An Information Based Strategy to Reduce Korea’s Increasing Threat

This report is authored by Commander Skip Vincenzo, (US Navy SEAL), who is among the longest serving uniformed officers in Korea in the past two decades.  He assembled a group of Korea hands (page 13 of the report) to work on this project this summer.

Co-published with CNAS, USKI-SAIS, and NDU our Georgetown Security Studies Review.

The report can be accessed directly in PDF at this link: http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/An-Information-Based-Strategy-to-Reduce-North-Koreas-Increasing-Threat.pdf

Special Issue: An Information Based Strategy to Reduce Korea’s Increasing Threat

 Oct 17, 2016  GSSR  Special Issues, The Review  0

http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2016/10/17/special-issue-an-information-based-strategy-to-reduce-koreas-increasing-threat/

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In cooperation with the Center for a New American Security, National Defense University, and the US-Korea Institute at SAIS, Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies and the Georgetown Security Studies Review present a new special report available for download here.

Executive Summary

“Deterrence works, until it doesn’t.”—Sir Lawrence Freedman

The United States’ current approach to North Korea does not fundamentally resolve the risks of its belligerent behavior nor halt the development of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. As these capabilities are improved, there is greater potential that Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea— confident he can deter a regime-threatening reaction—will attempt a violent provocation to achieve political objectives but in doing so miscalculates and instead sparks a crisis which escalates disastrously. While the United States has contingency plans for a wide range of conflict scenarios, executing them would be extraordinarily costly—the military capabilities Pyongyang has now amassed would inflict catastrophic damage.

James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, has repeatedly warned that Pyongyang is “committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States…” and that “North Korea has already taken initial steps toward fielding this system…”1 With such a capability, Kim is attempting force the international community to accommodate him to avoid conflict. However, he could underestimate U.S. resolve, which in turn would ignite conflict. If the Kim regime falls, a nuclear-armed, fragmented military could strike the United States.

To avert this, the United States should work with South Korea to develop an information campaign designed to reduce the risks of conflict or regime collapse by convincing regime elites that their best options in these circumstances would be to support ROK-U.S. Alliance efforts. This would require five key elements:

• Enhance our ability to de-escalate a crisis by ensuring that the regime’s elites fully understand the consequences of a war by continually demonstrating the U.S.-ROK Alliance’s advanced military capabilities.

• Reduce the potential for violence by formulating policies that provide credible assurances of amnesty to regime elites and, if they act in ways which support alliance efforts, a beneficial role after the Kim regime collapses or a conflict is resolved on Alliance terms.

• Reduce the humanitarian costs by formulating policies that inform ordinary North Koreans what to expect in a contingency and how to act.

• Reduce civil and military resistance by formulating policies that guarantee North Koreans full rights as citizens of South Korea.

• Mitigate collapse of the civil infrastructure by incentivizing bureaucrats, technicians, and local commanders to protect and maintain critical facilities.

Reducing the wartime damage the North could inflict and lessening the potential chaos of collapse would provide renewed leverage for the U.S.-ROK Alliance to de-escalate a crisis before it erupts. However, if crisis does occur, this strategy would enable a more favorable and less costly conclusion.

This is very important.  This is why the ROK government should provide support to the Korean entertainment industry to develop dramas that will help educate the Korean people living in the north about unification, as I have argued here:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/30/north-korea-nuclear-threat-can-south-korean-made-t/

Actually what I would like the ROKG to do is articulate its plans and policies for unification and how it intends to address certain issues like economic and political integration; what they intend to do with the nKPA, etc and then let the entertainment industry build narratives to entertain (and subtly educate) the Korean people in both the north and South.  All the ROKG has to do is provide its vision, plans, and policies for unification and then let the entertainment industry create the dramas.

South Korea TV show going viral in North Korea

The movies are making it into the country on flash drives, according to a report.

By Elizabeth Shim    |   April 25, 2016 at 2:40 PM

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/04/25/South-Korea-TV-show-going-viral-in-North-Korea/7771461609006/

A South Korean television series is highly popular in North Korea, where people are secretly watching the show on flash drives. Image courtesy of KBS

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SEOUL, April 25 (UPI) -- The North Korean regime may celebrate founder Kim Il Sung's birthday as the "Day of the Sun," but more North Koreans are soaking up the rays of South Korean media trickling into the country.

A popular South Korean soap opera is circulating in the North, making its way across the border with China, where the television series has been downloaded 2 billion times, Asia Times reported.

Descendants of the Sun is so well received in North Korea even border guards in the country secretly watch the show in their spare time, Radio Free Asia reported.

The movies are making it into North Korea on flash drives and are pricey, costing $4 to $5 per episode, according to the report.

