Showing posts with label assassination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label assassination. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2019

Why Has There Not Been a North Korean Stauffenberg?

The short answer is, there may have been. Maybe even more than once during the seven decades of the Kim family regime. Word of the event(s) simply may have never made it to the outside world, as little does. It’s also possible that the Korean Stauffenberg(s) never made it as far as the real Stauffenberg and were cut down before they could make a serious attempt on the lives of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, or Kim Jong Un. But all signs point to there never having been a coup attempt with any realistic chance of success.


For those who may be unaware, Colonel (German: Oberst) Clause von Stauffenberg was a German military officer and minor noble who was a leading figure in the July 20 plot of 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler by blowing him up in a conference room. July 20 was the last known attempt to kill Hitler. Despite the murder of 6 million Jews, the deaths of millions of rank and file German soldiers and tens of millions of European civilians, and despite the creation of an authoritarian regime that eliminated nearly every freedom one can think of, no mass uprisings occurred in Germany. Even during the final year of the war, when it was obvious to everyone that the war was lost and that Germany would be destroyed, after July 20, 1944, not one stray bullet or bomb found Hitler, and certainly not a nationwide coup as July 20 had attempted.

So what does World War II history have to do with North Korea? (Besides a lot) North Korea has created a state every bit as brutal and oppressive as Nazi Germany or the Stalinist-era Soviet Union. Nazi Germany was only destroyed from the outside after nearly six years of war. The Soviet Union managed to survive for a staggering 69 years. However, even the USSR wasn’t immune to challenge and revolt. The countries behind Iron Curtain chaffed at Moscow’s reigns and occasionally this spilled out onto the streets, such as during the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Within Soviet Russia itself, you had the Kronstadt Rebellion and anti-Bolshevik peasant revolts. But North Korea appears to lack this kind of internal strife, at least, to a very large degree. It has certainly managed to hold off mass violence and protesters marching in the streets longer than any country I’m aware of, communist or otherwise.

Andrew Scobell’s 2006 monograph Kim Jong Il and North Korea: The Leader and the System mentions the fact that totalitarianism demands tremendous resources, both human and material. By necessity it creates systems for coercion and surveillance. And after a while, resources start to dry up and wear down. The economy suffers, infrastructure breaks down, and people grow weary of constant “ideological struggles”, mass mobilizations, as well as the more immediate and constant struggle of feeding one’s family. This leads to a burnout of faith in the regime and a burnout at a more fundamental level – the people themselves simply become tired of it all. North Korea has managed to hold on for 71 years and counting, longer than any communist country in history. The Nazis fell because of outside forces and the Soviets fell because of unstoppable economic forces. And both countries had to deal with internal dissent and the burnout of their people. The question I’d like to answer is, why has North Korea not only been able to survive, but why hasn’t it even had a Stauffenberg figure?

I suspect that a full answer and explanation would end up being many, many pages long, too long for the purposes of this blog. So, I will attempt to give a satisfactory but abridged answer here as told through a history of the country.



Kim Il Sung

After the July 20 plot, Stauffenberg was viewed by his contemporary citizens as a traitor. This wasn’t necessarily because he tried to kill Hitler the person, but because he tried to kill the leader of the nation during a time of crisis and war. The people of Germany saw this as dishonorable and as an act that, if successful, would have hurt Germany – after all, the average German still saw Hitler as the reason for the economic improvements of the 1930s and directly responsible for the amazing military successes earlier on in the war. Hitler was still viewed as the only one who could bring about ultimate victory. The world may have been collapsing, but the Führer was the personification of their ultimate hope.

Likewise, Kim Il Sung became the embodiment of the hopes and dreams of the North Korean people.

The Kingdom of Korea, it would be fair to say, was one of the last quasi-feudal kingdoms in the world by the time it was annexed by Japan in 1910; slavery wasn’t even officially banned until 1930. Millions of people lived in abject poverty and few had access to education. Japan’s annexation brought with it rapid modernization. The northern half of Korea was industrialized, while the southern half became the breadbasket of the peninsula. But all of this “good” also brought tremendous, continued suffering on the part of the native Korean people. Korean language and culture were banned in favor of Japanization. Japanese citizens were moved into Korea and countless Koreans were forcibly moved out to the far reaches of Japan’s growing empire.

