Diplomatic Dilemma: North Korea Will Not Yield to Pressure

Pak Su Dong, manager of the Soksa-Ri cooperative farm in the area hit by recent floods and typhoons shows damage to agricultural products in the South Hwanghae province September 29, 2011. In March, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimated that 6 million
July 16, 2018 Topic: Security Region: Asia Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: North KoreaKim Jong UnNuclearWarChina

Diplomatic Dilemma: North Korea Will Not Yield to Pressure

Decades of cultural traditions and social hierarchy play a critical role in Pyongyang's resistance to Washington's tactics.

Since denuclearization talks began to take form, there has been this farcical idea that Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could somehow be a global-tourism hub and prosperous economic power if not for its nuclear program and the accompanying diplomatic pressures.

President Donald Trump, in his opening statement at the post–summit press conference in Singapore, said, “Chairman Kim has before him an opportunity like no other: to be remembered as the leader who ushered in a glorious new era of security and prosperity for his people.”

China, too, has been reporting that Kim speaks of “liberalization” when he meets with Chinese leaders. Having accomplished its nuclear goals, the Kim regime can now shift to focusing on the economy, the second half of byungjin, so the argument goes.

But whether or not Kim Jong-un really decides to open up North Korea’s economy ultimately has little to do with his nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s economic policy is domestic policy, and Kim can change it on his own with or without the consent of Americans and Chinese.

North Korea is not impoverished because of sanctions. The people of North Korea have been starving for three decades, through periods of no sanctions and sanctions, through periods of Sunshine and fire and fury. South Korea’s GDP per capita broke away from North Korea’s in the early 1970s, and the South hasn’t looked back since then.

The reason that North Korea’s GDP per capita ranks among the bottom twenty in the world and that its unemployment rate is 25 percent is because of the DPRK Workers’ Party’s oppressive, economically-illiterate policies, which stifle growth. No amount of foreign aid or investment will make a significant dent in North Korea’s economic or humanitarian outlook as long as “Dear Leader” and his cronies continue stealing aid for their own purposes, expropriating investment, breaking contracts, and clamping down on what little freedom the long-suffering people have to engage in commerce and everyday life.

Economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson documented how extractive political and economic institutions work together to impede prosperity in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. “Extractive political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power,” the book states. “Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of society. Extractive economic institutions thus naturally accompany extractive political institutions. In fact, they must inherently depend on extractive political institutions for their survival.”

There are few countries with more extractive institutions, in both politics and economics, than the Hermit Kingdom. The Kim mafia views the whole country, its government, and the people of the land as its property to be used to enrich themselves.

It keeps a harem of hundreds, or a couple of thousands, of modern-day “comfort women” who are recruited as young as thirteen years of age. Soldiers, who are conscripted for ten years of service, are made to do farming and clam digging. Ordinary citizens are arrested for watching DVDs, and gray-market traders constantly face pressure and shakedowns. In contrast, Kim Jong-il used to buy bottles of Hennessey cognac that cost $630 a piece, almost as much as the average resident of North Korea made in one year.

What modest reforms Kim Jong-un has presided over since 2011 don’t change the fundamental nature of the regime. It is still a tightly-controlled Leninist dystopia. State-directed development can work for a time, as the examples of China under Deng Xiaoping and South Korea under Park Chung-hee can attest to, but Deng and Park were both pragmatists, unconstrained by either stifling ideology like Juche or concerns about family legacy, and even their regimes were nowhere near as tyrannical as present-day North Korea.

If Kim Jong-un surprises the world and makes real, structural changes, rather than cosmetic tinkering meant to win plaudits in the press, that would be cause for celebration. But the United States and its partners should wait until they see that improbably day come with their own eyes before they let up pressure on North Korea’s human-rights abuses.

Let us remember, it was not President Nixon meeting Chairman Mao that opened China’s economy; it was the death of Mao.

Mitchell Blatt is a freelance writer, Chinese-English translator, and lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong. He has been published in The Korea Times, Silkwinds magazine, and Areo Magazine, among other outlets. He tweets at @MitchBlatt.

Image: Pak Su Dong, manager of the Soksa-Ri cooperative farm in the area hit by recent floods and typhoons shows damage to agricultural products in the South Hwanghae province September 29, 2011. In March, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimated that 6 million North Koreans needed food aid and a third of children were chronically malnourished or stunted. Rising global commodities prices, sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile programmes, and its dysfunctional food distribution system had created a hunger crisis in the North, even before devastating summer floods and typhoons compounded the emergency. Picture taken September 29, 2011. To match Special Report KOREA-NORTH/FOOD REUTERS/Damir Sagolj