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One problem with watching North Korea is that reports that are probably not true—and could even be disinformation—just might be true because the country’s leadership has historically behaved in such strange ways.
So we could not dismiss out of hand a report published by the NK Strategic Information Service Center on a secret instruction to the military given by Kim Jong Il. The NKSISC is an NGO devoted to supplementing official intelligence on North Korea with other sources; according to its website “a number of NKSIS members are originally from the elite class of North Korea, with a history in the upper echelons of government, administration, and education.” As a result, they may have independent channels of information. On the other hand, the NKSISC is made up of refugees who make no bones about their distaste for the regime.
An article on their website purports to summarize a hand-written, but undated, written instruction from Kim Jong Il on strategy with respect to a possible surprise attack on the South. The summary of the letter says that Kim Jong Il was dismissive of ROK military capabilities, but urged “preparations to destroy US military bases in Japan and the US Pacific Fleet…” An interesting premise of the letter is that Kim Jong Il assumed that the Japanese self-defense forces would become involved in the case of a cross-border attack. The NKSISC concludes that the letter shows the continuing commitment to the idea of unification by force.
We understand the sensitivity of intelligence sources, and applaud the NKSISC for any information in can bring to the table. But such sources are much more useful—and credible—if released in full so that analysts can parse the original. This would hold with respect to the group’s discussion of Kim Jong Il’s will, which was the subject of a conference in April.
