North Korea continues to refuse
calls to halt their nuclear weapons and long-range missiles program.
That stubbornness has resulted in a growing list of international trade
sanctions. In response the north has threatened war with South Korea in
increasingly hostile terms in the last few months. War would hurt South
Korea, but it would destroy North Korea and no one is quite sure what
North Korea is up to. China is among the perplexed. It appears that the
North Korean leadership is split on what to do about the continued
economic and social problems. Although GDP has increased by 25 percent
in the last decade, most of that increase went to the military and the
few thousand families that run the country. They have flat screen TVs,
new cars and impressive homes (visible on Google Earth) outside the
capital. Inside Pyongyang there is a lot of new construction, including
stores selling luxury goods.
In the rest of the country all you see is a
poorly maintained slum with frequent electrical blackouts and growing
shortages of fuel for heating and transportation. The GDP growth comes
largely by allowing Chinese firms to operate mines and factories, using
cheaper North Korean labor. The government seizes most of the profits
from this increased economic activity, leaving most North Koreans with
less than they had a decade ago. This has caused growing unrest,
including anti-government graffiti (unknown a decade ago) and more
people fleeing to China and from there to South Korea with details of
the hell up north. China has been urging North Korea to allow economic
freedom, as China did in the 1980s. But many in the North Korean
leadership believe this would lead to revolution and catastrophe for
them.
North Korea has put more restrictions on travel to the Chinese
border. Like most old-school communist police states everyone must
carry an internal passport at all times and you need a permit to travel
outside your home town. For those travelling to areas near the Chinese
border additional permissions and documentation must now be obtained.
This puts pressure on the government and secret police officials
involved because for everyone they approve who disappears (and is
presumed to have fled to China) the responsible official is in trouble.
Too much of that can get you sent to prison. Despite the risk, $50-100
in bribes will get you past all the document checks as you get near to
the Chinese border.
One reason for this crackdown on travel to the Chinese border
is increased hostility towards the North Korean government by China.
This is expressed in several ways. For example Chinese officials will
not meet with their North Korean counterparts. North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un recently sought to arrange a visit to China, but his officials
who went to China to arrange the trip last month were snubbed and came
back without meeting any senior Chinese officials. At the border
crossings Chinese border guards are interfering with North Korean
government exports of drugs and counterfeit U.S. currency, as well as
blocking some imports. China is sending less fuel and food. China is
unhappy with North Korean threats of war and this is how China sends the
message. So far North Korea has not responded in a dramatic fashion,
but it has been gradually toning down the threatening gestures (long
range missiles readied for launch, additional troop activity along the
DMZ and anti-South Korea propaganda). Officially North Korea is still
getting ready for war.
The North Korean government is trying to find new jobs for the
workers at the recently closed (by North Korea) Kaesong Industrial
Complex in North Korea. This put over 50,000 North Koreans out of work.
The South Korean government is providing help with the losses suffered
by the South Korean companies that operated the Kaesong factories. North
Korea has blamed South Korea for all this and is quietly trying to get
jobs in China for some of the unemployed Kaesong workers. Most of the
workers and their families brought to Kaesong to work in the South Korea
factories are being sent back to the other parts of North Korea they
came from. Shutting down Kaesong cost the North Korean government a lot
of money since the wages of the Kaesong workers were heavily taxed.
North Korea has long exported workers to China and Russia, as long as
the workers were housed in dormitories where they could be watched by
North Korean secret police. Any of these workers who tried to defect
would be putting their family into prison, which was a death sentence
for the very young and very old. North Korean workers don’t like working
outside the country when they have to leave their families behind. But
working in Russia and China was at least a job and you got enough to
eat.
South Korea has lost more than money with the closure of
Kaesong. The South Korean managers have long been a good source of intel
on the north. One of the last bits of such intel received was North
Korean officials fearing that the 50,000 workers at Kaesong were
learning too much about the higher standard of living in South Korea and
were beginning to question the mismanagement of the North Korean
economy. Apparently this has been a problem for several years and the
decision to shut down Kaesong was delayed because of all the cash it was
bringing in for the North Korean government. The North Korean
government is also trying to ensure that the former Kaesong workers do
not pollute other North Koreans with impure thought. To that end these
workers are being forced to attend two hours a day of indoctrination and
reminders that North Korea is the worker’s paradise and that South
Korea is evil incarnate. The workers are unhappy with the mandatory
indoctrination sessions, and the sharp drop in income.
South Koreans appear less concerned about the North Korean
threat than many foreign countries (like the United States and Japan).
