North Korea sanctions

This is why sanctions are a bad idea:

After hearing complaints from factory managers and state economic planners, the scholar said any potential reform of the hyper-socialist economy in North Korea was being hamstrung by a range of sanctions by the United Nations, the United States and other nations. Most of the sanctions have been imposed over the North’s refusal to abandon its nuclear programs.

The foreigner living in Pyongyang also saw the bark and the bite of sanctions among North Koreans.

“Sanctions have not changed behaviors of the elite, nor have they stopped the flow of luxury goods or cars to Pyongyang,” the foreigner said. “But for ordinary people, they have so very little to work with — tools, running water, medicines in clinics. Imports of any kind are just absent.”

The foreigner said political isolation had been effective in shutting off North Koreans to most international commerce, from material goods to cultural influences to political ideas.

“In some ways,” the foreigner said, “people here are so used to being without — without stuff, without validation, without contact to the outside world, without a set of standards about how things happen — that sanctions and isolation are normal. They feed a sense of victimhood, or at least underdog-ness, that justifies both the regime and attacks like the one we’ve just seen. 

Sanctions, which are typically targeted at authoritarian regimes, almost invariably hurt the citizenry while sparing the elites, who are always the last to suffer. We do ourselves no favors by impoverishing the people and cutting them off from outside commerce and ideas, which only make serve to make them more dependent on the government.

Sanctions stupidity

Further evidence of just how counter-productive US efforts to isolate countries like Cuba and North Korea are:

Jin Sun Rak, director of Free North Korea Radio, calls his old country almost every night. His wife and 14-year-old daughter live in North Korea. He decided to defect - telling nobody but his brother - in 2008, after traveling to China and seeing the relative wealth. The first time he went, hoping to sell 80 grams of unrefined gold, he bribed a border guard and carried a dagger, tucked near the lower part of a leg. His first night in China was "beyond imagination." He said he went to a restaurant, had some drinks and ended up at a karaoke bar where he knew none of the songs. Days later, he returned to North Korea with some money and a new frame of reference. 

"Whenever they say something," Jin said of the government, "they're lying. They're as worthless as barking dogs." As for a greater cynicism about the government, Jin said: "I think it's something unstoppable now. People's minds have been changed. Young people know the value of money. They don't want to be party members anymore. They've been exposed to the private markets." 

Once exposed to the charms of capitalism, it's hard to go back.  It should be deeply embarrassing to our government that nominally communist China is doing more to promote dissent in North Korea through exposure to its markets and way of life than the US. A policy of isolation only plays into Pyongyang's hands, it's time to change course.

Uncle Kim

Oh brother:

The toy AK-47 is a nice touch

Speaking of North Korea, here's a good article on the Kaesong economic zone.

Markets in North Korea

The Economist looks at the role of markets in North Korea:

Illegal DVDs showing South Korean soap operas gave northerners a taste of the better life their former countrymen enjoyed, helping to destroy the myth of South Korea as a downtrodden Yankee colony.

If the US were truly interested in assisting the downfall of Kim Jong Il's odious regime, it would abandon the nonsensical policy of isolation and bombard the country with McDonald's, the NBA and MTV. Nothing would do more to undermine communist nonsense than exposure to an episode of Cribs. It's hugely ironic that North Koreans have to rely on DVDs smuggled in from nominally communist China to gain exposure to the advantages of capitalism.

Then there's this:

This is not to say that North Korea came to resemble anything like a modern economy. In just one sign of long-standing deprivation, many women still have no choice but to use dried leaves as sanitary towels: a Korean-American missionary says the greatest gift you can give to a North Korean woman is a washable one made of fabric. “They cry with joy.”

How sad. Even if trade with North Korea wouldn't do a thing to shake the country's ideological foundations, it would still be the correct approach for its humanitarian aspect. We do ourselves no favors by keeping the North Korean people poor and ignorant.

