Over at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), Dr. Andrei Lankov discusses the “natural death of Stalinism in North Korea.” Here’s the executive summary:
The last fifteen years have witnessed the gradual wearing away of North Korean Stalinism. The collapse of the centrally planned economy has resulted in the unprecedented revival of small business. The corruption and gradual disintegration of the bureaucracy have led to considerable relaxation of police control. North Korea’s self-imposed information blockade has been broken,
and uncensored information about the outside world is flowing in. Thus, while North Korea remains under authoritarian rule, the polity can no longer be described as “Stalinist.”
Policy Implications
– Encouraging the gradual disintegration of Stalinism would help make North Korea more predictable and would pave the way for a democratic transition in the future.
– The new situation has created opportunities to communicate with common North Koreans, opportunities that can be exploited by the outside world.
– Large-scale economic ventures spearheaded by the United States and other foreign businesses in the North would likely only generate income for the elite and could even support nuclear development and other military projects; small-scale activities, on the other hand, would help engage the North Korean people and expose them to the outside world.
Read the rest on your own.
(Hat tip to reader)
23 Comments
I wonder how much he gets from Pyongyang?
Are you suggesting Dr. Lankov is a North Korean shill?
The best tactic still seems to be to aid defectors and cut off the income from drug smuggling, weapons sales and counterfeiting. The ideological labels are meaningless — N.K. is a straight up military dictatorship, Kim Jongill set that up years ago when he moved the power base from the Workers Party to the military. Lankov is the expert, but I doubt that small businesses have taken root in N.K. to the extent he and others say. I think the military controls the economy.
I like his idea of subverting through small means. Would it work in the long run? Maybe not, but at least if business was done with small operators, connecting with them in China, maybe some of the benefits would at least mostly go to average North Koreans rather than the elite. Let the elite rot under sanctions and sneak in cash, goods and subversive information through any way possible.
Yes. He seems consistently opposite a lot of other people who have basically the same amount of knowledge as he does. And he’s not a South Korean or a North Korean. And as far as I know, he’s not Bruce Cumings with a native-American axe to grind. It would not suprise me at all if he has a fat bank account somewhere and a telephone number on speed dial in Pyongyang.
The sanctions on the banks is the first real move I can think of since the heavy fuel oil stopped flowing. I’m not convinced it is the best route to make, but it seems like the best route if we want to more toward some resolution — with the alternative being the status quo - which is what China and South Korea are happy to live with, but I’m not.
I’d like to see the US do what others here suggested, but I’d step it up even more than perhaps others would.
I’d make North Korea look like the dumping ground for all unsold Office Depot gadgets that facilitate the easy transfer of information and with a size small enough to be hidden fairly easily. I’d pump so much computer and other electroic hardware into the North, people who wanted to pass along the information could fairly easily.
And the kind of information I’d be pumping in would be things like South Korean soap operas, sit-coms with Korean translations from any of the developed western nations, stuff from the Discovery Channel —– all kinds of what would be utterly benign in any other nation besides North Korea —- and when North Korea went screaming on TV for a global audience about the bastard Americans trying to destroy North Korea, and people in the South and the US and elsewhere start joining in with the complaint, I’d point out they are attacking The Discovery Channel in order to protect the most neo-feudal regime on the planet.
But, something else I’d do I can’t remember anybody at the Marmot’s old or new hole having said before is —
—-I’d find a way to make contact with some of the middle to higher ups in the nation, people with influence over the military especially —– and I’d let them know they will have a golden parachute available if they help end the regime or refused to slaughter the North Korean people if they started to rise up.
I guess North Korea could come unglued without out — that if enough people started to revolt, the whole thing could come crashing down enough to allow outsiders to step in and help put it on a different path — toward joining the outside world for real.
But, I would bet that it will take getting some of the key regime supporters — at some fairly high level — to understand at least that if they refuse to help the Kim regime when it might crumble, they will not be killed by the Americans or the North Koreans once the dust settles.
This might mean spiriting away to some third nation people who deserve to go to jail or die, but it might be a better alternative than to have those people throw in their lot with Kim Jong Il because they see death as the only alternative.
