B00BY4HXME EBOK (19 page)

Unfortunately for the common North Koreans, the Pyongyang leaders’ unwillingness to emulate China has very rational explanations. North Korean leaders stubbornly resist reform not because they are ideological zealots who blindly believe in the prescriptions of the Juche Idea (they do not, and the idea itself is too nebulous to be a guide to a practical policy anyway) nor because they are ignorant of the outside world. They are neither irrational nor ideological—on the contrary, they are rational to the
extreme, being, perhaps, the most perfect bunch of Machiavellians currently in operation. The North Korean leaders do not want reforms because they realize that in the specific conditions produced by the division of their country, such reforms are potentially destabilizing and, if judged from the ruling elite’s point of view, constitute the surest way of political (and, perhaps, physical) suicide.

The existence of rich and free South Korea is what makes North Korea’s situation so different from that of China or Vietnam. The regime lives next to a country whose people speak the same language and are officially described as “members of our nation,” but who enjoy a per capita income at least 15 times (some claim even 40 times) higher than that of the North Koreans.
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Even if the lowest estimate is believed, it is still by far the world’s largest per capita income difference between two countries that share a land border. To put things in perspective, the income ratio in divided Germany was merely 1:3, and even this was enough to prompt the East Germans to overthrow the regime as soon as they had an opportunity to do so without fear of Soviet retribution. If ordinary North Koreans become fully aware of the prosperity their brethren enjoy only a mere hundred miles or so away, the regime’s legitimacy would suffer a major blow and, quite likely, become untenable.

One can only imagine the mind-blowing effect that might be produced by the sight of the average Seoul street, a typical South Korean department store, or, for that matter, the flat of a humble, semiskilled manual worker. Perhaps 15 years of flourishing market activities somehow have made North Koreans immune to the sights of consumerist abundance at shops (after all, one can buy a lot in North Korea now if/when money is available). But one can easily imagine what will happen to a North Korean’s mind when he or she discovers that a South Korean worker—supposedly a slave of American neocolonialism—enjoys the amenities and lifestyle that in North Korea are available only for a tiny minority, to people like successful drug smugglers or Central Committee officials.

Reforms worked in Vietnam and China because their situation is different—simply put, Chinese reform succeeded because there is not a prosperous “South China” whose size would be comparable with that of
the China of the Communist Party. The prosperity of, for example, Japan or the United States is well known in China, to be sure, but is not seen by the common Chinese as politically relevant—after all, those are different nations, with different histories, so their remarkable prosperity does not necessarily demonstrate the inefficiency of the Communist Party rule.

And, of course, China is not going to join the United States, becoming its 51st state. Neither Vietnam nor China has a rich “other” with which to seek unification: Taiwan is too small to have a palpable impact on the average Chinese income in the event of unification, and South Vietnam ceased to exist in 1975. Thus, for the time being the common Chinese seemingly accept the same bargain accepted by the South Koreans or Taiwanese of the 1960s: they put up with authoritarian rule as long as they enjoy stability and economic growth. In North Korea, due to the allure of the rich and free South, such a bargain has very thin chances of success, and the Pyongyang leaders of Kim Jong Il’s generation were well aware of this.

Reform is impossible without a considerable relaxation of the information blockade and daily surveillance. Foreign investment and technology are necessary preconditions for growth. Consequently, if Chinese-style reform were to be instigated, a large number of North Koreans would soon be exposed to dangerous knowledge of the outside world, and above all of South Korea. A considerable relaxation of surveillance would be unavoidable as well: efficient market reforms cannot occur in a country where a business trip to the capital city requires a weeks-long wait for travel permits and where promotion is determined not so much by labor efficiency but by demonstrated political loyalty (including the ability to memorize the lengthy speeches of the Dear Leader). Relaxation would entail information flowing within the country, and thus the dissemination of this information, as well as dangerous conclusions drawn from it, would become much easier. The situation is further aggravated by the recent dramatic improvement of the IT technologies, which make censorship even more difficult and therefore constitute a major political threat to the regime.

