|
|
|
|
Something for Pyongyang to chew
on
By Andrei Lankov
SEOUL - A survivor of the North Korean
prison camps concludes a story of his suffering at
the hands of Kim Il-sung's henchmen by saying, "I
think I will live to see how those bastards will
go to prison, to pay for all what they have done
to us." It is easy to understand that this man, in
his late 30s, with such an experience of torture,
betrayal, lies and destitution, would expect
revenge. After all, Adolf Hitler's executioners
(well, most of them) went to prison, and some even
to the gallows. Thus, it is only rational to
expect that the same fate would befall the people
who run one of the bloodiest "minor" dictatorships
in the world.
But let's face it: such a
triumph of justice is unlikely to happen.
Furthermore, it probably should not be allowed to
happen: the only way to prevent further suffering
in North Korea might be by granting the country's
elite complete immunity from persecution for all
crimes committed during their rule.
A
woeful state
No complete statistics are
available yet, but a few figures (some are more
reliable than others) have already emerged from
North Korea, and this data leave few doubts that
we are talking about a truly murderous system.
Currently, 150,000-200,000 people are in political
prison camps. We might assume that the average
number for the past 50 years has been 100,000, and
consider that the average time spent in prison is
about 10 years, after which a prisoner can be
either dead or released. Thus, we will arrive at
some half million people who have been imprisoned
for real or imagined political crimes under the
rule of Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung -
out of a population of about 24 million.
These are estimates, but they seem to
agree with the scarce information available from
defectors, and those figures are conservative.
But the actual number of victims is higher
than the number of prison inmates. A large number
of people are not sent to prison, they are exiled
to remote areas, and their families are deprived
of the right to pursue a normal life. Often such
banishment leads to the death of the family, as
during the "great famine" of the 1990s.
Repression on such a massive scale cannot
be even remotely compared with the political
persecution in post-Stalinist East European
countries, where the number of victims was counted
merely in the thousands, and where their chances
of survival were much higher. The much-vilified
Stasi, the East German security police, appeared
to be harsh only if compared to the standards of
affluent and democratic Europe. What could happen
to an individual in East Germany if he got himself
in trouble with the authorities? Such a person was
likely to lose promotion or the opportunity to
travel overseas. However, in North Korea, a
similar report normally leads to the victim's
execution or a slow death in a prison camp. More
often than not, the victim's family will go to
prison as well.
And we are talking only
about victims of judicial persecution. The North
Korean government can also be blamed for the
famine of 1996-1999, which probably took between
600,000 and 900,000 lives (once again,
conservative estimates). Those people died because
economic reforms, which could have saved most or
all of them, were deemed politically dangerous by
the elite. One can also blame the regime for
starting the Korean War, which resulted in the
deaths of millions.
But even if we cling
to 500,000 as the minimum number of people who
were directly killed or imprisoned for their real
or alleged political wrongdoing, it is a very
large number for a country of such a size.
So, the number of victims is great, but
what about the perpetrators? It is equally large.
The North Korean political police, known as the
Ministry for Protection of the State Security
(MPSS), run an extensive network of informers.
Defected officers of the MPSS say that under
normal circumstances they are supposed to have one
informer per every 50 persons, while in more
"politically difficult" environments the density
is increased.
Yi Su-ryon, the daughter and
wife of ethnic Koreans from Japan, told about a
typical incident. During a drinking party, four
out of its seven participants (including Yi's
husband) admitted to being informers.
These figures mean that roughly half a
million people are or have been government spies.
And police cadres and government officials of all
levels are required to approve arrests, as was the
case in Joseph Stalin's Russia or Mao Zedong's
China.
Then there are the people who were
involved in manifold acts of terror and subversion
against South Korea - and we can be sure they all
know the stories of assassination plots and
commando raids are only the tip of the iceberg.
There are the officers who kidnap people from
South Korea and other countries, officials who run
drug smuggling and counterfeit currency rings, and
of course prison guards: the average ratio for
Stalin's gulags is well known - one guard for
every 10 prisoners. This means some 50,000
ex-guards - and this is a conservative estimate,
once again.
In short, a few hundred
thousand people have been directly involved in the
criminal activities of the regime. With such large
numbers of victims and perpetrators, no serious
investigation is likely to be possible.
A choice between two evils
There
is an apocryphal story about Nikita Khrushchev,
the man behind the de-Stalinization campaign in
the USSR. He was allegedly asked why so few people
were brought to trial for crimes committed in
Stalin's era (merely a few hundred of the most
notorious people stood in secret trials). He
reportedly answered, "Well, I suppose we must
empty the prison camps, not replace old inmates
with new ones."
True or not, the story
captures the essence of the dilemma: in a truly
murderous dictatorship, more or less every member
of the elite is somehow involved with what might
be best described as "criminal policy". Thus,
persecuting everybody might mean putting into
prison the majority of educated people with
administrative experience.
