The Diplomat » Kim Jong-il

Don’t Return to Korea Status Quo

diplomat_admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:37:16 +0000

In the wake of North Korea’s failed missile launch, Washington policymakers may be tempted to believe that the danger of a catastrophic breakout has passed, and that the United States can expect to return to relative quiet on the Korean Peninsula. This belief is deeply misguided and wrong. Indeed, satellite imagery has suggested that Pyongyang is preparing for a third nuclear test. Furthermore, the launch attempt has demonstrated that the regime is as dedicated as ever to expanding its ballistic missile capabilities – both to blackmail the international community, and to sell that technology off to its fellow rogue states. The United States and the free world must recognize that the core of this crisis is the nature of the North Korean regime, and adopt a multi-pronged strategy that will undermine the junta’s rule.

North Korea is the lynchpin of the global proliferation of nuclear and ballistic missile technology. The Hermit Kingdom has provided invaluable assistance to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Meanwhile, the Syrian nuclear reactor at Dair Alzour was a mirror image of the North’s uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon. As the authoritarian state develops its capabilities, it soon disseminates that knowledge to the world’s rogue states. Therefore, the proliferation crisis in the Korean Peninsula is in large part the measure of the proliferation crisis throughout the world.

North Korea’s attempt to cast last week’s actions as entirely peaceful is ludicrous. A “satellite launch” and an ICBM launch are practically one and the same, as the underlying technology and principles of both are identical. Indeed, the United States’ first astronauts were launched into space on converted ICBMs. Therefore, last week’s missile launch shouldn’t be primarily seen as a failure fit for mockery on late-night comedy shows, but as a demonstration of Pyongyang’s commitment to developing the most dangerous weapons in the world’s arsenal.

The sole concern of North Korea’s rulers is the continuation of their regime. Hence, since the onset of the nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, Pyongyang has sought to bind agreements with non-aggression agreements with the United States and aid shipments. While this latest round of missile and nuclear tests are tied to the 100th birthday of Kim Il-sung, and securing the “legitimacy” of Kim Jong-un in the eyes of the military and the people, they are also part of the North’s long-held strategy of acting provocatively to extract favorable concessions at the negotiating table. The administration is to be commended for its refusal to ship food aid to Pyongyang in the wake of Friday’s test, but there’s little reason for confidence in the Obama administration to offer aid again in the future.

Instead of accepting a perpetual diplomatic game of inches with Pyongyang, Washington should fundamentally orient its policy towards ensuring the regime’s ultimate overthrow. First, the United States should lead an international effort to completely stop the North’s shipment of conventional arms, ballistic missiles, and nuclear technology abroad. Likewise, Washington should target and freeze their financial assets in the international banking system. North Korea showed extraordinary sensitivity to the freezing of their funds in Banco Delta Asia during the Bush administration. President Obama would do well to find another avenue of leverage against the regime, and use it to full effect.

A North Korean Refugee Dilemma

diplomat_admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:53:37 +0000

They beat paths worn solid by so many who came before them. Some who sought riches and returned. Smugglers. Bootleggers. Shadowy government agents. Others who left with no intention of retracing their steps – at least willingly. People in flight for their lives. Those escaping repression. Some even starving.

As the latest to fall under the full glare of the international radar wearing their boot prints into this fertile ground, they are deemed outlaws at home, personas non grata on the other side – placed somewhere amid the sorrows of the latter category. Having slipped across their country’s forbidden frontier into China, likely in bitter winter temperatures, they bore a familiar hope: to reach South Korea. For they are North Koreans – defectors in pursuit of the promised land.

Or they were until disaster struck.

Like an estimated 5,000 others annually, their break was curtailed in China when they were caught in the net of local police. The 30-plus group – reportedly including the elderly and with women with children – were quickly detained, taken away and reportedly held in the Chinese city of Shenyang with a gloomily uncertain fate dangling over their heads.

Treated by China as economic migrants rather than refugees, they now face forcible repatriation to North Korea – a process China routinely carries out, activists say, in flagrant violation of its commitments under United Nations conventions and protocol to protect refugees.

More ominous is what awaits them on the other side. The harsh lot for defectors from North Korea, argue the activists, is almost certain punishment that can include consignment to political concentration camps, forced labor, or public execution.

