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

Sign up for our weekly Korea Now newsletter An exclusive report putting perspective on the week's most important developments.

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/

Park Sang Hak: North Korea's 'Enemy Zero'

This is why there needs to be a comprehensive influence campaign.  (But I perhaps the ROK government feels it must show public opposition and disapproval but at the same time it has at least tacitly supported these efforts for some years so I am sure underneath all of this that the ROK government does approve).  But the north Korean reaction is one of the best measures of effectiveness of the defector's influence operations and demonstrates the value of an influence campaign.  These efforts are going to make one of the most important contributions to unification because they are helping to prepare the north Korean population for unification.

V/R

Dave

• THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW
• July 5, 2013, 7:13 p.m. ET

Park Sang Hak: North Korea's 'Enemy Zero'

Sending balloons aloft with leaflets and memory sticks, a dissident enrages Pyongyang. South Korea isn't too happy with him either.

• By DAVID FEITH CONNECT

Paju, South Korea

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324853704578585961242121902.html#printMode

It's nerve-racking to drive toward the North Korean border with Park Sang Hak. Called "Fireball" by his admirers, the North Korean-born Mr. Park is designated "Enemy Zero" by the Pyongyang regime, which two years ago sent an agent into South Korea to assassinate him with a poison-tipped pen. On this summer morning, he promises to do again what so infuriates the Kim dictatorship—launch large balloons into North Korea carrying leaflets, computer-memory sticks and sweets for the oppressed people of the hermit kingdom.

In return, Pyongyang promises to "physically eliminate the kind of human scum that commits such treason." Adds the North Korean military: "The U.S. and the present puppet authorities of South Korea should not forget even a moment that the Rimjin Pavilion"—Mr. Park's favorite launch site near the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries—"is within the range of direct sighting strike" of the Korean People's Army.

North Korean threats are generally discounted as bluster, but driving toward the border has a way of concentrating the mind. The highway from the South carries little traffic in either direction and is separated from the Imjin River by barbed-wire fences, guard towers and civil-defense loudspeakers.

Yet once we arrive at the balloon-launch site, it becomes clear that Mr. Park has a different antagonist to contend with: South Korea, which has deployed a few hundred police to stop his airborne humanitarian mission. The police let him speak to assembled local media, but when Mr. Park tries to retrieve his balloons from a pickup truck, three rows of plainclothes officers block the way. Mr. Park tries to push through, but the police push back. When he tries to drive the truck slowly through the cordon to a different launch site, a large scuffle breaks out.

Shoving matches pit uniformed and plainclothes police against Mr. Park and fellow activists—most of whom, like him, are native North Koreans who defected to the South sometime in the past 15 years. The most recent defectors wear handkerchiefs to cover their faces, because their identification in photos could mean imprisonment or execution for family members left behind. The grim, chaotic scene ends when Mr. Park is shoved into a police car and driven to the Paju Police Station.

He is released later that day, but not without a reinforced sense that something is rotten in one of the world's most prosperous democracies. "Launching balloons is legal activism that I can do as a free citizen," he tells me (through an interpreter) when we meet again two days later. But his arrest shows that "the threatening and blackmailing by the North Korean regime work well in the international community." And especially in Seoul, he argues, where successive South Korean governments have played down the catastrophic human-rights abuses across the border.

To be born in North Korea is generally a life sentence in the world's cruelest totalitarian state. There is no freedom of speech or worship. North Koreans can't travel without official permission, and border guards have shoot-to-kill orders for anyone trying to flee. More than 200,000 languish in kwalliso, political prisons akin to Stalin's gulag, where more than one million have died. Almost no one owns a car, only about 10% of apartments have refrigerators, and some 10% of the population died of starvation in the mid-1990s. The average 7-year-old is 8 inches shorter and 22 pounds lighter than peers in South Korea.

Mr. Park is one of roughly 25,000 North Koreans to escape and get to the South, and his balloon launches aim to break the information monopoly held by the Kim family. In addition to praising the South's liberal democracy, the leaflets reveal unflattering truths about Pyongyang's rulers, such as Kim Il Sung's craving for mistresses during his reign from 1948-94. The digital memory sticks inform North Koreans about the world, including "people power" movements and life inside South Korea as captured by news articles, movies and (especially) soap operas.

The idea, says Mr. Park, is that even in North Korea "the truth can set you free"—but only if you have access to it. "We don't want the South Korean government or the U.S. government to start a war," he says. "What we're waiting for is to change the [Pyongyang] regime by the hands of North Koreans who are educated with the truth. . . . That's the only way we can give freedom to the 24 million people in North Korea."

