January 12, 2012
NORTH KOREA PERESTROIKA WATCH: State media claims that Kim Jong Eun could drive at age three, which is simply precious. Once, when my own son was three, he made a very spirited argument that I should let him drive us all home from Old Town Alexandria to Maryland. And to think that had I not restrained him so, he might have been the Last Emperor of some bleak and far-flung little puppet kingdom. Actually, I have more trouble with the claim that Kim could “safely maneuver dirt roads at 75 mph” by age eight. Sorry, no one can safely maneuver a dirt road at that speed at any age.
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The WSJ’s Korea Real Time blog has a very good, concise summary of the lessons learned from German reunification. Of course, the differences between the two cases are far greater than the similarities, but all of this advice makes sense to me. Example: “Don’t introduce currency union too soon, and definitely not at a 1:1 exchange rate. One Deutsche Mark was worth about four Ostmarks in 1990, but currency union set a 1:1 rate, since the alternative would have meant massive migration. Overvaluing the currency, however, meant East German industry collapsed as wages became uncompetitive, leading to massive unemployment.” Funny, I was in Berlin when that was happening, and I still remember what a mess it was.
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Among other unaffordable grandiosities, Kim Jong Il merits repose in his father’s palatial meat locker, plus this:
The country also said it will erect a new Kim Jong Il statue and build “towers to his immortality,” while the ruling party called him “eternal leader” and gave his birthday a new title that underlines his military-first policy and links him more closely to his father, Kim Il Sung, who is still revered as the “eternal president.”
May I suggest an epitaph? “Even in death, he still kills.”
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Brian Myers thinks that the succession of Kim Jong Eun does not presage instability in North Korea, because the people with the power and the guns are invested in his survival. As much as I respect Myers’s understanding of North Korea’s official pathology, I don’t see how he could possibly have enough information to know this. The premise is probably true, but it was just as true that a year ago, men who now make up the Free Syrian Army were invested in the survival of Bashar Assad. When the people rise against a system like this (or at least somewhat like this), as history suggests they usually do eventually, it’s always in defiance of most expert predictions. Repressive regimes are very good at concealing nascent discontent from foreign observers, and foreign observers who get access to repressive countries tend to be selected for how easily they can be fooled.
(How many times has Selig Harrison been to Pyongyang, again? Maybe he’ll remind us.)
In the end, repressive regimes fall when three things happen. First, there is a local uprising (that has already happened plenty of times in recent North Korean history). Second, the uprising spreads to other areas of the country, spreading the regime’s forces so thinly that they can’t quash it everywhere at once (that can’t happen until North Koreans have the means to communicate quickly and freely across different areas of the country). Third, enough of the security forces either side with the protesters or refuse to shoot at them that the regime can’t reestablish its control (the right propaganda could set the stage for this). Of course, good diplomacy with China, and yes, with North Korea at the appropriate time, could truncate the civil war that Step Three usually means, by offering safe passage to exile.
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The Chosun Ilbo says that the U.S. and South Korea have a new plan to deter North Korean attacks like those of 2010, but from what I can see, the new plan looks a lot like the old plan. Although the report tells us next to nothing about what the specific plan is, there’s enough information to suggest that it’s essentially a military response. I’m now at the point where I’d agree that a limited and well-targeted limited military response may be less dangerous than no response at all, but I think the deterrent value would be limited at best; at worst, a limited war helps Kim Jong Eun consolidate his rule and only serves to prolong the underlying problem. In other words, we can now safely put the “soft power” fad to rest, secure in the knowledge that Washington and Seoul have reverted back to the same old crap — dangerously underreactive diplomacy, and dangerously overreactive military options, both of which Pyongyang has learned to play to its own advantage, and neither of which consequently solves anything.
I’m most skeptical about this plan because of the risk I perceive that it will lead to involving us in another ground war, while we happen to be otherwise occupied in Afghanistan, fighting against the people who directly attacked our country (or enabled the people who did). That’s especially true given that South Korea continues to cut its own defense budget and troop strength, without offsetting that loss of capability with better weaponry.
If Washington and Seoul really want to deter Kim Jong Eun, they ought to be threatening to do what Kim Jong Eun (and more importantly, Jang Song Thaek, and the generals) are really afraid of. We should instead be threatening a broadcasting and arms-smuggling campaign directed at North Korea’s norther and eastern provinces, along with increased economic constriction against the regime and its (mostly Chinese) business partners. That would not only undermine Kim Jong Eun’s political control in the provinces, it would also give China a reason to help deter the North Koreans, for once.
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This looks like an interesting read:
The protean main character is Pak Jun Do, whose father tends an orphanage in the northern port city Chongjin; Jun Do is not as expendable as the orphans themselves, but nearly so. [….]
While at sea, Jun Do becomes an unlikely “hero of the state.” When a fellow sailor defects, everyone aboard the fishing boat fears government retribution. They devise a cover story about the defector having been eaten by sharks after American sailors boarded the boat and threw him in the water. To increase the tale’s credibility, the crew and captain decide, another layer should be added about someone jumping in to try to save the man–and suffering a shark bite in the process. The captain directs Jun Do to let his arm be bitten by a shark they have pulled aboard; he complies. The shark chomps down to the bone but doesn’t sever the arm.Now a living emblem of American rapacity, Jun Do joins a secret diplomatic mission to Texas, where North Korean ministers try to twist military compromises from a well-meaning senator in exchange for empty promises.