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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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