This strategy of pursuing regime change from within was explicitly rejected by South Korean leaders during the "Sunshine Policy" years of 1998-2008. Seoul believed that Kim Il Sung's successor, his son Kim Jong Il, would lose interest in nuclear weapons and loosen his grip at home if he saw that no outside forces were working to oust his regime. So South Korean presidents feted him at summits, gave him economic benefits, and ignored human rights.

(Continued at the link below)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324853704578585961242121902.html#printMode

Defector Brings News of NK Interior

Some important insights.  This should confirm that the people in the north can be influenced by an effective influence campaign.  As an aside I was at a conference lunch yesterday with a retired ROK Admiral (and former Korean Ambassador to Kuwait) and we were of course discussing north Korea.  He made an off hand comment about the two Korean miracles.  The first of course is the "Miracle on the Han" - the rapid advancement of Democracy and Economic developing in South Korea.  The second miracle which I will now call the Miracle on the Taedong" (the river that runs through Pyongyang as the Han runs through Seoul) which is the fact that despite the failed economy and horrendous suffering by the people north Korea continues to exist after 60+ plus years.  While he meant as sarcasm, it made me think that there could be a useful theme and message to support unification.   Although there are huge differences between north and South (greater than anything between East and West Germany) the similarity is that Korean culture is responsible for the way they are:  The Korean independent hard working spirit is responsible for the Miracle on the Han creating a nation that is able to fight well above its weight in the global community.  The spirit of the Korean people is also responsible for the survival of the north Korean people despite what has happened to them over the past sixty years.  When the unification process begins it will be necessary to try to focus on the similarities between north and South and the "Koreaness" of the Korean people.  The two miracles though obviously 180 degrees out from each other  are both possible because of the Korean culture, history, and tradition – leading  both success and survival. V/R Dave Defector Brings News of NK Interior

By Park Seong Guk [2013-06-26 21:25 ]   http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01300&num=10689

What do North Korean people really think of the sophomore Kim Jong Eun regime? According to one newly arrived defector, the state enterprise of idolizing Kim continues apace, but is proving to be ineffective in comparison with the days of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Kim Young Hun, who arrived in South Korea in December 2012, explained the latest situation during a new briefing event, “Monthly Insight into North Korea,” co-hosted by NK Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS) and Daily NK at Seoul Press Center on the 26th.  “North Korean people still don’t know much about Kim Jong Eun,” Kim explained, adding, “[The authorities] are unable to release a detailed record of his revolutionary history.” “There aren’t really any materials that can prove he is a great man, as there were when they idolized Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il,” he went on to point out. “So the North Korean people hardly ever talk about Kim Jong Eun. They are frightened of the National Security Agency, too; but really people just don’t know who he is.”  Kim also described a common approach to politics in the current era: ignore it. He pointed out that there have been so many claims about economic reform down the years, but none of them were worth anything. Therefore, people have stopped listening to the political pronouncements, and just concern themselves with their own lives. Kim made additional mention of changes to the consciousness of citizens that have been taking place in recent times. According to his testimony, in the past it was Japanese-Korean returnees and persons working for foreign-currency earning enterprises who were envied in North Korean society. However, he claimed that in the 2000s it is the families of defectors who occupy that social position. Relations with Japan remain tense, he pointed out, while even the conditions for foreign-currency earners have deteriorated somewhat. Conversely, families of defectors continue to receive relatively stable remittance flows from the South. “People envy households that have people in South Korea,” he declared. “North Korean people increasingly hanker after South Korean society, thinking that ‘In South Korea if you work hard you can live,’ or ‘If a South Korean laborer works for just a year then he can buy a car.’” (Continued at the link below) http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01300&num=10689

N. Korea could fall faster than we think By Bruce Bennett

Dr. Bennett has a new report coming out soon and it is the most comprehensive report on north Korean collapse that I have read in 20 years.  It will be of tremendous value to policy makers, strategists, and planners in the ROK/US Alliance.  I think the collapse of the Kim Family Regime is the most complex threat the Alliance and the countries in Northeast Asia faces and one for which extensive preparations need to be made immediately, most importantly by South Korea and particularly in the area of influence operations.  I will not predict a time for collapse (most of us thinking about collapse have never made a time prediction) but I do agree that it could really surprise us when it happens.

V/R
Dave

N. Korea could fall faster than we think

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130602000197

Published : 2013-06-02 20:38
Updated : 2013-06-02 20:38

Bruce Bennett

On Oct. 7, 1989, members of the East German Politburo looked on approvingly as sharply dressed soldiers and shiny military hardware paraded by them in a gaudy display of military might to mark the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic.

To the world, the 1989 celebration may have looked no different than any of the countless East German military parades that had come before it. But inside East Germany, this one was different. That night, demonstrations demanding political reform spread to the capital for the first time. Whispered calls for democracy were becoming shouts. Whether the rest of the world knew it or not, the days of the German Democratic Republic were numbered.

