Götterdämmerung Watch
The Wall Street Journal has two must-read op-eds on the decline of North Korea’s capacity to control the flow of food, money, and information within its territory. Marcus Noland, sounding very much like Kushibo, sees a “tipping point” after The Great Confiscation:
Once broken, the economy may prove difficult to repair. Prices for goods such as rice, corn and the dollar rose 6,000% or more after the reform. And while prices have come down from their peak as the government has relaxed some of its strictures, they are currently still 600% or more above their prereform levels–in spite of the money-supply contraction.
Noland also reveals this con game the regime played on farmers, and the effect it’s having:
It appears the government persuaded farmers in cooperatives to accept cash in lieu of half of their annual in-kind grain allotment–then rendered the bonus worthless via the currency reform. Farmers are now hoarding grain however they can: The United Nations Development Program reports that post-harvest losses amount to 30%. The farm economy has been severely disrupted. But unlike the 1990s famine, which was largely an urban phenomenon and killed perhaps a million people, hunger is now reported in the countryside. [….]
A survey of 300 North Korean refugees conducted in November 2008 by Stephan Haggard of the University of California San Diego found that respondents were increasingly accessing foreign sources of news and disinclined to accept the government’s explanations, instead holding it responsible for their plight. The currency fiasco will accelerate these trends.
This seems like a good segue to quote Peter Beck’s latest op-ed, also in the WSJ. Peter Beck and I always seem to find things to agree on, despite our other differences. Here, he talks about the impact of clandestine broadcasting into North Korea:
Over the past several years, South Korean researchers have quietly interviewed thousands of North Korean defectors, refugees, and visitors to China about their listening habits. One unpublished survey conducted last summer of North Koreans in China found that over 20% had regularly listened to the banned broadcasts, and almost all of them had shared the information with family members and friends. Several earlier studies confirm these findings. [Peter M. Beck, Wall Street Journal]
I’d like to flatter myself that Peter’s coming around to seeing things my way when he calls for an expansion of broadcasting hours and budgets, knowing full well how much this will piss the North Koreans off and spoil the millieu for talks. But then, it’s now a matter of conventional wisdom that those talks aren’t going to achieve their original purpose anyway.
By the way, expect to see research published this year that says more North Koreans listen to foreign broadcasts than don’t have access to them, and that virtually all North Koreans who can listen to foreign broadcasts do. And that’s all I have to say about that for now, except that the evidence we have suggests that on several levels, the influence of Open News, Good Friends, the Daily NK, RFA, and Free NK Radio is rising as the information blockade crumbles.
Revolutionary history in Europe doesn’t easily translate to Asia. But one theory for the French Revolution was that the government’s manipulation of the “assignats” or government annuities created disaffection among those classes that were naturally inclined to support stability. So when revolution came, they stood back. That’s what the DPRK’s criminization of foreign exchange has done. Likewise one of the causes of the 1848 revolts in middle Europe was government price manipulations whereby farmers were deprived of their produce by false payments and confiscatory orders — and became Republicans. That has happened over the past winter in the DPRK. Finally, in England in the 1820s there was very nearly a revolution due to hugely defective and confiscatory government price-setting misconduct that caused widespread hunger among the newly urbanising poor, which is generally called the “Corn Laws.” That too has happened in the DPRK.
All these elements appear in North Korea — what is missing are two crucial elements — popular will for regime change, and a weakening use of lethal force by the powers in control. Those appear to be mandatory minimum requirements, and don’t exist. The only alternative then is a military-based coup, where the leadership changes for political reasons and is underwritten by the passive population. That remains a major possibility — but in turn requires Chinese permission.
David, they may exist in embryonic form. The DPRK is terrified of the inroads Christian and capitalist messages are making into NK, especially through leaflet drops and underground Church networking. So much so, that the KPA issued an 18-page field bulletin to its regulars warning them against the ‘evils’ of religion and its opposition to socialism and class consciousness.
If enough Soldiers in the KPA become sympathetic to the underground believers or at least their right to believe as they choose, that would signal a turning/tipping point (ie, they would not use force on the civilian population as ordered). Its hard to guage where we are along that continuum, but I thinks its fair to say the trajectory favors the failure of Jucheism as a state religion and the vacuum caused by its ideological failure will be filled by something. Even Shamanism has made a come back in NK during the past 5 years.
Joshua, thanks for these editorials. I’ll take a look.
In the meantime, have you seen this declaration by a former British envoy to the DPRK?
That KT article seems to be the latest revisionist push by the Sunshine Squad. It would be tragic and arguably criminal if this movement succeeds in rewriting history and somehow convinces the Obama administration to reverse course and save the DPRK — just as the Kim Family Regime is really on the ropes.