Q&A With Professor Andrei Lankov: On Changing North Korea

[OFK: This post is a follow-up Q&A to my review of Professor Andrei Lankov’s new book, “.” Prof. Lankov is a lecturer at the Australian National University, now on leave and teaching at Kookmin University. You can see more of Prof. Lankov’s books here, and you can find plenty more of his work linked on this blog. Two of his more notable recent articles include “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism” and “How to Topple Kim Jong Il.”]

Q. I’ve described you as possibly the West’s only authentic expert on North Korea, but I’m constrained to put that in its rightful context. You only lived in Pyongyang a year, and it doesn’t sound like you had many (if any) opportunities to visit the countryside or the provincial cities, or to really get to know any North Korean people. What other first-hand or otherwise reliable knowledge were you able to acquire about North Korea?

I do not think I am the “only authentic expert” — if you look at Russians or Chinese or South Koreans there are people who know much more than I do. The major problem for the students of North Korea is the hyper-secretive nature of the regime. Even basic things, like market prices, can be learned through complicated operations which in other countries would be applied to, say, counting missile silos. This led to a paradox: quite frequently a foreigner can learn more about North Korean when s/he lives outside this country. By talking to defectors in China and/or South Korea one can get more reliable information than by spending years in the gilded cages of the foreign embassies. So, if one wants to be a North Korean specialist, one has to: a) read as much as possible on the subject (there are good books, largely in Korean); b) talk to defectors; c) do it systematically for many years.

Q. Tell us about the trucks run on charcoal and corn stalks.

It’s more about technology. Frankly, I do not know how a gas generator works. They put wood or corn stalks or anything which contains carbon, and it is transformed into an inflammable gas. There is a page in Wikipedia dealing with this subject (note a Saab with a gas generator on trailer): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

Q. You mention that a very high percentage of North Korea’s population wears some kind of military uniform on a daily basis. We sometimes hear estimates of North Korea’s military strength being around 1 million out of a total population of approximately 18-23 million. Yet it sounds like many of these soldiers are part of “shock detachments” that spend more time performing construction labor than preparing for war. Do you think this total strength figure is skewed or even overstated in some ways?

I do not know if the ‘shock detachments’ are counted as part of the military by the Western experts. The North Koreans definitely do not consider them ‘real’ soldiers. However, the army per se also has a large number of construction units whose soldiers are used almost exclusively as unpaid labour.

Q. I’ve seen several sources mention that North Korean enlisted soldiers serve for a very long time — for a decade or more. Do most of them serve near their home towns, which might lead to various units taking on a regional character?

No. As far as I understand, the place of origin is not taken in consideration. You serve where the Leader and the Party need you most. Period.

Q. You mention that there’s also hunger in the military and that the children of the elite can dodge the draft for a price. What information do you have about the current state of morale in the North Korean armed forces?

Well, state of morale is now better than in 1997-2000, but worse than at any time under Kim Il Sung. It is important that the military service ceased to be seen as the best way to start climbing the social ladder. For decades, the years in the military was the best time to join the Party, thus making person eligible to some low-level managerial positions, once much coveted. Nowadays, people are not so eager to become petty officials, since market gives them more opportunities to reach prosperity. So, the years in the armed forces are seen as lost time, and people are not eager to go there. The children of the elite who at the top by the right of birth, were never eager to go to the armed forces.

Q. My favorite book of political philosophy is Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer,” and I was struck by several of your statements that sounded strikingly similar to things Hoffer also said. One of his conclusions is that a fanatical mass movement can only be destroyed by another fanatical mass movement. You said: “The newly emerging North Korean Protestantism will take some rather extreme forms.” I tend to agree with that. Protestantism is certainly a far more compassionate world view than juche, but do you think it has the potential to become a unifying, revolutionary ideology?

No, not at the first stage of changes in North Korea, even though some activists of the catacomb church might contribute towards the undermining the regime’s foundations. But I think it will play a major role in cushioning the post-unification traumas of all kinds, and it will also help the North Koreans to make some sense of their last decades full of suffering and sacrifice which proved to be useless.

Q. You say, “One of the things to which all long-time Pyongyang watchers have grown accustomed is the announcement of “Ëœhistoric breakthroughs.’ Indeed, every two or three years the international media erupts with reports about a new “Ëœdramatic change’ which has supposedly just occurred in North Korea. To date none of the predictions have withstood subsequent analysis.” Some have seized upon Pyongyang’s relative openness in admitting that its recent floods were very severe.

There is nothing special in this openness. From 1998-99 they learned to admit large material damage, and even exaggerate it, in order to get more aid. It is an easy trick, after all.

Q. Others believe that this time, North Korea has made the strategic decision to give up its nuclear arsenal. What’s your take on this? Has Kim Jong Il made the decision to change?