Within weeks, the Berlin Wall fell. Less than a year later, agreements for the reunification of East and West Germany were signed. And just like that, there was one fewer communist nation threatening Europe.

When it comes to ostentatious displays of military might these days, no one outdoes North Korea, where parades are only the beginning. When leader Kim Jong-un wants a macho show of military strength, he’s likely to order nuclear tests, or rocket launches, or the firing of short range missiles into the sea as he did this week.

What the former East Germany and North Korea have in common is that they both have relied on shows of military might to divert domestic dissent while propping up regimes that face enormous challenges, both internal and external. Could North Korea collapse with as little warning as East Germany did 24 years ago? It’s possible.

When analysts look at the Korean Peninsula, they often talk of the reunification of the two Koreas as a long-off goal that should be planned for over the span of decades. But in the 1980s, the reunification of Germany seemed equally distant.

The United States, South Korea and their allies would be well advised to factor in the possibility that North Korea could collapse in a fit of revolt and economic decay at any time, just as East Germany did.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has made clear her hopes for talks at some point between Seoul and Pyongyang to prepare for peaceful coexistence and perhaps even unification over the coming decades. But she has said little about how South Korea might deal with an early collapse of the North. A sudden collapse is possible in the coming years and could create regional chaos and impossible burdens on the road to reunification unless South Korea and its allies are better prepared.

Should Kim Jong-un be assassinated and a successor government fail to arise from the likely factions, South Korea and its neighbors would find themselves dealing with a humanitarian crisis of historic proportions. In the aftermath of a collapse, hunger would likely be the immediate urgency and food the most valued commodity. South Korea should make it clear to North Koreans that it is creating stockpiles of food that will be available in the event of a collapse, just as the West German’s offered “greeting money” to East Germans during the unification process.

At the same time, South Korea will have to deal with a broad range of other issues, like securing North Korean weapons, keeping its massive military appeased, and dealing with the remnants of Kim Jong-un’s regime.

How these huge issues are resolved will depend largely on how invested the North Korean people are in becoming one with the south. In the divided Germany of the late 1980s, virtually all Germans thought they would be better off if unification occurred. South Korea should be working toward creating this same kind of feeling of solidarity between its people and those of North Korea. If the North Korean people oppose unification, it may be impossible to secure the North, aborting the unification process. Once aborted, unification may never happen ― there may only be one chance.

South Korea has been successful in recent years in establishing a national brand that is cultural, economic and political. It includes music and technology and all the things South Korea is known for around the world. Making this brand more inclusive of all Koreans would be a good place to start creating a shared view of Korean success.

South Korea should seek to communicate to the North Korean people, and especially the elites, how life after unification will be in their best interest. They will share in the Korean economic plenty, have broad access to education including college, and only those guilty of serious human rights violations will be subjected to judicial punishments. While such offers may seem overly generous, they may be necessary to secure North Korean support for unification.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130602000197

Kaesong Closure Poses Challenges for North

I do worry what will become of the workers in Kaesong, especially those that had the most interaction with South Koreans.  I do not think we can understand deeply enough the importance of information to and contact with the north Korean people.  Again, I hate to beat the dead horse but this is another indication of why we (the ROK/US Alliance) need a comprehensive PSYOP/MISO, influence campaign.  North Korea is probably one of the most important PSYOP targets and one where we can achieve the most long term effects.

V/R
Dave

• May 6, 2013, 4:17 PM KST

Kaesong Closure Poses Challenges for North

ByAlastair Gale

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/05/06/kaesong-closure-poses-challenges-for-north/tab/print/

A South Korean police officer stands guard on an empty road connecting the Kaesong Industrial Complex inside North Korea with the South after all South Koreans returned from the park on May 3.

After the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and delivery of millions of dollars in final wage and tax payments to North Korea on Friday, several questions remain about the fate of the plant and the people who worked there.

Setting aside North Korea’s claim that it isn’t worried about the lost income, Pyongyang’s biggest headache is what to do with the 53,000 or so workers who have lost their jobs. The shutdown has effectively tossed one in six people in Kaesong–North Korea’s third-largest city–out of work.

Reassigning that number of people to new jobs presents a major logistical challenge, coupled with the potential risks to the regime of the spread of information about the capitalist system at the facility. Daily NK, a website based in Seoul that specializes in news about North Korea and is partially staffed by defectors, reported Monday that the workers have been sent to a wide range of other workplaces in the adjoining region to Kaesong.

The former Kaesong workers are also being given lectures and special study sessions to tackle the problematic ideas they have been exposed to, according to the report. By spreading the workers over a large area, North Korea likely hopes to dilute the politically toxic message they may bring.