It is doubtful whether the North Korean population would acquiesce to enduring a further decade of destitution followed by a couple of decades
of relative poverty and backbreaking work if they were to learn about another Korea—affluent, free, glamorous, and attractive. Would they agree to tolerate a reforming but still authoritarian and repressive regime on the assumption that this regime will on some distant day deliver a prosperity comparable to that of present-day South Korea? The North Koreans, unfortunately for their leaders, are much more likely to react to the new knowledge and new freedom in a different way: by removing the current regime and unifying with South Korea in order to partake in the fabulous prosperity of the wildly rich South.

One can easily imagine how discontent with the North Korean system, as well as information about the astonishing South Korean prosperity, will spread: first through the relatively well-heeled North Korean groups who are suddenly allowed to interact with South Koreans and foreigners, or who have better access to the foreign media and entertainment, and then down to the wider social strata. Once North Koreans come to the conclusion that they have no reason to be afraid of the usual crackdown, they are very likely to do what East Germans did in 1989.

There is another important difference between North Korea and China—and, once again, this difference is created by the existence of the successful South. It is an open secret that the Chinese party officials used the reforms to enrich themselves: the new Chinese entrepreneurial class to a significant extent consists of former officials as well as their relations and buddies. The situation in the post-Communist countries of the USSR and Eastern Europe is no different. With few exceptions, the political and economic life of those countries is dominated by the former second-tier party apparatchiks who once used their connections, experience, education, and, above all, their de facto control over the state assets to appropriate the government property and remake themselves into successful capitalists and/or politicians. It might be just a minor exaggeration to describe the collapse of Communism as a “management buyout,” as Richard Vinen recently did.
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On balance, in the 1990s the younger generations of Eastern European and Soviet
nomenklatura
jettisoned the system they never actually believed in, while enormously increasing their wealth, if not power, in the process.
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However, the situation of the North Korean elites is different. They stand little chance of becoming successful capitalists if the system is overthrown. In all probability, the regime collapse will be followed by the unification of the peninsula—after all, this is what the common people will likely want, on the (mistaken) assumption that unification will instantly deliver them the same level of consumption as enjoyed by their southern brethren. In such a case, all the important positions in the new economy will undoubtedly be taken by people from South Korea—people with capital, education, experience, and perhaps political support. The capitalism in the post-unification North is to be built not by born-again apparatchiks (as was the case in the former USSR), but rather by the resident managers of LG and Samsung, as well as assorted carpetbaggers from Seoul.

This fact is understood by at least some North Korean bureaucrats, but it seems that the majority has another, greater, fear. They know how brutal their rule has been. They also know how they would treat the South Korean elite (and their descendants) had the North won the intra-Korean feud, and do not see reasons why they would be treated differently by actual winners. This makes them very afraid of retribution. They are not merely afraid to lose power and access to material privileges (these privileges are quite modest, incidentally, by the standards of the rich in most other countries). They are afraid of being slaughtered or sent to prisons, of suffering the same fate they have bestowed on their enemies for decades. A few years ago, a high-level North Korean bureaucrat with an unusual frankness told a high-level Western diplomat: “The human rights and the like might be a great idea, but if we start explaining it to our people, we will be killed in no time.” This seems to be a common assumption. It is also not coincidental that many visitors to Pyongyang, including the present author, had to answer the same question quietly asked by their minders: “What has happened to the former East German party and police officials?”

Perhaps one of the reasons behind the remarkable resilience of the North Korean regime is this universal assumption of its bureaucrats (including those who are quite low in the pecking order) that they would have no future in case of regime collapse. This makes North Korea different
from many other dictatorships. A clerk in Mubarak’s Egypt, for instance, could assume that, Democrats or not, Islamists or not, under a new regime he would still sit at his desk and continue the old routine of, say, issuing permits for house construction. Ditto a high-ranking military officer, who also would expect that under a new government in Cairo he would still command his battalion. Consequently, they did not see the revolution as a personal threat, and might have even been supportive of the movement.