No. Why should they abandon nuclear weapons? What will they get from this? Some aid? Well, now they are certain that Chinese and SK aid will keep them afloat, and they can do without additional aid. Recognition and opportunities to be engaged in exchanges with the world community? They are deadly afraid of such exchanges, and perhaps with good reason: if their populace will learn too much, it will become unruly and restive. On the contrary, they will lose a lot if they agree to surrender the nuclear weapons. They will loose deterrent which ensures that Americans (or whoever else) will never attack them. They will loose an important negotiating chip which enables them to successfully blackmail the world into concessions.

[Here, Professor Lankov launches his thesis, an expansion on ideas you may have seen here. I made a few gentle grammatical edits, all in brackets, but no omissions or substantive edits.]

The North Korean leaders do not want changes, they have not implemented reforms and perhaps never will, since they know that reforms might bring collapse if common people learn about South Korean prosperity and freedom. But changes are happening anyway, not as part of some reform plan, but spontaneously, from below.

North Korea of 2007 is dramatically different from North Korea of 1990. Many old regulations are not enforced. [The b]order with China is porous. People watch South Korean movies and sing Seoul hit songs. And the most important change is that a majority of North Korean[] people now make their living in the black or grey private economy, not in the now defunct state-run sector. The government did not want these changes, it tried hard to stop them on the tracks, and now it still works hard to roll the situation back. But it is unlikely to succeed, it lacks resources to stop the gradual disintegration from below. So, the people [have] changed, and the country has changed.

So, I believe that these changes should be encouraged. Above all, the truthful information about the world should be brought in. This implies both measures the NK government will hate and measures they will like.

First, I would mention the measures which are openly hostile to the regime. The radio broadcast should be increased dramatically, from the present-day low level. There should be five or six different stations, each broadcasting 3-6 hours of original programming a day. The production of documentaries targeting North Korean audience should be undertaken. The difficult part is how to get tapes and DVDs there, but the wonder of modern technology is that, once there and if interesting enough, the tapes and DVDs will be copied countless times by the North Koreans themselves.

Second, there are measures which do not threaten the Pyongyang rulers directly, but can be done without cooperation with them. I mean, above all, work with defectors. [These] measures should include scholarships which will allow younger defectors to get MAs and PhDs and receive all other kinds of advanced training. Nowadays defectors are eligible for the undergraduate scholarships, but in South Korea where some 75% of youngsters are college graduates these days, this does not help much. There should be internships for them, to prepare them for work in SK environment, and perhaps also international (modestly paid) internships. The broadcast stations, newspapers and the like, staffed with the defectors, should be supported. Post-unification Korea will need a lot of educated managers, officials, educators, journalists. The “born again” members North Korean elite cannot be completely trusted, not only because they are incurably corrupt and not only because their revival as democrats will be patently fake. Their major problem is ignorance of modern ways. The South Koreans who will move to the North to work or do business will have their problems, too. Some of them are likely to be typical carpet baggers, and all of them will have very inadequate ideas about the country where they will have to operate. So, defectors will be an ideal source of cadres which know both South and North Korean ways.

However, training defectors will take time, many years, perhaps a decade. Even if we still have this time left (and this is a big “if”), the work should be started right now. Unfortunately, South Korean government is not too eager about such undertakings. They do not want a local defectors’ community to become a political force, and they still believe in the delusions of the so-called “soft landing.”

Finally, I would mention the activities which are not confrontational. North Korea’s contacts with the outside world should be encouraged as well. North Koreans should receive scholarship[s] to study overseas, perhaps in the third countries, since they would never go to the States or South Korea. The North Korean officials, actors, athletes should be invited overseas as frequently as possible. Books should be presented to the NK libraries, and so on. In other words, the policies which worked very well in the case of the former USSR and especially Eastern Europe should be applied as well. We should bring the North Koreans to the world and also bring the world to North Koreans.

Some people might argue that it is the NK elite who will benefit from those contacts most. Yes, this is really the case. However, the scions of the Pyongyang earls and barons will learn the information and acquired skills which will be shared with the less privileged parts of the population.

The joint projects which bring the North Korean and foreigners (especially South Koreans) together also should be welcomed. No amount of efforts by the NK secret police will prevent small interactions which will tell volumes to the average North Koreans. This is why I do support Kaesong project. Yes, this is [] slave labour, but those workers would do slave labour anyway[], and certainly in worse conditions. Do people who criticize the Kaesong really mean that otherwise those North Korean workers who now work there some 10 or 15 dollars a month would be get better conditions at an authentic North Korean factory? However, in Kaesong they will acquire some useful skills and they will see South Koreans, will talk to them, and will come to conclusions their government will not like. Some people see all these exchanges as a “reward” to Pyongyang. But it is not [a] reward. The goals of these policies are, first, to shatter the foundation of dictatorship, and, second, to facilitate the evolution of the country after the unavoidable collapse of Kim Jong Il’s regime to mitigate the disaster which is, alas, bound to happen.

I will try to post my response later this week, perhaps tomorrow. Overall, it’s going to be pretty disappointing to anyone expecting a long debate. Lankov is brilliant. He gets it. I dare say he’s even come close to doing the impossible by budging me on Kaesong, although there are certain conditions I’d insist on before I’d throw any support to that project. More later.