The South Korean companies that operated at the Kaesong plant still have machinery and raw materials there that they were unable to bring out during the evacuation. North Korea could expropriate everything but it won’t be able to restart the plant because the South has stopped almost all of the electricity supply that is used to power the facility. A small amount of electricity and water that is used by the city of Kaesong is still being provided at the North’s request.

Meanwhile, as Seoul and the South Korean companies hold out for a potential return to Kaesong, North Korea is sticking to its demand for an end to “hostile acts and military provocations” from the South in order to reopen the plant.

(Continued at the link below)

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/05/06/kaesong-closure-poses-challenges-for-north/tab/print/

The Mirage of Peace in the DMZ A trip to the Korean border makes regime change in Pyongyang seem like the only effective option.

A few key points:

Mr. Kerry's lack of imagination bodes well for Pyongyang's goal of perfecting its nuclear and missile capabilities, and bodes ill for the security of northeast Asia. There can no longer be any realistic hope that the North will denuclearize. 

Moreover, China has refused to isolate the regime despite Washington's repeated pleas for joint action. Yes, some Americans with close ties to China now say that they've never seen Beijing so frustrated with Pyongyang. But there is no indication that new leader Xi Jinping is considering serious sanctions against the North or independent economic and political pressure. 

Committed to a failed negotiation strategy, the U.S. government has all but assured the Kim regime of its safety so long as it doesn't attack the South or Japan. That means negotiations are doomed from the beginning. 

The Obama administration's willingness to return to talks under the "right" conditions plays perfectly into this North Korean strategy of undermining collective resolve. The longer Washington sticks to a failed policy, the more confident Pyongyang grows in its survival. It will figure out a way to proliferate WMDs, likely with Beijing looking the other way.

But in this sentence lies a potential key:

The longer Washington sticks to a failed policy, the more confident Pyongyang grows in its survival.

If one wanted to truly undermine the regime and play three dimensional chess a combination of the status quo negotiating strategy with Pyongyang confident in its survival with a comprehensive psychological operations/ influence campaign targeting the second tier leadership and the population and global intelligence and law enforcement operations against Department 39 could simultaneously cause dissent and discord internally,  prepare for a post-regime Korea , prevent proliferation of WMD (before and after collapse) and set the peninsula on a path to unification.   The supposed "failed strategy" is one key element to this because as long as the regime is confident of its survival it remains one of the best ways to prevent a deliberate attack (but not a provocation) by the north.  But the question is can we and the Alliance operate on multiple levels orchestrating the instruments of national power to achieve the ultimate end state per the 2009 Joint Vision?

V/R
Dave

• OPINION ASIA
• May 1, 2013, 12:26 p.m. ET

The Mirage of Peace in the DMZ

A trip to the Korean border makes regime change in Pyongyang seem like the only effective option.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324266904578456570076166246.html#printMode

By MICHAEL AUSLIN

To understand how North Korea policy has become a diplomatic no-man's land—empty, hopeless and likely to stay that way, if recent pronouncements by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are any indication—it helps to visit the physical no-man's land of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

The DMZ is not entirely devoid of life, of course, at least on its margins. Approaching from Seoul, only 50 kilometers from the armistice line, a single barbed-wire fence gives way to thicket of guard towers and other fortifications. Busloads of tourists give the scene a surreal commercial streak, while apartment blocks lend a domestic touch here and there.

At heart, however, the DMZ remains a place of limbo, frozen in time by the armistice of 1953. The four kilometers on either side of the border are crisscrossed only by small animals, and the absence of any human activity creates a false sense of calm.

That stillness reflects the diplomatic stasis of the defunct Six-Party Talks, and the inability of Washington to devise a new approach that could change North Korea's behavior. If anything, by focusing on denuclearization and encouraging greater Chinese pressure on Pyongyang—two strategies that have never worked—Mr. Kerry seems to have adopted an approach expressly designed to maintain the status quo.

Above all, Mr. Kerry seeks a return to fruitless disarmament talks. In his first trip to Tokyo last month, he told reporters, "Our choice is to negotiate, our choice is to move to the table and find a way for the region to have peace." He reiterated such sentiments throughout his Asia trip.

Mr. Kerry's lack of imagination bodes well for Pyongyang's goal of perfecting its nuclear and missile capabilities, and bodes ill for the security of northeast Asia. There can no longer be any realistic hope that the North will denuclearize.

South Korean soldiers patrol along a military fence near the DMZ.

Looking across the DMZ border from a high vantage point, one sees the desolate North Korean landscape and brutish buildings lying just outside the now-shuttered Kaesong Industrial Complex. The bleakness is a reminder that the Kim regime's strength is solely military, and that the nuclear trump card is the regime's lifeline.

