North Korea’s Jasmine Revolution?

With autocratic, dictatorial regimes falling left and right in the Arab world, one might anticipate a few demonstrations by the oppressed in other corners of the globe. North Koreans in particular have been receiving news of the uprisings via leaflets flown in by balloon from the South. “A dictatorial regime is destined to collapse,” they claim. Sadly, so long as China continues to prop up the North Korean regime, inspiring uprisings will remain a far-off dream. The Jasmine Revolution will not spread to North Korea, but there is reason for optimism in the long term.

A common justification for the DRPK’s continued existence is its potential to create millions of refugees in the event of state collapse. China, experts say, lends North Korea its support because it is unwilling to deal with the problems created by twenty million lost souls streaming across its borders. In reality, argues former U.S. ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill, China could handle the refugees; the true issue is one of bureaucracy. The Chinese government, he contends, is fairly indecisive regarding Korea, and inertia prevails in the inner circles of state. China may also fear a unified Korea on its doorstep, especially one friendly to America. Regardless, China controls North Korea’s fate, as its economy is almost 90% dependent upon China. Only the Chinese have the leverage to force North Korea into economic collapse, and they simply aren’t willing to use it.

China aside, the prospect of a North Korean revolution is exceedingly slim, Jasmine Revolution or not. When faced with unemployment, corruption, and oppression, the Egyptian and Tunisian people took to the streets and overthrew the governing elite. In Korea, when 5% of the population starved to death in the late 1990s, dissent was noticeably absent, and Kim Jong-Il maintained a firm seat on his trembling throne of deceit. Why? Because North Korea is the paragon of isolationism taken too far. The government works hard to ensure that its citizens know nothing of the outside world. The life of a North Korean citizen is nightmarish: a complete lack of civil liberties, an endless stream of Dear-Leader-glorifying propaganda, and hard labor camps for dissenters characterize daily life for all. An ongoing famine has left over three million dead since 1995; people sometimes subsist on twigs, bark, and grass. Yet the ruling regime’s information monopoly has left the population brainwashed and accustomed to their extreme poverty.

The importance of social networking in the Arab uprisings only underscores the vital role of information and civil society in provoking dissent. In North Korea, however, Internet access and mobile phones are rare commodities indeed. According to a March 6^th Reuters article, the Internet is only available to elite state supporters, and the nation’s single cell network is strictly monitored and incapable of international calls. Moreover, argues Foreign Policy in Focus co-director John Feffer, North Korea has no civil society that can take democratic ideals and translate them into a North Korean context. Accustomed to oppression and with state forces monitoring their every move, ordinary citizens have become apathetic to their own plight. South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek puts it best, stating that the impact of the Arab revolutions on the North will, for now, be “insignificant.”

Surrendering to the status quo in North Korea, however, is not an option. With 28,000 troops just south of the border and tensions running high on the Korean Peninsula, the United States certainly has reason for concern. The North Korean military has up to 9 million troops at its disposal and maintains a small but worrisome nuclear stockpile. A madman with nuclear weapons atop a wobbly throne cannot be ignored.

Still, options are scarce. The military option is suicide: with North Korean artillery aimed directly at our troops in Seoul, any military provocation could lead to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers. A decapitating first strike aimed at either the North Korean rulers or nuclear stockpile comes with unacceptable risk. Hard power is not an option. Traditional diplomacy, too, has failed: the Six-Party talks have stalled and restarted dozens of times, yet North Korea still has nuclear weapons. Most experts are pinning their hopes on Western soft power: the attractive force of Western democratic ideals and success.

Will the soft approach work in North Korea? Many remain skeptical. “We can be a bit delusional about the impact of [American] soft power,” claims Mr. Feffer. North Korea, he says, understands that the West is hoping for a soft power-fuelled revolution and has taken precautionary steps. Its propaganda machine depicts the wonders of the West as a “poisoned apple.” It likens openness to a window; while opening the window lets in a cool breeze, it also lets in flies. Thus, Koreans have put in a “screen” to filter out the evils of capitalism and Western thought. Since North Korea lacks a civil society, even passive soft power looks like the West is imposing its ideas upon Koreans. Without a platform or public debate, all information is filtered through the propaganda machine.  A suggestion becomes a demand, the innocent idea of liberal reforms a dangerous gambit doomed to fail. Acclimated to oppression and blind to the realities of the outside world, the North Koreans are unlikely to revolt any time soon.

In truth, so long as the current regime can maintain its information monopoly, reform will not come to Korea. Until the chronic instability that often cripples oppressive, elderly dictatorships rusts a hole in Korea’s iron curtain, no amount of soft power can safely provoke a revolution without putting U.S. troops in a dangerous position.

When these cracks begin to appear, however, prudent soft policy may play a role in catalyzing an “Arirang revolution.” Such a strategy must focus on what Mr. Feffer calls the “four M’s of Asian soft power”: media, missionaries, market, and music. Media involves the use of broadcasts such as Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and South Korean radio stations to transmit news and information from the outside world to show the North Korean people that there is a better alternative to their way of life. Balloon-borne messages from the South are already accomplishing this goal. Missionaries are straightforward: using religion in the form of human missionaries and the ongoing dispersion of flash drive bibles along the Chinese border to establish unity and promote values. Market means training North Koreans in free market technologies and theories from the West. Music, finally, is symbolic of all forms of cultural diplomacy that can make the North Korean populace receptive to Western influence. Indeed, the international diplomatic community lauded the New York Philharmonic’s 2008 visit to Pyongyang, by far the largest contingent of U.S. citizens to visit since the Korean War, as proof that cultural diplomacy can open Korean minds in a way that traditional diplomacy cannot.

Ultimately these elements should be combined in a cohesive policy of laissez-faire diplomacy, a hands-off approach that gives North Korea enough space to create a “North Korean-brand democracy.” The hope is that the four M’s will provide a spark to light a reformist blaze in a choked society cut off from the oxygen of information, but the fact remains that they are naught but a spark in an expansive darkness. Korean society is nowhere near ready for even preliminary democratic reforms; it may take a several generations before North Koreans even realize the true magnitude of their plight as a society. But if it ever comes, a North Korean democracy will not smell of jasmine; its flavor is for Korea to decide.