“China knows that forcing these refugees back to North Korea will mean certain torture, certain imprisonment and even execution, yet they continue to label them economic migrants, and not refugees,” says Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the U.S.-based North Korea Freedom Coalition.

News of their situation had been gaining steady worldwide coverage over the course of last month after their detention was first revealed. Though the deal struck between the United States and North Korea that saw the North agree to a nuclear moratorium may draw attention away from their plight, the momentum of a fresh source of support appears determined to drill the story into the global conscience.

For at no time in recent history has the issue of China’s treatment of North Korean refugees attracted such a strong show of government and public support in the South. Though some insist the public showing is still paltry compared to protests against perceived slights by the likes of former colonial masters Japan, President Lee Myung-bak’s government has taken the unprecedented step of taking the case to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Noisy protests have taken place outside the Chinese embassy in Seoul – including stars of South Korean popular culture who are familiar to people in China due to their popularity on the other side of the Yellow Sea. And a member of the

National Assembly embarked on a hunger strike outside the Chinese mission in the Southern capital.

“Usually, South Koreans don’t care that much about the refugees,” says Andrei Lankov, a North Korea specialist based at Kookmin University in Seoul. “Now, we have a massive demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy – usually, such noisy crowds harass only U.S. diplomats. It’s unusual, and reflects the changes in perception of both China and North Korea.”

The international organization mandated to intervene in refugee emergencies has also come under the microscope. Not for the first time in recent years, some see the response of the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, which urged the Chinese government to adhere to international law governing the recognition of refugees, as insufficient. But the body issued a statement following the detention of the refugees, saying it “has been in communication with the Chinese authorities about this group and called upon the Chinese government to uphold the non-refoulement principle,” adding, “UNHCR is encouraging all parties concerned to find a viable humanitarian solution in the best interest of these individuals and ensure their safety.”

Asked to comment further, Andrej Mahecic, the UNHCR’s senior communications officer covering East Asia and the Pacific, told The Diplomat the agency responded to the current situation playing out in China “the moment we learned about this group,” approaching the Chinese authorities “both verbally and in writing” in order to clarify their circumstances. “We don’t have access to the North Koreans at the border area in China and do not have firsthand information,” Mahecic insisted.

Perhaps tellingly, however, in its earlier statement, the UNHCR didn’t refer to the defectors as “refugees” but “detained North Koreans.” And Mahecic, dealing more generally with criticism directed at the agency, said the UNHCR continues to remind the Chinese authorities of its “overriding concern” that people should not be forced back to North Korea “until their need for protection is properly assessed.”

Critics aren’t convinced.

“The North Korean refugee emergency is arguably the most urgent in the world today,” wrote Robert Park, a Korean-American activist who spent time in North Korean custody in 2010, in a recent commentary. “Yet over the past decade, as tens of thousands of refugees have been repatriated, the United Nations has done nothing to help. Stemming from an unwillingness to confront China, it has chosen to obey China's prohibition to go to the Sino-North Korea border rather than fulfill its mandate to protect the refugees.”

The Leap Day Deal’s Mixed Bag

Richard Weitz — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 20:52:07 +0000

All things considered, the deal announced on February 29 between the United States and North Korea looks like a helpful contribution to resuming the stalled nuclear and other negotiations involving these and other countries. The sides made some progress on disputed issues, and will receive other benefits ancillary to the formal deal. But these achievements are still fragile and can easily be reversed, as they have in the past. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right to refer to the deal as “a modest first step in the right direction.”

The deal had been under discussion for months, but its announcement was sudden. Since July 2011, North Korean and U.S. officials have been informally discussing in Beijing, New York, and probably elsewhere how to resume direct negotiations. These “talks about talks” centered on what “pre-steps” Pyongyang would take to reverse the damage inflicted by its provocative actions in 2009 and 2010, including the detonating of another nuclear explosive device, testing another long-range missile, and attacking South Korean military and civilian targets.

The two earlier rounds of exploratory talks held in July and October of last year set the stage for the deal announced this week. A third round had been scheduled for last December, but the sudden death of Kim Jong-il resulted in their postponement . At the end of the third session in Beijing last week, the U.S. negotiators gave no indication they expected a sudden breakthrough. North Korea is still in a formal 100-day period of mourning regarding the death of Kim Jong-il. In fact, until now, the most important indicator of progress was a deal in which the two sides agreed to resume the search for the remains of an estimated 5,500 American servicemen missing from the 1950-53 Korean War. Then they suddenly heard from Pyongyang that it had agreed to the deal.