Moreover, China has refused to isolate the regime despite Washington's repeated pleas for joint action. Yes, some Americans with close ties to China now say that they've never seen Beijing so frustrated with Pyongyang. But there is no indication that new leader Xi Jinping is considering serious sanctions against the North or independent economic and political pressure.

Instead, China seems to be betting that Washington's future of defense cuts will lead to a reduced American presence in Asia. President Obama's repeated invocation of the U.S.'s so-called strategic "pivot" to Asia may worry Beijing over the short term, but the Chinese believe the budgetary fundamentals are in their favor. And so they see no incentive to deal with the Americans over North Korea.

All of this leads to the question of what to do. Perhaps unexpectedly, a trip to the DMZ makes regime change in the North seem like the only thing that will alter Korea's destiny. Figuring out strategies to get rid of, or at least seriously undermine, the Kim family regime is something both the Bush and Obama administrations have studiously avoided talking about.

Committed to a failed negotiation strategy, the U.S. government has all but assured the Kim regime of its safety so long as it doesn't attack the South or Japan. That means negotiations are doomed from the beginning.

(Continued at the link below)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324266904578456570076166246.html#printMode

Outside the paradigm of the regime: North Korea really is evolving

I do not believe that Kim Jong-un intends to truly open up the north and allow open access to information for the people.  But these two paragraphs are something to keep in mind both about how to view the north Korean people and the potential that the small acts of opening provide to support a major influence operations campaign.  Now is the time to really begin exploitation of Kim's actions.  We (as in the ROK/US Alliance) now more than ever should be executing an influence campaign to prepare the north Korean population for what comes after the Kim Family Regime.

The North Koreans that tourists see pretending to do things are not dumb. They know their situation -- they know they live in a repressive state, and that they are instructed to act in a certain way for a reason. An actor knows she is acting. Piracy of South Korean music and TV shows is rampant; iPads and smartphones are common; even skinny jeans are a popular fashion accessory. To reduce these people to stooges is not only to patronise, but to dehumanise.

That makes the move to open up 3G internet to tourists a brave one for the regime. Ordinary people might not get access to the web, but they can see something if you're standing next to them, holding it in your hand. Google Earth renders of Pyongyang saved to a MacBook were a big hit in 2010, as were the lyrics to Pulp's "Common People". Who knows what the they might think of Gangnam Style's tongue-in-cheek satire of nouveau riche South Koreans? The more people engage with North Koreans outside the paradigm of the regime, the more the illusions wavers. Nobody saw the fall of the Berlin Wall coming, but it had been coming, bit by bit by bit.

V/R
Dave

Outside the paradigm of the regime: North Korea really is evolving

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/02/north-korea-internet-tourism?page=all

By Ian Steadman

02 March 13

In 2010, Wired.co.uk's Ian Steadman spent just over a week in North Korea. After the events of recent weeks -- such as Google's Eric Schmidt visiting the nation, and 3G being switched on -- he reflects on his trip, and how significant the North Korean regime's changes of stance could affect its people and our understanding of them.

You wait years for North Korea to open up a little, and it does so -- twice! -- in one week. You can now follow people Instagramming and Twittering from within the Hermit Kingdom as surely as they do so anywhere else, thanks to foreigners being granted 3G internet access.

That goes alongside the utterly bizarre sight of Kim Jong-Un sitting next to former NBA player (and notorious joker) Dennis Rodman, watching members of the Harlem Globetrotters face up against North Korean players in a game of "basketball diplomacy" for a Vice and HBO documentary.

One of these is a positive thing, the other, not so much.

North Korea elicits an understandable fascination in westerners for being a country apparently frozen in time. Most of the news we receive comes from the country's propaganda machine, or from whispers in neighbouring capitals. It's mysterious because we never know exactly what's going on. Unfiltered information, uploaded straight to the web (albeit perhaps with a sepia filter added for effect) is a sign that it's becoming a place less hard to picture. But let's not confuse a push for more tourists, with reported new hotels and attractions on the way, as some kind of concession to international law and better human rights -- visiting North Korea means giving money to a totalitarian regime that starves its children. The US State Department's press conference on Rodman's visit is an unsurprisingly tetchy example of that.

When I visited North Korea, more than anything it reminded me of being taken on a bus tour of the poorer parts of Cape Town. There is no justification for these township tours for wealthy western tourists -- they exist in the same way that wildlife safaris do, for the purpose of letting people gawp at things that are Other. The groups that run these tours often claim that they use the proceeds to fund charitable work, but if I wanted to have given to charity I could well have done so without sitting in a bus separated from other humans by glass just as surely as I'm separated from gorillas at the zoo. It is dehumanising in a fundamentally wrong way.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/02/north-korea-internet-tourism?page=all

North Korea: The new capitalists

This is why influence operations conducted by the ROK/US Alliance are so important.  

