Or, Maybe It’s Just the Same Old “Reign of Terror”

The other day, Adam found fault with a Chosun Ilbo report that claimed that North Korea’s cross-border slaughter of five refugees represented an escalation of its shoot-to-kill policy. I found the criticism rather pedantic and pointless, although the evidence on the whole suggests that crossing borders and shooting escapees are part of a long-standing pattern of North Korean atrocities. It’s too bad Adam didn’t wait a few days, because the Chosun Ilbo has presented him with a much softer target today, if you will forgive my horrid metaphor:

A diplomatic source familiar with North Korean affairs Wednesday said there were 60 confirmed public executions in the North last year, more than triple the number of 2009. “Since last year, the regime has put a notice on bulletin boards warning that those who use Chinese-made mobile phones or illegally circulate dollars face public execution, the source said.

Another source familiar with North Korean affairs said, “It’s rumored that Kim Jong-un has called for ‘gunshots across the country.’ Kim Jong-il did exactly the same thing when he took power.”

Jang Se-yul of the North Korean People’s Liberation Front, a group of former North Korean soldiers and officers who defected to South Korea, said, “In Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province alone last year, at least six people were executed publicly on charges of human trafficking and robbery. People are executed publicly for crimes that would have sent them to prison for just a few years in the past.”

“The number of public executions had gradually dwindled in the North since the famine of the late 1990s,” said International security ambassador Nam Joo-hong. “But since last year, the regime has apparently relied increasingly on public executions to tighten control in the aftermath of the botched currency reform and complaints about the hereditary succession.”

Now, I suppose it is possible that public executions really did triple between 2009 and 2001. Open News reported early in 2010 that North Korea had increased the use of public executions. The problem is that a consultation with the OFK Memory Hole shows that the very same Chosun Ilbo, citing NGO sources, reported on July 23, 2008 that North Korea carried out 901 public executions in 2007 (the original link is dead). This doesn’t exactly fit the narrative of a gradual decline and a recent spike. The truth is probably closer to this: that North Korea has used public executions as a tool of domestic terror since at least 2005, that it’s impossible to generate reliable statistics as to how many, and that anecdotal reports of trends may reflect nothing more than local trends.

This principle extends. At the moment, I can’t think of a single statistic about North Korea I believe to be accurate within a reasonable standard deviation. For that matter, it’s doubtful that we really know how many North Koreans are even left alive today.

So what do I think is really going on here? It’s more likely that corruption, indiscipline, and low morale in the border guard force require periodic inspections and crackdowns to ensure that the shoot-to-kill orders are carried out, at least for those who don’t pay the requisite passage bribes.

What we can be reasonably certain of is that North Korea is pretty much consistently brutal and opaque, and that being opaque (and belligerent, and to some, anti-American) gets North Korea a free pass from Ban Ki Moon’s U.N., from the Human Rights Industry (with occasional exceptions), and recently, from the Bush and Obama Administrations. Not to mention the generous financial underwriting of a certain responsible rising power to its North. Periodically, we hear reports of new shoot-to-kill orders and crackdowns, but in due course, we hear new reports of pretty much the same old familiar atrocities as we discover new examples of those polices in action. And just as reliably, no one really elects to do a damn thing about it.

Nominally, the Obama Administration has a Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea. But by all outward appearances, King has been wholly ineffective at doing anything other than schmoozing academics in Washington. Of course, King will soon have an opportunity to prove me wrong:

A human rights group here on Tuesday urged U.S. President Barack Obama to press China to to stop repatriating North Korean refugees.

“We urgently request that during your meetings next week with President Hu Jintao… that you request China to end its current policy of repatriating North Korean refugees back to North Korea,” Suzanne Scholte, chairwoman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, said in an open letter to Obama. “We believe that ending this policy of repatriation would have a very positive effect for China and North Korea.”

More here. I’d like to see our Nobel Laureate earn his laurels by taking the Coalition’s advice to heart. Recently, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be better for the administration to strike at the heart of the problem by taking its own sanctions authorities seriously, applying them to the Chinese entities that fund North Korea. Regrettably, both are probably too much to ask.