On the surface, North Korea has made some important concessions. Its agreeing to suspend the launching of long-range missiles or testing nuclear explosive devices simply confirms the existing de facto moratorium, and it can easily resume these tests whatever it has said or done in the past. However, the offer to suspend nuclear activities at its major nuclear complex at Yongbyon and invite inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, absent from North Korea since 2009, to return is important since it reverses some recent setbacks.

But the most important indicator of progress is that now the monitors will be able to assess North Korea’s uranium enrichment activities, at least at that facility. U.S. and South Korean officials expressed surprise at the scale and modernity of the plant, which is equipped with at least 1,000 centrifuges, after a delegation of visiting U.S. scientists was unexpectedly allowed to see it in November 2010. This is a significant development since the outside world knows little about this possible alternative North Korean path to making nuclear weapons. Current intelligence estimates are that the country has made enough separated plutonium to manufacture about a half-dozen nuclear bombs, but North Korea’s large uranium enrichment potential casts doubt on previous these calculations.

More generally, simply restarting a formal dialogue between North Korea and the United States and restoring an IAEA presence in the country is helpful – the current stalemate is, after all, inherently unstable. North Korea could at any time resume testing its nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. Together, these capabilities could render the continental United States newly vulnerable to a direct North Korean nuclear attack. U.S. officials must therefore strive to avoid a mutual deterrent relationship between an aggressive and unpredictable North Korean regime and the United States.

In return for these concessions, the United States will provide North Korea with 240,000 metric tons of food, through regular monthly deliveries of about 20,000 tons of nutritional supplements under intensive monitoring to ensure it is properly delivered to babies, expectant and young mothers, elderly people, and other North Koreans most at risk of chronic malnutrition. U.S. officials have said that the monitoring will be even more rigorous than under a U.S. program a few years ago that worked well before North Korean authorities abruptly terminated it. This immediate U.S. quid pro quo seems modest and arguably worth doing in any case.

Sadly, as with many policy questions regarding North Korea, there are no good options regarding the food aid question. U.S. aid groups have attacked the Obama administration’s lengthy deliberations in deciding whether to provide large-scale deliveries of food aid to North Korea. U.S. officials indicated they were open to providing some food aid, but only with credible North Korean guarantees that it won’t divert the shipments to feed the country’s elite, the North Korean military, to sell abroad, or to release at the planned mass celebrations marking the 100th year anniversary of the birth of Kim il-sung, the founder of North Korea (and the Kim dynasty). Experts and moralists may debate the relative merits of North Korea’s request for the food assistance, but the promised deliveries have helped establish the conditions needed to resume a painful but necessary dialogue with the North Korean regime regarding its proper international behavior.

How Weibo “Killed” Kim Jong-un

diplomat_admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:52:18 +0000

According to North Korean media, a group of students arrived this past week at Pochonbo where, just spitting distance from an empty, gleaming Chinese tariff-free zone, they were encouraged to learn lessons from the anti-Japanese guerillas, in particular the method of “publishing flash news.” In the Kim Jong-un era, students are spreading the revolution online, occasionally sending an expedition out on the comment boards of the Chinese defend the dignity of the country’s leader.

But the image of Kim Jong-il’s successor came under perhaps its most extraordinary assault Friday, when the Chinese internet – quickly followed by the world’s media – seethed with rumors of an assassination. Kim Jong-un, microblog Weibo posts asserted, had been killed at 2 a.m. in the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. Details were scarce, but lending a veneer of respectability to the enterprise was Phoenix TV, the semi-state affiliated, semi-reformist internationalist outlet based in Hong Kong.

Certainly, Chinese netizens haven’t had the happiest relationship with Kim Jong-un: he’s habitually referred to as “Fatty Kim,” and Chinese state TV has fanned such flames by passing along parodies (easily accessible during his father’s funeral) depicting the young Kim as “Kung Fu Panda”. Virtually every time his father spun through China unannounced, Weibo lit up with unconfirmed reports of Kim Jong-un sightings in such cosmopolitan centers as Changchun. The odd formalities of the information environment in China are such that Weibo, rather than state media, is seen in China as the more fertile ground for genuine news (along with all those rumors).