The nuclear threat and the vicious eccentricities of its leadership are, for the West, the most compelling of the country’s features. But, as our briefingexplains, a revolutionary force is rising from below: a new class of traders and merchants.

An assessment does need to be made as to the resistance potential among the population. It may not be a traditional resistance with an underground, auxiliary and guerrilla force but these traders and merchants will be critical in a post Kim Family Regime situation (as will the 2d tier leaders on whom we should also be focusing).  Opportunities are being created but the question is will anyone be prepared to exploit them.

V/R
Dave

North Korea

The new capitalists

Even as another nuclear provocation looms, hope glimmers for the world’s most oppressed people

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571421-even-another-nuclear-provocation-looms-hope-glimmers-worlds-most-oppressed-people/print

Feb 9th 2013 |From the print edition

NOT long ago North Korea-watchers were speculating that the new leader, Kim Jong Un, might prove a moderniser. The path-breaking boy-dictator let himself be seen with his fashionable wife. He actually spoke in public, whereas his late father’s speeches were as rare as a well-stocked Pyongyang supermarket. Lately, though, Mr Kim has reverted to type by prophesying war. Experts fear the North’s Punggye-ri underground complex is about to host a nuclear test. If it does, Mr Kim will inherit the family title of Asia’s pariah-in-chief.

The nuclear threat and the vicious eccentricities of its leadership are, for the West, the most compelling of the country’s features. But, as our briefingexplains, a revolutionary force is rising from below: a new class of traders and merchants. Capitalism is seeping through the bamboo curtain. This is not at the behest of the regime, as happened in Deng Xiaoping’s China. North Korea is more repressive and backward than Cuba or the old Soviet Union. The regime will not depart quickly or easily: in the short term, Mr Kim’s growing unease could well make him still more of a threat to his neighbours. But a familiar picture is emerging—and the world should do what it can to encourage it.

Jinxed by juche

Mr Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, built his post-war paradise in the north on the principle of juche, or “self-reliance” (though, the Soviet Union greatly helped). At first the North and South Korean economies matched each other won for won but, starting in the 1970s, autarky decayed into inefficiency. The North’s huge army hogged resources. Managers and workers stripped state factories bare and flogged anything of value on new black markets. Today perhaps 200,000 North Koreans remain imprisoned in the gulag. Output per head is over 17 times larger in the South than the North. Twenty-year-old South Koreans stand 6cm (2.4 inches) above North Korean contemporaries stunted by famine and malnutrition.

In the 1990s famine provided an opening for a new sort of North Korean trader. Many of them were smallholders, often women, selling vegetables grubbed up from the family plot. The facts are patchy, but it is becoming clear that other merchants operate today on a far more ambitious scale, exporting raw materials to China and bringing back consumer goods. The merchants use an informal system of money-changing to move funds in and out of the country. In the capital those with cash go to restaurants and play the slot machines. It sounds surreal, but they are the North’s nouveaux riches.

North Korea’s capitalists are here to stay. The regime has repeatedly tried to purge them, by suppressing the farmers’ markets and cracking down on smuggling. But money talks in today’s North Korea, and the traders often have enough cash to bribe their way out of trouble. Moreover, they have become an indispensable part of the economy. Industry functions so poorly that tower blocks in Pyongyang cannot be built without the imported supplies the merchants provide.

As in China, capitalism is letting in the outside world—a vital change for a people fed only grotesque lies. Corrupt border guards and security operatives can be bribed by people determined, for religious or political reasons, to get information in and out. The mobile phones, computers and radios that the traders sell are eroding the state’s monopoly on truth. Television shows and films smuggled in on memory sticks confront North Koreans with the potentially revolutionary fact that their brethren in the South live in comfort and plenty—and without the fear of a knock on the door at midnight. They discover that the Workers’ Utopia is built on a Great Lie.

And the capitalists count because they stand somewhat apart from the security establishment. The Kims have always surrounded themselves with a caste of revolutionary families present at the North’s creation. For decades power began and ended with them. But some of the merchants come from outside the Kims’ circle—and all have a keen eye on their wealth. Although the traders make money from the status quo, they are likely to value growth more and security less than the ruling clique. Competition for resources is also emerging in parts of the government-controlled economy. Fissures are thus emerging in what used to be a monolithic state.

For years now the world’s dealings with North Korea have chiefly been about stopping its nuclear programme, which poses a grave threat to peace. But that policy has pretty much failed. Today’s nuclear intimidation is just the latest in a series of provocations from a state that will lie, threaten and blackmail its way to the negotiating table only to storm off again into belligerent isolation. The bet is that Mr Kim will never give up his weapons, because they are his only claim to influence.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571421-even-another-nuclear-provocation-looms-hope-glimmers-worlds-most-oppressed-people/print

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#

EXCLUSIVE: FOREIGNERS NOW PERMITTED TO CARRY MOBILE PHONES IN NORTH KOREA

The operative word is "carry".  As in foreigners will be able to carry their cell phones but not be able use them so they will be as effective as a paperweight.