The treatment of the Korean people continued to be abysmal. Then came along a shining example of Korean nationalism and the greatest general of all time, Kim Il Sung. (So says the official myth, anyway.) Japan was defeated in 1945 and a Soviet-backed state was created in 1948, with Kim Il Sung at its head. He instituted broad reforms, imprisoned the landlords and gave the farms to the people. He attacked the Christian minority (seen as a stain of imperialism) and replaced such superstitions that "oppressed" the people with faith in him; a demigod they could see. Education, healthcare, housing, no sector was left untouched by his brand of Korean-Marxism. Then, a short two years later, he launched his country into the most devastating war it had ever seen.

Millions of Koreans died and nearly every building in Pyongyang (and everywhere else) was destroyed. The truth is that North Korea only survived because of Chinese intervention, but the official regime story is that it was the iron-willed leader, Kim Il Sung, who saved the northern half of Korea from American imperialism – while the southern half was forced to languish under the American whip until a new war of unification could be waged. The end of Japanese occupation and the Korean War created a situation that gave Kim Il Sung the opportunity to lay claim to the titles “creator” and “savior” of North Korea. The people, naturally, had been given a front row seat to the horrific abuses of the Japanese and the devastation of modern warfare. North Korea would now forever be at risk. It would always be in the sights of much larger powers just waiting to destroy them.

However, while the peasantry was happy enough to take their anger out on abusive landlords, the apparatus of state was far from settled. Kim Il Sung was only one of many would-be national heroes. In fact, by the end of WWII, he had spent more time outside of Korea than living inside the country. Multiple factions existed and it wasn’t until 1961 before he could really lay claim to being an absolute dictator. But this struggle was largely limited to political machinations on the part of those that opposed him, or at least against his desire to be a dictator. Unfortunately for them, Kim & Co. wasn’t afraid of violence. He and his guerrilla warrior faction cared little for the rules of war (or law) and they didn’t mind purging those who opposed his will – either by exile or outright murder. By the 1960s, his Manchu-based guerrilla faction was the only one that had any real power.

Afterward, the dictatorship he created was constructed to help ensure his continued rule. Some dictatorships are “cooperative”. Those in the military, the bureaucracies, and economic bosses tend to work together within their respective sectors to create a stable state. Lots of other dictatorships lean on a more competitive design. They pit people against each other, and agencies try to usurp one another in the grab for resources and political favor. This creates an inefficient and unstable state, but it also breaks up possible alternate bases of power and limits the risks to the dictator from anyone within government or the military. Kim chose the latter design.

As the country recovered from war and Kim rebuilt the nation, the average person genuinely respected him and had faith in “socialist construction”. It’s important to recall that most Koreans were poor, uneducated farmers and laborers prior to the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The only education they received after that was education that promoted the state and made Kim Il Sung the center of the universe. And the country’s elite and military leaders knew to respect and fear him. They were also well aware of the threats facing their country and that they would not have their positions without Kim, thus loyalty was required.


Kim Jong Il

Kim Jong Il on the other hand was disliked by basically everyone by the time he died in 2011. When Kim Il Sung died in 1994, many outside observers thought the country would soon collapse. What Kim Jong Il had going for him (and the first hereditary succession of a communist state) was that throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he had been maneuvering himself into being the only viable successor to his father. He built up the personality cult surrounding his father beyond anything Stalin received. He placed himself at the center of every powerful agency, and most importantly, he ingratiated himself with the military. He played up Kim Il Sung’s “divine” bloodline, which he, too, shared. And by necessity to gain the power he needed, he slowly cut the elder Kim out of active politics and control.