Vice Guide to North Korea

Behold the weirdness. Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

North Korea update

Today's New York Times reviews several new books on North Korea. Some highlights:

If we have trouble seeing North Koreans plainly, they cannot see us at all. Telephone use is severely restricted. (Even the telephone book is a classified document marked “secret.”) Postal service is spotty. There is essentially no e-mail. Television and radios receive only approved channels. The country’s citizens are force-fed a steady, numbing diet of state propaganda devoted to sustaining the personality cult of Kim Jong-il and savaging all things American.

...Ms. Demick’s book is a lovely work of narrative nonfiction, one that follows the lives of six ordinary North Koreans, including a female doctor, a pair of star-crossed lovers, a factory worker and an orphan. It’s a book that offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.

The people Ms. Demick observes lived, before their defections, in northeastern North Korea, far from the country’s tidy, Potemkin village-like capital, Pyongyang. The existences she describes sound brutal: there is often not enough food; citizens work long days that can be followed by hours of ideological training at night; spying on one’s neighbors is a national pastime; a nonpatriotic comment, especially an anti-Kim Jong-il wisecrack, can have you sent to a gulag for life, if not executed.

...“It would be a gross exaggeration to say that the people support Kim Jong-il,” [write Mr. Hassig and Ms. Oh, authors of “The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom"]. “Rather, it does not occur to them to oppose him.” North Koreans are too busy trying to survive, and too preoccupied by the tensions of the supposed mighty conflict with America, to be able to think about much else.

Mr. Hassig and Ms. Oh’s portrait of Mr. Kim’s hyper-sybaritic lifestyle is detailed and devastating. He may look like a man of the people, they write, with his tan slacks, zippered jackets and stout build that make him resemble Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden in “The Honeymooners.” But they chronicle his obsession with the latest electronics, the “pleasure teams” of girls he keeps handy, the Bordeaux wine he has flown in. While many of his people starve, they write, Mr. Kim “is such a connoisseur that, according to his former chef, every grain of rice destined for his dinner table is inspected for quality and shape.”

...Mr. Hassig and Ms. Oh’s book concludes with pointed policy recommendations. They think it is nearly hopeless to negotiate with Mr. Kim and suspect that “nonproliferation agreements with the regime will simply encourage it to brandish new threats in the future.” Instead of fixating on Korea’s weapons, the authors suggest bypassing the regime and reaching out to North Korea’s people, who sorely need humanitarian aid and “a new way of thinking about their government and their society.”

I am in full agreement with Hassig and Oh's policy recommendation of reaching out to the North Korean people. Rather than engage in futile talks with the government over its nuclear program, the U.S. should seek a permanent peace treaty, end all embargoes on the country (save for WMD-related materials) and encourage as much contact with the outside world as possible.

Our way of life and beliefs are our greatest assets, and we do ourselves no favors by leaving the North Korean people isolated and ignorant. Allowing investment in the country, which could provide employment for the people and help alleviate their desperate plight, would also be the correct move from a humanitarian standpoint.

More postings on North Korea can be found here.

North Korea: the case for economic engagement

I used to attend think-tank forums on North Korea policy on a fairly regular basis, and still do on occasion. Most of the panel discussions I've witnessed are fairly predictable, with right-wing participants advocating for a harder line on Pyongyang through increased isolation and tougher sanctions while those on the left call for greater engagement in the form of bilateral talks and various welfare programs such as food aid and/or building the Norks a safe nuclear facility.

After a while I started to wonder why the U.S. didn't simply pull the troops out of South Korea, call it a day and go home. After all, are we really scared of North Korea, a country about as developed as the Solomon Islands? (Yes, they have the Taepodong missile, but it lacks a proven re-entry capacity and is inaccurate) And why are we protecting South Korea, when it has a population more twice that of the North and an economy many times times greater?

The better approach, in my view, has been to end most of the sanctions and turn North Korea into a most favored nation trading partner. Send in ipods, the Jonas Brothers, and burger joints and watch the communist system collapse. Indeed, as I have argued many times before, what the world's last Stalinist regime -- one based on isolation from the outside world -- truly fears is capitalism. Current policy gives them exactly what they want.

