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I have been posting on NGOs a fair amount recently because of a broader development: increasing evidence that Pyongyang is seriously concerned about the unification rhetoric emanating from the South. Peaceful coexistence and an effort to dampen the “confrontation of systems” was a strong theme in the New Year's Speech. We recently witnessed a striking statement of foreign threats following the arrest of South Koreans Kim Guk-gi and Choe Chun-gil.
And now we have a more elaborated document on the topic by a Kim Ye Jin, a researcher at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs-linked Institute for Disarmament and Peace published by NKNews; if you have a serious interest in North Korea, it is worth reading closely for tone (the piece was submitted to NKNews in English, which had a thoughtful discussion—in which I and others participated—on whether to publish it at all).
The piece begins with the usual bluster about the continual risks of war on the peninsula, but the triggering threat is not US imperialism or war games but the danger that “one side tries to force its ideology and system on the other.” The solution is a new concept that should be familiar to those who grew up during the Cold War: “system-coexistence.” The document renounces all North Korean ambitions to unify the peninsula under its system—a bow to reality—but also urges that similar principles be respected by the South. Of course, the principle is by no means new; it was implicit in the 1972 Joint Communique and in the two summit documents (June 15 Joint Declaration and the October 4 Declaration), to which the North Koreans continually refer. But such an extended restatement of the principle and the advantages that could flow from it—military, political, economic—suggests more than a little concern that it is being violated by the puzzling unification rhetoric coming from the South.
But it is not, of course, just the rhetoric: it is the fact that the gradual opening of North Korea carries risks that the regime now has to manage. Thanks to a piece in New Focus International we have yet another piece of evidence along this vein in the so-called “9.8 measures.” Again, New Focus has stumbled on something important that is worth reading closely. According to New Focus, North Korea’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and Ministry of People’s Security (MPS) launched this new initiative last fall in response to directives from the top. The objectives were the “militarization of State Security” and “militarization of People’s Security” so that surveillance and control missions are toughened up. New Focus is worth quoting on one of several directives under this broad initiative:
“It read, ‘most criminals who are forgiven are likely to commit another crime’ and that ‘the time has come when words are not enough. The sound of gunshot must accompany the destruction of impure and hostile elements, and when necessary, public executions are to be used so that the masses come to their senses.’ It also ratified the extra-judicial clause, ‘if an anti-regime act is uncovered, State Security soldiers are to judge and execute by gunfire of their own accord, and afterwards file a report on the person and crime to Pyongyang.’”
The target of this activity: clamping down on the border in particular: “to seek out escapees, mount operations to bring defectors back to North Korea through coercion or persuasion, gather information and maintain files on defectors, trace their phone calls and correspondence, and maintain special oversight over defectors’ remaining family members in North Korea.”
An additional source of danger is NGOs operating in the country, including not only those doing so under the radar (vide the detention of Mssrs. Kim and Choe) but those operating legally as well. In addition to the expulsion of Welthungerhilfe's country director we now have the expulsion of Wheat Mission Ministries Sandra Suh; Julie Makinen offers up good coverage for the LA Times.
The exact charges are interesting: according to the KCNA report, “[Suh] frequented the DPRK from 1998 under the pretence of "humanitarianism" but she has been engaged in anti-DPRK propaganda abroad with photos and videos about the DPRK she secretly produced and directed, out of inveterate repugnancy toward the DPRK.” No doubt, Suh’s version of socialist realism did not match the injunction that served as the title of British Ambassador John Everard’s observant memoir: Only Beautiful Please. The Wheat Missions Ministry site is clearly trying to adjust.
Other NGO efforts are more openly subversive—maybe. In the high risk category: sending copies of The Interview north via balloons. According to Al-Jazeera coverage, North Korean defector-turned-activist Lee Min-Bok has sent copies of The Interview and other anti-Pyongyang propaganda north on at least four occasions since January, evading efforts by South Korean authorities to discourage them. My concern: that when North Koreans observe the vulgarity and crassness of the film they may reach the conclusion they are better off under the Young General. But Lee has a point: the film has a strong “emperor with no clothes” theme and ends with a democratic North Korean outcome.
In short, the signs of tentative economic opening—giving more room to the market, consumerism, pilot reforms, ongoing DPRK-China integration—should not be confused with any political relaxation. To the contrary, there are now ample signs of nervousness and even a crackdown. Later in the week, we consider in more detail the implications of these developments for outside actors and strategies of engagement.