Kim Jong Il didn’t escape unscathed in his transition to power. But, once again, the opposition was limited to palace intrigue, with the requisite purges that followed. There wasn’t visible public out crying against this most un-socialist of transitions and there weren’t any overt attempts on his life by the elite. Once again, their own survival depended on his, much like the survival of the Nazi elite depended on the continued patronage of Hitler, even in the last weeks of World War II.

The great famine of the 1990s proved to be his greatest threat and it became the greatest example of the regime’s durability. Around a million people died and the state failed in many of its obligations. This is one of a few periods when consistent, but limited, stories pop up of dissent; however, they’re largely limited to local factory strikes and such. But this dissent wasn’t necessarily aimed at Kim Jong Il himself (although any dissatisfaction or grumble is viewed by the state as going against the Leader and is a crime). The people simply wanted food. Luckily for Kim Jong Il, there were plenty of plausible things to blame the famine on that deflected attention away from him and the inherent flaws within socialism: droughts and floods, corrupt officials stealing, and the perennial favorite, Western hostility.

The closest example of a Stauffenberg-like revolt is rumored to have happened in 1997, while the famine was still ongoing. Elements of the Korean People’s Army Sixth Corps, based in North Hamgyong Province, conspired to begin a general uprising. This is where the regime’s insistence on extreme political surveillance and “centralized decentralization”, where Kim is the only one with an overall view of the nation, while the military and state apparatuses are fragmented – particularly when it comes to communication – came into play. The plotters were unable to reliably contact others to arrange a mass uprising. They also failed to overcome the fact that every high-ranking official has their own (one or more) state security officer watching their every move. The commander of the corps refused to take part and the Sixth Corps was disbanded. The conspirators and their families were never heard from again.

The popular perception of organizations like the Nazi SS or Soviet KGB is that they had absolute control over the people. That they knew everything, saw everything, and heard everything. But that isn’t reality. The reality is that Colonel Stauffenberg was recruited by others and that they had far reaching support (even if that support wasn’t exactly based on mass support). An entire apparatus including military officers and political leaders was able to be assembled for the purposes of the July 20 coup attempt. (Some 7,000 people were eventually arrested in connection to the plot.)

What little we know about the 1997 plot paints a much different picture. The conspirators weren’t even able to reach outside of their own units, and they didn’t seem to have had any political supporters. North Korea’s multilayered approach to state security and the security of the supreme dignity (another term for Kim) far surpass the capabilities of the SS or KGB.

One very plausible reason for the military’s opposition to revolt, even though their own families were suffering during the famine, is that Kim Jong Il switched the center of national power away from the Worker’s Party (WPK) and state bureaucracies and moved it to the military. Kim promoted the military by instituting the Songun (military first) policy. By securing his power base among the largest and most powerful (literally) organization in the country, he ensured his continued survival. He also managed to build up a base of support early on, before his succession, by taking over the ideological and propaganda departments. With these behind him, there was little chance of a sustained or deeply rooted challenge to his authority.

A rare example of popular dissent comes from 2009. The people were protesting unpopular currency reforms which wiped out what little people had managed to save. It was viewed as an attempt by the government to steal wealth and crack down on market activities. However, Kim Jong Il, unlike many dictators, learned to listen to the opinions of others and made just enough limited changes to the reforms in response. He also had the “mastermind” behind the reforms executed. The ability to know when to bend to pressure while maintaining the appearance of personal infallibility served Kim Jong Il well. For the second time in a row, a dictator was able to die of natural causes, as he did in 2011.


Kim Jong Un

Successful dynastic succession is completely unheard of among communist and totalitarian regimes. Within communism, such a thing as hereditary leadership cuts against every aspect of the ideology. And totalitarian systems are largely created by a single strongman and then fall apart as soon as he dies. Kim Jong Un is the grandson of Kim Il Sung. Unlike his father, Kim Jong Il, he didn’t have decades of grooming. In fact, he didn’t have more than two or three years. To outside observers none of this bode well for the young man. However, Kim the Third seems to have taken rapid actions to secure his reign. A series of purges and executions allowed him to consolidate his power. He took steps to reaffirm the authority of the Party while emphasizing a parallel track that allowed the military to hold on to its power.

