18 June 2010
You know, it’s as if Michael Gerson reads this blog or something:
There are limits to the policy of isolation. Given that North Koreans did not revolt when millions were dying of starvation in the mid-1990s, it is difficult to imagine that economic pressure alone will bring down a committed, completely ruthless regime that cares nothing for the opinion of the world or the lives of its own people.
The most fragile thing about the North Korean regime is the structure of deception that supports it. Its main vulnerability is internal and ideological. Its propaganda appeals to nationalism and racial pride. But the regime has made North Korea a laughingstock while another Korea is the envy of the world. It pretends to socialism. But North Korea is ruled by a privileged class of unimaginable excess.
In addition to a policy of economic isolation, it would be worth trying a policy of ideological exposure — an aggressive, patient, well-funded information assault by South Korea and the United States. Clandestine distribution of radios and cellphones. Video exposure of the gulags. History texts on flash drives for the educated. Information on the decadence of the elite for the common folk.
Other options have failed. We should test if the North Korean regime can survive the collapse of its lies.
I like the way he’s thinking, and I’m glad to see him giving these ideas more exposure in a city that finally seems to have grasped that North Korea will never agree to disarm and live at peace with its neighbors, but which which still seems to be at a loss for where we go from there.
Troops and police mobilised a special task force early Thursday after a resident of Ansan, 35 kilometres (22 miles) southwest of Seoul, reported that 40 to 50 flying objects resembling parachutes fell on a mountain the previous night. They turned out to be balloons from a nearby kindergarten, a ministry spokesman told AFP.
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Totaling 180,000 troops, North Korea has the largest number of special ops forces in the world. The 11th Corps accounts for 22 percent with 40,000 special forces troops, and 120,000 light infantry brigades make up 66 percent of the special forces. The reconnaissance brigade, which has been fingered in the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, accounts for around 6 percent of special forces, and the Navy and Air Force each have around 5,000 crack troops, which make up 3 percent.
“Ten thousand North Korean special forces are capable of infiltrating simultaneously through underground tunnels or aboard 260 hovercraft or submarines, while 175 AN-2 transport planes and 310 helicopters can transport another 10,000 troops,” Kim said.
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Don’t Just Stand There, Do Something!
A Council on Foreign Relations sponsored task force has released a report saying the Obama administration should take a more aggressive approach in its North Korea policy.
What, like we’ve been trying to do for the last 20 years? I didn’t read a single original or useful idea in there.
Well, that’s a start: Obama extends existing sanctions against North Korea.
North Korea needs to be China’s problem, too:
The United States and our allies should then band closer together to contain North Korea militarily — as we have since the end of the Korean War — and to defeat and deter Pyongyang’s efforts at nuclear and missile proliferation. We should bring maximum pressure on the North attacking its illicit activities, which range from counterfeiting Marlboro cigarettes, Viagra, and U.S. $100 bills, to drug smuggling and gun running. We should remorselessly hunt down and confiscate Kim Jong-Il’s personal overseas bank accounts, funded by his despotic and criminal activities. In short, China should know that we will no longer dance to the tune played so long by Pyongyang: create an international crisis, use that crisis to extract economic and political concessions, and apply those concessions to prop up a bankrupt system. [William Tobey, Foreign Policy]
Tobey might also have mentioned that the same legal tools we’d use to attack this illicit North Korean trade would be perfectly suitable for sanctioning the Chinese banks, mining companies, and construction companies that China uses to prop Kim Jong Il’s regime up.
Anti-Americanism declining in South Korea?
About 79 percent of 706 South Korean adults, surveyed between April 7 and May 8, responded positively to the U.S., the third highest rating after Kenya (94 percent) and Nigeria (81 percent), according to the research center. The figure is up one percentage point from last year.
The positive mark grew sharply to 70 percent in 2008 with the inauguration of conservative President Lee Myung-bak, elected on a promise to strengthen the alliance with the U.S. The ratings were 46 percent in 2003 when liberal President Roh Moo-hyun took office and sought more independence from the U.S. Roh was elected amid growing anti-Americanism after the death of two schoolgirls hit by U.S. military vehicles on a training mission north of Seoul.
“South Koreans continue to give the U.S. overwhelmingly positive marks (79%),” Pew Research said in a report. “The only publics giving the U.S. higher marks than South Koreans are the two nations surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa. Roughly eight-in-ten (81%) have a positive view in the continent’s most populous country, Nigeria. And with near unanimity, Kenyans (94%) voice a positive opinion of the U.S.” [Yonhap]
That would be interesting and welcome, if true; however, I see little evidence that the anti-anti-American aspects of Lee’s platform were what got him elected. Lee campaigned and won on by portraying himself as a man of action who cleaned up Seoul, took no guff from the public sector unions, and promised a more competent and decisive leadership style. The other problem with numbers like these is how volatile they are, and how poorly they tend to predict such bizarre episodes as the whole Mad Cow drama.
Japan will crack down on remittances to North Korea next month.
Hmmm: A South Korean mine injures a Marine on Yeonpyeong Island? I wonder if it was a land mine or a sea mine.