Month: June 2018

Pyongyang watchers have always found reasons not to discuss ideology. According to the first consensus, North Korea was just a mindless satellite of the USSR. The second consensus was that it had a unique doctrine of solipsistic communism no foreigner could hope to penetrate. The current consensus: The North is a “reactive” state where ideology no longer matters.

Although observers still talk of a Juche / communist / Stalinist state, they always mean a failed one, with only enough ideology remaining to hold the economy back.

Thus has the regime’s nationalist commitment to unification been ignored or even denied. Conferences on North Korea took place, have taken place this month – are probably taking place as I write this — without anyone mentioning its ideology. You know you’re at a North Korea conference when you can’t tell the political scientists from the I.R. people.

Meanwhile Korean nationalism has not only energized the North’s march to nuclear armament, but also exerted a growing appeal on people in the South — the ideological discourse of which republic has received even less attention than the North’s. The average American knows only that in the 1980s liberal democracy replaced authoritarianism here.

Academics are not influential enough to deserve all the blame for this. The press talks to us, sure, but the press will talk to anyone. The government is much less keen on hearing our point of view. I bet it’s especially wary of consulting scholars when they say a regime’s ideology is beyond our knowing, or that fabricating sources is nothing to criticize a colleague for, but fields less obviously dysfunctional than “North Korean Studies” get passed over too.

Generally our bureaucrats reach their own conclusions among themselves, and then seek just enough external expertise to cover their rear ends. This was done most notoriously during the Vietnam War. In War and Politics (1973) Bernard Brodie writes:

If there is one practically unvarying principle about the use within the government of outside experts as consultants, it is that they must be known to be friendly to the policy on which they are being consulted. They may be critical of details … but not of the fundamentals. (p.214.)

We may scoff at this, but it’s human nature, and academics are no less prone to it.

In any case, the same tendencies that have made Koreanists shirk discussion of the North’s ideology seem to have induced our government to do likewise. An intelligence community with a serious interest in the subject would not have contented itself with any of the three consensuses summarized above. (The CIA’s research helped shape them all anyway.)

I was mindful enough of Brodie’s words not to get carried away last year when the Washington Post reported that US officials were reading The Cleanest Race. I assumed that the government had come around to a similar view of the North for which it sought external confirmation. I was also encouraged by a few official references to the unification drive.

But when the NSC’s H.R. McMaster spoke of this in December 2017 he described it in terms of an urge to unite the peninsula “under the red banner.” If there had been any change in perception, it was a reversion to the notion of a virulent-communist adversary.

This spring, however, the State Department took center stage again, and with it the more conventional misperception of the North. When Pompeo showed Kim Yong Chol the Manhattan skyline he did so with an air of Cold War oneupmanship, like Henry Cabot Lodge taking Khrushchev around town.

According to a senior State Department official, Pompeo was motioning to “a brighter future” that could be possible for North Korea, in exchange for it ending its nuclear program. (ABC News, 31 May 2018.)

To judge from the North Korean’s high spirits after the meeting, he knew just what fallacy our people were laboring under, and how to turn it to advantage.

No less telling were the photos of Sung Kim’s meetings with Pyongyang’s “diplomatic warriors.” Choe Son Hui looked more relaxed and cheerful than ever. She too must have known what was in the offing: the myth of a failed-red North was about to give the real, ascendant North more time and stature with which to attain its nationalist objectives.

Considering how much of the agreement was obviously worked out before the summit — and with how many portents of American weakening — it’s wrong to blame Trump for what happened on the day itself. His buffoonery was mortifying, yes, but edifying too. All he did was act out the hoary conventional wisdom as if on a pantomime stage. The spectacle was a devastating caricature of all our wishful dealings with the North.

As the day unfolded it became clear that, once again, our side had devoted far more attention to event-planning than to ideological reconnaissance. We saw the usual indifference to the question of how the North could justify its existence after disarming. We saw the lie given to our tough-guy rhetoric. We saw a familiar American combination of credulity and condescension.

All this was as old as the nuclear crisis itself. But for once we got it without any dignifying sheen of sophistication. I suspect many observers who professed to be appalled by Trump’s performance were really only lamenting the lack of that sheen. Their criticism of him for not getting more from Kim in writing makes little sense. Either the regime has changed fundamentally or it hasn’t. If it has, it would indeed be counter-productive to impose a series of hurdles that must be jumped over within a certain time. If it hasn’t, no concessions it might commit to paper are going to have any more value than the last ones.

As for that much-ridiculed video Trump had made for the occasion, what was it, if not a dramatic rendition of the failed-communist model? The moment I realized what I was watching, I waited for that satellite photograph, the nocturnal one we never hear the end of. Sure enough, it appeared at about the 2-minute mark. For how can a country without lights not be failed, broken, looking for a face-saving way out? And America can help.