Examples? Anyway, if Pyongyang is paying Dr. Lankov, they’re not watching what they’re doing with their money: he’s very critical of the North Korean regime and the South Korean leftists who apologize for it.? In fact, this is the first time ever I’ve heard anyone accuse Lankov of being a North Korean lackey, and frankly, I find it laughable.
“It would not suprise me at all if he has a fat bank account somewhere and a telephone number on speed dial in Pyongyang.”
Well, frankly the speed dial does not work any more. Obviously, Comr. Ryu and Col. Ree overreacted when they were ordered to cut down communication channels with the outside world. But it will be restored soon, I am sure…
“But, something else I?? do I can?? remember anybody at the Marmot?? old or new hole having said before is ??I?? find a way to make contact with some of the middle to higher ups in the nation, people with influence over the military especially ????and I?? let them know they will have a golden parachute available if they help end the regime or refused to slaughter the North Korean people if they started to rise up.”
On more serious note. I cannot agree more! It’s cynical, but this is a necssary compromise. As a matter of fact, I just finished a large article in Korean which argues along the same lines (”they are cornered, so give them an exit option! they are bastards, but historical justice is a fiction while people who will be killed or starved to death are real people! general amnesty for all NK officials, with perhaps some lustrations for those who were invloved with the worst crimes!”). It will be published by DailyNK next week, I assume, and I am ready to read a lot of angry comments in their forum.
Accusing Andrei Lankov of being a paid shill for North Korea has got to be one of the strangest comments I have ever read here, and considering the people who comment here, that’s saying a lot.
Marmot, thanks for posting this. It’s useful for some research work that I’m (still) doing with a couple of Korean professors on Korean Reunification.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Yes. I agree. I went for the typical kind of muckraking that gives the internet a bad name. Chastisement duly noted and accepted.
I will stand behind the idea of being overly optimistic and against the grain of much of what you hear outside of South Korea and occasionally in the news. If I had read this in 2000 or 2001 or 2002, it would have sounded like the chorus, but today?……
Hasn’t much of the talk most recently been about North Korea moving to reimpose tighter control on the business sector like rice distribution and local markets that came about through the starvation period of the 1990s?
Hasn’t the government also moved to reassert control over the movement of people that also rose up not because the government reformed but out of an inability to control it during the worst of the famine when too many people decided they were already starving and had little to lose if they disobeyed?
Isn’t kicking out the NGOs part of this reassertion of authority and a police state and curbing the reach of the outside world into North Korea?
On uncensored information flowing in, is not the flow of information contrary to the effort of the regime? Can you really call it “uncensored” when it is being done on the grassroots level and under threat of the authorities?
For example, if the story about some of the cheerleaders being put in the gulag for talking about the South is true, how does that mesh with the idea North Korea has progressed beyond the Stalinist level? Or, in the recent CNN-hosted documentary where the woman talked about the authorities catching people with illegal South Korean soap operas by turning off the power to the house so the owner could not get the tape out of the VCR before the police broke in to check. Or, in the same documentary they woman talking about how the government, in response to the anti-Kim Il Sung banner being hung under that bridge, some 60 families in the area had been sent to islands. The gulags still exist, and I haven’t read where the government is talking about shutting them down.
If North Korea has progressed beyond being a Stalinist state, what definition of Stalinism are we using?
Perhaps the confusion I have with this stems from an understanding of the direction of the flow of change. Top down or bottom up.
But, if we are focused on the bottom up changes, it causes a problem for me to say the Stalinism is at an end. Isn’t a Stalinist state top down? Even if the regime has not been able to reassert its control to the level it had before the famine disrupted the whole society, it has moved, especially in the last couple of years, to reassert that control, hasn’t it? How can we say a nation has passed beyond Stalinism when it does that or when it maintains the gulags?
It should be “Kim Jong Il banner” and I meant to mention the ban on cellphones in that paragraph too…
“In fact, this is the first time ever I??e heard anyone accuse Lankov of being a North Korean lackey, and frankly, I find it laughable.”
Though I still admit wholeheartedly I shoved my rather long foot squarely into my mouth, not every form of cooperation you would expect to find with the North under the table is going to look like the spokesmen for the pro-North Koreans in Japan that are regarded as Pyongyang’s outside line to the world. If you want to target an audience in the US and Western Europe for influence, you would want someone who could reach out in the mainstream academic community but also influence it away from policy the North does not like or toward those it does. That would not require a lackey, but a subtle hand.
