Double-Crossing on the Border (north Korea)

More indications of problems.  The additional incentives for guards to double cross smugglers and defectors likely indicates the regime's fear of losing control on the border.  I think it is also interesting that Soldiers might still be obsessed with getting Party membership.  I think we should recall that the military and security services are made up of mostly those from the wavering classes of society (see Robert Collins' work on Songbun at the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea).  But the final paragraph should give us some hope (however slight) because it illustrates some resistance potential and it is this mindset that will ultimately create the resistance necessary for change and if properly supported people with this attitude will be important during the unification process.

However, the source pointed out that the current policy will have an effect on people who trade in smuggled goods, but that ultimately people will find a way to circumvent the problem. “They think we cannot compete with the soldier who is obsessed with party membership,” the source explained, “but we say ‘if this is how you decided to treat us, we will find our own way to stand up to it.’”

Double-Crossing on the Border

By Kang Mi Jin [2013-08-23 12:56 ] http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=10878

Although there is still plenty of smuggling taking place in North Korea with the active collusion of border guards, there have recently been a number of cases in which border guards double-crossed their links, reporting on them in order to obtain alternative benefits. A source from North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK about one case yesterday, “Earlier this month a group of people tried to defect across the Tumen River near Hyesan. The moment they tried to cross the river they were arrested by border guards.” “A guard who had promised to help them didn’t show up; indeed, I heard it was him who reported them,” she explained. The source then went on, “The soldier who was suspected of reporting them received a vacation from his unit and went home. People are very resentful. They wonder how someone could do that, no matter how obsessed with getting Party membership he may have been.” (Continued at the link below) http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=10878

Adam Johnson wins the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 2013 (north Korea - "The Orphan Master's Son")

I have recommended this book before.  I would recommend also reading the non-fiction report on the north Korean social structure by Robert Collins called "Marked for Life: North Korea's Social Classification System."  It can be down loaded here: http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Songbun_Web.pdf

This Pulitzer Prize winning fiction account of north Korea is something that "operationalizes" Robert Collins' seminal work on the north Korean social structure.  Everyone concerned with future operations in north Korea, to include planning and preparing for regime collapse and what happens in north Korea either during post-regime collapse or post-war.  Again I recommend reading Adam Johnson's book along with Robert Collins' important report.

V/R

Dave

Adam Johnson wins the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 2013

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-adam-johnson-wins-the-pulitzer-prize-in-fiction-for-2013-20130415,0,7088248.story

By Carolyn Kellogg

April 15, 2013, 12:28 p.m.

The Pulitzer Prize in fiction, announced Monday, has been awarded to Adam Johnson for his book set in North Korea, "The Orphan Master's Son." The committee described the book as "an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart."

Johnson teaches at Stanford; "The Orphan Master's Son" is his third book. Sharon Olds won the poetry award for her collection "Stag’s Leap," cited as "a stunningly poignant sequence of poems that tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory and new freedom."

The fiction award comes as something as a relief to literature watchers, who were disappointed when the Pulitzer Committee declined to award a fiction prize in 2012. It was only the 11th time in the history of the Pulitzer Prize that the committee declined to award a fiction prize, and the first time that had happened since 1977.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-adam-johnson-wins-the-pulitzer-prize-in-fiction-for-2013-20130415,0,7088248.story

Book Review: Truth or fiction from North Korea?

Of course this book is fiction and the plot is farfetched.  However, I strongly recommend reading this as a companion to Robert Collins' seminal work on the the north Korean social system which can be downloaded at this link from the Human Rights north Korea web site:  http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Songbun_Web.pdf

What this book does in a tragic but entertaining way is illustrate the brutallity of the north Korea social system that is in place in the north.  Anyone who wants to try to understand north Korean society needs to read Robert Collins report but this work of fiction below will bring the tragedy to life.  

V/R

Dave

Posted: Feb. 9, 2013 at 8:55 AM

Sophia Lee

Book Review: Truth or fiction from North Korea?

