Search Results for “Lankov”

July 19, 2016

Andrei Lankov doesn’t really know if North Korea sanctions are working

It’s no secret that I’ve been a skeptic of “engagement” with Pyongyang from the very beginning, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Andrei Lankov. His Korea Times columns, his book, and his other writings on social, historical, and political matters have been so useful that I often cite them, despite his unrealized predictions or the silly things he occasionally writes. His view of engagement isn’t just the conventional approach of wheeling a catapult up the DMZ and flinging bundles of unmarked...

Appeasement/Sanctions

January 7, 2015

Dear Professor Lankov: Shall we make it double or nothing?

As he did in 2012, Andrei Lankov has gone all-in supporting the latest rumors of economic and agricultural reforms in North Korea, calling them “revolutionary.” The Wall Street Journal’s excellent Alastair Gale describes Lankov’s prediction, notes the skepticism of the South Korean government, and notes that Lankov is “not often associated with very bullish views on North Korean reform.” The plan, he says, citing recent visitors to the country, would give more freedom and land to the country’s farmers. North...

Famine & Food Aid

December 23, 2011

Lankov and Klingner on NK Succession

At the Daily NK, two of the more sober and best-informed analysts offer some fairly scary prognostications (Klingner here, Lankov here). I tend to agree with the idea that we’re going to see more instability there. I’ve been saying that for a long time, but I also expect things to accelerate soon. No one could have imagined that Libya and Syria would become unstable a year ago, and just look at those places now. The more repressive the regime, the...

Kim Jong Un

June 19, 2010

Lankov and Foster-Carter on the Pyongyang Purges

Lankov, writing in the Asia Times, helps to educate our suspicions about the untimely death of one senior North Korean leader: The car incident that killed Yi Che-kang was also timely for Jang Song-taek. Yi was widely believed to be a rival of Jang. Now, with Yi dead, Jang seems to have no serious rivals left. The recent assembly session also appointed a new head of the North Korean cabinet. In North Korea, the prime minister is essentially a top...

Kremlinology

April 20, 2010

Andrei Lankov on Ajumma Power

Picking up the theme of North Korea’s indefatigable ajummas, Andrei Lankov writes in the Wall Street Journal: A joke making the rounds in Pyongyang goes: “What do a husband and a pet dog have in common?” Answer: “Neither works nor earns money, but both are cute, stay at home and can scare away burglars.” I’ve often thought that one of the most destructive consequences of socialism is the destruction it wreaks on families. That is especially so in Korean society,...

Korean Society/NK Economics

March 30, 2010

Lankov on the New North Korean Elite, Part 2

Alternative elite members who can apply the knowledge they learned in South Korea well in the North Korean reality could be doctors, technicians, CEOs and scholars of a post-Kim age. Re-education could cultivate specialists in the new North Korea. Despite the very low economic level, North Korea provides a fairly good basic education. Therefore, when carrying out the rehabilitation of North Korea, re-education based on the knowledge they already have is more reasonable than educating North Korean specialists such as...

Reconstruction/Refugees/Regime Change

March 28, 2010

28 March 2010: Lankov on Educating North Korea’s Next Leaders

Must-read: Writing at the Daily NK, Andrei Lankov proposes a hydroponic growth program for a class of intellectual leaders for North Korea: While it is important to help North Korean elites, however, it is more important to pursue the formation of a new North Korean elite group. Intellectuals who were educated in North Korea know well about the reality of the country, but they face a lot of obstacles in learning modern knowledge. On the contrary, young North Koreans can...

Anju Links

November 17, 2009

Lankov in the NYT, on Negotiating with North Korea

Andrei must really hate peace to say something like this: People in Washington have finally realized what should have been understood years ago: Under no circumstances is North Korea going to surrender its nuclear weapons. North Korean leaders believe that they need these weapons both as a deterrent and a diplomacy tool. Only through the existence of the nuclear program can North Korea, a destitute third-rate dictatorship, manipulate the outside world into providing generous aid. It is often suggested that...

Diplomacy

October 14, 2009

Lankov in the NYT, on Changing North Korea

My friend Andrei begins by advocating “cultural exchanges” as a means to change North Korea, a topic we’ve often debated in the past. If only such exchanges had the potential he suggests they do. North Korea only permits them on an infinitesimal scale, with people whose loyalty is thoroughly vetted, and when it calculates that the regime-stabilizing financial benefits outweigh the risk that the participants will be corrupted. Look no further than the Kaesong experience, or that of the North...

