Andrei Lankov: Changing North Korea
[Andrei Lankov is professor of history at Kookmin University, in Seoul. This article was adapted from an essay in the Nov./Dec. issue of Foreign Affairs.]
When it comes to dealing with North Korea, the United States and its allies have no efficient methods of coercion at their disposal; the regime is remarkably immune to outside pressure. Its leaders cannot afford change, so they make sure their state continues to be an international threat, using nuclear blackmail as a survival tactic while their unlucky subjects endure more poverty and terror.
Since outside pressure is ineffective, change will have to come from the North Koreans themselves. The United States and its allies can best help them by exposing them to the very attractive alternatives to their current way of life.
This is a well-tested approach: It is, essentially, the one that allowed liberal democracies to win the Cold War. Americans sometimes credit containment with cracking the Soviet Union, but it was the West’s economic prosperity and political freedom that irrevocably undermined popular support for Communism. This approach might be even more efficient in the case of North Korea.
Aware of their vulnerability, North Korean leaders have taken information control to extremes unprecedented even among Communist dictatorships. Since the late 1950s, it has been a crime for a North Korean to possess a tunable radio. Private trips overseas are exceptional, even for government officials. North Korea is the only country without Internet access for the general public. These measures seek to ensure that the public believes the official portrayal of North Korea as an island of happiness in an ocean of suffering.
To crack Pyongyang’s control over information and bring about pressure for change from within, truth and information should be introduced into North Korean society. As the Cold War demonstrated, cultural exchanges can be effective in transferring forbidden knowledge and fostering critical thinking. Exchanges can also bring young members of the North Korean intelligentsia into contact with the outside world. Away from police surveillance (and close to Internet-equipped computers), they would learn much about the true workings of the world...
Read entire article at NYT
When it comes to dealing with North Korea, the United States and its allies have no efficient methods of coercion at their disposal; the regime is remarkably immune to outside pressure. Its leaders cannot afford change, so they make sure their state continues to be an international threat, using nuclear blackmail as a survival tactic while their unlucky subjects endure more poverty and terror.
Since outside pressure is ineffective, change will have to come from the North Koreans themselves. The United States and its allies can best help them by exposing them to the very attractive alternatives to their current way of life.
This is a well-tested approach: It is, essentially, the one that allowed liberal democracies to win the Cold War. Americans sometimes credit containment with cracking the Soviet Union, but it was the West’s economic prosperity and political freedom that irrevocably undermined popular support for Communism. This approach might be even more efficient in the case of North Korea.
Aware of their vulnerability, North Korean leaders have taken information control to extremes unprecedented even among Communist dictatorships. Since the late 1950s, it has been a crime for a North Korean to possess a tunable radio. Private trips overseas are exceptional, even for government officials. North Korea is the only country without Internet access for the general public. These measures seek to ensure that the public believes the official portrayal of North Korea as an island of happiness in an ocean of suffering.
To crack Pyongyang’s control over information and bring about pressure for change from within, truth and information should be introduced into North Korean society. As the Cold War demonstrated, cultural exchanges can be effective in transferring forbidden knowledge and fostering critical thinking. Exchanges can also bring young members of the North Korean intelligentsia into contact with the outside world. Away from police surveillance (and close to Internet-equipped computers), they would learn much about the true workings of the world...