So what to make of Friday’s talk? Jaundiced irony is hardly a monopoly of the Western press when covering North Korea, but some of the analysis of the Kim Jong-un rumors was, frankly, a little embarrassing. Gawker, Huffington Post and Reuters, all weighed in, sometimes inexplicably relying on unedited Google translations. Apparently content with the “Babel,” no one bothered to check or cite the North Korean state organ, the Rodong Sinmun (the newspaper does, after all, have a website). On the day he was supposedly killed, Kim Jong-un was on the website’s front page – he had received a gift from Kuwait – although there was no clear evidence he was actually there for the event.

As the next edition rolled out on the morning of February 11 local time, Kim Jong-un was said to be accepting condolences from neighbors. North Korean journalists gave a subtle nod to the Weibo rumors by including two pictures of Kim Jong-un with his dead father in a new Rodong Sinmun photo gallery, highlighted in red as if to say “hello foreign journalists.” These aren’t insignificant items: since the January 8 documentary film extravaganza celebrating Kim Jong-un, such photo montages of the deceased father have been inexplicably sloppy in omitting Kim Jong-un, going so far as to include Jang Song Taek, the so-called “regent” of North Korea who has shown hints of developing his own nascent cult of personality.

Time to End North Korea “Genocide”

diplomat_admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:49:31 +0000

Has North Korea violated the international norm known as the Responsibility to Protect to the point that intervention is warranted? I would argue the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

Certainly, North Korea is believed to have committed acts that many would consider genocide, including executions and state-sanctioned murders, the systematic use of torture, state-induced mass starvation in political prison camps (and arguably elsewhere), forcible abortions and infanticide, and the forcible transfer and enslavement of children.

In 2007, Christian Solidarity Worldwide published a report based on seven years of research, and written by international lawyers, which concluded that there are indications of genocide taking place against religious groups in North Korea, specifically against Christians. Indeed, Christian watchdogs such as Open Doors and Release International rate North Korea as the world’s most egregious violator of religious rights. But North Korea’s policy towards its indigenous religious population extends far beyond “persecution” – religious believers and their families are being exterminated.

Before the rise of the Kim Il-sung, an estimated 25 percent to 30 percent of Pyongyang’s population was Christian. Today, all traces of this once-flourishing religious community and culture have been obliterated. Recognizing the inherent threat posed by faith to totalitarian rule and the Kim cult of personality, the North Korean regime has since its inception committed genocide against religious believers and their families.

There are many indications of the specific intent to destroy religious groups in North Korea. Harsh punishment is meted out to repatriated North Korean refugees who have had contact with missionaries and churches in China. Refugees, after being forcibly returned, are tortured and interrogated to discern whether they had any contact with religious groups. Those that confess to, or are suspected of, having met with missionaries in China or converting to Christianity are either killed or banished to concentration camps for life along with their entire families, including children, to three generations. Open Doors estimates between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians are imprisoned in North Korea’s concentration camps today.

These Christian human rights organizations believe that North Korean Christians who haven’t been publicly executed or killed through beatings or starvation in the prison camps have even in some instances been used as guinea pigs in chemical and biological weapon experiments – an allegation which is by no means new.

North Korean refugees, including former prison camp guards who played a role in these atrocities, have been speaking out in an attempt to get the international community to pay attention for over a decade, but to no avail. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have been forced to flee to China in order to survive famine and oppression. The majority of these refugees are women, many of whom have become victims of sex-trafficking or have been sold into forced marriages.

North Korea also continues to systematically brutalize women and children through infanticide and forced abortions. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has acknowledged officially North Korea’s “continued violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, in particular the trafficking of women for prostitution or forced marriage, ethnically motivated forced abortions, including by labor inducing injection or natural delivery, as well as infanticide of children of repatriated mothers, including in police detention centers and labor training camps.”

Multiple reports over the last ten years have indicated that infanticide and forced abortions on ethnic grounds is taking place systematically in North Korea’s prisons. This practice corresponds with the country’s obsession with racial purity, and the intent to destroy racially “mixed” babies on ethnic grounds is clear and incontestable.

Kim Jong-un’s Dangerous Brother

diplomat_admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:06:44 +0000

North Korea’s leadership succession from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un has gone according to script. The Korean Workers’ Party and the Korean People’s Army are supporting Kim Jong-un as North Korea’s new leader and North Korea’s propaganda machine hasn’t missed a beat in announcing new titles, manufacturing accomplishments, and portraying Kim Jong-un as a Great Successor worthy of the name.