Deprogramming/Propaganda/Subversion/Sunshine

September 18, 2007

Q&A With Professor Andrei Lankov: On Changing North Korea

[OFK: This post is a follow-up Q&A to my review of Professor Andrei Lankov’s new book, “.” Prof. Lankov is a lecturer at the Australian National University, now on leave and teaching at Kookmin University. You can see more of Prof. Lankov’s books here, and you can find plenty more of his work linked on this blog. Two of his more notable recent articles include “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism” and “How to Topple Kim Jong Il.”] Q....

Books & Films/Deprogramming

September 16, 2007

Review: ‘North of the DMZ,’ by Andrei Lankov

[Update: I’ve since received some responses to specific questions I asked Prof. Lankov, so the discussion should begin either later tonight or tomorrow AM, depending on other stuff I need to do first.] I first read Andrei Lankov’s work when both of us were blogging on NKZone, through his columns in the Korea Times, and through his more recent scholarly works. I imagine that most readers have also read something of those works. The first time I met Prof. Lankov...

Books & Films/Inside NK

July 22, 2007

What I’m Reading: Andrei Lankov, ‘North of the DMZ’

Back in the 1980s, one of my Russian friends who was then in her early 20s, worked as an interpreter at a joint venture between North Korea and the Soviet Union. She was by no means a prude herself …, but she was somewhat shocked by the amount of sexual banter which her female North Korean colleagues engaged in. For the entire summer when the girls were on their own, they tried to learn as much as possible about the...

Books & Films/Deprogramming/Korean Society

March 7, 2007

Andrei Lankov on Triggering a North Korean Revolution

Update: Here. It’s a must-read. You have to see this one (via The Marmot). In a logical follow-on to “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” Professor Andrei Lankov offers practical suggestions for exploiting and accelerating a trend he identified previously — the political decline of the Kim Dynasty. I’ve previously called Dr. Lankov arguably the Western world’s only genuine North Korea expert; he’s one of those rare people you can listen to for hours in rapt attention without even...

Deprogramming/Reconstruction

January 1, 2018

How Kim Jong-un, China & the autumn gales set a death trap for North Korea’s fishermen

By now, you’ve probably seen the ghastly reports of boats from North Korea washing up against the Japanese coastline with the desiccated or skeletal remains of their crews. You’ve probably also read reports speculating about why. This post will sift through dozens of those reports, discard the theories that the evidence refutes, and assemble the more plausible ones into a coherent explanation that the evidence supports. As it turns out, most of what you’ve read about North Korea’s ghost ships...

Capitalism/China & Korea/Class Warfare/Japan & Korea/Resistance

December 11, 2017

Korean War II: A Hypothesis Explained, and a Fisking (Annotated)

(Update, May 2018: A hypothesis should to be tested by its predictive record. I’ve now watched, with growing alarm, how events since the publication of this post have validated it as a predictive model. I’ve recently gone back and embedded footnotes throughout, to indicate which specific predictions have been validated, or not.) In the last several months, as Pyongyang has revealed its progress toward acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city, the North Korea commentariat has cleaved into two...

Fiskings/Korean War II

August 21, 2017

Whatever happened to North Korea’s agricultural reforms? Just what I expected.

Starting around 2012, with a boost from an AP Pyongyang guided tour and some optimistic (but thinly sourced) analysis from Randall Ireson, Andrei Lankov, and others, a consensus formed among the pro-engagement school of North Korea watchers that Pyongyang was finally striking out on a bold new course of reform in an area of obvious need — its agriculture sector. In practice, the “reform” amounted to breaking up big collectives into smaller ones, and allowing collective farmers to keep and...

Famine & Food Aid

November 22, 2016

China breaks N. Korea sanctions it says won’t work because it’s afraid they’ll work

In yesterday’s post, I linked to reports suggesting that China’s failure to agree on the terms of a new U.N. sanctions resolution responding to North Korea’s latest nuclear test may be motivated by a desire to wait out the end of President Obama’s administration. This theory would only make sense if China figures it can get better terms from President Trump next year, but my post pointed to evidence of the opposite of this — that what we know so...

China/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics

August 31, 2016

N. Korea’s biggest ahole shoots Vice-Premier, sends second-biggest ahole to weed the fields

Here at OFK, stories about kremlinology are usually page two material. Too often, we’ll read reports that some official or minor celebrity has been executed, only to read a year later that the target has risen like Lazarus from the KCNA crypt. As a general rule, the closer a story about North Korea is to the center of the power structure, the less I tend to believe it. Which is why I didn’t even tweet the report yesterday that His...

Cyberwar/Kremlinology/Terrorism (NK)

Search Results for: Lankov