By Chad 0Carroll

Last week we published the first part of an extensive interview by KEI’s Chad 0Carroll with Dr. Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University on the prospects for economic reform in North Korea. In the second part of the interview Chad discusses with Dr. Lankov what the U.S. can do to encourage reform in North Korea, why Myanmar style reforms are unlikely, and why it is doubtful that reunification between North and South Korea will occur though a negotiated process.

Korea Economic Institute (KEI): This year we’ve seen reports that North Korea’s authorization of migrations to China for business purposes has been at its highest rate ever. That obviously comes with some risk, but why do you think North Korea is willing to now legally allow so many of its nationals to China for business purposes?

Andrei Lankov (AL): Obviously they want to control the migration because simultaneously they dramatically increased security on the border. Illegal crossing of the border has never been that difficult – never. A lot of border guards – very thorough control. So they obviously prefer to let people out, because they know who gets out, and they prefer to maintain control over people whom they know, whom they can to some extent trust, and whom they can blackmail if necessary. And they understand that such cross border movement is an important safety valve. Without such cross border movement, the economic situation of North Korea will become even more difficult.

KEI: Moving forward, is there any way the US can encourage reform in North Korea?

AL: Well, I don’t think so. I don’t think much can be done about it. As usual, I favor all kinds of exchanges, as well as support for broadcast and production of digital material to be smuggled inside North Korea and so on. In short, we should welcome everything which brings information about the outside world within the reach of the average North Korean, and especially the lower parts of the North Korean elite. However, it’s not a wonder bullet, but just a way to speed up the ongoing changes. And, of course, a policy of pressure doesn’t work well. So if Americans become more reconciliatory and less pushy, it will probably slightly increase chance for reform. But I would not be too optimistic. Right now I believe that as long as former advisors to Kim Jong-il remain in actual control of the young dictator, nothing is going to happen. It will be more of the same. Then, when Kim Jong-un takes actual power, and this is bound to happen eventually, things might change. But once again, reforms in North Korea should not be perceived as a dawn of a beautiful, shiny era of economic growth and gradual transformation. It might be the case, but I believe it’s much more likely that such reforms will be a sign of a dramatic and bloody crisis to happen soon.

KEI: So you would say the notion of Myanmar style reforms is probably quite unlikely then?

AL: Once again, Myanmar, Iran, China, Vietnam – none of these countries is a divided country. Their leaders can afford to be soft on the populace. In Myanmar, reforms are not really that dangerous, because even if this leads to collapse of the current regime, a vast majority of the current Myanmar elite is likely to enjoy a very comfortable retirement. North Korean elite, well, they’re much less certain about their future, because if they’re going to be overthrown, it’s quite likely that the country will be swallowed by the triumph from the South, and they believe, probably without much reason, but they do believe nonetheless that they will be pushed aside or maybe punished for their future misdeeds by their own subjects and the triumphant South Koreans.

KEI: In terms of unification, where we are currently standing – what do you think is more likely going forward? A unification scenario with the South Koreans, perhaps a few decades from now, or a further cementing of division, and perhaps creation of a Chinese client state?

AL: I would say that I do not believe, most emphatically don’t believe, in the gradual negotiated unification. In Korea it is plain impossible. Its unfortunate that majority of South Korean politicians either sincerely believe in such a probability, or behave as if they do believe it. The only event which might open way to unification, essentially, is a regime collapse in North Korea. However, even regime collapse will not necessarily produce unification, because it might lead to a Chinese intervention and an emergence of a pro-Chinese puppet state, probably under the same name of the DPRK, with the same constitution, the same coat of arms – everything remains as not ostensibly, but such government will operate under complete or near complete Chinese control. If this happens, unification is likely to be postponed for a long time, or perhaps forever, because now in South Korea and to some extent in North Korea we see the slow emergence of two different nations, two different identities. So far, this process seems to be reversible. But I am not so sure whether it will be reversible in twenty or thirty years’ time. After all, many of the present day nations emerged as a result of political division, which looked rather artificial, then it first happened. Look at Arab countries, or for that matter, countries of South America. The initial division was absolutely arbitrary, but they have eventually developed their own identities, they have become completely separate countries. It has not happened in Korea yet, but in the long run, it’s not impossible.

KEI: Frankly speaking, do you think, from your experience of being in South Korea, the average person on the street worried about the future of their family livelihood and so forth – do you think they would prefer the two countries to stay separate with the possible risk that North Korea does become that Chinese client state? Or ultimately that it’s more advantageous for them for an eventual unification for the two?

AL: I believe the average Korean will get much from unification. The problem is, however, that the positive results of unification will come in the long run. The immediate result will be economic hardships and a great deal of social disturbance and friction. Then, the first positive results might show in a couple of decades, if not later. For the average South Korean, it might be too lengthy. It essentially means that South Koreans should sacrifice their lives for the better lives of their children and grandchildren. I am not sure whether they are ready to make this sacrifice, especially now, when they increasingly perceive North Korea as a foreign country, whose population just happens to speak Korean as their native language.

