North Korea needs a dose of soft power
By Andrei Lankov
SEOUL - It is clear that the current Western approach to dealing with North
Korea is not working. Some people in Washington obviously still believe that
financial or other sanctions will push the North Korean regime to the corner
and press Pyongyang into relinquishing its nuclear program. But this is very
unlikely.
First, neither China nor Russia is willing to participate in the sanctions
regime wholeheartedly. Neither country is happy about a nuclear North Korea,
but they see its collapse as an even greater evil. However, without their
participation, no sanctions
regime can succeed. More important, South Korea, still technically an ally of
the United States, is even less willing to drive Pyongyang to the corner. And
finally, even if sanctions have some effect, the only palpable results will be
more dead farmers. The regime survived far greater challenges a decade ago when
it had no backers whatsoever.
So what can be done? In the short run, not much. Like it or not, Pyongyang will
remain nuclear. There might be some compromises, such as freezing existing
nuclear facilities, but in general there is no way to press North Korean
leaders into abandoning their nuclear weapons.
This is not good news, since it means that the threat will remain. Earlier
experience has clearly demonstrated that every time North Korean leaders run
into trouble, they use blackmail tactics, and they usually work. In all
probability, there will be more provocations in the future. Since Pyongyang's
leaders believe (perhaps with good reason) that Chinese-style economic reforms
might bring about the collapse of their regime, they have not the slightest
inclination to start reforming themselves.
This leaves them with few options other a policy aimed at extracting aid from
the outside world, and regular blackmail is one of the usual tools of this
approach. Thus the threat persists unless the regime or, at least, its nature
is changed, but how can this goal be achieved if pressure from outside is so
patently inefficient? The answer is pressure from within, by nurturing
pro-democracy and pro-reform forces within North Korean society (and also
pro-reform thoughts within the brains of individuals).
Of all assorted "rogue regimes", North Korea is probably most vulnerable to
this soft approach. On one hand, unlike the bosses of the assorted
fundamentalist regimes, North Korea's leaders have never claimed that their
followers will be rewarded in the afterlife; they do not talk, for example,
about the pleasures of otherworldly sex with 72 virgins.
Their claim to legitimacy is based on their alleged ability to deliver better
lives to Koreans here and now, and Pyongyang's rulers have failed in this
regard in the most spectacular way. The existence of another Korea makes the
use of nationalistic slogans somewhat problematic as well.
North Korea's leaders cannot really say, "We have to be poor to protect our
independence from those encroaching foreigners," since the existence of the
dirty-rich South vividly demonstrates that under a reasonably rational
government, Koreans can be both rich and independent (and also free).
This leaves Pyongyang with no choice but to seal the borders as tight as no
other communist regime has ever done before, on assumption that the common folk
should not know that they live a complete lie. This self-imposed information
isolation is the major condition for the regime's survival, and breaking such a
wall of ignorance should be seen as the major target for any long-term efforts
directed at bringing change to North Korea.
The power of soft measures is often underestimated, not least because such
policies are cheap, slow and not as spectacular as commando raids or even
economic embargoes. However, their efficiency is remarkable.
In this regard, it makes sense to remember a story from the relatively recent
past. In 1958, an academic-exchange agreement was signed between the Soviet
Union and the United States. Back then the diehard enemies of the Soviet system
were not exactly happy about this step, which, they insisted, was yet another
sign of shameful appeasement.
They said this agreement would merely provide the Soviets with another
opportunity to send spies to steal US secrets. Alternatively, the skeptics
insisted, the Soviets would send diehard ideologues who would use their US
experience as a tool in the propaganda war. And, the critics continued, this
would be done on American taxpayers' money.
The first group of exchange students was small and included, as skeptics
feared, exactly the people they did not want to welcome on to US soil. There
were merely four Soviet students who were selected by Moscow to enter Columbia
University for one year of studies in 1958. One of them, as we know now, was a
promising KGB operative whose job was indeed to spy on the Americans. He was
good at his job and later made a brilliant career in Soviet foreign
intelligence.
His fellow student was a young but promising veteran of the then-still-recent
World War II. After studies in the US, he moved to the Communist Party central
bureaucracy, where in a decade he became the first deputy head of the
propaganda department - in essence, a second in command among Soviet
professional ideologues.
Well, skeptics seemed to have been proved right - until the 1980s, that is. The
KGB operative's name was Oleg Kalugin, and he was to become the first KGB
officer openly to challenge the organization from within. His fellow student,
Alexandr Yakovlev, a Communist Party Central Committee secretary, became the
closest associate of Mikhail Gorbachev and made a remarkable contribution to
the collapse of the communist regime in Moscow (some people even insist that it
was Yakovlev rather than Gorbachev himself who could be described as the real
architect of perestroika.)
Eventually, both men said it was their experiences in the United States that
changed the way they saw the world, even if they were prudent enough to keep
their mouths shut and say what they were expected to say. So two of the four
carefully selected Soviet students of 1958 eventually became the top leaders of perestroika.