[How typical that the one source of information on North Korea that requires no reading or background knowledge should be invoked more often by Americans than any other. I get reminded of it when I talk of a unification drive: “How could such a backward country possibly,” etc, etc. But would a satellite shot of divided Vietnam in 1974 have looked all that different?]

Even those who mocked Trump for setting the mission of denuclearization back a step or two said they were glad the summit had taken place. Why? Because talk is always better than war, even if our adversary derives far more benefit than we do. Without debating the merits of appeasement per se (and there were merits even in Chamberlain’s kind), let’s at least acknowledge that such an approach is appeasement.

Pompeo says we can expect major progress toward denuclearization “in, what was it, two and a half years.” That he had to jog his own memory shows how little thought he has given to what Kim and Moon plan to accomplish in that time frame. If we don’t see what we want by the winter of 2020-21, our options will be far more limited than they are now.

For years the American press gave us sporadic reports on how blasé South Koreans were about the threat from the North, and how indifferent they had become to the welfare or human rights of the people up there.

Yet early this year the commentariat suddenly had to explain the dramatic change in North-South relations without resorting to meta-ideological discussion, which it hates above all things.

At first we heard from our leading newspapers how the South Korean public had been turned upside-down by the immense charm and fashion sense of Kim Yo-jong, of all people. This talk was so obviously trivial and false as to incur a backlash.

Since then the press has pushed the line that Moon’s outreach to the North reflects South Koreans’ yearning to be free from the sleep-robbing fear of nuclear war, free also from fear of a US strike on their brethren above the DMZ. (No one acknowledges the contradiction to the line we used to get.)

In accordance with this new consensus, the lumpencommentariat dismisses all talk of ideological affinity between the Blue House and the Kim regime as “McCarthyist” ravings or “fucking John Birch shit,” to mention a few epithets on Twitter directed at my ally-as-intermediary piece.

Much as I want to put this blogging stuff behind me, the upcoming summit compels me to draw attention, if only for the record, to how the nationalist left’s own discourse backs me up.

A few months ago I predicted the ruling Minjoo Party would begin agitating for a league or confederation before the June 13 elections. I said that in doing so it would focus on the economic benefits.

Last week I received the various parties’ campaign materials in a big envelope. (As a permanent resident I am eligible to vote in local elections.) Sure enough, the Minjoo pamphlet has a slogan in big brushstroke font at the top of one page: “Peace Equals Economy!” Underneath, next to a photo of President Moon, is the somewhat coded but still urgent pledge to “construct a permanent peace system this year.”

Of course his base knows what this means. To quote an approving headline in the nationalist-left Hankyoreh on April 29:

The plan for unification via a North-South league is hidden in the Panmunjom Declaration.

Indeed it is, and in plain sight. But the Hankyoreh was quick to drop this talk, being mindful of the need to get the Americans to Singapore in as blissful a state of ignorance as possible. This is why street demonstrations for the “peace system” have so far been rather small and sedate affairs (though with a higher proportion of young participants than conservative rallies).

A less prominent, therefore less constrained source of Moon camp discourse is Tongil [Unification] News. In a recent article Paek Nak-ch’eong, an SNU professor emeritus of some influence, is quoted as saying that the leaguing-up or confederating process has in effect already begun.

The stage of a North-South league, in which North and South maintain their own constitutions, governments and militaries while forming a league of the two states, can be said to be already underway.

Such remarks are becoming common. On May 29, just after the second Kim-Moon summit, the head of a research institute had his presentation summarized as follows:

The ‘Panmunjom Declaration’ has effectively opened the door to the stage of a North-South league. In less than a month, North-South summits have become routine and regular, and if a formal structure for North-South cabinet meetings is created, and meetings on the parliamentary level take place this year, a ‘North-South league’ will be complete.

South Korea is an unpredictable place, but at present I see no pressing reason why things couldn’t unfold in the way described. After all, the main reason the ruling party has been touting its plan for a “peace system” in the run-up to local elections — in contrast to the shrewd downplaying of North-South issues during Moon’s presidential campaign — is in order to claim a mandate on June 13 to gallop towards it.

(Yes, gallop. After Kim Jong Un said that North-South relations must progress as fast as a “10,000 league horse,” the ROK Unification Minister allegedly said in the earshot of reporters: “We need to make a faster horse.”)

The conference that produced the last indented statement above was hosted by Tongilmaji, a civic group run by the ruling party’s own Yi Hae-ch’an. (Many groups that seem more radical than the government itself would be considered astroturf organizations by American standards.) The published proceedings offer valuable insight into the mindset of the sort of people the Moon administration likes to see on its advisory “TF” or task forces.