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/02/book_review_truth_or_fiction_from_north_korea

Adam Johnson’s novel The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012) traces the twisted yet fantastical life of a young North Korean nobody called Pak Jun Do (a Korean play off “John Doe”). It received positive reviews (including one from WORLD), but also stirred discussions about how much of its content is true. Few critics disagree that Johnson’s book makes an entertaining read, but should a book about North Korea entertain at all?

Johnson’s interest in North Korea started in 2004, when he first read about the country’s Soviet gulag-style prison camps. As a well-educated professor at Stanford University, Johnson said he was “shocked” at his ignorance—and fascinated by how such brutal concentration camps could still exist in the 21st century without much being done or said about them For more than a year, he read up on North Korea as much as he could, becoming “mildly obsessed” about the subject before he even realized he was writing: “It just came into life.”

Johnson isn’t the first American to author a book about North Korea. But most are nonfiction books that detail the experiences of North Korean defectors. Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14 and Melanie Kirkpatrick’s Escape from North Korea, both released last year, are examples. Their works portray grim snapshots of prison camp life, where campers are worked literally to death on a few handfuls of corn gruel a day.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/02/book_review_truth_or_fiction_from_north_korea

The secret lives of North Korea

This is why an active and aggressive influence campaign must be conducted in north Korea by the ROK/US Alliance.  The people that Mr. Everard is talking to might be considered those who are potential 2d tier leaders and often members of what the regime considers the "wavering classes" i.e., those in the middle of  Songbun social system of 51 classes.  Increasing information to these people will help better prepare a key element of the population for a post-Kim Family Regime Korea as they are potential leaders and technocrats who could make a difference.  We need to conduct aggressive psychological operations (or MISO) and a comprehensive influence campaign – standard – e.g., Radio Free Asia and "non-standard" – infiltrating more DVDs or penetrating the closed cell phone and computer infrastructure of the regime as just a couple of examples. 

V/R
Dave

The secret lives of North Korea

What is life like for the non-elite in this closed land? Do citizens really believe that mountains dance when a leader is born? Britain's former ambassador describes the people he knew there

John Everard

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-secret-lives-of-north-korea-8468421.html#

Sunday, 27 January 2013

I had the rare privilege of serving as the UK's ambassador to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (usually referred to simply as North Korea) from February 2006 to July 2008, a tumultuous period that included missile launches and the country's first nuclear test.

In between wrestling with these issues, and despite the efforts of the North Korean regime to block contacts between its citizens and foreigners, I managed to get to know some North Koreans reasonably well – at least to the extent that they were prepared to discuss with me their lives and how they saw the world. In particular, I realised that while many, even some experts, viewed North Koreans as identical automatons who obeyed unquestioningly every order of their leaders, this was simply wrong.

North Korea is not like that at all. It is a real country with real people, whose everyday concerns are often not so very different from our own: their friends, how their children are doing at school, their jobs, and making enough money to get by. Above all, North Koreans are sharply differentiated human beings, with a good sense of humour and are often fun to be with.

The North Koreans whom I got to know were from the outer elite of Pyongyang. These were not the inner elite of the regime, who live in some luxury and rarely if ever interact with foreigners. But neither were they from the impoverished countryside. None of my social contacts was a key decision maker, but many were involved in implementing decisions by the senior leadership. They were executives rather than leaders.

By and large, these people did not eat well, but at least they ate regularly. Their clothing was not smart, but adequate (although all of them had one special outfit for obligatory appearances at parades and other official events). And they lived not in the villas of the elite nor the hovels of the poor, but in cramped flats in respectable, if unprestigious, parts of Pyongyang. Above all, they talked among themselves – North Koreans always seem to have time to chatter, and to share the fragments of information they can gather about their country and the outside world.

