Last week, South Korea’s Unification Ministry included Kim Kyong-hu, sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, in its diagram of the country’s power structure. Given ‘Dear Leader’ Kim’s health, which has reportedly been deteriorating, this announcement has fuelled speculation about the timing and nature of a leadership succession. Such speculation has followed much discussion centred around Kim’s sons and his brother-in-law.
In fact, no one outside of North Korea knows what will happen when Kim becomes incapacitated. However, one reasonable conclusion is that there’s no heir apparent in Pyongyang who has the same mix of skill and ruthlessness as Kim. This doesn’t foretell a collapse of the regime when a transition occurs, but it does point toward an opportunity to apply pressure on it as it begins experiencing additional internal tension.
In recent months, there have been two limited but real signs that regime decay is accelerating. The first came in the wake of an exchange and devaluation of North Korea’s currency on November 30. The plan required an exchange of old won bank notes for new ones worth only 1 percent of the old value, and capped exchanges at the equivalent of $40 per person. Foreign currency transactions were also banned. Given the collapse years ago of the state-run food and retail goods distribution networks in North Korea, a growing, informal private economy had emerged, one that at times appeared to be tolerated by the government. Some North Koreans thus acquired a modicum of economic independence and private wealth, which the regime set out to destroy with the devaluation.
The notable decay factor implicit in this act was not as much the economic pressure that caused it, but the reaction. For what appears to be the first time during Kim’s reign, North Koreans protested and were not met with total repression. Even more significantly, the regime backed down somewhat, relenting on its ban on foreign currency possession and with a Kim apology to boot. Both were unprecedented.
News of these developments seeped out of North Korea via clandestine information networks that mostly did not exist until recently. These have been developed in recent years by a diverse collection of North Korean refugees and South Korean human rights activists in Seoul–often persisting through the grudging acceptance or outright disapproval of the Pacific’s democratic governments.
At the heart of this effort are half a dozen shoestring news organizations that broadcast information and commentary into North Korea and gather information inside the world’s most opaque state. They transmit radio signals from a variety of locations around the western Pacific–except for South Korea. There, despite the abandonment of Seoul’s appeasement-oriented ‘Sunshine Policy’ after the election of Lee Mung-bak in 2008, institutional hesitancy to do more than pay lip-service to Korean unification persists. Determined efforts to bring a non-violent end to the North Korean regime remain largely taboo.
Luckily, the radios and a vibrant set of other non-governmental organizations have been able to survive by drawing on small amounts of support from individual Koreans around the world, as well as the US Congress. On Capitol Hill in Washington, a senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback, has been a leading advocate of the cause, working quietly to get modest funds channelled to the radios and also pressuring bureaucracies to do a better job of resettling North Korean refugees. US support is expected to continue after Brownback’s departure from Washington after this Congress. Meanwhile, a human rights bill currently moving through South Korea’s national assembly could provide the first support from an Asian government–an important step to expanding the effort.
The North Korean regime hates the radios–and for good reason. Pyongyang tries to block the signals and reportedly sought to assassinate Kim Seong-min, who runs Free North Korea Radio, because they give North Koreans the means to learn the truth about the regime and its misconduct, and catch a glimpse of the outside world. This is highly threatening to a government that tries to tell its starving, abused citizens that they live in a ‘socialist paradise.’
Two assumptions in starting the radios were that they would encourage more North Koreans to obtain the means to listen–freely tuneable radios in North Korea are banned–and that they would promote the flow of information out of North Korea too. Both of these are coming true. Facts about developments on the ground in the North turn up in Seoul with increasing speed and accuracy, and this information is then sent back inside the North to a growing number of listeners. North Korean authorities seem unable to halt this trend.
While none of this indicates an imminent change in North Korea, these faint signs of regime decay do offer a better approach to policy to the Pacific’s democracies. While it is fine to keep open a diplomatic path to Pyongyang, inter-governmental discussions alone have accomplished little during the years Kim has ruled North Korea. These should be supplemented with measures that will expedite the regime decay taking place in the North–aiding the change that must come from within.
First among these should be greater support for the independent media organizations focused on North Korea. Cultural exchanges that bring more North Koreans out of their country will help open more eyes still. Pacific democracies including Japan and the United States should open missions in Pyongyang–but only on the condition that any North Korean may access them, and that anyone issued a visa will be given permission to exit the country. Existing foreign missions in Pyongyang should make this demand or depart.
Ultimately, this is not just sound human rights policy, but a key element of sound security policy. The free societies of the Pacific will be made much safer by the collapse from within of the North Korean government. This is the goal toward which we should all work.
Christian Whiton was the US deputy special envoy for North Korean human rights during the George W. Bush administration. He is a principal at DC Asia Advisory and the president of the Hamilton Foundation.