That’s because South Koreans believe that aside from all the hostile
rhetoric, in the end the people of North Korea and South Korea are all
Koreans and that something can be worked out. The alternative is
fixating on another war, which benefits neither the north nor the south.
Nevertheless, many South Koreans are beginning to wonder just how
deranged and unpredictable the leaders up north really are.
Although North Korea has been receiving technical assistance
on ballistic missile design from China and Russia for decades, it is
obvious that not enough such help has been provided to enable the North
Koreans to perfect their long range (over 1,000 kilometers) multi-stage
rockets. Satellite photos of launch sites and some test results are
public information. From this it is obvious that the North Korean
long-range missile program is a low-budget operation that emphasizes
spectacular propaganda events, not systematic development of useful
capabilities. The North Koreans are trying to leapfrog the tedious
development process used by the U.S., Russia and China and ends up
launching high-risk rocket designs. That’s why they have such a high
failure rate. North Korea builds most of the rocket components itself
and these are largely simple technology that has been around for a
while. The problem they have is assembling all the thousands of parts to
create a workable and reliable long-range rocket. Even when they have a
successful test, it’s doubtful that they have a very reliable design.
North Korea appears to have followed the same path in
developing nuclear weapons. The three North Korean weapons tests
conducted so far indicate a crude design. This would appear to mean
North Korea had to develop the design largely by themselves. A separate
question is whether Russia supplied technical help on adapting a nuclear
weapon to handle the physical and electronic stresses of being launched
by a ballistic missile. This is no trivial task and problems with
warhead design continue to plague the existing nuclear powers. It would
appear that the North Koreans have not yet “weaponized” their nuclear
device design to work in a missile (or even an aircraft bomb). But the
possibility of illicitly obtained Russian tech is always there until
evidence to the contrary is found. The same with technical assistance
from Pakistan, which was helped by China to develop its nuclear warhead
equipped missiles. In the end the biggest obstacle the North Koreans
face is a reliable warhead design. Testing such a design without
actually firing a live nuke into the ocean requires another bunch of
tech (and high-performance computers) that North Korea does not have.
May 4, 2013: South Korean pro-democracy activists (many of
them refugees from the north) attempting to release balloons (carrying
200,000 leaflets and cheap consumer goods into the north) were stopped
by police. Police have often tried to prevent these balloon launchings
in the past, and usually failed. But this time the cops shut it down at a
park six kilometers from the DMZ. Police also halted a balloon launch
last month. This time local villagers had complained to the police,
fearing that this time North Korea would make good on its frequent
threats to fire artillery at the launch sites. The North Korean
artillery has never fired after these balloons floated north. When the
balloons reach the north police and soldiers are sent out to seize the
cargo carried by the balloons, lest northerners be polluted by this
South Korean propaganda. Over the years, many of these downed balloons
have been found by civilians and the word slowly circulated about what
the message really was. China has long called for the two Korea’s to
stop threatening each other over this use of balloons. This has been
going on for years. To the north, this is a deliberate provocation by
the south. But the reality is that many South Koreans want the North
Korean dictatorship to collapse and that is more likely to happen when
more North Koreans know the truth about life in the two Koreas. For
decades the North Korean government has restricted information in the
north and smothered the people with propaganda describing the north as
the best of all possible worlds and the south as worse off. In the last
decade, more and more northerners have learned the truth and this has
caused confusion, fear, corruption and calls for change. Many northern
leaders believe some of their own propaganda, and don’t understand how a
democracy works. They cannot comprehend people doing anything without
first obtaining permission from a government official. The balloon
releases must be a South Korean government operation. In the most recent
case the north openly threatened military action if balloons were
released again. Southern officials responded that the south would fire
back if attacked, but in the end the southern government did ban the
balloon release.
May 2, 2013: A North Korean court sentenced American Kenneth
Bae to 15 years in prison after convicting him of espionage and plotting
to overthrow the North Korean government. Bae was a tour operator and
advocate for more aid to starving North Koreans. The charges against him
described setting up a network of anti-North Korea programs in China
and smuggling anti-government literature into North Korea. No evidence
was presented at the trial and Bae, who was said to have confessed, did
not testify. This is the fourth American to be seized and prosecuted in
North Korea since 2009. Bae was arrested there six months ago. The other
three Americans were eventually freed after negotiations with North
Korea.
April 26, 2013: North Korea refused a South Korean offer to
negotiate a peaceful settlement of whatever complaints the north has.
The south was particularly eager to reopen the Kaesong industrial park
in North Korea, where 53,000 North Koreans work for 123 South Korean
firms.
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