In North Korea things are different: the elite—pretty much everybody who is somebody—believe that it has nothing to gain and much to lose through unification with the South. These fears might be—and, indeed, are—exaggerated, but they are by no means groundless. It is important that their predicament stems from the existence of a successful South, not from particular policies followed by a specific Seoul administration. Even if the most pro–North Korean administration imaginable will come to power in Seoul, it will not make South Korea less dangerous (perhaps, as we will see later, a friendly South is actually
more
dangerous—even though this fact might not be currently appreciated in Pyongyang).

This reconstruction of the Pyongyang elite’s thinking is necessarily hypothetical, but an impressive confirmation of this hypothesis has emerged recently. This confirmation came from Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il’s oldest son who lives overseas in semi-exile (largely in Macao and continental China). Kim Jong Nam is the only member of the Kim family who talks to foreign journalists. They occasionally manage to intercept him in an airport or a lobby of an expensive hotel. With the passage of time, his short interviews have become more substantive in content and more politically frank. In 2010 he even went so far as to openly voice his disapproval of the hereditary power transfer at that point developing in Pyongyang.

His remarks became even more candid in recent years, and in January 2011 he gave a lengthy interview to Yoji Gomi, a journalist for
Tokyo Shimbun
. Soon afterward it was revealed that since 2004, the maverick North Korean prince had maintained e-mail exchanges with Gomi, who published these e-mails in a book.

The single-most important topic in this book is the (im)possibility of Chinese-style reforms in North Korea. Kim Jong Nam has clearly stated
his belief that market-oriented reforms would probably revive the North Korean economy. In one case, addressing his half-brother Kim Jong Un (by that time already the successor to Kim Jong Il), he implored him to “have pity on the common people” and follow the Chinese example.

However, in many other cases, Kim Jong Nam is far less certain about the potential positive impact of reforms. In his January 2011 interview, he said, “I personally believe that economic reforms and openness are the best ways to make life better for the North Korean people. However, taking North Korea’s unique position into account, there is a fear that economic reforms and openness will lead to the collapse of the present system.”

In the same interview, Kim Jong Nam repeated the same point: “The North Korean leadership is stuck in a bind. Without reforms the country’s economy will go bankrupt, but reforms are fraught with the danger of systemic collapse.”
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This is a remarkably forthright—but completely reasonable—admission, and unfortunately it confirms that the North Korean leaders understand perfectly well how dangerous the reforms would be for their survival.

In such a case, what is the best policy choice for the North Korean elite? The optimal course of action appears to be a continuation of the policies the current leaders and their predecessors have followed for the last two decades. Domestically, the regime’s policy aim has been to keep the North Korean population under control, compartmentalized, and, above all, isolated from the outside world. Internationally, the safest solution is an aid-maximizing strategy, which includes attempts to squeeze more aid from outside through diplomacy and blackmail.
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This foreign aid helps to keep the inherently inefficient economy afloat, prevents another major famine, and allows the country’s tiny elite to live a reasonably luxurious lifestyle while buying at least some support from “strategically important” social groups (the aid was first distributed to the military, the police, and the populations of major urban centers).
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Judged from the point of view of leaders in Pyongyang, this policy has been a success: they remain in control and enjoy a privileged life even today, in 2013, while a majority of more liberal and permissive Communist regimes have long been overthrown. By keeping the system unchanged
and restraining the spontaneous growth of the private, market-based economy, the North Korean elite has probably forfeited the chance to achieve sustainable economic growth. However, growth is not their major concern. They do not mind growth, to be sure, but only as long as it does not jeopardize more important goals of maintaining the political stability and their own domination. They would be happy to see a North Korean economic boom—as long as they are not going to enjoy this wonderful picture through the window grate of their cell.