A paper released in October by a group of noted North Korea experts seems to suggest I am not alone in my thinking. From the introduction:

The United States should adopt a long-term strategy of economic engagement with North Korea. North Korea’s attitude toward the world is closely related to the underlying structure of its domestic political-economy: a closed, command economy that favors the military and heavy industry and is isolated from the sweeping economic and political changes that have transformed the Asian landscape in recent decades. Encouraging a more open and market-friendly economic growth strategy would benefit the North Korean people as a whole and would generate vested interests in continued reform and opening, and a less confrontational foreign policy.

In other words, economic engagement could change North Korea's perception of its own self-interest. China’s economic transformation stands as an important precedent, showing how a greater emphasis on reform and opening can have positive effects on foreign policy as well. Economic change has the potential to induce and reinforce the D.P.R.K.’s peaceful transition into a country that can better provide for its people’s welfare and engage with other countries in a non-hostile manner.

Economic engagement should be a central part of U.S. strategy in dealing with Pyongyang, and is complementary to the current focus on solving the nuclear issue. Sanctions have a role in defending the U.S. against risks of proliferation, but they have not and cannot provide a long-run solution to the North Korean problem.

To its credit the Obama Administration has demonstrated a willingness to rethink U.S. policy on Cuba, moving away from a policy of isolation towards greater openness. Let's hope it will extend this approach to North Korea.

Update: More on North Korea here.

Guilty of capitalism

You know what really strikes fear into the heart of the North Korean government? Capitalism:

North Korea's infamous penal system, which for decades has silenced political dissent with slave labor camps, has evolved into a mechanism for extorting money from citizens trading in private markets, according to surveys of more than 1,600 North Korean refugees.

Reacting to an explosive rise in market activity, North Korea has criminalized everyday market behavior and created a new kind of gulag for those it deems economic criminals, according to a report on the refugee surveys.

...Markets, though, have weakened state influence over daily life, while offering new ways to make money in careers that are not under the control of the government. To rein this in, the government has come up with a matrix of laws that criminalize everyday market behavior, the report says.

A couple of points:

• Pyongyang is quite correct to be scared of independent economic activity. A free people and free markets are inextricably linked.

• Given North Korea's hatred and fear of the free market, why do we seek to punish them with the use of economic sanctions, which simply aid and abet their repression of capitalism?

Journey to the Hermit Kingdom

Two Canadian journalists went to North Korea last month and described the experience in an article for The Globe and Mail. Free of the typical experience of those who visit the country, who are typically shepherded around in tour groups, the Canadians were given an unusually close look at the Stalinist outpost.

Two things stood out to me, the first being the grinding poverty and technological level that can perhaps best be described as medieval:

Some of the scenes we saw as our train rolled through a succession of crumbling towns and farming communities on its way to Pyongyang were startling. An entire village waded in a canal, dredging it with their bare hands. An old woman and a younger woman walked, kilometres from anywhere, carrying jugs of water attached to bamboo poles slung over their shoulders. Weaponless soldiers in mismatching footwear filled sandbags for a war the government insists could start at any time.

In a country with chronic food shortages, rice and corn fields are everywhere. The problem, however, lies in the outdated techniques on which the farmers are forced to rely in the absence of fuel and farm equipment. In the hundreds of fields through which we drove by train and car (there seems to be plenty of fuel for tourists and government officials) during our stay, I saw only two antiquated tractors, only one of which was moving. Even though the fields were many hectares in size, most of the work was done with hoes and spades, or by digging in the soil with bare hands.

There were few cars even on the streets of Pyongyang, and almost none outside of the country's showcase capital city. In the countryside, it was almost as common to see a farm animal in the middle of one of the divided four-lane highways as it was to see a private car.

Though our guides bragged of the city's mass transportation system, which costs just pennies to ride – a standard part of the tour involves showing off a metro system decorated with larger-than-life murals celebrating the achievements of Kim Il-sung – the vast majority of North Koreans seemed to walk wherever they were going, even if they were travelling from one town to the next.