(continued at the link below)

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/04/25/South-Korea-TV-show-going-viral-in-North-Korea/7771461609006/

A comprehensive information and influence campaign is one of the most important things the ROKG supported by the ROK/US Alliance can do to prepare for unification.  We have wasted the past 20 years not doing this effectively as I have argued here (http://bit.ly/1MAPxS1) in 1996 and here (http://bit.ly/1CWA5vm) in 2004.  We have not taken this seriously enough and we have not invested the intellectual capital, time, and resources to do this and do it well.  But it is not too late to start especially because there are so many more opportunities to achieve effects and influence the multiple target audiences from the elite to the second tier leaders to the Korean people living and suffering in the north.

Breaking The North Korean Information Blockade

Updated February 21, 201610:05 AM ETPublished February 21, 20167:57 AM EThttp://www.npr.org/2016/02/21/467365354/breaking-the-north-korean-information-blockade

NPR STAFF

Visitors look at the military wire fences at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, South Korea, Feb. 14, 2016.

Lee Jin-man/AP

North Korea is considered the most reclusive country in the world. Outsiders know very little about what happens inside the Hermit Kingdom.

North Koreans, in turn, know very little about the outside world. The regime of dictator Kim Jong Un bans nearly all forms of outside media. North Koreans are only exposed to what their government tells them, giving a them skewed view of their own country.

A group of nonprofits in the U.S. is trying to change that with USB drives. They are asking Americans to donate thumb drives, which are then loaded with Western TV and movies and smuggled into North Korea.

The idea for Flash Drives for Freedom was started by the Human Rights Foundation. Sharon Stratton is the U.S. program officer with the North Korean Strategy Center, one of the groups involved. She spoke with NPR's Rachel Martin about what goes on the flash drives and what the risks are for the people involved.

(Continued at this link)

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/21/467365354/breaking-the-north-korean-information-blockade

Truth Or Propaganda? Finding Real Stories In North Korea

Photos can be seen at the link (which are actually just some of the usual fare we see from western photographers traveling in the north).  However, there are some interesting anecdotes in this story with the Buddhist monk, the bowling alley, and Gone with the Wind.  And we should keep this in mind:

One man, a smuggler who fled North Korea, wanted Sullivan to understand that.

"'You gotta remember, we're normal,' " he told Sullivan. "'We're normal people, we're like you. We're like everybody else. Our hearts break, we have fights at the office, we fight with our wives; we're just like anybody else.' "

All of these and many other anecdotes should help convince us that we need to have an aggressive psychological operations campaign to increase information flow inside north Korea.  One of the two major contributing factors for why East and West Germany had a relatively smooth reunification was that there were many contacts between the East and West and the East Germans had much great knowledge of the West that then north has of the South (though the gap is closing).  The second reason was that the infrastructure in the East, though much below that of the West was still relatively much closer to the West than the north's is to the South.  There is not much that can be done about the north's infrastructure now since the regime has been slowly destroying it for the past 60 years due to its bankrupt economic policies.  However, active preparations for unification can be conducted using the information instrument of national power.

But I am reminded of this quote:

"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - - and quickly."
- Robert A. Heinlein from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long: Time Enough for Love 

V/R

Dave

Truth Or Propaganda? Finding Real Stories In North Korea

by NPR STAFF

September 29, 2013 5:02 PM

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/29/226888234/truth-or-propaganda-finding-real-stories-in-north-korea

A Peek Inside North Korea

National Geographic photographer David Guttenfelder went on assignment to North Korea with AP correspondent Tim Sullivan, and came back with these photos.

North Korea remains one of the most closed places in the world. And that makes Tim Sullivan kind of a rarity: As the Asia correspondent for the Associated Press, he's spent about six weeks in the country over the course of two trips.

It's a different kind of reporting trip, he tells All Things Considered host Arun Rath.

"A lot of my time is spent ... gauging what is real, what is fake," he says. "If something is fake, in what way is it fake? Do they really do this job and they're simply acting for me? Or do they not do this at all, and it's complete Potemkin?"

But for some reason, he says, he forgot that temporarily during his most recent trip, when he visited a Buddhist monastery.

"All I could think of was that I was dealing with monks, that these people could be genuine believers and if they saw me as an opportunity to criticize the regime and they were heard — which they would be because my minders are with me always — they would go to prison," he says. "Their families would go to prison. People could die."

So he avoided the one topic he wanted to discuss, freedom of religion.

It was an uneventful visit. Sullivan says he asked banal questions, chit-chatted with the monks, then left.

Then something happened on his way out: Suddenly, the senior monk and Sullivan's minder were waiting, looking at him.

"The monk said to me, we know what you want to ask, and he was right," he says.

So Sullivan asked about freedom of religion. There is absolute freedom of religion in North Korea, the monk told him, and it's your responsibility to tell that to the world.

But of course, Sullivan says, religion has been crushed in the last 60 years. While there are a handful of churches and Buddhist temples, he says, they're basically there to show foreigners.