KEI: You mentioned that reform is not possible in the North because the elites believe it would lead to collapse and an unsecure future for them. Would not a negotiated reunification allow them to secure their own future status and avoid the peril of reform or the failure to reform leading to the collapse they fear?

AL: I am afraid, not. They will not believe such security guarantees – and, I would admit, with good reason. Do you remember what has happened to South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan? He also relinquished power on the conditions of personal security, but nonetheless he stood the trial in less than a decade. And South Korean military strongmen were harmless kittens if compared to the North Korean dictators. Once the former deeds of these people will become widely known, they are in trouble. There will be a public pressure from below to punish them, and it will make perfect political sense to make them scapegoats as well. While I support the idea of general amnesty in the case of regime collapse, I do not see why the North Korean leaders would take initiative in negotiating such a dangerous deal.

KEI: For the final question, I’d like to pick you up on something you said in 2007. You said a “sudden death or even a serious illness of Kim Jong-il is almost certain to trigger a serious crisis.  If this happens, all bets are off, but it seems that the collapse of the system, Romanian or East German style, is one of the most likely outcomes.” Why do you think this didn’t happen, and do you still think it’s a risk in the imminent future?

AL: It still remains a risk, but I was wrong because I underestimated the cohesion and the unity of the North Korean elite – and of course it is important that in 2010 Kim Jong-Il appointed a successor. Kim Jong-un is clearly a young and inexperienced leader, who just a couple of years ago, was a complete unknown. Nonetheless, he is seen as a symbol of unity, and the North Korean decision-makers, few hundred families who have been running the country for 60 years by now, they understand that they have to hang together in order not to be hanged separately. So they have demonstrated impressive unity so far. But once again, if the new leaders choose to start reforming the country, it will become very unstable. They might find a right proportion of terror and material rewards to stay in control. They might succeed, but it’s a very risky game.

KEI: Do you think we still have a potential for the Kim regime to be around in say, two or three decades from now?

AL: Yes, I do. If they behave carefully, there are three options why they can be around in, say, 2040. First, they might choose to strictly follow Kim Jong-Il’s line, not to change anything – use clever diplomacy and nuclear blackmail to squeeze unconditional aid from the outside world, to silence dissent. If they do so, with some luck they will muddle through, and they can stay in control for another few decades. The second option is that they will take the risky gamble of reforms and succeed – frankly, against my expectations. They will start reform, and will find the right balance of police control, terror, persuasion and, of course, economic incentives. It will be very difficult to find and maintain such balance, it will be an exercise in rope-walking, and personally I don’t think they will succeed – but who knows? Maybe they will. If so, Kim Jong-un will still be in control of his people, as an aging strongman of a developmental dictatorship. The third option – China will take over. Maybe as a result of crisis, maybe as a result of some deal between North Korea elite and Chinese government may be as a result of some other circumstances. If so, we are going to see a puppet state, which is still likely to be run by the same Kim family, and will use the same rhetoric and ideology, which will be very similar to the North Korea of today ostensibly.  However, for all practical reasons, it will be a classical developmental dictatorship, more or less similar to present-day China, or South Korea of the 1960s, or Taiwan of the 1970s, and will be controlled by China (pretty much like countries of Eastern Europe were once controlled by the Soviet Union).

Photo from expertinfantry’s photo stream on flickr Creative Commons.

By Chad 0Carroll

The death Kim Jong-il has rekindled debates about the prospects for Korean unification following a period of relatively little public discussion on the matter in South Korean circles.  As a result of the difficulties that Kim Jong-un is anticipated to encounter in cementing his hold on power in coming months, some analysts have suggested that reunification may now be one step closer.  But on the other hand, some believe that North Korea is showing signs of stability under Kim Jong un, whose government appears “stable, dynamic, and here to stay.”  The two analyses offer dramatically different implications for the longtime goal of unification, especially in light of changing national attitudes and circumstances, both sides of the DMZ.

For South Korea, unification costs have been estimated from between a few hundred billion to one trillion dollars, with the larger numbers reflective of a rapid-style model for unification.   These are significant numbers and play a large part in understanding why just 35 percent of 19 to 40 year olds see the goal as an important contemporary political issue in South Korea.  Faced with an uncertain global economic outlook, it is easy to understand why younger generations, so detached from the people of the North, might want to postpone unification as long as possible.  To some degree, it appears the government shares the same opinion, with Deputy Unification Minister Kim Chun Sig recently explaining, “We don’t want the North to collapse. Our plan calls for: first creating peace, then cooperation, then a confederation, then unity.”  However, even creating peace as a first step towards achieving unification seems a long way off in the current environment.  And the longer the first steps of reunification are delayed, the more the financial costs will likely be for South Korea when it eventually happens.