But despite these efforts, there are two notable missing pieces: Kim Jong-un’s brothers Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-chol. The failure of these brothers to publicly appear at the funeral clarifies that they are excluded from power, but their apparently differing fates raise important questions about Kim Jong-un’s power and the sustainability of his leadership.

Kim Jong-chol, in his thirties, is Kim Jong-il’s second son (the first son of Kim Jong-il’s second wife, Ko Yong-hee, who is also the mother of Kim Jong-un). Although Kim Jong-chol is Kim Jong-un’s elder brother, he’s rumored to have been dismissed by his father as a potential successor for being too effeminate. Kim Jong-chol’s absence is disturbing because it raises questions about how far Kim Jong-un might go to squelch even perceived contenders for power. North Korean purges have historically been ruthless, but family members have usually been exiled rather than executed. Kim Jong-il’s half-brother Kim Pyong-il was assigned to decades of diplomatic service abroad in Europe rather than eliminated. Kim Jong-chol’s fate may hold telling clues to the character of leadership under Kim Jong-un.

If Kim Jong-chol’s silence raises questions, Kim Jong-nam’s visibility poses even more serious challenges. Kim Jong-nam, aged forty, is Kim Jong-il’s child with his first wife, Sung Hae-rim. As Kim Jong-il’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam is reported to have been groomed for succession until he fell out of favor in 2001, after being detained at Narita Airport in Japan with a fake passport. Since that time, he has lived in apparent exile in Macao and Beijing. Kim Jong-nam has emerged as a surprisingly voluble critic of North Korea’s leadership succession, directly challenging the legitimacy and capability of Kim Jong-un as a leader.

Tokyo Shimbun journalist Yoji Gomi quoted an e-mail from Kim Jong-nam received on January 3, in which Kim Jong-nam stated that “I expect the existing ruling elite to follow in the footsteps of my father while keeping the young successor as a symbolic figure…It’s difficult to accept a third-generation succession with normal reasoning,” he added. He also said he doubted that a young successor “with some two years of training can retain the absolute power.” (Gomi’s book, based on several years of e-mail exchanges with Kim Jong-nam, was being published this week in Japanese.)

This forthright public assessment of North Korea’s succession makes Kim Jong-nam the foremost external critic of Kim Jong-un’s succession and a direct challenger to the viability of Kim Jong-un’s leadership. It directly contradicts North Korean efforts to burnish Kim Jong-un’s legitimacy, and raises questions about whether sibling rivalry might be a sign of discord among Pyongyang’s elites.

External public criticism of the succession can’t be viewed as helpful to Kim Jong-un’s efforts to consolidate power, and it’s presumably in Kim Jong-un’s interest to silence his older brother from providing ongoing commentary regarding his succession, if for no other reason than that quieting Kim Jong-nam would be one means of proving that Kim Jong-un isn’t a puppet or “symbol” of the North Korean elite.

Kim Jong-nam’s public criticisms of the succession from his base in China also raise the question of who is Kim Jong-nam’s protector, especially given rumors last year that Kim Jong-un had instigated purges against leading supporters of Kim Jong-nam in Pyongyang. China presumably sees utility in protecting Kim Jong-nam – as a reform-minded Kim family member who is indebted to China – as a potential alternative leader if Kim Jong-un’s leadership fails. A more complicated factor is that in 2002 and 2003, shortly following his exile from Pyongyang, Kim Jong-nam appeared to have an open line of communication from Beijing with his uncle Jang Song-taek and his aunt Kim Kyong-hui, who are now critical supporters of Kim Jong-un.

It’s ironic that Kim Jong-nam is able to robustly exercise his freedom of speech from his home base in China despite his presumed dependence on China to allow him permanent residency in that country. This circumstance complicates Kim Jong-un’s ability to silence Kim Jong-nam as compared to Kim Jong-chol, but it also raises a potentially awkward situation for China at a time when North Korea’s leadership surely seeks assurances that China isn’t hedging its support for Kim Jong-un.

Scott A. Snyder is senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously a senior associate in the international relations program of The Asia Foundation and Pacific Forum CSIS. He blogs at Asia Unbound, where this piece originally appeared.