Short Skirts And Muscle Shirts

Not every story Sullivan is told has been scripted. One of his favorite places in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang is a bowling alley called Gold Lane.

The 1970s-style bowling alley — a big showcase during the regime of Kim Il Sung — is a popular gathering place for soldiers now.

"The soldiers take off their shirts, they love to bowl in their sleeveless white t-shirts, showing off their muscles," he says.

The scene, Sullivan says, tells you a lot about recent changes in the country.

"By simply being in the army and living in the capital, that makes them a part of an elite, even if they're not high elite. They're somebody. And they're there with their girlfriends, who can dress in a way that was never seen before," he says.

Their girlfriends parade around in short skirts and high heels. Sullivan says it was basically illegal to wear a short skirt until about a year ago. North Koreans are more plugged in than they used to be — hence they realize how out of date they are, Sullivan says.

There is more money flowing into the country, from mineral and timber sales to China. Sullivan says the tiny but growing middle class wants the same things the Chinese middle class wants.

"They want to wear nice clothing and high heels and have iPods," Sullivan says. "They now do have a consumer ideal, which didn't exist there before."

A Country That Identifies With Scarlett O'Hara

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/29/226888234/truth-or-propaganda-finding-real-stories-in-north-korea

The US is encouraging the Foreign Office to back plans to establish a BBC Korean service

Interesting development.  Any information to the people of north Korea is helpful and though I am happy to see that Lord Alton hopes to have talks with the new ROK Administration, I hope that with the US approaching the BBC to do this would be from an Alliance perspective and that this is not purely a bilateral US-UK initiative.  Anything we do in north Korea has to be in support of our treaty ally the ROK and must be to further the 2009 ROK-US Joint Vision which is to achieve unification of the Peninsula (hopefully peacefully).  Government initiatives should (must?) be in synch with the ROK government and the overall influence strategy for solving the "Korea question."  We should be long past trying to do anything unilaterally or not involving the ROK on the Korean Peninsula.

V/R

Dave

How do you solve a problem like BBC World Service Korea?

The US is encouraging the Foreign Office to  back plans to establish a BBC Korean service

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-bbc-world-service-korea-8432714.html

IAN BURRELL 

  

FRIDAY 28 DECEMBER 2012

The BBC World Service could broadcast programmes aimed at residents of North Korea for the first time, under proposals being discussed by MPs, corporation bosses and US officials.

Barack Obama’s administration is encouraging the Foreign Office to back plans to establish a BBC Korean service to help open up the most secret country on earth.

They believe the BBC’s reputation for impartiality could help build up trust with communist state's 24 million population.

The talks come amid signs that North Korean citizens are increasingly ignoring a ban that forbids them from accessing foreign media. A Korean network is also seen as having potential commercial and cultural benefits in South Korea.

Peter Horrocks, the head of the BBC World Service, will discuss the matter in Westminster with MPs from the All Party Group on North Korea early in the new year. Lord Alton, who leads the group, which has also met with the Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire, said Washington-based officials had recently been in London to support the idea of a BBC service. The US government-run networks Voice of America and Radio Free Asia already broadcast into North Korea.

The peer said: “Within the last month I have had discussions with senior [US] State Department officials. They are very positive about the idea of the BBC becoming involved in transmission.”

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-bbc-world-service-korea-8432714.html

ROK Government Agrees to Maintain Analogue TV (for north Korea)

Wise move on the part of the ROK government.  (and another illustration of the infrastructure differences between north and South). Obviously this has current benefits for influence operations but it is also important for the South to maintain this capability for use during post-regime collapse so that it can communicate information to the north Korean people using the existing north Korean infrastructure.

V/R
Dave  

Government Agrees to Maintain Analogue TV

By Cho Jong Ik [2012-12-25 21:22 ]   http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=10184

The South Korean government has agreed to maintain a system for the broadcasting of analogue TV signals, ensuring the ability of people in North Korea to watch analogue South Korean television despite the broader shift to digital television now underway.

The move came after concerns were raised that the ability of North Korean people living along the west coast of Hwanghae and east coast of Gangwon Province was going to be undermined by the shift to digital.

A government official reported the news on Christmas Day following a meeting with the relevant broadcasting authorities.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=10184

Kim Jong-eun should fear Sunshine

There is of course the theory that a fully executed Sunshine Policy could unhinge the regime because so much aid and more importantly information would get into the north and it would undercut regime legitimacy and thus lead to collapse.  Under such a theory the end state would be regime collapse and unification of the peninsula.  Unfortunately the Sunshine Policy is based on the flawed assumption that aid to and engagement with the north  will lead to a change in regime behavior.  We should know after the 12/12/12 missile launch that the regime has no intention to (nor can it) change its behavior.  