But what if circumstances soon emerge that put the idea of imminent reunification centre stage in South Korea?  The death of Kim Jong-il certainly provided a stark reminder that an unpredictable neighbor lies just 30 miles from Seoul.  And as the downfall of the German Democratic Republic in 1989 showed, unification from collapse can come unexpectedly and move extremely quickly.  If the Pyongyang government were to collapse in the short-to-medium term, then how would South Korea deal with what could be a rapidly moving and extremely costly unification process? Minister Kim recently explained, “That is also a very sensitive question. Let’s put it this way: Perhaps the North Koreans could remain in their homeland, yes? And we will help them.”

If South Korea is to either slowly integrate North Korea, or “help” the North Korean people remain in their homeland post-collapse, then it is going to need money – and lots of it. The idea of 23 million people added to the Seoul’s current portfolio of responsibility will require significant support.  Perhaps in anticipation of this problem, Lee Myung-bak announced his “Vision 3000” process upon entering office, with the goal of raising North Korean per capita income to $3,000 in exchange for denuclearization.  Had it been agreed to it would have helped reduce income differences between the two countries and reduced Seoul’s immediate fiscal burden in any future unification process.  But given the importance North Korea places on its nuclear arsenal, observers correctly predicted that Pyongyang was always going to reject the “Vision 3000” proposal.

More pragmatic ideas have since emerged, though.  In 2010 President Lee touted the introduction of a reunification tax to help cover potential costs, and the following year Unification Minister Yu Woo-Ik suggested the creation of a voluntary “unification jar” to bank an extra $50 billion to help cover the transition.  But while Seoul is currently working out the details for Lee’s unification tax, recent leaks to The Korea Times have suggested that it might only raise $11 billion, well short of the $1 trillion some predict unification will cost.   And although Yu Woo Ik’s plan to create a “unification jar” aims to raise nearly five times more money than the tax, it now lies at an impasse – with discussions stopped due to opposition from the Democratic United Party.  These efforts to address the financial aspect of unification should be welcomed, but they must be built upon – and quickly. After all, if a collapse situation does emerge, then it seems that South Korea is not currently in an optimum financial position to deal with the problem.

But it is not just a financial concern, for social and cultural differences between North and South Korea continue to grow at a rapid pace. North Koreans remain cut off from the rest of the world, for the most part used to a lifestyle that would be better matched to 1970s – not 21^st century – South Korea. Already there are significant differences between the Korean language spoken on both sides of the border, and the longer the nation remains divided, the more substantial these and other societal differences become.  While Andrei Lankov has accepted that unification is at least “possible” in the next few years, he still contends that it is far more likely to take place several decades from now.  If this is the case and the various differences between the two Koreas continue to grow, might the distinction between the two Korean identities become so strong that unification one day becomes an irrelevant goal for the people of both states?

A recent survey by the Peace Research Institute asked respondents in the ROK whether or not they still viewed North Koreans as sharing the same state and ethnicity. Some 44.1% said that they were beginning to view the DPRK as a separate state, while 30.2% said that instead of viewing North Korans as their ethnic brethren, they now saw them as just foreign as Chinese people.  These statistics corroborate with other analyses that suggest ambivalence from the South Korean public can easily shift for or against the goal of unification, dependent on the contemporary political climate.  While the leadership of South Korea continues to tout unification as a lofty national goal, it appears that beneath the surface, many South Koreans are actually losing their appetite to publically call for meaningful action in this area.  The take home point from all of this is that the longer the status quo remains, the stronger this ambivalence is likely to become.  And the stronger the feelings become, the more chance there is that some day a South Korean politician will emerge who publically opposes unification – something that could prove to be a real turning point in the unification discourse.  Consequently, if Lankov’s prediction that it could take several decades until the Pyongyang government collapses proves correct, then it would not be inconceivable to imagine Southern yearning for unification to have become so intangible by then that the two states remain divided forever.

Just as time may be changing opinions in the South, it is quite plausible that the same effect is replicating itself in the North, too.  While we do know that unification does remain a goal in the state’s official propaganda, little is known about what the general population really thinks.  Recent KBS interviews with defectors paint a mixed picture.  On the one hand, interest in unification remains high in North Korea, with 97 of 102 defectors saying they really want unification.  On the other hand, there seem to be mixed opinions on the prospects for unification – 27 defectors thought it would happen within 10 years, 6 within 20 years, and 23 within 30 years.  Tellingly, 46 defectors said they thought unification would never happen.  What explains the fact that 46 defectors think unification is so unlikely?