I was trying to find the article from some weeks to months ago I had in mind when first reading and commenting on this post. I couldn’t find it, and I don’t remember the details other than this — it seemed so different from other things I had heard about NK recently, I emailed it to somebody I know spends much more time on NK issues than me to see what he thought.
Anyway, in the unsuccessful search for that article, I ran across one I had read but did not remember — which I wish I would have, because it makes the snide comment I made here make me look like even more of a gigantic ass —- but re-reading it, it leaves me more perplexed than before…
Aid Strengthens Kims Regime
http://www.cacda.org.cn/englis.....asp?ID=125
“The recent news out of North Korea leaves no room for doubt. After a decade of grudgingly allowing small-scale free markets, Kim Jong Ils regime is seeking to reimpose total control.”
Definately not something Kim Jong Il would have wanted to pay for….
…..but how does that article mesh with this one???
>
The short answer: long term and (hopefully) short term trends. Long term trend is the gradual erosion of the regime, but over the last year or so, since 2005 summer, they try to tighten things up. It remains to be seen if they are going to be successful or not. I hope not.
In regard to the remark “If North Korea has progressed beyond being a Stalinist state, what definition of Stalinism are we using?”. This is the question. The word “Stalinism” has been (ab)used so much that it has become nearly meaningless. But, I believe, not because it does not reflect some social phenomenon, but simply because it is used extensively and emotionally. In the article I discussed the issue breifly.
By the way, for those who read Russian: you are welcome to read a long trend in a Russian forum on contemporary Asia where they discuss whether I am a [US] State Department paid hand and how much I get from the CIA for my writings. Not a joke, you are welcome to have a look
http://polusharie.com/index.php/topic,8293.0.html
Yes. As I said, I made a gigantic ass of myself in the first two comments. I usually hold to my rule of not making a comment shorter than a paragraph, because if you don’t do that, you don’t really make a point even if you have one, and I didn’t really have one beyond how this article reminded me one from some weeks to a couple of months ago that seemed very out of place with what else was being said — with the rest of what was being said was exactly what what you wrote in the last article I linked to about the government moving to curb reform.
I still have a hard time reconciling the two sets of ideas exhibited in the article that started the thread and the one from Dec.
It was that way when reading the definition of Stalinism in the latest piece.
Of the signs of Stalinism –
“a system of mass terror”
“an extreme mobilizational model of economic growth, tied to goals of achieving military power and the political consequences thereof”
“a heterogenous value system that favored economic status and power stratification, fostered extraordinary cultural uniformity, and was tied to extreme nationalism”
“a system of personal dictatorship”
I am not a North Korea expert or read extensively the latest material on the topic, but it would suprise me if these things are no longer a characteristic of the society. With the note on the economy, since the North’s industry has deteriorated so much, it might be hard to judge, but I would think continuing the military first policy steadfastly would fall in there.
And then there was the first quote –
“??s the Gulag emptied in the late 1950s, the USSR remained a society which treated its citizens badly by Western standards, but ceased to be a society which imprisoned and killed its citizens on a uniquely massive scale.”
The gulags in the North haven’t emptied, and I’m not sure about killing the citizens in mass either considering the move to kick out NGOs. I would think we’d have to see if famine conditions return and how the regime handles it this time compared to the 1990s. (And in the CNN aired special, the people who made it said the refugees were saying starvation conditions similar to the start of the famine in the 1990s were returning).
I would guess the starvation of the 1990s and the loss of prestige that went with the death of the father Kim have altered the society much, but especially if a person had little to no knowledge of North Korea, I would think reading the article they would get the idea North Korea is a misunderstood place that isn’t so bad after all.
And one thing I was curious about — “The centrally planned economy has ceased to exist, government control over the population has been undermined to such an extent that even cross-border movements are now unmonitored.”
I haven’t heard anything like that. The only thing I can think of related to the border I’ve heard in the last few months was about the possibility of NK guards raiding a place in China and more recently the possibility of attacks on NK guard stations on the border.