In the front matter is a warm letter from the “Committee of National [minjok] Conciliation” in Pyongyang, complete with North Korean orthography and Juche calendar date, and talk of a shared “patriotic movement” (aeguk undong). To North Koreans the obvious implication is that the South Korean friends share their love of the DPRK.

Whether the folk at Tongilmaji realize this, I am not sure; they may well think reference is to the North-South league (one country or kuk, two systems) which in their minds is already a done deal.

Either way, the events of the past few months have had quite a disinhibiting effect. Not since the Chang Myun era (1960-61) has the National Security Law been so loosely enforced. One encounters increasingly casual invocation of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un as an authority on whatever is being discussed. For example: We Koreans are too easily fooled by others, so we must read Kim Il Sung’s memoirs With the Century, and learn how he always kept his guard up. (The irony! But I know a few foreign Koreanists who swallow the “memoirs” too.)

While there is great affection for “Inny,” as the South Korean president is sometimes called, there is more solemn respect for the three Kims. This is only natural, for by nationalist standards they are far superior.

Still, it’s obvious that the left is consciously holding back until after the Singapore summit. As Ko Sŭng-u of the Citizens’ League for Democratic Media put it in a recent talk:

Some people are saying that to make sure the US-North Korea summit goes ahead, it is better not to mention the problem of the withdrawal of US troops.

I get the logic. If Trump realizes how quickly low-level confederation will come about, and what is bound to ensue, he might be less impressed by what Kim Jong Un refrains from demanding. And less inclined to reward this forbearance.

But take it from me, Moon camp: You can talk as loudly as you want, and the Americans won’t pay the slightest attention. Least of all Trump. As far as they’re concerned, the North Koreans are communists, and you’re liberal democrats.

Ko himself doesn’t need my encouragement. He comes right out and says that the construction of a “permanent peace system” must lead to the abolition of the Mutual Defense Treaty in its current form. Which is of course true. (Ko believes it already violates the ROK constitution.)

To return to the Tongilmaji gathering: A paper by Yi Hyŏk-hŭi, chairman of the group’s steering committee, confirms my hunch — as expressed in the ally-as-intermediary posting — that political power is now being exercised not by an administration in the full sense, but by a clique answering to a popular movement.

In the current situation the executor known as ‘government’ does not appear very different from the public [min’gan]. It is known that for reasons related to security, urgency and importance a very small group inside the Blue House is making policy decisions, and shaping the current state of affairs. When you get right down to it, the worrying reality is not so much the ‘bypassing of the public’ but the ‘bypassing of government.’

Sounds a bit like the Trump administration, doesn’t it? But Yi isn’t worried for the reasons you or I would be.

While the president is racing along, the offices directly and indirectly responsible for implementing policy are not doing their work. Worse, they are causing ‘mishaps’….. Inside ‘government’ there appear to be no bureaucrats who understand the Moon government’s philosophy. A second fundamental reason appears to be the lack of a purge of accumulated ills [cheokpye]. Expecting bureaucrats who worked in the Unification Ministry and other offices under the Lee Myung Bak and Park Geun-hye governments to correctly understand the current situation and correctly do their work is in itself nonsensical.

So many North-critical people to purge, so little time. After local elections generate the appearance of a mandate, this endeavor will pick up pace in a big way.

As it must. April 2020 is not far off.

Let me explain: Judging from cyclical trends in ROK political history, and the international track record of economic policies like Moon’s, there is a strong likelihood of the conservatives taking back the National Assembly in the 2020 legislative elections, whereupon they would move to nullify North-South agreements, and restore whatever US troops and weaponry might have been sent home by that time.

The many apologetic Pyongyang watchers who attributed the twin military attacks of 2010 to Lee Myung Bak’s abandonment of the Sunshine Policy will have to agree with me that the dictatorship would not take a much greater reversal of its fortunes lying down.

No doubt the same people who jeered at me last winter for thinking confederation possible will now find me crazy for suggesting that the South Koreans might get cold feet at the altar of this eminently sensible “peace system.”

But the scenario in question certainly looms large in the Moon camp’s own thinking. This is why it wants the legislature to compel future compliance with all summit agreements — regardless of whether the North violates them, it seems. It has also, as I have said before, expressed a commitment to keeping the right out of power for the next twenty years.

Unfortunately the US government shows no awareness of how dangerous the “peace process” is likely to be. Trump has given his blessing to inter-Korean dialogue of which he clearly understands nothing, and praised Kim Jong Un as an “honorable” person, while making clear that US troops will remain here for as long as they’re wanted. In this manner he has encouraged the South Korean people to sign off on risks they may well balk at later. Our troops could end up paying the price.