Excerpt:

Despite this new development, tourists are currently neither able to roam on North Korea’s domestic KoryoLink network nor purchase local SIM cards, meaning that despite being allowed to carry their handsets, they are unusable. 

Again, keep in mind image first politics.  But Richardson and Schmidt went to north Korea and did not get to see or help get released Kenneth Bae.  They saw the computer "Potemkin Villages" and I will bet they asked about cell phones. In fact they probably matter-of-factly made a comment along the lines of "you should let foreigners carry their phones."  They were probably responding to a question such as how can we make people like north Korea and they casually responded with a "carry cell phone" comment.  Of course the north Koreans parsed every word exchanged and someone came up with the idea that sure we can let foreigners carry their cell phones but we will not allow them to put sim cards in their phones and we certainly will not allow international access through their phones.  So they were able to literally take the advice of Schmidt and Richardson.  I mention this because Richardson at least should understand how the north will exploit anything and everything they can and of course interpret and spin anything said to their benefit.

V/R

Dave

EXCLUSIVE: FOREIGNERS NOW PERMITTED TO CARRY MOBILE PHONES IN NORTH KOREA

CHANGE IN NATIONAL POLICY COMES JUST DAYS AFTER GOOGLE CHAIRMAN'S VISIT

HTTP://WWW.NKNEWS.ORG/2013/01/EXCLUSIVE-FOREIGNERS-NOW-PERMITTED-TO-CARRY-MOBILE-PHONES-IN-NORTH-KOREA/

 January 19, 2013

NK NEWS can exclusively reveal that only days after Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s visit to North Korea, tourists may now bring cell phones into the country without having them confiscated by immigration officials at the border.

Up until now, bringing mobile phones into North Korea has been strictly forbidden, with all handsets confiscated at customs and only returned on exit. Despite this new development, tourists are currently neither able to roam on North Korea’s domestic KoryoLink network nor purchase local SIM cards, meaning that despite being allowed to carry their handsets, they are unusable. 

The news that cellphones can be legally brought into North Korea comes just days after Google’s Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s returned from a high profile trip to North Korea. At that time, there had been no reporting on what had happened to the delegation’s cell phones upon entry to the DPRK. It is possible that they may have been the first group to benefit from the new policy. Either way, coming so soon after the Google trip, it can be read as a signal of North Korea’s possible softening of its stance toward communication technology, and its increased interest in understanding the ways it can engage with advancements in the field.

According to Richie Fenner, a tour manager at China based Young Pioneer Tours who reported the news today, explained that GPS enabled devices are allowed in the country. He told us:

When we were coming in on the train, they asked us to show us our phones. The customs official asked if the first one he looked at had GPS, which it didn’t, so he handed it back. But then with the iPhones and other modern phones when we told them they had GPS, he just handed them back and gestured that we just put them in our bag.

Thinking that the phones might just be sealed upon the group’s arrival to Pyongyang, Fenner explained that to his surprise the local guides explained a new policy meant that foreigners can now keep their cell phones in their possession. But that didn’t mean they could be used. Fenner explained, “Wthout a North Korean sim card, the phones are useless. I asked if we could get North Korean SIM cards and our guide said that it might be possible in the future”.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.NKNEWS.ORG/2013/01/EXCLUSIVE-FOREIGNERS-NOW-PERMITTED-TO-CARRY-MOBILE-PHONES-IN-NORTH-KOREA/

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

Eric Schmidt’s North Korea Trip May Not Be as Ridiculous as It Sounds

Sure I would hope that Kim Jong-un would accept Google in north Korea and allow his people access to outside information because as I have said he would be singularly responsible for the collapse of the Kim Family Regime and would become a hero to Korea making the largest contribution to unification that any foreigner could possibly make.  Professor Cha (though his earlier statements show perhaps a little too much optimism because I do not think this event is anything more than another gimmick to support "Image First Politics")  is exactly right with his concluding statement and very much the reason why nothing (beyond perhaps the release of Kenneth Bae) is likely to come of this and also why I believe that Richardson and Schmidt are going to get played.

It’s also hard to imagine that 29-year-old Kim Jong-un, who was educated in the West, can resist the same tech that defines the lives of twentysomethings around the world. “He’s got to be interested in this stuff,” Cha says. But the risks are great: “As soon as he allows open access to it, he can kiss his leadership goodbye.”

