishing for China to rescue us through some kind of pressure or coup plot is probably an exercise in self-delusion.  China isn’t worried about proliferation, it’s worried about instability. 

======================================

What should the objective of an insurgency be? 

*   First, without firing a shot, to increase the flow of information across the border and weaken the will of North Koreans to fight for those who have made them miserable.  That is already happening.

*   Second, to create enough of a threat to this regime that it may make the decision it has not yet had to make — to negotiate in good faith and allow CVID and basic transparency. 

*   Third, if nonviolent means fail, to weaken the regime economically by attacking its economic infrastructure, mainly its vulnerable  communication and transportation networks, thus decentralizing state control.  As much of this as possible  should be done through acts of sabotage against inanimate targets; the regime’s economic weakness is its greatest vulnerability.

*   Fourth, to persuade China (and to a lesser extent, South Korea) that  its support for Kim Jong Il’s regime, notwithstanding the security danger it imposes on the American people, carries security consequences for them, too.

*   Fifth, to reduce the risk of conventional warfare by forcing the North Korean Army into a counterinsurgency war that would divide its infantry from its armor and artillery and break up the set needed to wage combined arms warfare. 

*   Finally, to convince elements of the power structure that the continuation of the regime is a threat to the nation, or to their own survival, and to inspire them to further weaken or bring down the regime. 

==========================================  

There are real risks with such a course, and I’m not going to deny any of them.  If our support for North Korean insurgents became known — and eventually, it would — there’s a danger of escalation.   There’s also a  danger of escalation over sanctions, the boarding of North Korean ships, or any of the loony things the North Koreans do on occasion.  In those cases, the escalation has always been limited because North Korea’s leaders understood that the consequences of taking things too far meant regime extinction.  Weighed against this, there has always been some other less dire alternative that would let them live to fight another day.  As long as the  insurgency  isn’t in a position to march on Pyongyang — something highly unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future — North Korea will probably keep up its provocative behavior, but it won’t bring down Gotterdammerung. 

If circumstances shift quickly — and a large-scale military  mutiny might change them quickly — then we enter the really dangerous phase.  Before we reach that point, we will need to make sure that Kim Jong Il always has another way out.  That doesn’t mean immunity or amnesty.  It means  safe passage to a place that will shelter him from prosecution, possibly even to let him live out his final days in a lifestyle he certainly doesn’t deserve (consider the alternative).  Burma, Cuba, and  Zimbabwe come to mind.