It was obvious that even bicycles were too expensive for many. On the day we left, we saw dozens of uniformed pilots walking the 24-kilometre distance between Pyongyang and the capital's main airport.

The other noteworthy element is the appeal of Western culture and prosperity, which serves both to inspire North Koreans and question the approach taken by their own country:

It was also clear that for all the tanks and missiles deployed in the Korean peninsula, the strongest weapon the United States possesses is still the “soft power” that helped it win the Cold War in Eastern Europe, the lure of a culture that allows complete freedom of expression.

During our five days in North Korea, I repeatedly lent my iPod out to North Koreans I met, watching their reactions as they listened to songs and watched films unknown in a country where Internet access is denied to all but a very few and there's no such thing as a music store or a movie channel.

One Pyongyang resident who borrowed my earphones hummed along to the soft chorus of Nelly Furtado's All Good Things (Come to an End) , and gleefully started the song again as soon as it was over. At another juncture, I was asked to help write out the lyrics to Billy Joel's 1983 hit Uptown Girl .

Hip-hop and alternative rock music proved less popular, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall , the raunchy Judd Apatow comedy that, regrettably, was the only movie I'd downloaded for the trip, drew a slightly mortified thumbs-down. But the excitement generated by these rare glimpses of Western culture was far more revealing than the rote recitations of propaganda we received at stops like the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War – otherwise known as the Korean War – museum, the monument to the foundation of the Workers Party, or the Great Leader's mausoleum.

“Our hatred of American imperialism and our feelings for the American people are not the same thing,” one 20-something woman said after revealing an affection for Britney Spears songs and Harry Potter books. She, too, wore a red Kim Il-sung button over her heart.

After a week of dining in restaurants that had the same five music videos on rotation – all of them melodramatic hymns to the Dear Leader and the mighty North Korean military – it was easy to see how Oops, I Did it Again would be a breath of fresh air.

The appeal of our very way of life is the most effective weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and yet it is one kept tightly sheathed through economic sanctions. Our policy of isolating a country that prides itself on self-reliance and shuns foreign contact is something I do not understand. Beyond being morally bankrupt, depriving the North Koreans of exposure to Western ideas and commerce brings their eventual freedom not one day closer.

You can read about another visit to the country here.

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.

Kim's temper tantrum

North Korea's recent nuclear and missile tests, in my opinion, deserve little more than a collective shrug from the international community. This is simply Kim Jong Il's way of trying to get attention. However, I noticed what might be a rather significant development the other day in an opinion piece co-authored by Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After some criticism of the Obama Administration and lamenting over the dearth of military options they conclude with this:

If we decide to talk again, American diplomacy should expand beyond nuclear talks to begin preparing for the outcome it wants: a democratic, unified and eventually nonnuclear Korea. As Korea expert Andrei Lankov has suggested, America's new approach could include the opening of cultural, educational and economic exchanges with the North. Western experts should be encouraged to teach at North Korean universities; North Koreans should be allowed to study in the West; and the United States, Japan and South Korea should undertake cooperative economic projects in the North. The United States should also open more radio and television broadcasts from South Korea and the West. In short, Washington's diplomacy with North Korea should focus on measures that raise North Koreans' standard of living and exposure to the West.

This is exactly right, and I am pleasantly surprised to see two right-of-center, relatively hawkish members of the foreign policy community endorse such an approach. It's one that I have long called for. The way to bring down the communist regime is to raise up the North Korean people. Even if this approach fails, it still has the virtue of improving human lives rather than further punishing a deeply oppressed people.

Team America vs. reality

Scene from Team America: World Police:

Kim Jong Il: Hans Brix? Oh no! Oh, herro. Great to see you again, Hans!
Hans Blix: Mr. Il, I was supposed to be allowed to inspect your palace today, but your guards won't let me enter certain areas.
Kim Jong Il: Hans, Hans, Hans! We've been frew this a dozen times. I don't have any weapons of mass destwuction, OK Hans?
Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind. I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.
Kim Jong Il: Or else what?
Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.

