Death (to communism) by chocolate

Via the fantastic North Korea Economy Watch blog I noticed that junk food is apparently striking fear deep into the hearts of the North Korean regime:

Think Choco Pie, the thick wafer-like confection, all pastry and cream, served in the Kaesong Industrial Complex as a daily dessert for the 40,000 North Koreans who toil for 100 South Korean companies with factories in the complex.

“North Koreans love Choco Pie,” said Ha Tae-keung, president of NK Open Radio, which beams two hours of news daily into North Korea from its base in Seoul. “It’s an invasion of the stomach.”

North Korean workers, and the friends and family members for whom they save their daily treats, may salivate over Choco Pie, but it’s giving a severe stomach ache to senior officials fearful of the infiltration of South Korean culture in all corners of their Hermit Kingdom.

North Korea is sufficiently concerned exposure of its citizens to Choco Pies and other elements of South Korean capitalism that there is talk of the country moving to shut down the industrial complex. Even if they do this, however, there is still the problem of China:

When it comes to South Korean cultural infiltration, however, North Korea has far more to fear from the entry of goods from China than from the Kaesong complex. South Korean DVDs and CDs, even soft-core porn movies made in the South, are now distributed surreptitiously throughout North Korea. Electronic gadgetry, MP3 and MP4 players, TV sets, radios and rice cookers, also shipped via China, are also available for those with the money to pay for them.

Now here's the real kicker: at the same time that North Korea is running scared because of Choco Pies the U.S. and other countries are looking to further tighten sanctions on the country in response to its recent nuclear test. If we really want to punish them we should actually be moving to lift sanctions on the country. If they are living in fear over Choco Pies just imagine the shock and horror that would emanate out of Pyongyang if the population were to discover MTV and Big Macs.

Choco Pies: Kim Jong Il's worst nightmare

As I have written before, there is nothing that Kim Jong Il would hate more than Hollywood-made DVDs and other U.S. goods making their way into the country, which would instantly undermine almost his every utterance about both the worker's paradise and the militaristic intentions of Washington. Indeed, thanks largely to goods imported from China this is starting to happen in some areas of the country according to North Korea expert Andrei Lankov:

...People in the villages probably still believe that they are living in a prosperous place; that the entire world admires their leader; that Kim Jong Il is an extremely popular and mighty leader and the hope of the entire world. In the towns it is different. Very few people if anybody believes that anymore.

Fifteen years ago many people even in Pyongyang would have had no idea about life outside the borders. They were told that North Korea was one of the world’s most successful and prosperous countries. They were told that South Korea is a country of 8 million unemployed people, where 25% of all younger women are prostitutes for the US soldiers. People in the villages still believe this stuff. In the towns they are beginning to understand that their country is quite poor and backward, but still, very few really understand how poor it is if compared to the neighbours.

It is deeply ironic to me that nominally communist China, through its engagement approach with North Korea, is doing far more to promote positive change in the country than the democratic and capitalist U.S. that maintains a hard-line policy based on isolation. We're the ones with the superior ideas and should be doing our utmost to promote and expose them to the North Korean people rather than further cutting them off.