In addition, it would be quite a policy shift by the ROK and the US to actively attempt to undermine the regime to cause it to collapse.  Ironically no one in the region really wants that to happen because 1) it could lead to war and 2) the financial and economic (and not to mention the humanitarian) burden will be so great as to overwhelm the ROK and others potentially destabilize the region.  So while it is in everyone's interest to maintain the status quo we face the moral dilemma of 22, 995,000 people living in a virtual prison suffering on a scale that has little rival in history.

But I would offer this strategic assumption: There will be no change on the Korean peninsula as long as the Kim Family Regime exists.

V/R

Dave

COMMENT Kim Jong-eun should fear Sunshine By Andrei Lankov  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NL15Dg01.html Whatever policy towards North Korea will be chosen by the new South Korean government following the December 19 presidential election, it seems clear that it will be significantly softer than that followed by the Lee Myung-bak administration.  Right now it appears that Park Geun-hye, the candidate of the moderate right, has better chance of winning, but it is unlikely that she will continue with the hardline policy of her predecessor.  This looming dovish turn is likely to annoy some people on the political right in South Korea. They often vilify aid to, and cooperation with North Korea as "appeasement", and they point to the obvious lack of reciprocity in North-South relations. It is stated that the money earned by Pyongyang through exchanges with the South is used to strengthen North Korean leader Kim Jong-eun's rule.  These accusations have within them a kernel of truth. In few, if any, cases have interactions between North and South Korea been equal. Much of these interactions are officially termed "economic exchanges", but in most cases they are heavily subsidized by the South Korean government. To be blunt, without direct or indirect subsidies neither the Kaesong industrial complex, nor the now defunct Keumgang and Kaesong city tours would be viable economically.  It is also true that the North Korean government takes the lion's share of all the "profits" from such "economic cooperation" projects, then re-distributing this income as it sees fit. It is indeed likely that many secret police in North Korea have been paid indirectly by the South Korean taxpayers.  However, things are not so simple as all that. Economic exchanges do not merely fill the coffers of the regime, but also introduce dangerous knowledge about the outside world to North Koreans who are involved.  A North Korean seamstress in a Kaesong textiles factory has a South Korean manager to whom she has to talk every day. When the Kaesong city tours were in operation, the entire city of Kaesong could see busloads of South Koreans whose behaviour and dress clearly demonstrated that they were not merely the enslaved, downtrodden pawns of US imperialism. The same can be said about virtually any interaction between North and South Koreans.  (Continued at the link below) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NL15Dg01.html

Winning Without Fighting: Chinese Public Opinion Warfare and the Need for a Robust American Response

Anyone with any interest in trying to understand China should study and know the "three warfares."  When my good friend Dean Cheng talks about China, I listen.

V/R
Dave

Winning Without Fighting: Chinese Public Opinion Warfare and the Need for a Robust American Response

By Dean Cheng
November 26, 2012

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/11/winning-without-fighting-chinese-public-opinion-warfare-and-the-need-for-a-robust-american-response

Abstract : Over the past decade, the People's Republic of China has exhibited a growing interest in waging asymmetrical warfare. The purpose of this interest is chilling: to enable the PRC to win a war against the U.S. without firing a shot. To this end, the PRC is expanding potential areas of conflict from the purely military (i.e., involving the direct or indirect use of military forces) to the more political. Such expansion will be fueled by manipulation of public opinion, legal systems, and enemy leadership. It is essential that the United States counter the PRC's new soft-power surge not only by rebutting political attacks, but also by taking the offensive and promoting America's positions to a global audience.

Over the past decade, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has exhibited a growing interest in waging asymmetrical warfare. To this end, the PRC released an initial set of regulations regarding political warfare in December 2003, before updating them in 2010. These "political work regulations" for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) address the importance of waging "the three warfares": public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.

The "three warfares" represent the PRC's commitment to expanding potential areas of conflict from the purely military (i.e., involving the direct or indirect use of military forces) to the more political. Such expansion will be fueled by manipulation of public opinion, legal systems, and enemy leadership. But unlike more traditional military conflict, the foundation for political warfare must be established during peacetime so as to create beneficial conditions and context for the military conflict and, in turn, precipitate an early end to a conflict on terms favorable to the PRC. Indeed, if waged successfully, political warfare allows one side to win without fighting.

In hopes of being able to alter the strategic context of any future U.S.-PRC confrontation, the PRC is improving its ability to influence both global and Chinese public opinion. If the United States does not counter Chinese political warfare efforts, it may well find that its access to the Western Pacific is endangered by a lack of regional support—long before American forces even begin moving toward the area. In order to avoid being outmaneuvered by a PRC intent on winning without firing a shot, the U.S. must strengthen its strategic communications, public diplomacy, and media outreach capabilities.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/11/winning-without-fighting-chinese-public-opinion-warfare-and-the-need-for-a-robust-american-response