Real life:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday said North Korea's weekend missile launch had "grave implications" and the first response should be a forceful position taken at the United Nations.

The U.N. Security Council had held an emergency session on Sunday, but the 15 members agreed only to further discussions after North Korea launched a Taepodong-2 rocket.

"It's a provocative act that has grave implications. North Korea ignored its international obligations, rejected the unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations," Clinton told reporters.

She said U.S. officials were in active consultations with members of the U.N. Security Council and countries engaged in six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear program.

"We know that working out the language is not easily done overnight but we remain convinced that coming out with a strong position in the United Nations is the first and important step that we intend to take," Clinton said.

For the record I think that the proper response to North Korea's missile launch is little more than a collective yawn, but the humor is undeniable. The UN is literally a caricature of itself.

North Korea and the folly of polls

You frequently see politicians waving around poll results as a justification to engage in various public policy moves. Claiming the mantle of the will of the people they plod ahead with their schemes and accuse anyone who stands in their way of obstructing democracy. In a country that holds democracy sacred there can be few things less offensive.

The problem with this is at least two-fold. First, the people aren't well informed on most issues. Frequently they favor contradictory policies. People claim to support a balanced budget but also develop a white hot anger when favored government programs are placed on the chopping block. Americans supported the invasion of Iraq by a wide margin but then four years later decided it was a mistake. They also expressed their belief that the addition of U.S. troops to the country in 2007 did not contribute to increased stability when most experts believe that the surge was a success.

It should also be noted that people's opinions change over time. For example people are more open to the idea of gay marriage and marijuana legalization now than 20 years ago. Now, both may either be good or bad ideas, but they aren't good or bad ideas simply based on whether a majority of people approve of them or not.

The second point is that letting the people rule is not the sacred creed that many believe it to be. After all, the U.S. was established as a republic, not a democracy. The founding fathers were fearful of mob rule and put in place a number of barriers between politics and the people. It should be remembered that when the Constitution was first written there was no direct election of Senators and the electoral college elects presidents rather than the people. In the country's early years the right to vote was restricted to white males that owned property.

All of this brings me to the current situation with North Korea and a new poll that indicates more than half of the country favors a military response to Pyongyang's launch of a rocket over the weekend. I wonder how many of those that are so anxious to drop bombs on North Korea and potentially begin a war realize that the missile launch was a failure:

But looking at the launching from a purely technical vantage point, space experts said the failure represented a blow that in all likelihood would seriously delay the missile’s debut.

“It’s got to be embarrassing,” said Geoffrey E. Forden, a missile expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I can imagine heads flying if the ‘Dear Leader’ finds out the satellite didn’t fly into orbit,” he said, referring to the name North Koreans are obliged to use when speaking of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s reclusive leader.

...Analysts dismissed the idea that the rocket firing could represent a furtive success, calling the failure consistent with past North Korean fumbles and suggesting it might reveal a significant quality control problem in one of the world’s most isolated nations.

Let's think about how absurd this is. North Korea is an economic weakling with a half-starved population that can't even afford to turn the lights on at night. Their high-profile missile launch meant to attract world attention was a failure. In relative terms it's the equivalent of a 12 year old threatening Mike Tyson with a pop gun.

North Korea is a tragedy, not a threat. The only thing we should be dropping on the country are sacks of rice.

Understanding North Korea

I don't write much about foreign policy on this blog but I have to mention the subject of North Korea, which is again in the news. While North Korea is widely seen as a dark and mysterious place run by an insane midget it's actually remarkably simple to understand.

If you study the diplomatic history of engagements with North Korea (this book is particularly good) a clear pattern begins to emerge. North Korea creates a crisis, the U.S. and other countries promise to give Pyongyang something -- typically in the form of humanitarian aid or nuclear power plants -- and Kim promises to delay his plans for blowing up the world.