But I just heard Richardson say on CNN that he is in good hands because he is taking his expert advisor Tony Namkung (Chinese born and raised in Tokyo) who is an Asian expert.  You can read his bio below and note what he wrote in 2000 about the north opening up and of course blaming the US for being involved in dividing the peninsula – thus overlooking the fact had two US Army officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel not come up with the plan for the Soviets to take the Japanese surrender north of the 38th parallel and the US to the South the peninsula would today be unified under the Stalinist dictatorship that was established in the north in 1945.

But I think perhaps Tony Namkung's north Korean expertise is equivalent to my current football skills.  I can watch a football game on TV and explain it so I must be able to play in the Super Bowl.

K.A. "Tony" Namkung, Ph.D. - Partner
http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=49022005&targetid=profile
Tony is an internationally known expert on U.S. - Asia relations and is well known and highly respected by business and government leaders throughout Asia and the U.S. He is Owner of Murray Hill Consultants, LLC, an advisory services firm assisting corporations on both sides of the Pacific in the areas of corporate strategy, market access, and governmental relations. Tony's knowledge, experience and extensive professional network makes him uniquely suited to lead Sandia Capital Partners strategic advisory and investment activities for Asian businesses seeking to expand activities in the Southwestern United States and for US businesses seeking investment and strategic alliances with leading Asian corporations. 

Tony has over three decades' experience in fostering U.S.-Asia relations, including at U.C., Berkeley where he taught and served as Deputy Director of its Institute of East Asian Studies, as Executive Director of the Asia Society in New York, and in the think tank community as Guest Scholar at theBrookings Institution and Director of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He has also served as Senior Adviser to Shearman & Sterling and as President of the Shearman & Sterling Institute. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1991 and sits on the boards and committees of a number of national organizations dealing with U.S.-Asia relations.
Tony holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and is the recipient of numerous national fellowships, grants from private foundations, and honors and prizes in the Asian field. He was born in Shanghai and raised in Tokyo while attending American schools. 

NAPSNet Daily Report, Tuesday, October 10, 2000ftp.nautilus.org, 14 Mar 2001 [cached]The Los Angeles Times published an opinion article by K.A. Namkung, chairman of Murray Hill Company in New Jersey, specializing in doing business with North Korea, ("U.S.-N. KOREA NORMALIZATION IS NOW IN SIGHT," 10/6/00) which said this week's visit by Jo Myong- rok, DPRK's first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission to the US could reshape the security landscape of Northeast Asia.
...
This visit, Namkung wrote, " could lead to a meeting of leaders of the two nations."He continued, "With the dramatic improvement in its relations with South Korea, the restoration of its ties underway with its former allies, China and Russia, and its normalization efforts with the European Union, Japan and other countries, now was the time for North Korea to realize its decade- old strategy of bringing its most formidable adversary, the United States, to the peace table.But the United States must be more involved in easing the military standoff.It can serve as an honest broker between the two Koreas, not on the model of Camp David but as a stabilizer and harmonizer.The U.S. was involved in dividing the Korean peninsula.It must now help bring peace to this troubled land and thereby secure its long-term presence in the region."

V/R

Dave

Eric Schmidt’s North Korea Trip May Not Be as Ridiculous as It Sounds

• BY MARCUS WOHLSEN01.04.137:55 PM

• HTTP://WWW.WIRED.COM/BUSINESS/2013/01/ERIC-SCHMIDT-NORTH-KOREA/

Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s planned trip to North Korea promises few returns for the company’s shareholders. But for the world’s most locked-down country, where only a few thousand citizens have internet access at all, his visit could offer the strongest hint yet of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s tortured longing for openness.

To be sure, the gulf between Google and North Korea couldn’t seem wider.

“The face of probably the most important facilitator of borderless information in the world is going into the hyperstate for the control of information,” says Victor Cha, a director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the second Bush administration and now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The past quarter-century has seen ex-presidents, diplomats, and the world’s most powerful nations try and fail to crack open North Korea’s totalitarian regime. During the visit reportedly planned for later this month, Schmidt will join former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson for what Richardson described as a “private humanitarian visit” to free a detained U.S. citizen over the State Department’s objections.

Richardson told CBS that Schmidt’s presence on the trip had nothing to do with Google.

“I invited Eric. He is going as a private citizen,” Richardson said. “This is not a Google trip.”

Perhaps. “We do not comment on personal travel,” a Google spokeswoman said in response to questions.

But since stepping down as Google’s CEO in 2011, Schmidt has continued to serve as the search giant’s most visible public face. The significance of showing that face in Pyongyang isn’t lost on North Korea, Cha says.

“I don’t know if it’s a good opportunity for Google. But it’s a good opportunity for the North Korean leadership to signal to the world that they’re serious about going forward,” he says.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.WIRED.COM/BUSINESS/2013/01/ERIC-SCHMIDT-NORTH-KOREA/