North Korea’s isolation is undoubtedly on the decrease, with information about daily life in South Korea penetrating the North more than ever before.  But with little to go on, North Korean perceptions are often framed through the bizarre combination of vehemently anti-ROK propaganda and the distorted reality of South Korea’s mega-hit soap operas and dramas.  Quite how this impacts North Korea’s yearning for unification is hard to judge, but it is quite conceivable that South Korea might feel just as alien to the average North Korean as does North Korea to the average South Korean citizen.  And the more Korean culture continues to grow apart, the more this sense of difference will increase from a North Korean perspective.  Might this explain why 46 defectors living in South Korea think that unification is now something that looks likely to never happen?

With projected costs continuing to rise, the cultures of the two Koreas growing further apart, and an increasingly apathetic South Korean public (possibly in North Korea, too), the longevity of the Pyongyang government will have a significant impact on the prospects for Korean reunification.  If there is a collapse of the DPRK political system in the short to medium term, huge resources and commitment will  need to be allocated by the South to ensure a smooth integration process.   And if a collapse doesn’t happen and North Korea remains in its current form for decades, then the prospects for unification will be come dimmer and dimmer if South Korean politicians do not put more effort into educating their younger generations about the benefits and advantages the process can offer.

 Chad 0Carroll is the Director of Communications for the Korea Economic Institute. The views represented here are his own.

Photo from Skinnylawyer’s photo stream on flickr Creative Commons.

By Troy Stangarone

On February 10, rumors that Kim Jong-un had been assassinated at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing began to rapidly spread across the internet. First making their way around Weibo and then jumping to Twitter, word of Kim Jong-un’s death eventually spread as far as the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but would later be debunked by news organizations such as CNN. Looking back, it’s fair to ask why a seemingly unfounded rumor that Kim Jong-un had been assassinated would seem so believable and spread so quickly, but perhaps more importantly what it would have meant for South Korea had it been true?

The first part is fairly easy to answer. While Twitter and other social media have allowed for the quick dissemination of information, they also tend to the spread false information because they lack the formal vetting process of traditional news sources. Kim Jong-un is not the only living person to have died on Twitter in the past year, as one news organization created a Top 10 list of celebrates killed off by Twitter.

On one level, the news was believable because in many ways North Korea is a mixture of Shakespearean drama unfolding in real life. It is not hard to imagine Kim Jong-un as an indecisive leader or figure head in the mold of Hamlet with plotting relatives and elders (the military) around him calling the shots. Nor, that at the first hint of a move to claim his rightful throne that they would seek to eliminate him first. In fact, the idea that Kim Jong-un may merely be the face of a regime run by others and lacking in his own ability to lead is in many ways how the outside world views him.

Because of the lack of openness in North Korea, it is not hard for people’s minds to wander and to wonder if rumors like this just might be true, even if there is little substance to back it up because it fits with preconceived notions of Kim Jong-un and North Korea. Even when Kim Jong-il died in December there was an inclination for some to think that it must have been a coup, because he had seemed in good health recently and the regime has a history of doctoring the truth, setting aside that heart failure can impact even those in seemingly good health. So, if Russia “is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” as Winston Churchill famously said, North Korea is more like a fun house mirror in black hole. Seemingly no information escapes and what we think we see can often be distorted. As long as we lack information about North Korea there will likely continue to be an inclination to believe rumors such as this.

The more substantive issue is what an assassination would have meant for South Korea. Because our real knowledge of the inner workings and the stability of the regime in Pyongyang is so sparse, it’s difficult to know for sure what a real assassination would mean for stability on the peninsula. The military might be able to hold the regime together, perhaps with Kim Jong-nam returning with Chinese support to keep a Kim family member at the front of the regime. However, an assassination could quickly lead to the dissolution of the regime, at which point it becomes a question of whether the process of unification begins or China supports a new strongman to try and maintain North Korea as a buffer state between itself and U.S. troops in South Korea.

If the regime began to fall apart, Seoul would likely have to move quickly. In many ways, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and German reunification might end up looking like a slow and orderly process in comparison to reunification in Korea. Much of the public planning to date has focused on a more gradual process. In an article in Der Spiegel one Korean official notes that “We don’t want the North to collapse. Our plan calls for: first creating peace, then cooperation, then a confederation, then unity.” The challenge for Seoul is that should an assassination occur unity might come before peace or cooperation, looking more like regime change in Libya than reunification in German.

Fortunately, the rumors of Kim Jong-un’s passing proved to be premature, but they are an important reminder that things could change at any moment in North Korea. Ultimately, this will require flexibility on the part of Seoul and Washington, especially since Beijing is unwilling to discuss how best to handle change in North Korea.  That might be the real lesson from the latest passing on Twitter.

Troy Stangarone is the Senior Director for Congressional Affairs and Trade at the Korea Economic Institute. The views expressed here are his own.

Photo from Viola Violante’s photostream on flickr Creative Commons.