Beijing Foreign Policy Hurts China

Minxin Pei — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:34:20 +0000

Veteran China watchers have always wondered what kind of foreign policy China would have adopted had the country been a democracy. There are two schools of thought. One, the realist school, insists that it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. States pursue power and seek security regardless of the type of political regimes in control. What influences the behavior of states is the amount of power they possess and the external constrains on the use of such power. From this perspective, Chinese behavior is determined by its power, not by its political regime. For example, China’s abandonment of its low-profile foreign policy in favor of a more assertive one in recent years is the result of growing Chinese power, not a change in its domestic political system (which has remained the same).

The other school argues that differences in domestic political regimes are fundamental to understanding state behavior. Democratic states and authoritarian ones view the world from decidedly different lenses – their threat perceptions aren’t the same. The foreign policy decision-making processes are completely different in two systems. Democracies have far greater transparency and openness, in sharp contrast to the opaque and closed nature of decision-making in autocracies. Most importantly, there’s no conflict between regime security and national security in democracies because in such systems the democratic political regime is fundamentally legitimate and accepted by all the key players. Governments may fall due to a lack of public support, but the democratic system always endures. As a result, leaders in democracies don’t have to sacrifice national security in order to ensure regime security.

In contrast, in autocracies, regime security and national security often conflict. Because in such systems the fall of government also means the collapse of the regime, the ruling elites characteristically assign a higher priority to protecting regime security than national security. In other words, regime interests override national interests in autocracies. Moreover, threat perception by autocracies is notable for its political nature. While democracies perceive external threats exclusively in terms of physical security, autocracies see such threats in both political/ideological and military terms. Consequently, autocracies tend to devote costly resources to defending against external political threats and make unnecessary enemies of democracies not because of their military threat, but because of their political threat. So in their pursuit of regime security, autocracies simply can’t avoid undermining the security of the nation, both in terms of wasting national resources and antagonizing major democratic powers they otherwise should befriend.

This perspective may help us better understand the constant tensions between the regime security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the national security of China. Chinese foreign policy today is frequently torn by these two conflicting objectives. Two examples can serve as illustrations.

China’s policy toward North Korea should be exhibit A of this conflict. Chinese national security interests dictate that China shouldn’t tolerate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program or aggressive behavior toward its neighbors. Yet, because the ruling CCP regards a reunified democratic Korea that is a close military ally of the United States as a greater threat to its regime security than a nuclear-armed hereditary dynasty (which is a threat to Chinese national security, but not the CCP regime’s security), Beijing has pursued a policy of keeping the Kim dynasty in power almost at any cost. The price China has paid in terms of diminished national security is exorbitant – an untrustworthy neighbor armed with nuclear weapons, heightened risks of regional war, real danger of being dragged into another conflict on the Korean peninsula, alienation of South Korea as a long-term strategic ally, Japan’s rearmament and antagonism toward China, and increase in American offensive capabilities in the region.

What Not to Do About North Korea

diplomat_admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:15:26 +0000

The announcement of Kim Jong-un as Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army is one more step in the process of Pyongyang’s efforts to consolidate power as quickly as possible after the sudden death of Kim Jong-il. It’s fairly certain that the proliferation of pronouncements and titles given to the young Kim are manifestations of a terribly rushed succession process. Something that they hoped could be done over the course of a decade or more has suddenly been set in motion.

Many Western analysts believe North Korea has been planning such a succession for a long time and they are therefore methodically carrying out the power transition step-by-step. I don’t think this is right.

The funeral for Kim Jong-il was carried out methodically because the regime had a blueprint from the 1994 death of Kim Il Sung. They have no blueprint for a rushed dynastic succession. They are making it up each day. Some argue that a “leadership by committee” should work in North Korea to compensate for the inexperience of the junior Kim. But never in the history of North Korea have they ever ruled through compromise within a committee. This would be a feasible outcome only if we completely discounted all past history and knowledge of the regime.

Some, meanwhile, say the leadership will survive because all the leaders within the system want to survive. We could have said the same thing about all the fallen leaders in the Arab Spring, and yet they didn’t.

Many analysts have pitched different theories about what may be happening inside the dark kingdom. And even more analysts have mused about what policies the United States, South Korea and China should be undertaking. For a start, some have said the U.S. and South Korea should have had better intelligence about the elder Kim’s state of health. Others, myself included, say that China will align itself even more closely to Pyongyang in order to effect a successful transition.