The reason Kim does this is because North Korea is a failed Stalinist state that would be incapable of even feeding itself if not for foreign aid. Indeed, it is barely capable of even achieving that even with the aid, thanks to its embrace of collectivism and the juche philosophy of autarky, which is similar to all of the vows by politicians to wean the U.S. off of foreign oil except on a grander scale.

With a new administration in place Kim has apparently decided that it's time for another payday and has once again begun stirring the pot. Most dramatically North Korea has vowed to launch a missile, a not so subtle reminder that it retains a ballistic missile capability that could strike U.S. ally Japan. Recent weeks have seen it close the border crossing with South Korea, holding a South Korean captive and announcement that it will place two American journalists on trial. Plainly Kim is annoyed that Obama is not paying him any attention and that Secretary of Defense Gates has largely dismissed any threat posed by the North's impending missile launch.

The reality is that Kim is not interested in a war, which would likely mean the end of his regime and with it the caviar, cognac, palaces and "pleasure groups". The best course, then, is just to ignore him. The fly in the ointment, however, is the journalists set to go on trial.

With the U.S. in the midst of bailout mania Kim plainly wants a piece of the action. He may like to cultivate the image of being crazy, but he certainly isn't stupid.

Hell in North Korea

A story about one escapee from a North Korean prison camp, who has written a book about the experience:

The book grew out of a diary he kept in the Seoul hospital while he was recovering from the nightmares and screaming bouts that were part of his adjustment.

It begins with the story of his birth in Camp No. 14 to parents whose union was arranged by prison guards. As a reward for excellent work as a mechanic, his father was given the woman who became Shin's mother. Shin lived with her until he was 12, when he was taken away to work with other children.

In the book, Shin describes the "common and almost routine" savagery of the camp: the rape of his cousin by prison guards and the beating to death of a young girl found with five grains of unauthorized wheat in her pocket. He once found three kernels of corn in a pile of cow dung, he writes. He picked them out, cleaned them off on his sleeve and ate them. "As miserable as it may seem, that was my lucky day," he writes.

Nearly as heart-breaking is this:

Shin also struggles to understand why prosperous Koreans in the South seem so uninterested in and unmoved by the suffering of tens of thousands of fellow Koreans living in torment in the North's prisons.

"I don't want to be critical of this country, but I would say that out of the total population of South Korea, only .001 percent has any real understanding of or interest in North Korea," Shin said. "Only a few decades ago, the South Koreans had their own human rights issues. But rapid growth and prosperity has made them forget."

There's an easy solution to that -- just rename North Korea "Guantanamo." Every left-wing group imaginable will shriek in outrage -- until they realize that the U.S. is actually on the other side of the issue, at which time they will all head back to the coffee shop.

Update: Speaking of Gitmo, check out pics of the camp here. Compared to what North Korea offers up -- granted, about the lowest bar you can establish -- I imagine that this place seems like Disneyland. Then again, compared to subsistence life in Afghanistan it might even be an improvement.

North Korea policy

When most policymakers think of North Korea the first thing that comes to mind is the country's nuclear program. It strikes fear deep in the heart of many people and convincing Pyongyang to give up its nukes has become the primary goal of the Bush Administration in its Korea policy. Indeed, the U.S. has even tried using peer pressure via the six party talks to try to persuade the North to halt its effort to develop nuclear weapons, the latest edition of which is scheduled to meet early next month in China.

However, I would submit the following:

• If North Korea is truly intent on building nuclear weapons there is little to nothing we can do to stop it short of full-scale invasion. The country is home to thousands of caves and other places where the North could easily conceal its activities. It would be impossible for inspectors to fully canvass the country if North Korea would even agree to their presence, which is unlikely. They can develop weapons without our knowledge.

• Any agreement signed with them is worthless. North Korea has little problem with diplomatic niceties or going back on its word. This isn't a treaty with Canada or Denmark, it's freakin' North Korea. Kim Jong Il is an international pariah already that doesn't get invited to the cool international conferences anyway so I doubt he really gives a damn about his reputation.
  

