North Korea’s decision to restart its nuclear program and the launch of a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States have been widely interpreted as sending a signal to the Obama administration. But other observers suggest that the regime’s actions are more likely to reflect internal tensions rather than international grandstanding.
North Korea “has historically carried out provocations more for internal North Korean reasons than external reasons,” notes Bruce Bennett, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. Kim Jong-Il’s dynastic rule has seriously damaged the economy and undermined the state’s viability, but, he cautions, “neither the regime nor the state has failed yet, and both might continue to survive in some form for many years to come”:
Other governments have learned to compromise with the outside world when they have faced such troubles. With North Korea, there is no such option. If a North Korean leader were to compromise under external pressure, he would appear weak and ripe for overthrow. He is therefore forced into provocations that make him appear empowered.
It is unlikely that the international community can call on China to rein in its neighbor. Beijing, like Russia, is tied to the Pyongyang regime through a range of economic interests, but geopolitical considerations also play a role.
“China knows that it needs to stabilize its backyard, but it continues to support dictators and weak regimes alike,” argues Jonathan Holslag, head of research at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies:
Rivalry with other powers like the United States, Japan and Russia inhibits Beijing to effectively tackle nontraditional security threats for the long haul, because pressure once again might undermine its regional influence in the short term. A worst-case scenario would be a peaceful regime change that allows Japan and the U.S. to move in. Equally troublesome would be unification with South Korea, as this would again require Japanese support, and might bring about a more self-determined Korea with economic and political ambitions that could challenge China’s growing influence in Northeast Asia.
There is little prospect of regime change driven by domestic discontent, writes Andrei Lankov an associate professor at Kookmin University, Seoul:
In the late 1990s, about 5 per cent of the entire population starved to death, but there were no signs of discontent: terrified, isolated and unaware of any alternative to their system, North Korean farmers did not rebel, but died quietly.
He advocates a long-term approach of constructive engagement, including international exchanges as a means of influencing North Korean citizens.
“Another step is to create every opportunity for North Koreans to engage with the outside world and see that what their regime tells them about the ‘paradise’ they live in is false,” argues Australian Labour MP Michael Danby, the parliament’s “most fearless and important” human rights advocate and a member of the World Movement for Democracy’s steering committee.
Even controversial economic engagement such as the Kasong industrial zone which admittedly economically props up the regime is subversive of the deeply isolated, wolkenkuckkuckscheim (cloud cuckoo land) that the half cult, half Stalinist regime forces North Koreans to live in.
Whether they come as students, diplomats or entertainers, every North Korean who is exposed to the outside world can become an agent of change when they go home.
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