There is no reason to believe that measures that worked in the Soviet case
would be less effective in North Korea. Academic exchanges are especially
important, since the policy toward North Korea should pursue two different but
interconnected purposes. The first is to promote transformation of the regime
or perhaps even to bring down one of the world's most murderous dictatorships.
However, it is also time to start thinking about what will happen next, after
Kim Jong-il and his cohorts vanish from the scene.
The post-Kim reconstruction of North Korean will be painful, expensive and
probably lengthy. Right now North Korea is some 20 times a poor as the South,
and the gap in education between two countries is yawning. With the exception
of a handful of military engineers, a typical North Korean technician has never
used a computer.
North Korean economists learn a grossly simplified version of 1950s Soviet
official economics, and North Korean doctors have never heard about even the
most common drugs used elsewhere. This means that in the case of a regime
collapse, the North Koreans would be merely cheap labor for the South Korean
conglomerates - a situation bound to produce tensions and hostility between the
two societies. A North Korean who in 20 years' time will look for a decent job
should be made employable, and the best way to ensure this is to start thinking
about his or her education right now.
Academic exchanges with North Korea would have dual or even triple purposes.
First, they would bring explosive information into the country, hastening
domestic changes (probably, but not necessary, changes of a revolutionary
nature). Second, they would assist North Korean economic development, thus
beginning to bridge the gap between the two Koreas even while the North was
still under Kim Jong-il's regime. Third, they would contribute to more
efficient and less painful reconstruction of post-Kim North Korea.
Of course, all these scholarship programs should be paid for by the recipient
countries. North Koreans have no money for such exchanges (and to paraphrase a
remark by North Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter, North Korean leaders are
people who never do anything as vulgar as paying). But all three targets are
clearly in the interest of the world community, and anyway the monies involved
would be quite small.
North Korea's leaders are no fools. They understand that such exchanges are
dangerous, and they do not want future Korean Yakovlevs and Kalugins to emerge.
Back in 1959-60 they even decided to recall their students from the Soviet
Union and other countries of the Communist Bloc and did not send their young
people to study anywhere but in Mao Zedong's China until the late 1970s. In
other words, for two decades Pyongyang's leaders believed that those countries
were way too liberal as an environment for their students.
However, they also understand that without exchanges they cannot survive in the
longer run. Even now, Pyongyang is doing its best to increase exchanges with
China, sending numerous students there.
Another important factor is endemic corruption. There is no doubt that nearly
all students who will go overseas will be scions of the Pyongyang aristocrats,
the hereditary elite that has been ruling the country for decades. A high-level
official might understand that sending a young North Korean overseas is
potentially dangerous. But if the person in question is likely to be his
nephew, he will probably choose to forget about the ideological threats.
Of course, no sane North Korean leader would ever agree to send students to the
US or to South Korea. However, there are many countries that are far more
acceptable for them. The Australian National University a few years ago had a
course for North Korean postgraduate students who studied modern economics and
financial management. Australia or Canada or New Zealand might be good places
for such programs.
While English-language education is preferable, since English is the language
of international communication in East Asia, there is a place for European
countries as well, especially smaller ones, whose names do not sound too
offensive to the Pyongyang bureaucrats - such as Switzerland or Hungary or
Austria.
Such programs should be sponsored by those countries whose stakes are the
highest, such as the US, Japan and South Korea, but smaller and more distant
countries also should consider sponsoring such an undertaking. This is not a
waste of money, nor even a good-looking humanitarian gesture for its own sake.
As history has shown many times, former students tend to be sympathetic to the
country where they once studied, and they normally keep some connections there.
North Korea has great potential, and when things start moving, those graduates
are likely to be catapulted to high places, since people with modern education
are so few in North Korea. This means countries that consider small investments
in scholarships for North Koreans will eventually get large benefits through
important connections and sympathies that their business people, engineers and
scholars will find in some important offices of post-Kim North Korea.
Scholarships for North Korean students are not the only form of academic
exchanges. North Korean scientists and scholars should be invited to Western
universities, and books and digital materials should be donated to major North
Korean libraries in large numbers. Of course, only selected people with special
clearances are allowed to read non-technical Western publications in North
Korea, but they are exactly the people who will matter when things start
moving.
It is well known that students and academics who come back from longtime
overseas trips are routinely submitted to rigorous ideological retraining upon
their return to North Korea. But does it help? Unlikely. If anything, heavy
doses of obviously nonsensical propaganda make a great contrast with what they
have learned and seen, thus putting North Korean society in an even less
favorable light.
Of course, they will not say anything improper when they come back home, but
they will see that there are other ways of life, they will see how
impoverished, bleak and hyper-controlled their lives are, and they will think
how to change this. Sooner or later, these people will become a catalyst for
transformation - and their skills will help to ease the pains of the post-Kim
revival of North Korea.
Dr Andrei Lankov is an associate professor in Kookmin University, Seoul,
and adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacifica and Asian
Studies, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State
University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea.
He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.
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