• It's not our problem. Why are we trying so hard to solve a problem that has far more to do with China, Russia, South Korea and Japan? China, which shares a long border with the country, seems pretty disinterested in the whole affair. Yes, we have troops in the region, but there is a solution there too: withdraw them. South Korea has a larger GDP and population than North Korea, let them defend themselves.

• Even if North Korea gets nuclear weapons their usage is doubtful. Look, Kim Jong Il does not fit the cartoonish buffoon image that many hold of him. The irrational and the insane typically do not have long holds on power. He has no reason to use nuclear weapons, as they would assure his annihilation. He leads a pretty nice life, why would he want to mess that up? After all, nuclear weapons serve him much better as a tool with which to extract concessions from the U.S. and South Korea as he is currently doing. Use of nuclear weapons would be signing his own death warrant.

Talking about nukes with Kim Jong Il is a great deal for him. He gets to pretend that he is genuinely interested in peace. He gets to extract concessions and various forms of aid that help to prop up his regime. He gets another excuse to keep his people living in a state of fear that the evil American/Japanese imperialists are out to get him.

Now, defenders of the current approach may argue that by getting the other countries on board with the process that we can further isolate Pyangyang and exert more pressure. To that I say, get real. Isolating North Korea is like throwing Br'er Rabbit into the briar patch. After all, this is a country that loves international isolation, with their juche philosophy of self-reliance the basis of their entire political system. The North Koreans saw what happened when the Soviets and Eastern Europeans were exposed to Western influences and were determined not to make the same mistakes. If the truth about North Korea and its horrendous living conditions ever make its way to its own people it could spell doom for the government.

Indeed, in an excellent piece Andrei Lankov notes North Korea's apparent determination the shut down the Kaesong Industrial Park. Although it provides Pyongyang with much needed hard currency Lankov theorizes that North Korea seems willing to forgo that because of fears that interactions between the North Korean workers and their South Korean managers could compromise their political indoctrination:

The North Koreans not only learn modern technical skills, they also have ample scope to look at their southern compatriots and see that they do not behave like South Koreans are supposed to, according to North Korean propaganda. Cautious political discussions can't be ruled out, which in the long run could have a great impact on the internal situation of North Korea.

This must have been a crucial consideration for Pyongyang, as the survival of the North greatly depends on maintaining the myths about the South, such as it being a starving US colony, a "living hell, land of destitution and despair".

In recent years, the spread of smuggled South Korean videos has made this propaganda line unsustainable. Now, North Koreans are told that the South, while probably affluent, has lost its true national identity, so its inhabitants are full of admiration towards the spiritual purity of their Northern brethren. The southerners, the propaganda claims, also badly want to purify themselves under the wise guidance of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il (allegedly a cult figure in both the South and the North).

The leaders in Pyongyang do not want this myth exposed, and for North Koreans to see how badly the North fares in comparison to the prosperous and free South - something about which the leaders themselves have no doubts.

If Lankov is correct -- and I suspect he is -- it would seem to suggest that our policy should be predicated on engagement instead of isolation. Very simply, I would argue that the best U.S. policy would be to approach Kim Jong Il and tell him that we are lifting all embargoes on his country and that he should do as he pleases, with the one caveat being that if we ever catch him selling nukes to sworn enemies of ours such as Al Qaeda that we will make every effort to personally kill him. I suspect that this would scare the bejeesus out of him (and the Castro brothers as well if we adopted a similar stance towards Cuba). There is nothing that Kim 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.

I imagine that many North Korea hawks would respond with disgust to such a policy, saying that this amounts to letting Kim Jong Il off the hook not only for his nuclear activities but also for his monstrous police state in which tens of thousands languish in concentration camps. It's a fair point, but we come no closer to bringing those people freedom by punishing them through sanctions.

I defer to no one in my intense loathing of Kim Jong Il and have read enough material to make me fully aware of the horrors of life in modern day North Korea. That said, policy must be based on helping the millions of ordinary North Korea rather than punishing their leader, who will always be the last to suffer.

