December 17, 2013 | Forbes
The Perils Of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
It’s been a landmark year for North Korea’s third-generation tyrant, Kim Jong Un, who inherited power two years ago with the death of his father, Kim Jong Il. Young Kim kicked off 2013 with a nuclear test, in February. He is closing out the year with a political purge that made world headlines last week with the denunciation, humiliation and execution of his uncle by marriage, the second most powerful man in North Korea, Jang Song Thaek.
Commenting Sunday on this drama to ABC TV’s “This Week,” Secretary of State John Kerry drew a connection between the nuclear and political dots. Kerry warned of instability in North Korea, calling Jang’s execution “an ominous sign,” indicative of Kim’s insecurities and “the nature of this ruthless, horrendous dictatorship.” Kerry added that for somebody like Kim Jong Un to have, “potentially,” a nuclear weapon, “just becomes even more unacceptable.”
True, but just how unacceptable does it have to get before the U.S. stops accepting it? In 2009, following North Korea’s second nuclear test, President Obama said it was “unacceptable for them to be accepted as a nuclear power.” That followed Obama’s comments on a North Korean long-range missile test (advertised by Pyongyang as a satellite launch), in which the President said “Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”
Neither words nor sanctions nor a series of nuclear freeze deals stretching back to 1994 have swayed North Korea’s regime from its pursuit of nuclear weapons, or its more conventionally bloody ways. In 2010, North Korea unveiled a uranium enrichment plant which it had built in addition to its plutonium-based program, thus providing itself with a choice of pathways to the nuclear bomb. There are now signs that North Korea is making preparations at its Punggye-ri underground test site for a fourth nuclear detonation. Given North Korea’s longtime alliance with Iran, based on more than 30 years of increasingly sophisticated weapons traffic plus a shared wish of Death to America, it is worth asking whether future North Korean nuclear tests might double as an offshore service to Tehran — now haggling with the U.S, and other world powers over its own nuclear freeze deal.
As long as North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim keeps absolute power, and he and his chosen inner circle live well, the agonies of North Korea’s more than 24 million people and the threats to the free world are, in Pyongyang’s calculus, just part of doing business. Thus did Kim Jong Un blot out his uncle last week with a flourish worthy of the court of Caligula, while preparing to amuse himself this week by welcoming basketball eccentric Dennis Rodman on a third visit to North Korea.
So what should the U.S. be doing while Kim Jong Un maneuvers to consolidate power? According to Kerry, this North Korean purge, which in the months before Jang’s obliteration had already involved “a significant number of executions,” is an urgent reason for the U.S. to rally its fellow participants in the old Six-Party diplomatic talks — South Korea, Japan, Russia and China — to “put as much effort into the denuclearization as possible.”
What does that mean? On Friday a State Department spokeswoman outlined America’s urgent approach as one of continued “collaboration” and “evaluating”: “We’re going to increase our discussions with our allies and partners in the region about the internal situation in North Korea.” Reprising a diplomatic refrain which in the context of North Korea’s Kim regime means precisely nothing, the spokeswoman added that “North Korea has a choice…between continuing down a path of isolation and impoverishment for their own people, or meeting its obligations and coming back into the international system.”
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has made his choice. He has not been in power long enough to replicate the record of his father, who, during the lean 1990s, rather than ease his grip on power chose to target an estimated two million or so of North Korea’s politically less favored citizens for death by famine. But young Kim’s liquidation of his own uncle is a reasonable guide to his regard for North Korea’s people. Jang’s downfall included a public display in which he was hauled before a special military tribunal of the North Korean Ministry of State Security, and denounced as “despicable human scum” — someone “worse than a dog” who had engaged in “thrice-cursed acts of treachery.”