Their lives would seem very dull to most Westerners. They revolved around daily rituals of carefully phased breakfasts in overcrowded flats, tedious journeys to work (often prolonged because Pyongyang's rickety public transport so often broke down), and generally tedious work days. I had the impression that they worked at a relaxed pace. They all seemed to have a great deal of time to sit around talking with their colleagues – it was important to them to keep good relations with their workmates, both to create a pleasant working environment but also to make sure they had as many friends as possible if they got into trouble.

After work, they might have to attend a political meeting. When I asked my contacts what these meetings were about they told me that they did not remember. At first, I thought they were politely saying that they were not going to tell me, but I once came across an open-air political meeting at which the audience all appeared to have glazed eyes, despite the best efforts of the speaker. Perhaps my contacts were telling the truth – that they effectively entered a kind of catatonic state in these meetings, simply switching off, and genuinely could not remember what they were about.

Then they would face the commute home. Some told me that whenever possible they would walk – a longer journey but much less frustrating. Some of my contacts refused to use the Pyongyang metro because of the risk of a power cut while they were in a tunnel.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-secret-lives-of-north-korea-8468421.html#

Google can help N. Korea through many other programs: experts

I am afraid that the kind of help the regime will want from Google will not be the kind we want it to receive.  It will want to develop and use software to monitor and surveil its own people as this could be a great addition to help them keep the Songbun system functioning.  It will want to use it to reverse engineer software and then find ways to hack it and use it for spyware at home and abroad) and malware globally.  I would be very wary of any deals between Google and the regime because things might not turn out in ways that Google might envision.  That said, such deals could also provide us with opportunities.  In the long run I would err on making a deal to gain more access and influence inside north Korea but I am afraid few have the stomach for developing and sustaining a long term influence operation against the regime and to influence the population to prepare for eventual regime collapse and unification.  Instead Google and other foreigner will be exploited in ways they cannot imagine (but should – as Richardson and Schmidt should have imagined they would be and were used).

V/R

Dave

2013/01/12 04:35 KST

Google can help N. Korea through many other programs: experts

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2013/01/12/13/0401000000AEN20130112000100315F.HTML

By Lee Chi-dong

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (Yonhap) -- Although this week's trip to Pyongyang by Google czar Eric Schmidt remains controversial, the California-based firm may be able to search multiple ways to help North Korea, experts here said Friday.

   Schmidt made a four-day trip to North Korea earlier this week, along with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, drawing keen international attention.

   Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute, said Richardson was the apparent driving force behind the trip, which was opposed by the U.S. government.

   "Eric Schmidt was likely the 'juicy bait' to seal the deal with the North Koreans (on the trip)," Hayes, a long-time Korea watcher, said in an article co-authored by Roger Cavazos, an associate at the think tank.

   After his visit to Pyongyang, Schmidt said he had urged the communist regime to start work to connect its people to the outside world through cyberspace.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2013/01/12/13/0401000000AEN20130112000100315F.HTML

(north Korea) Marked for Life; Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment; The Hidden Gulag

As I have said Bob Collins' report on Songbun should be mandatory reading for any policy maker or strategist and anyone dealing with north Korea.  Good to see Foreign Affairs recognizing the good work of the Committee for Human Rights in north Korea.

V/R

Dave

Marked for Life; Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment; The Hidden Gulag

Robert Collins

Ken Gause

David Hawk

Reviewed by Andrew J. Nathan

January/February 2013

Article Summary and Author Biography

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138688/robert-collins-ken-gause-david-hawk/marked-for-life-songbun-north-koreas-social-classification-syste

The Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea produces valuable research that sheds light on life in the “hermit kingdom.” These three recent reports reveal North Korea’s extraordinary system of repression. Collins describes the institution of songbun, under which each North Korean citizen is assigned “a heredity-based class and socio-political rank over which the individual exercises no control but which determines all aspects of his or her life.” Fifty-one subcategories are clustered into three classes, defined by their level of commitment to the regime: core, wavering, and hostile. Access to jobs, housing, medical care, and even marriage depends on one’s class status. Members of the lower classes are not allowed to live in relatively prosperous cities, such as Pyongyang. The regime directs foreign aid to the “core” group, while the lower groups—perhaps up to 80 percent of the population—suffer from famine and a high risk of political imprisonment.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138688/robert-collins-ken-gause-david-hawk/marked-for-life-songbun-north-koreas-social-classification-syste