I would have thought if the border with China were unmonitored, there would have been a flood of refugees drastically above what was seen in the 1990s and it would be talked about a great deal….
Prof Lankov’s analysis does seem relatively optimistic, but it was fascinating and he made a lot of good points. It really does seem that a lot of cracks have begun to appear, and though there are the camps and plenty of nastiness continues, it seems that KJI and cohorts don’t have the kind of control they had in the past. Lankov is suggesting that we push ahead with ’small measures’ that can help average Norks and push ahead with small subversions, such as radio and communications to widen the cracks further. At the same time, he recommends against doing the big projects that only help the leadership, so he presents some interesting possibilities. I hardly think he’s painting the place as some kind of paradise, but it does seem to have changed a great deal from it’s severely Stalinist days. They’re still trying to be that way, but it doesn’t seem to work to the same degree anymore. He seems to be saying that KJI and his pukes are losing it, slowly but surely.
“Andrei Nikolaich…” ~ doesn’t sound too much like a fellow on the CIA payroll.
The problem I have with the suggestion of doing small projects with the non-regime elite is I don’t imagine the regime going for it. Maybe Chinese business people, but I wonder how the US and Western Europe or even South Korea would fair if it tried to say it wanted economic engagement with the middle class?
I also just can’t come to grips with the idea the Stalinist, or whatever terminology used, worse days are gone. Does loss of control count in that sense? Does the fact the people are increasingly more disillusioned than they were under Kim Il Sung warrant much optimism?
Not too long ago, there was a lot of optimism placed on the idea of Kim Jong Il and a group of younger technocrats were going to lead to a refashioning of the society. Now it is hope in a grass roots peaceful revolution or evolution. I haven’t seen enough to put my money on either.
I don’t like the chances fundamental change will come without a rougher collapse than what happened in the Soviet Union in large part because it seems to me the Pyongyang regime has long been much more successful in making a dictatorial state and controlling the people in large part due to its geography and size.
I’m not sure exactly what Lankov is proposing, but in my mind, small measures would be more ‘underground’ support, not anything negotiated with the elite. Put resoures into undermining the elite via North Koreans in China, in terms of business and communications and stuff like that. Don’t ask me how, as I’m just speculating (and I’m definitely no expert). But maybe there are ways, as in Iran, of promoting subversion stealthily. As things seem at a standstill these days, it seems like a good idea to try to quietly undermine KJI in some way. Mind you, again, this may not be easy to accomplish as China would not agree to anything.
My guess is that it would be easy to get a lot of small, technology driven devices into Korea and passing around a lot of infomation including multimedia. I saw where one of the top computer groups is making a small, cheap self-powered computer that you can crank. I imagine with some imagination and help from computer makers, the intel community could pump a lot of resources into North Korea. I think I said above I’d turn North Korea into the dumping ground of the latest from Office Depot and even cutting edge stuff most people in the US can’t afford now. I wouldn’t even make it that covert — meaning I wouldn’t care if NK’s news agency started showing captured stuff and screaming about America undermining it, because the intel I would pump is would be typical American, French, British, Japanese, and especially South Korean television and movies and documentaries. Not a bunch of CIA psych opts stuff. Just run of the mill stuff, because North Korea has planted the seeds of its downfall in its very success and excess.
There is a risk to the outside world in trying to bring down the internal downfall of North Korea. The alternative is the status quo that leaves the chance (I think much more slim than people seem to think) of them selling a nuke or nuke grade material to someone who will use it, and the continued suffering of the North Korean people indefinately.
Yes, I agree. The military options just seem extremely difficult, so trying to subvert by stealth seems to be at least a decent option. Certainly better than the Roh-nothing approach of continually giving to the elite and never receiving anything in return. The only result of Roh’s approach will be that reunification will be kicked ever further down the road, that is, if China ever lets it happen.
PyengYang is a small Disneyland where street peddlers pretend that they are independent businessmen. They are not. They just man the cart and at the end of day turn in their money to the Kim’s people. I am sure the Gaesung factory workers do the same.
Nothing much has changed. They all play the game. KJI is just waiting to eat up SK. And, under Kim’s command, these men will kill SKs without thinking twice about it.
When they kick out International food relief workers and let people starve, what has really changed? It is still KJI country.