Embrace the Chaos: A New Report of Desertions in the N. Korean Military

The London Daily Telegraph is reporting an upsurge in the number of North Korean soldiers “defecting” to China this year. The report, unfortunately, adds little detail to the headline’s claim, aside from saying that “on one stretch of the border, Chinese troops apprehended five North Korean soldiers in May alone.” Despite the breathless headline, the text offers no evidence that a “military clash” is “imminent.”

Perhaps the word “desert” more accurately describes these soldiers’ actions than “defect,” which implies a change of location and political allegiance from one political system to a rival one, which China certainly isn’t as far as North Korea is concerned. In fact, the North Korean regime can rest assured that China will send any deserters it catches back to North Korea, “where they face execution.” By contrast, this North Korean officer’s crossing of the DMZ in 2008, and this NCO’s crossing later that year, are a better fit for the verb “defect.” But then, I’ve caught myself in the same linguistic imprecision.

Regular readers will already have read Part 3 of my presumptuously entitled Capitalist Manifesto, where I wrote about the difficulty North Korea has had in maintaining discipline among its border guard forces along its border with China. Corruption has been rife among the force, with guards sometimes caught on camera smuggling in the broad daylight. There were similar reports of desertions, including one mass desertion by border guards in 2007. The guards were reportedly one step ahead of an inspection that was going to arrest them for taking bribes from illegal border-crossers. North Korea launched a cross-border manhunt to catch them, but not too soon to prevent two of the deserters from giving an interview to a Japanese television station.

This is the second report in as many days to suggest that in at least some elements of North Korea’s security forces, morale is poor. Unlike Robert, I embrace the rise of chaos in North Korea and any erosion in the regime’s cohesion and discipline. After all, it’s not as if a stable North Korea governs competently, helps keep peace in the neighborhood, keeps loose nukes out of the hands of terrorists, or advances the humanitarian interests of the North Korean people. On the contrary, an unstable North Korea means the regime will have to divert resources from weapons development, luxuries, patronage, and white elephants of the figurative and literal kind back into investments in domestic tranquility (and we can only hope that means food). Instability in North Korea would also force China to reassess whether supporting the Kim Dynasty advances or threatens its objective of retaining influence over North Korea’s resources and keeping its people on the other side of the border. Continuing to bail the Kim Dynasty out financially — and UNSCR 1874 notwithstanding, China continues to dump more cash into North Korea than ever — will only delay the descent into chaos. If China actually sends troops into North Korea, it would be a costly decision for China, and could be a great strategic opportunity for the United States.

Unfortunately, this report suggests no more than low morale in some military units. Certainly that disgruntlement is ultimately a function of the regime’s limited resources to feed, pay, and entertain its soldiers, and financial sanctions are helpful in creating the conditions for this decline in morale. But like the similar previous reports I linked above, this one is likely to recede into history without much consequence unless the U.S., South Korean, and Japanese governments look for ways to give some organization and direction to the soldiers’ disgruntlement.