Jang was accused of trying in a multitude of ways to challenge the absolute power of the Kim dynasty. He was charged with corruption, greed, sexual depravity, planning to stage a coup and failure to clap and cheer with full enthusiasm at the 2010 special party conclave at which Kim Jong Un was initially acclaimed heir apparent. Allegedly, Jang — who had run the Korean Workers’ Party state security apparatus — also turned down a unanimous request from a unit of the internal security forces to have an autographed letter from Kim Jong Un carved in granite and set in front of their command building; instead Jang committed the offense of having this treasure placed in “a shaded corner.” According to North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, which translated this entire performance into English for the edification of a global audience, Jang was then sentenced to death, and executed.
Even by North Korean standards, this was not merely a falling out. It was a statement. It was an in-your face announcement to the people of North Korea, and the world at large, of the character of young Kim’s regime. This caps some two decades during which the U.S. and its allies have repeatedly tried to entice Pyongyang toward joining the civilized world, and concluded three major nuclear freeze deals, in 1994, 2005 and 2007, crammed with aid and concessions for Pyongyang. North Korea has replied by cheating and reneging, carried out long-range missile tests, sold missiles and nuclear technology to such clients as Syria and Iran, and conducted three nuclear tests, in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
The U.S. has a choice of its own to make. The Obama administration can carry on talking, and head back toward the bargaining table to crown the rising young tyrant Kim with offers and supplications from the great world powers for yet another feckless North Korean nuclear deal.
Or the U.S. can recognize that Kim is not going to be talked or even sanctioned out of his nuclear program, or his barbarisms. It is unfashionable these days to talk about regime change. Current diplospeak treats it as unthinkable. But it should be clear by now that the only serious solution to the growing threat of North Korea’s Kim regime is an end to the regime itself.
In North Korea’s current upheaval lies an opportunity for the U.S. — not to parley with Kim, but to undermine him. Amid the purge, North Koreans are now living even more than usual in a state of fear. A BBC dispatch, citing North Korean defectors with contacts back home, reports that inside North Korea there are many people questioning how Kim could murder his own uncle. Among the followers of the executed Jang Song Thaek, there are surely high-ranking officials looking for ways to escape a similar fate.
This is a moment for U.S. and South Korean authorities to invite North Korean officials, including their envoys around the globe, to defect. A public offer of asylum from the U.S. would not be amiss. It would be a fitting response from the free world, and a decent retort to North Korea’s threats earlier this year to land nuclear bombs on the U.S. and drown South Korea in a “sea of fire.”
In similar spirit, it appears from the indictment of Jang Song Thaek that Kim is trying right now to ensure his control over North Korea’s cash flows, some of which were handled by Jang. This would be a good moment for the Obama administration to disrupt Kim’s efforts by ratcheting up the pressure on North Korea’s global rackets.
For instance, a North Korean-flagged freighter, the Chong Chon Gang, seized in Panama this year, turned out to be transporting 25 containers of military hardware hidden under some 200,000 bags of sugar. What’s the rest of the North Korean fleet up to? Or, in a drug case now before a New York federal court, the indictment describes a plan to smuggle 100 kilos of North Korean-manufactured methamphetamine into New York, and mentions a ton of North Korean-made methamphetamine stashed in an unnamed Asian country. Coming from North Korea, these drugs are surely of government manufacture. Could the Obama administration tell the public a lot more about such traffic?
For that matter, this would be a good moment for the Obama administration to better educate the American public, and the world generally, with a thorough account of North Korea’s rogue activities across the board, including its weapons dealings and WMD in general. There are signs of North Korean complicity in Syria’s use of chemical weapons earlier this year. There have been unconfirmed but intriguingly detailed reports in the press of Iranian officials attending North Korea’s February nuclear test. For too many years, spanning too many U.S. presidential administrations, the official instinct in Washington has been to hush up the real dangers and depravities of North Korea, in hope of that elusive deal that will somehow make the problems go away. Instead, the North Korean abuses and dangers keep getting worse. There are risks if the North Korean regime collapses. As Kim Jong Un has just clarified, there are worse risks if it doesn’t.
Ms. Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.