Because there’s so much uncertainty about the situation, it might be more useful to think about things that the United States, South Korea and China should not be doing. Often in international relations, the most likely cause of instability when clear information is absent is miscalculation on the part of different parties. So what must the parties avoid going forward?

First, the United States shouldn’t be treating the situation in North Korea as “normal.” An early State Department podium remark in the aftermath of Kim Jong-il’s death intimated that all was calm and that a leadership transition to Kim Jong-un was predictably underway. This was unhelpful on two counts. For a start, it implied that the United States had already recognized the young Kim as the new leader when others in the region, including allies, had not.

But it also gave the impression that Washington wasn’t treating the situation seriously and was distracted by other issues, such as the budget battle, the withdrawal from Iraq and starting Christmas vacations. Washington should also not assume that either Beijing or Seoul will remain in a wait-and-see mode with North Korea. China sees as much opportunity in the current vulnerability of North Korea as they see uncertainty. And for Seoul, there’s nothing that hits at the core interests of Koreans more than the opportunity for potential change in North Korea. South Korea is a stalwart ally, but this is about blood, not politics.

Second, China shouldn’t dismiss dialogue with South Korea and the United States about the evolving situation in the North. Thus far, China has reacted with typical closed-mindedness, revealing little information that it might have about Kim Jong-un and expressing unconditional support for the leadership transition. The South Korean six-party negotiator, Lim Sungnam, took the initiative to reach out to the Chinese in the aftermath of Kim’s death, and yet Beijing did little to take advantage of this diplomacy to enhance dialogue and build trust with Seoul.

This is unfortunate. Whatever China may see as its interests in North Korea, it won’t be able to achieve them without cooperation from Seoul and Washington. As Beijing continues to support the current leadership transition, it shouldn’t allow itself to be seen as an advocate of keeping the peninsula divided. Many posit that a “leadership-by-committee” is the likely direction of the post Kim Jong-il government. But never before in North Korea’s history of totalitarian, personality-cult leadership has anything like this been attempted. Should this fail, it would hurt Beijing’s long-term position in the region dramatically if it were seen as the last great power to support a divided Korea.

Finally, South Korea must avoid the temptation to act unilaterally. This is hard for Koreans to hear. After all, this is their peninsula, and while political flux in North Korea is a foreign policy issue for China and the United States, it’s about life and death for Koreans. But in every scenario game I have played on exactly this contingency, the spark for major power conflict in Korea has been South Korean unilateral actions that spark an action-reaction spiral between the United States and China.

This must be avoided at all costs. Seoul must also avoid Chinese efforts to use the current situation in the North to lure Seoul away from Washington. South Korea is in a vulnerable situation: it’s desperate for information about the situation in North Korea and the Chinese are the only ones who have eyes on the ground. Beijing may try to exploit this vulnerability and cut deals with Seoul without Washington.

This would be a grave mistake. Not because of the damage to the alliance, but because South Korean and Chinese interests are not in sync – China in the end doesn’t want to see a unified Korea; South Korea does. This can’t be forgotten and it informs all of Beijing’s policies to the two Koreas going forward.

In the weeks and months ahead, others will no doubt offer much advice on what governments should do. But with North Korea, remembering some important don’ts could be just as important.

Victor Cha is a professor at Georgetown University and Senior Adviser and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared at CSIS Pacnet.

New Year, New Kim, Same Policies

diplomat_admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:53:38 +0000

Events surrounding the death of Kim Jong-il have revealed a country in transition, and an elite apparently shifting seamlessly from one ruler to another. Yet the funeral list, the promotion of Kim’s youngest son as ‘Great Successor’ and ‘Supreme Commander,’ and the political movements around Kim’s sister Kim Kyung-hee and her husband, Chang Sung-taek have underscored the shifting balance of power between the Kims and the National Defence Commission, the Korean People’s Army (KPA), and the Korean Worker’s Party (KWP).

Now, following the remarkable rally that transferred power to Kim Jong-un, the question of most interest to Seoul, Tokyo and Washington is whether we will we see more of the same in 2012, or can we expect some sort of change? And if Kim Jong-un is going to shift North Korean internal and external policy, will it be for the better or for the worse?

