Open Sources, August 15, 2012

WHEN I WAS A KID, I LOVED HIKING IN THE DESERT.  I remember seeing those great pools of blue water on scorching July days and thinking of how good the water would taste and feel, especially as I watched them recede and vanish as I got closer to them.  North Korea watching is another vocation where sensible folk must train themselves not to chase mirages:

Many of the changes appear purely symbolic at first glance ? like, for instance, the explicit endorsement of the first American popular music concert in Pyongyang by Kim Jong-un himself. On the same level is his truly unprecedented decision to grant real public prominence to his wife Ri Sol-ju who has been seen next to him quite a few times.

These minor changes are by no means trivial. The open endorsement of Americana is a highly unusual for a country where the United States is (and has been for 60 years) a byword for evil. The appearance of the first lady of the “Supreme Leader” is also very unusual, since North Koreans have known for decades that they risk being sent to a prison camp should they discuss the personal lives of their leaders.  [Andrei Lankov, Korea Times]

It’s maddening enough to see the North Korea story kardashianized down from an admittedly depressing story of hunger, terror, and death camps into one about nice handbags and royal weddings.  It’s all the more maddening to see keen observers impute substance to these things.  When North Korea stops standing people in front of firing squads for trying to get out of North Korea, I’ll agree that these things aren’t trivial.

Andrei then goes on to discuss unverified rumors and rather vague hints that North Korea plans to reform its agricultural system.  But doesn’t it make sense to wait for evidence that the system is being (a) reformed at all, and (b) reformed in some broad and significant way, before we declare the next false dawn?

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THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY ASSUMING THAT KIM JONG UN is in charge in North Korea ought to give some thought to why the Chinese are treating Jang Song-Thaek like the guy who’s really in charge.

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YOU KNOW, I SEEM TO REMEMBER A TIME when, as a much younger man who was kicking around Africa and recently ex-Communist Europe, I carried Lonely Planet books that contained more practical advice about where to stay and what to eat, and far fewer unreadable harangues.

To establish the quality of the political education they’re serving up to a new generation of travelers, it’s useful to begin by skimming their guidebooks for undemocratic countries like Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

There’s a formula to them: a pro forma acknowledgment of a lack of democracy and freedom followed by exercises in moral equivalence, various contorted attempts to contextualize authoritarianism or atrocities, and scorching attacks on the U.S. foreign policy that precipitated these defensive and desperate actions. Throughout, there is the consistent refrain that economic backwardness should be viewed as cultural authenticity, not to mention an admirable rejection of globalization and American hegemony. The hotel recommendations might be useful, but the guidebooks are clotted with historical revisionism, factual errors, and a toxic combination of Orientalism and pathological self-loathing.  [Michael Moynihan, Foreign Policy]

And sure enough, the quote on North Korea is priceless, especially if you’ve paid any attention to that story:

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Bradt also has a unique take on North Korea’s successful quest for nuclear weapons at a time when millions of its people were starving: “The most common arguments in the Western media are that the aggressive little dictatorship sought all along to build a nuke and use it as a bargaining chip for more aid — which sidesteps the fact that the DPRK was being threatened by a nuclear mega power with which, someway by mutual consent, it was not at peace.” Regardless, there is little cause for concern, according to Bradt, because the “allegations about the uranium enrichment” are most likely a figment of overheated American imagination, from the same people who “cooked up the WMD intel against Iraq.”

Ahem.  This just might not be the best place to get accurate information about a country, which doesn’t even touch on questions of completeness and context.  I don’t know what morally developed person could escape the significance of how that country’s government treats its people.  But then, if you told the complete truth about North Korea in a guidebook, the guidebook itself would get you arrested.  If there’s a better test of whether you should go at all, I don’t know what it is.

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SPEAKING OF NORTH KOREA’S CONSTRUCTION PRIORITIES, does anyone else worry that the prioritization of light-water reactors could come at the expense of dolphinariums, amusement parks, and luxury hotel skyscrapers for North Korea’s needy?

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UNLIKE GORDON FLAKE, I’m not in the business of endorsing candidates, but I like Gordon as both a person and an analyst of North Korea, and I strongly recommend his analysis of the Obama Administration’s North Korea policy.  I agree with his point that the Bush Administration vacillated between talking to the North at all and being so desperate to deal with them that we damaged relations with allies that matter much more to our national interest.  I also agree that Obama’s policy is — to use a double negative — less ineffective than Bush’s because it is more a northeast Asia policy than a North Korea policy.

The problem with Obama’s policy is that it lacks any apparent strategic objective; really, it’s a short-term do-no-harm policy.  To the extent it goes beyond that, it seems to be premised on the idea that time is on our side, and that moderate economic pressure — it will never be more than that unless we’re willing for force Chinese companies to stop sustaining the regime — will eventually get North Korea to change one way or the other, or maybe to cut some kind of deal (until it inevitably reneges?).  Assuming that happens before North Korea makes new nuclear powers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the future Islamic Republic of Egypt, the “change” such a policy brings us is a North Korea that will increasingly be a Chinese territory.  When viewed in that light, I wonder how much Japan and South Korea would approve of that outcome.

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MAYBE NORTH KOREA WILL GET CHINA TO DISINVEST all by itself.  A Chinese mining company reports that it was swindled by the North Koreans, and other Chinese seems to wonder what else they expected:

“Regrettably, according to Xiyang Group’s microblog and blog…the North Koreans kicked them out after an unresolvable dispute. In March, North Korean security officials forcibly sent the ten remaining Xiyang employees back to China. In other words, the $37 million they invested in North Korea disappeared.” [Isaac Stone Fish, Foreign Policy Passport]

There’s always another sucker.  The greatest myth about investing in North Korea is that it will eventually be broad and transformational.  But the truth is that they’ve sputtered along on a small scale and isolated conditions for decades, because small swindles like this are all the regime really needs to pay its elite.