Kim Jong Il Trivia

I guess if the whole dictator thing doesn't work out he could always go on the PGA tour:

Like his father, Kim has a fear of flying, and has always traveled by private armored train for state visits to Russia and China. The BBC reported that Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian emissary who traveled with Kim across Russia by train, told reporters that Kim had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day, which he ate with silver chopsticks.

...Kim reportedly also enjoys basketball. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended her summit with Kim by presenting him with a basketball signed by NBA legend Michael Jordan. Also an apparent golfer, North Korean state media reports that Kim routinely shoots three or four holes-in-one per round. His official biography also claims Kim has composed six operas and enjoys staging elaborate musicals. Kim also refers to himself as an Internet expert.

Meanwhile, in other news:

...North Korea holds as many as 200,000 people in its political prisons. Not only are real or imagined dissenters imprisoned, but so are their relatives, including the elderly and children, under a guilt-by-association system instituted by North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung.

Prisoners in the gulag are provided starvation-level rations, forced to work long days under brutal conditions, and many face torture or execution for trivial offenses. It is estimated that more than 400,000 have died in the North Korean gulag over 30 years.

Kim would be funny if he wasn't also such a monster. What's also not funny is that while a google search for "Guantanamo Bay torture" gets 1,180,000 hits while a search for "North Korea prison camps" produces a relatively small 180,000.

Korea pic

Many people have seen this picture of the earth at night in which North Korea is conspicuous by its absence. Today, however, at the National Museum of Natural History I found this daylight photo (click to enlarge) of the Korean peninsula, in which the borders of North Korea can be delineated by its brown color and the lack of green -- in sharp contrast to South Korea. Seems to me that capitalism isn't just good for people, it's good for the environment too!

North Korea

Kim Jong Il is said to be a huge movie buff, it's therefore somewhat ironic that movies may be playing a huge role in promoting dissent within North Korea:

Watching South Korean soap operas and Hollywood movies inside North Korea, defectors say, is scary, exhilarating and depressing.

"We closed the drapes and turned the volume down low whenever we watched the James Bond videos," said a North Korean woman, who two years ago fled her fishing town in a boat with her husband and son.

"Those movies were how I started to learn what is going on in the world, how people learned the government of Kim Jong Il is not really for their own good," she said.

It's sad that China is effectively doing more to bring down Kim Jong Il's regime than the U.S., which continues to shoot itself in the foot with its sanctions regime.

North Korean defectors

The New York Times had an interesting article this week about North Korean defectors. This part in particular deserves to be highlighted:

Many of the North Koreans interviewed in Thailand said they wanted to go to the United States, even though they were reared in a country that has demonized America for decades. In school in the North, one defector said, she had had been taught that Americans were “inhuman, promiscuous and dictatorial.”

“Even today, I still sometimes refer to the United States as ‘Imperialist America,’ ” she said, laughing.

But as a fourth grader, the woman said, she began to have doubts about that image of America, after she happened upon a photograph in a magazine. As she recalled, it showed a tightrope walker balanced on a wire between high-rise buildings in Washington. The implicit message was that the United States was such an inhumane country that it forced people to perform such jobs, she said.

“But what I remembered about that photo was the tall buildings,” she said. “There was also a beautiful park and clean, wide streets. It was fascinating. There was nothing like that where I grew up.”

North Korea still unleashes daily attacks against the United States through its official media, but the desire of many of the defectors interviewed to go to the United States suggests that the power of ideology is waning.

“After spending a few months in China, they change their minds about the United States,” said a South Korean missionary who regularly visits the North Koreans at the detention center. “In China, they have access to so much information. They look at Web sites and exchange instant messages with people in South Korea.”

This seems to suggest that what the best way to undermine the regime of Kim Jong Il is opening up the country, not subjecting it to further sanctions. If a mere picture could prompt stirrings of doubt, what would North Koreans think after exposure to MTV?