PROMINENT SCHOLAR SAYS U.S. SHOULD UNDERMINE DPRK

UNCLAS SEOUL 000657 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL ECON SOCI KS KN SUBJECT: PROMINENT SCHOLAR SAYS U.S. SHOULD UNDERMINE DPRK THROUGH LOW-KEY ENGAGEMENT; CONDEMNS ROK POLICY SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (SBU) Andrei Lankov, a prominent authority on the DPRK, told the Ambassador on February 27 that the United States should ignore the DPRK at a political level, as the Kim Jong-il regime was a threat only to its own people. He argued that a low-key effort to provide greater information to North Koreans, particularly members of the elite, was the best way to undermine the regime. Lankov was scathing in his denunciation of the ROK's engagement policy, saying that by propping up the Kim Jong-il regime without a serious effort to demand reforms, Seoul was unwittingly worsening the situation it would inherit once the inevitable collapse arrived. Lankov predicted that the Pyongyang political elite would not fracture, as it viewed its fate as tied to Kim Jong-il. He was dismissive of DPRK economic reforms and said Pyongyang's nuclear program had evolved from a bargaining chip into a deterrent. END SUMMARY. VIDEOS, THE SEEDS OF THE REGIME'S DESTRUCTION -------------- ¶2. (SBU) The Ambassador met on February 27 with Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University, for a wide-ranging discussion of the DPRK. Born and educated in the Soviet Union, Lankov has devoted most of his professional career to studying North Korea and writes a regular column for the Korea Times. Lankov emphasized the importance that greater exposure to outside information would play in changing the country. Saying the Soviet Union was "ruined by short-wave radio," Lankov asserted videos were playing a similar role in the DPRK. He described proposals to send radios into North Korea by balloon as unnecessary, saying smugglers were already playing the role of the balloons through their effective introduction into the DPRK of South Korean and Western videos and other sources of information, primarily across the border with China. Lankov expressed disappointment that the United States was not making greater efforts to broadcast into North Korea, describing the hours that Radio Free Asia was on the air as inadequate. ¶3. (SBU) To the extent possible, said Lankov, the United States should simply ignore North Korea, as the DPRK thrived by having an outside threat. Kim Jong-il was not a serious threat to anyone but his own people. The DPRK would never initiate a war, which it knew would end quickly and disastrously. Similarly, Pyongyang knew better than to transfer its nuclear weapons and materials. ¶4. (SBU) The DPRK would engage if faced with a bold approach by Washington, Lankov predicted, although Pyongyang would not accept assistance if it were conditioned on economic or political reforms. He was skeptical about North Korea's interest in pursuing normalization with the United States, saying Pyongyang would view such an offer as either a trick or a sign of weakness, in which case it would push for still-greater benefits. The best way to engage with North Korea, and simultaneously undermine the regime, was to sugarcoat the medicine, for example by inviting children of the elite to study in the United States. Lankov asserted that no member of the North Korean elite would turn down the opportunity for his child to study in the United States; allowing a few thousand young people to study in the United States would have a significant effect in changing North Korean attitudes. He also advocated cultural exchanges, suggesting Washington allow the North Korean soccer team or a North Korean cheerleading squad to visit the United States. ROK ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE POSTPONES REFORMS -------------- ¶5. (SBU) During the Cold War, said Lankov, North Korea had brilliantly played China and the Soviet Union off against one another, as the two competed for influence in Pyongyang by providing ever-larger amounts of assistance with ever-fewer conditions. Now, Pyongyang was attempting to employ the same strategy to extract assistance from China and South Korea. In this regard, Lankov noted recent reports that Pyongyang may be reviving the Sinuiju project and speculated this might be an effort by China to "balance" the ROK's Kaesong Industrial Complex. ¶6. (SBU) Lankov complained that Seoul's strategy of "showering North Korea with aid" was good strategy but bad tactics, as it helped keep the Kim Jong-il regime in power but did not lead to any positive changes in the DPRK. On the contrary, supporting the regime without inducing changes merely postponed the inevitable collapse, while the underlying problems worsened and thereby exacerbated the ultimate crisis. By obviating the need for Pyongyang to reform, said Lankov, the ROK's unconditional assistance would ultimately kill more people than it would save. DPRK DOES NOT REFORM, BUT SURRENDERS TO PUBLIC PRACTICES -------------- -------------- ¶7. (SBU) Lankov pointed out that economic reform in China had been a top-down process in which the government steadily and deliberately introduced market reforms by relaxing economic controls. In contrast, "reform" in North Korea was a bottom-up process in which illegal economic activity eventually became so widespread that the government was forced to legalize what it could not eradicate. The recent effort to reinstate the Public Distribution System for rationing food, however, showed that Pyongyang believed it had received enough assistance from China and the ROK that it could reassert control of the food market. RULING ELITE WILL NOT FRACTURE -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Lankov was doubtful that the Pyongyang ruling elite would ever fracture. Members of the elite recognized that they must hang together or they would hang separately. In the Soviet Union and China, members of the political elite had realized in the late 1980s that they could prosper in a capitalist system and had effectively opted out of the government system. In North Korea, however, members of the elite recognized that if the political system were to collapse, the ROK would take control of the country and they would lose all of their privileges. Moreover, members of the elite had done terrible things to their people, they knew it, and they knew there would be an inevitable day of reckoning if the ROK took over. (Lankov added that for this very reason he believed there should be a general amnesty if it ever appeared the DPRK was about to collapse.) In fact, the North Korean elite probably thought their fate would be worse than it actually would: they knew what they would do to their South Korean counterparts in the event they were able to take over the ROK and presumably assumed that the South Koreans would treat them in the same brutal manner. ¶9. (SBU) As long as Kim Jong-il did not die unexpectedly, and China and the ROK continued to prop up the regime, said Lankov, the DPRK could probably survive for another 7-10 years. In the event that Kim Jong-il died suddenly, however, Lankov predicted the regime would collapse very quickly. NUCLEAR PROGRAM FIRST A BARGAINING CHIP, NOW A DETERRENT -------------- -------------- ¶10. (SBU) Lankov speculated that the DPRK nuclear program had originally been intended primarily as a bargaining chip that Pyongyang wanted to exchange for benefits, with deterrence as a secondary purpose. In the wake of the Iraq War, however, these priorities had been reversed, with deterrence now the program's primary raison d'etre. In addition, generous assistance from China and South Korea meant that Pyongyang no longer needed American assistance as much as it had in years past, hence it had less incentive to compromise on its nuclear program. RUSSIA: FOCUSED ELSEWHERE -------------- ¶11. (SBU) Asked about Russia's policy toward the DPRK, Lankov opined that Moscow considered North Korea strictly a secondary issue. Russia did not consider the DPRK nuclear program a threat, but wanted a Korean Peninsula that was stable, divided and non-nuclear (in that order of priority). Noting that North Korea's trade with the Netherlands and Thailand was greater than with Russia, Lankov characterized Russian policy as "broad smile diplomacy on the cheap." VERSHBOW