While many point to the fact that Kim Jong-un briefly lived overseas and attended an international school in Switzerland as evidence that this may lead to more open-minded rule, it’s not clear that Kim Jong-un is in any way an improvement on his father. Nor are there any signs that he would move the country towards economic reform or a policy of engagement with the United States and its Asian allies. There are two main reasons: first, the fact that Kim was chosen by his father over two elder brothers indicates that he had something they apparently lacked. Second, he is politically weak and inexperienced. From the first, we can infer that his father favoured him over his brothers because of certain character traits deemed necessary to exert rule in the North Korean system. These are likely to include a willingness to use force in achieving objectives, strong-headedness, and a strong ideological allegiance to the system.

Yet most analysts agree that Kim Jong-un’s hold on power is bound to be weaker than that of his father. While his father will have begun to prepare him soon after the recovery from his stroke in 2008, this left little time to master the political intricacies of a complex country like North Korea. His father had nearly 30 years in various party posts and agencies before gaining power. In addition, Kim Jong-il was able to use his time in the propaganda and agitation department in the 1970s to build his father’s cult of personality, which ultimately enabled him to build one around himself.

In contrast, Kim Jong-un’s has a number of weaknesses.

Unlike his father, who had a cadre of peers his own age when he gained power, Kim Jong-un’s peers are far below him in the hierarchy and it would be impossible to promote many to senior posts without causing discontent. That means that he may lack what many Western political leaders take for granted by the time they gain power: a wide network of contacts, associates and connected friends, who act as both informants and political actors. Kim’s youth may also tell against his ability to rule. While the ability to rule others isn’t necessarily aged-based (think Octavius or Alexander the Great), experience is certainly helpful in avoiding the many pitfalls that political leadership brings. If this is true in the West, it must be even more so in an authoritarian system, where political gains and losses are so much greater. There is, simply, less room for mistakes.

Kim’s Survivability Scorecard

diplomat_admin — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:10:54 +0000

Now that the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) has officially announced the start of the Kim Jong-un era, the major questions on the minds of North Korean observers revolve around the durability and sustainability of the North Korean leadership under Kim Jong-un. Another way of making judgements regarding this process is to assess whether the succession process is going according to plan. The 1994 succession experience provides the North Koreans a template for how to successfully manage succession and offers a scorecard for assessing the durability of the Kim Jong-un regime.

In the first few days, the North Korean leadership has made no obvious mistakes, nor has there been any evidence that the succession process is veering off track. The North Korean media has reinforced Kim Jong-un’s role, with international diplomats implicity acknowledging his position and KCNA bestowing on Kim Jong-un the titles of Great Successor and Supreme Commander. I believe that each of these elements is designed to reinforce perceptions of the inevitability of Kim Jong-un as the next leader, with the funeral being a major event designed to affirm Kim Jong-un’s new role at the same time that he pays respects to his father. This will also be the first opportunity to make judgments regarding his leadership style independent of his father.

Beyond the funeral ceremony, the calendar holds a series of events that North Korea will be able to use to its advantage to reinforce the centrality of Kim Jong-un and that therefore provide opportunities for external judgements regarding how the process is going, including:

Jan. 1: New Year’s address. North Korea normally issues a joint editorial or speech by the leader assessing the challenges and goals for the year. The 2012 address may have already been written, but can be scoured for deviations from the past and for evidence of possible rewriting post Kim Jong-il’s death. How the joint editorial is issued, and whether Kim Jong-un might decide to personally deliver it, as well as the substance it contains will offer some early clues to the actual role Kim Jong-un is and will be playing.

Jan. 8: Kim Jong-un’s 28th birthday and his first as leader. How will it be celebrated this year, and what messages are conveyed on this date?

Feb. 16: Kim Jong-il’s 70th birthday. Still well within the mourning period, how will this birthday be honored and what roles will Kim Jong-un and other leaders play in any commemorations on that date?

April 15: Kim Il-sung’s 100th birthday. This was to be the big celebration of the year, marking the establishment of North Korea as a “strong and prosperous state.” But what are the benchmarks for assessing Kim Jong-un’s performance toward that goal? Arguably, the benchmarks may shift to “are you better off than you were seventeen years ago?” The famine that occurred in the midst of the Kim Il-sung-Kim Jong-il succession process presents an opportunity to establish a low bar for assessing Kim Jong-un’s performance.