North Korea's caste system faces power of wealth

I cannot emphasize this enough.  Anyone who is making policy or strategy concerning north Korea must read Bob Collins' report on Songbun published by HRNK.   Without reading that report one cannot begin to understand the nature of the north Korean system and society and will not be able to make effective policy and develop the strategies necessary to support the ROK-US Joint Vision of 2009 which calls for peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula.

"If you were a peasant and you owned nothing, then all of a sudden you were at the top of the society," said Bob Collins, who wove together smuggled documents, interviews with former North Korean security officials and discussions with an array of ordinary North Koreans to write an exhaustive songbun study released this year by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. While the songbun system theoretically allows for movement within the hierarchy, Collins said most families' standing today remains a reflection of their ancestors' position in the 1950s and '60s.

V/R

Dave

North Korea's caste system faces power of wealth

By: TIM SULLIVAN | Associated Press 

Published: December 29, 2012

http://www2.wsls.com/news/2012/dec/29/north-koreas-caste-system-faces-power-of-wealth-ar-2439082/

SEOUL, South Korea --

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) For more than a half-century, a mysterious caste system has shadowed the life of every North Korean. It can decide whether they will live in the gated compounds of the minuscule elite, or in mountain villages where farmers hack at rocky soil with handmade tools. It can help determine what hospital will take them if they fall sick, whether they go to college and, very often, whom they will marry.

It is called songbun. And officially, it does not exist at all.

The power of caste remains potent, exiles and scholars say, generations after it was permanently branded onto every family based on their supposed ideological purity. But today it is also quietly fraying, weakened by the growing importance of something that barely existed until recently in socialist North Korea: wealth.

Like almost all change in North Korea's deeply opaque society, where so much is hidden to outsiders, the shift is happening slowly and often silently. But in the contest for power within the closed world that Pyongyang has created, defectors, analysts and activists say money is now competing with the domination of political caste.

"There's one place where songbun doesn't matter, and that's in business," said a North Korean soldier-turned-businessman who fled to South Korea after a prison stint, and who now lives in a working-class apartment building on the fringes of Seoul. "Songbun means nothing to people who want to make money."

Songbun, a word that translates as "ingredient" but effectively means "background," first took shape in the 1950s and '60s. It was a time when North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, was forging one of the world's most repressive states and seeking ways to reward supporters and isolate potential enemies.

Historians say songbun was partially modeled on Soviet class divisions, and echoes a similar system that China abandoned in the 1980s amid the growth of the market economy there. In Korea, songbun turned a fiercely hierarchical society upside down, pushing peasants to the top of the caste ladder; aristocrats and landlords toward the bottom. The very top was reserved for those closest to Kim: his relatives and guerrillas who had fought with him against Korea's Japanese occupiers.

Very quickly, though, songbun became a professional hierarchy. The low caste became farmers and miners. The high caste filled the powerful bureaucracies. And children grew up and stepped into their parents' roles.

"If you were a peasant and you owned nothing, then all of a sudden you were at the top of the society," said Bob Collins, who wove together smuggled documents, interviews with former North Korean security officials and discussions with an array of ordinary North Koreans to write an exhaustive songbun study released this year by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. While the songbun system theoretically allows for movement within the hierarchy, Collins said most families' standing today remains a reflection of their ancestors' position in the 1950s and '60s.

Generations after the system began, many of North Korea's most powerful people are officially identified as "peasants."

(Continued at the link below)

http://www2.wsls.com/news/2012/dec/29/north-koreas-caste-system-faces-power-of-wealth-ar-2439082/