{"id":997,"date":"2016-09-22T07:41:31","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T07:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/?p=997"},"modified":"2016-09-22T07:41:31","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T07:41:31","slug":"by-focusing-on-its-nuclear-weapons-and-disasters-the-west-misses-a-lot-about-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/?p=997","title":{"rendered":"By focusing on its nuclear weapons and disasters, the West misses a lot about North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alex<\/a><\/p>\n

By Dr. Alexander Dukalskis<\/a><\/p>\n

North Korea essentially has two international images: the bellicose nuclear provocateur run by a mad dictator, and the impoverished country in dire need of humanitarian aid. At the moment, both faces are on depressing display.<\/p>\n

North Korea recently conducted its\u00a0fifth nuclear test<\/a>. As on previous occasions, talk of how to resolve the nuclear crisis ensued, with debates about sanctions, regional co-operation, and the\u00a0rationality (or irrationality)<\/a>\u00a0of the Kim Jong-Un government.<\/p>\n

This is of course a matter of huge international concern. But another major event hit North Korea around the same time as the nuclear test: Typhoon Lionrock caused\u00a0widespread flooding<\/a>\u00a0that put over 140,000 North Koreans in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. International organisations and NGOs\u00a0stepped in to provide aid<\/a>. The Kim government acknowledged \u201cgreat suffering\u201d and deployed labour teams to assist affected communities.<\/p>\n

These events evoke the\u00a0famine of the mid-1990s<\/a>, during which somewhere between 600,000 and 1m people died. As then, the irony of recent events wasn\u2019t lost on outsiders: as North Korea\u2019s people struggle, their government expends vast resources on a nuclear program that only isolates them further.<\/p>\n

How do we navigate between these two images of North Korea? Is the country a serious threat to global security, or a weak state unable even to care for its population \u2013 or both?<\/p>\n

On the move, slowly<\/h2>\n

North Korea often gets only sporadic Western attention, usually in the aftermath of a military advance or humanitarian crisis. Other noteworthy developments crucial for understanding the country, meanwhile, are overlooked.<\/p>\n

Avoiding nuclear catastrophe in East Asia (and beyond) is essential and urgent appeals for aid are necessary and laudable. But between these extremes, North Korean society is changing, with serious implications for the country\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

For example, North Korea\u2019s economic system is\u00a0far more market-based<\/a>than the country\u2019s communist political structures suggest. The mid-1990s famine shattered the state\u2019s centralised rationing system, and most North Koreans have spent the 20 years since participating in one way or another in the country\u2019s various (and often illegal) markets.<\/p>\n

Time will tell what\u00a0political impacts<\/a>\u00a0these processes will have. But what\u2019s clear is that there are a number of vested interests that stand to gain from marketisation. Illicit trade along the\u00a0border with China<\/a>\u00a0and even Russia has a big impact on the North Koreans living in those areas, and can help alleviate chronic shortages \u2013 in turn relieving a little pressure on the regime.<\/p>\n

Political science research on sanctions shows that their record of actually achieving political goals (such as forcing authoritarian governments to liberalise) is\u00a0spotty at best<\/a>. As an alternative, perhaps the West should start coming up with another plan \u2013 such as finding a way to harness China\u2019s economic success as a means to help ordinary North Koreans prosper.<\/p>\n

After all, North Korea is well-known among Western governments for being the \u201cland of lousy options<\/a>\u201d. If the economic equation changed substantially, a process border trade might speed up, better new pathways to dealing with the country could open up.<\/p>\n

From the outside in<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s another force with the potential to change the balance. The mid-1990s famine and its aftermath led tens of thousands of North Koreans to take the decision to leave their country. High-level defections like that of the\u00a0deputy ambassador to the UK<\/a>\u00a0justifiably receive international attention, but it\u2019s generally less well-known that there are now more than 27,000 North Koreans living in South Korea.<\/p>\n

\"\"
In bad shape.<\/span>\u00a0EPA\/Jeon Heon-Kyun<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the South Korean government offers some support to new settlers, many northerners still face\u00a0serious challenges<\/a>, among them the onerous task of adjusting to a new society, psychological distress, and unemployment.<\/p>\n

But North Koreans living abroad can still influence the politics of their home country. They can speak out through\u00a0memoirs<\/a>, form\u00a0civil society organisations<\/a>\u00a0in the South, and share their knowledge about North Korean society with\u00a0researchers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0journalists<\/a>. Many can also communicate with family members who remain in the North, and send them information they would struggle to obtain in a highly restrictive and propaganda-rich country.<\/p>\n

Nuclear and non-nuclear developments in North Korea are very much intertwined, and the outside world needs to understand the latter if it wants to take an informed approach to dealing with the Kim regime.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that issues between the extremes of a nuclear North Korea and a poverty-stricken one are entirely overlooked. To be sure, there are numerous journalists and academics who provide valuable insights into North Korea, even if rumour still muddies the water and concrete information\u00a0remains scarce<\/a>. Rather, the challenge for those who hope to change North Korea is to understand the social developments already underway and connect them with opportunities for political progress.<\/p>\n

Many people are already thinking along the right lines, but there are many others still trying to understand the country principally in terms of nuclear machinations and domestic disasters. They need to update their thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr. Alexander Dukalskis North Korea essentially has two international images: the bellicose nuclear provocateur run by a mad dictator, and the impoverished country in dire need of humanitarian aid. At the moment, both faces are on depressing display. North … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/politicalscience.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}