Nonetheless,
even if complete and thorough persecution is
impractical, some key figures of the regime are
very likely to go to prison. And they understand
this. The fear of persecution is certainly one of
the factors that makes Kim Jong-il and his
entourage so stubborn and, as a result, so
murderous.
The North Korean leaders must
be aware that their system does not work too well
- at least, this is what many documents smuggled
from Pyongyang's inner circles seem to confirm.
But these people have no decent exit option for
themselves, and this is a disaster, not so much
for them, but for their subjects. They have good
reasons to be afraid of persecution and revenge,
and thus they are determined to resist until the
end.
As someone who witnessed the collapse
of the Soviet system from the inside, this writer
can testify that popular discontent (quite real in
the 1970s and 1980s) was only one of many factors
which led to its breakdown. The final blow to the
communist system was dealt when members of the
elite decided that it would make perfect sense to
jettison their formal allegiance to communist
beliefs (few of them sincerely shared these
beliefs by the 1980s anyway), and re-package
themselves as supporters of the market economy and
democracy. Politically, this was a wise decision:
in nearly all post-Soviet countries, the elite
nowadays overwhelmingly consists of former
communist bureaucrats who, 15 years ago, after a
lifelong career in the Communist Party, suddenly
proclaimed themselves staunch enemies of
communism.
In North Korea, such a
peaceful, if cynical, solution appears impossible
- it is prevented by the seemingly intractable
problem in the form of South Korea. The very
existence of this affluent (from the North Korean
point of view - not simply "affluent" but
unbelievingly rich) and free country creates
manifold problems for Pyongyang's leaders. If
common North Koreans learned of South Korean
prosperity and if they became less fearful of
political persecution, nothing would stop them
from behaving like East Germans did in 1990. Why
on earth would they agree to live in a crumbling
and destitute state if they knew that there was a
prosperous and free "other Korea" just across the
border?
And what will happen to the top
crust of the North Korean government, and the few
hundred neo-aristocratic families who surround Kim
Jong-il? They are afraid that a gloomy future
awaits them, and they are probably correct. Any
post-unification transformation is certain to be
painful. The new post-unification government will
need scapegoats, and the former North Korean
leaders will be first in the firing line - perhaps
both figuratively and literally.
Thus, the
North Korean elite is cornered. These people do
not want to tamper with the system since they are
afraid it will collapse as a result of some
experiments. In such a case, they have nothing to
gain and everything to lose - not only their
prosperity, privilege and power, but also their
freedom - and in some cases even their lives. This
means they have to continue with their policy,
believing that their choice is "kill or be
killed".
The carrot of amnesty
How to break this deadlock? The short
answer is an amnesty. People who run the country
should be granted immunity from persecution for
all crimes.
Such an amnesty might not
exclude what is known as "lustrations" in Eastern
Europe, where former party, police and security
bureaucrats were not eligible for certain
positions in the government and could not run
businesses of certain types. Such people above a
certain level under Kim might (and perhaps should)
be excluded from keeping official positions in the
post-unification era. But criminal persecution is
not an option, both because it is not practical,
and also because the fear of such persecution
contributes toward the ongoing tragedy of the
North Korean people.
Nobody can restore to
life the people who have perished in the torture
chambers and concentration camps of the regime.
But we are talking now about the living and of
preventing more deaths. Countless people would be
alive or have better lives had North Korea's
leaders been less persistent in their stubborn
(and understandable) rejection of reform, and had
they been given a way out.
Certainly, the
North Korean leaders might be cautious of buying
into any talk of amnesty. They will have seen what
happened to the former South Korean
generals-turned-presidents who once were promised
immunity in exchange for their willingness to
surrender power in a peaceful manner. The new
democratic South Korean government tried to keep
its promises for a while, but in 1995, facing
mounting pressures from the political left, former
presidents Roh Tae-woo and Chun Doo-hwan faced
prosecution.
Hence, to make such a promise
believable, it should be very public, unequivocal
and all-inclusive, leaving as few loopholes for
future revenge-seekers as possible. Further,
international involvement and overseas asylum for
the top leaders might be a good idea.
There is a precedent for this, from Idi
Amin of Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko of then-Zaire to
Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The latter, the
hereditary dictator of Haiti, if anything, was
much more of a bizarre personality than Kim, but
this did not prevent him from being warmly
accepted by France after his downfall.
Talk of an amnesty for North Korea's elite
will have its opponents, but it is a compromise
solution that might help save lives and hasten the
end of the regime: if the rulers in Pyongyang know
that in spite of being on the losing side they
will not face persecution, let alone die in jail,
but will spend the rest of their days in relative
safety and comfort, they might be more willing to
throw in the towel. And if lower-level officials
know that they will at least keep their personal
freedom after unification, they will be far less
ready to fight and kill.
Dr Andrei
Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian
Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at
Kookmin University, Seoul.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
