North Korea Perestroika Watch
Here’s something else the consumers of Selig Harrison’s next op-ed should try not to remember:
North Korea on Wednesday upped its rhetoric against South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, branding him as a “pro-U.S. fascist maniac” and “chieftain of evils without an equal in the world” in view of measures his government took last month in the wake of the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
The virulent name-calling came in a report released by the secretariat of the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea and carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The committee’s report blasted the “Lee Myung Bak group of traitors” for its “unprecedented brutal acts during the mourning over the great loss to the nation,” which it said had “rubbed salt into the wounds of the grief-stricken people” of North Korea. [Mainichi Shimbun]
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In the rest of the world, a photo op like this would either mean that the young man is stricken with a terminal illness, or that he needs to fire his campaign manager immediately. In North Korea, it means he’s done running for office, and he’s desperate to forestall a terminal case of lead poisoning.
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After North Korea’s 2010 attacks on South Korea, observers like Brian Myers suggested that their purpose was to burnish Kim Jong Eun’s credentials as an even bigger asshole than his father (though I recall that Myers phrased it more elegantly than I have here). Reports like this one lend credence to that theory:
[A] documentary on North Korea’s Central TV, also claimed that Mr. Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, oversaw the April 2009 test launch of the country’s long-range rocket.
“I had determined to enter a war if the enemies dared to intercept” the rocket, he was quoted as saying in the program, which showed him and his father visiting the control center during the test. [N.Y. Times, Choe Sang-Hun]
What does all of this really mean? It means that for its own domestic reasons, North Korea won’t be ready for Agreed Framework III for at least another year, and in any case, corresponding domestic reasons mean the same thing for the United States.
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Over the weekend, while watching the GOP debates, I watched John Huntsman (if you haven’t heard of him, he’s running for Secretary of State) talking about the importance of managing our relations with China. This caused me to ask myself to what extent Huntsman is really an authority on the topic. What, for example, has Mr. Huntsman accomplished toward, say, finally getting UNHCR access to North Korean refugees or the places where they’re forced to hide out? Aren’t we at least entitled to expect an effective diplomat to persuade China to violate U.N. sanctions resolutions a little less flagrantly?
An examination of U.N. and Chinese trade data reveals that exports to North Korea of products including cars, tobacco, laptops, cellphones and domestic electrical appliances all increased significantly over the last five years. Most items crossed the border from China. The data reveal glaring loopholes in the sanctions regime, demonstrating how China has stepped in as the main supplier of goods considered luxuries in North Korea as other countries have clamped down on such exports. [….]
[A]nalysts and diplomats believe the sanctions are ineffective, largely because the U.N. allowed member states to decide which products they consider luxury items. China agreed to comply, but permits exports of many products widely considered luxuries by the U.S., the European Union, Japan and others, which have halted or restricted exports of them. Other items reach North Korea through smuggling, especially over the Chinese border. [WSJ, Jeremy Page]
Of course, I don’t believe for a minute that Romney or any of the rest of them are likely to freeze the assets of the Chinese companies that are doing this, as much as I’d like to. This, kids, may be the most important thing I’ve learned since I’ve come to Washington: the educated pessimism that elections seldom result in significant changes to policies that aren’t a matter of intense public controversy.
The other educated pessimism that Washington didn’t have to teach me is about the reporter’s bonus commentary about the lighter side of North Korea starving its people to buy luxuries for its 1%. Price waxes about how these violations could transform North Korea’s new “entrepreneurial” class, which strikes me as a conflation of real entrepreneurs (who buy their cars and iPods) with corrupt regime cronies (who get them as gifts from other regime officials). Sure, there’s a degree of overlap. In North Korea, people who gain their wealth primarily through trading still need political protection. But the funding source and the method of receipt are key distinctions. To the extent the items are smuggled in, I agree that their introduction is actually a positive development. The state isn’t deciding who gets them, and the state isn’t buying those luxuries instead of, say, corn or infant formula. If people who accumulate wealth solely through trading are accessing smuggled goods, it means that the underground market continues to respond to economic demand. But those items presumably wouldn’t show up in Chinese trade statistics. The items that do show up are paid for by money that is deducted from what the regime spends to import food for its people. The positive impact they may have on getting new information into the hands of a few regime loyalists is more than offset by the suffering caused by that misallocation of resources. Further, Page underestimates the degree to which these loyalists, including those exposed to “forbidden” products and ideas, will defend the regime to the end because they know how badly the end of the regime will affect them.
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Speaking of refugees, 20 of them have been arrested in Shenyang. What will follow is the full cooperation of the ChiCom authorities in sending them across the border to a grim fate in their homeland. In “ordinary” times, that would have meant torture, interrogation, and then a slow death in a place like Chongo-ri. But with Kim Jong Eun’s new crackdown, it might mean an immediate trip to the firing squad.
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According to something called the Big News Network, a Japanese journalist is writing a book based on his correspondence with Kim Jong Nam:
According to The Japan Times, in an email in January after Kim Jong Il’s funeral, Kim Jong Nam voiced his opposition to the hereditary succession system that led to his younger brother, Kim Jong Un, being appointed North Korea’s new leader.
According to Gomi, Kim Jong Nam also said that the existing power group would continue to hold the reins of power and plans to use the new, young leader as a symbol of North Korea.
Kim Jong Nam also said Kim Jong Il had remarked he wouldn’t let any of his sons take power.
HT: Theresa.