North Korea’s circular firing squad

The reaper has come for two more key North Korean diplomats:

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said that Pak Kwang-Chol, an associate of the young supremo’s uncle and political regent Jang Song-Thaek, was seen returning home after making a brief stopover in Beijing. The envoy and his wife were reportedly escorted by North Korean officials onto a flight to Pyongyang.

Sweden is an influential diplomatic player in Pyongyang, AFP said. Since the United States and North Korea have no diplomatic ties, the Swedish Embassy represents US interests in the country, acting as a kind of go-between. [link]

And this:

Hong Yong, the North’s deputy permanent delegate to UNESCO, and his wife were spotted at Beijing airport on Monday before taking the flight to Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. Hong, one of Jang’s associates, took the post only six months ago, it said, quoting a diplomatic source in Beijing. [AFP]

Pyongyang had previously recalled its ambassadors to Malaysia and Cuba, presumably also as part of the purge. North Korea has historically used Malaysian banks for money laundering, and Cuba has recently emerged as a North Korean arms supplier.

In addition, the Joongang Ilbo now reports that “two Workers’ Party executives, two cabinet members, two soldiers and one corporate manager” (a total of seven others) were also executed with Jang. The South Koreans are saying that for now, the purge has only reached Jang’s highest-level supporters:

“We are seeing signs that those who were deeply involved with Jang are being recalled and purged,” Ryoo Kihl-Jae, South Korea’s unification minister in charge of cross-border affairs, told lawmakers. 

The purge however appears to be targeting a relatively small circle of officials, Ryoo said, rejecting speculation of a sweeping clear-out of party and military ranks. “We do not see that it (the purge) is being carried out on a large scale, though it still needs to be seen to what direction it would develop,” he told members of parliament’s foreign affairs committee. [AFP]

I’m not sure I believe that. As early as December 6, The Daily NK reported that “municipal and provincial Chosun Workers’ Party secretaries and cadres from judicial and security organs have been summoned en masse to Pyongyang,” although it’s not clear how many were purged, and how many were simply called in to observe the festivities in which Jang was denounced and purged.

The same appears to be the case with North Korea’s cadres in China, who are more visible to us. In mid-December, it was reported that North Korea had recalled large numbers of China-based cadres who were involved in enterprises earning and laundering foreign currency. The subscription news site East Asia Intel also reports that Pyongyang is recalling “large numbers of North Korean businessmen” who worked in Shenyang and Dandong, “to facilitate trade” with China, and “attract Chinese investment.” Without getting behind the paywall, I can’t tell whether the report is based on new information, or simply regurgitates what South Korean sources had previously reported. Taken together, these reports suggest that the purge won’t be confined to the top echelons.

North Korea’s ongoing crackdown on cross-border movements, in an apparent attempt to prevent defections by potential targets of the purge, is circumstantial evidence of the purge’s potential to affect a significant number of North Koreans. Pyongyang has assigned more guards to patrol the border and asked four Chinese companies to suspend their tours of the North (a Chinese tour bus seems like an unlikely way to escape North Korea; it seems more likely that Pyongyang is afraid of what the tourists might see).

North Korea’s lower and middle castes will feel the most immediate impact of this crackdown. They are the most likely to rely on illicit cross-border trade, or try to cross the border to find work or defect. Reports from inside North Korea tell a mixed story. Although the regime has cracked down on cross-border movements since the purge, Chris Green writes that the regime isn’t cracking down on markets and trade internally. Domestically, the regime is sending a business-as-usual message, while discouraging any unauthorized discussion about Jang’s purge. For once, the regime shows signs of trying to mitigate (perhaps “calibrate” is a better word) the impact of its brutality on lower-caste North Koreans.

In the longer term, however, this will inevitably disrupt the regime’s own finances, possibly severely. North Korea’s ambassadors play an important role in financing the regime, by making both legal and illegal business deals. The diplomatic corps’s mercenary nature is so notorious that the U.N. Security Council’s latest resolution begins by referring to “the illicit activities of diplomatic personnel” and “transfers of bulk cash.”

It also seems increasingly clear that Jang was purged as part of a struggle over North Korea’s resources, and who gets to use them for everything other than feeding the hungry. North Korea’s mineral industries are most often mentioned as in contention. Fighting over those resources is affecting Pyongyang’s ability to profit from them. According to the Daily NK, as early as October, North Korea took the extreme measure of halting gold mining and exports to reassert control of that income stream. (That is extremely interesting, in light of other reports that the North’s agents in China were selling off gold. The continued sale of gold after the purge could suggest that officials in China were defying orders from Pyongyang and preparing to go to ground, consistent with what we read here.) North Korea’s “special economic zones” and its overseas restaurant operations have also been associated with Jang, and will probably be affected. In the background, the North is hinting at a general tightening of the North’s economic restrictions. That will be another drag on efficiency and investor confidence.

Everything this regime prioritizes relies on the business relationships that are now being questioned, and on the overseas currency-earning operations staffed by the people who are being purged today. If my guess is right, we’ll soon see data showing a drop-off in North Korea’s imports and exports (although those data are certainly questionable). That will inevitably affect Pyongyang’s ability to buy the loyalty of a new Inner Party, to finance its WMD programs, to control the borders, and to feed its army. It might even affect the pace of construction at showpiece projects, like water parks and ski resorts. Anyone but an impulsive psychopath would have to realize that.