Kim Jong Un has also managed to accomplish what his father and grandfather couldn’t - the completion of the nuclear program, the successful test of a missile that could hit any part of the US, and face-to-face meetings with the leader of their greatest enemy, President Donald Trump. Furthermore, whatever problems arise from sanctions, Kim Jong Un has still managed to oversee a billion-dollar construction boom. He has also learned the lessons of his forefathers and struck against those who could harm him (like his uncle Jang Song-thaek and his half-brother Kim Jong Nam), and he has begun to reach out and rebuild relationships with old allies. His personal characteristics play in his favor, too. Like his grandfather, he is outgoing and more charismatic than his father. Not to mention his striking physical resemblance to Kim Il Sung.

From the outside, it seems like he is in a very good position to maintain power.

Conclusion

Kim Il Sung was the father of the nation. Kim Jong Il led the country out of famine and protected it while it was weakest. Kim Jong Un has managed to accomplish multiple regime promises. And all were able to maintain ruthless control, even if absolute power has waned slightly generation-to-generation. North Korea’s take on Confucianism, filial piety, ultra-nationalism, and severe coercive and security systems has meant that at any given time, the people were either unwilling or unable to reject the Kim’s. Kim Il Sung is viewed as the father of each of the 25 million North Koreans alive today and the Kim dynasty is the personification of the people’s will and of the state. A lyric to a North Korean song goes, “without you, there is no motherland. Without you there is no us.” The leadership has built for itself a system in which the people are instinctively opposed to the very idea of open dissent or overthrowing the Kim’s, and built a system in which broad dissent or revolt is all but impossible.

The regime’s ability to react positively, but only just, to popular demands and its ability to navigate and command the numerous group interests within the “competitive dictatorship”, has enabled the Kim family to rule for 71 years. In 2019, there is no real outward sign of imminent collapse. Going back to Andrew Scobell, perhaps instead of collapsing the way Libya or the Soviet Union did, North Korea will take the path of China (albeit more slowly) and manage a gradual transition toward a post-totalitarian system. Pyongyang’s total control over the flow of information and economic activity has been greatly reduced over the years. The average citizen no longer relies solely on the state for their needs, but instead relies on their own ingenuity to get what they want. And, the system has become highly corrupt. These weaknesses may enable the transition to a post-totalitarian state, or they may simply be the first visible cracks before the entire edifice comes crashing down. Either way, a Korean Stauffenberg seems as unlikely today as yesterday.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Terrorism and the Future of North Korea at the United Nations

Image source: Outside the Beltway

After Kim Jong-nam’s assassination with VX nerve agent by emissaries of North Korea in Malaysia on February 13, 2017, calls went up in the United States to have the country re-listed as a state sponsor of terror, and calls from South Korea to have their northern cousins suspended from the United Nations were also registered. But how likely is either scenario?

North Korea was placed on the US terror list in 1988, following the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987 which killed 115 people. The country was removed from the list twenty years later in 2008 by president George W. Bush after appearing to satisfy the demands of a nuclear agreement based on the Six Party Talks. And while North Korea has since violated many nuclear terms and agreements, their last "official" act of international terrorism remains the 1987 bombing. That is, until the death of Kim Jong-nam.

What makes Kim Jong-nam’s death more than a simple case of a country assassinating one of its own citizens, is the fact that he was killed in a foreign country and that he was ostensibly under the protection of China – which is also North Korea’s main patron. Jong-nam had been in a state of quasi-exile ever since trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland with a fake Dominican Republic passport in 2001. His main residence since that time had been Macau. Despite no longer holding any official titles, it is alleged that he had a role in maintaining the Kim family slush fund (operated via Office 39), which holds an estimated $5 billion. Kim Jong-un’s motivation for having his half-brother killed are unknown, but it could be for any number of reasons – from coup rumors, to being displeased with public statements Kim Jong-nam had made, to even mismanagement of funds (if he was indeed involved).

Since there is no single supreme definition the United States works with, it could be difficult pin the label "terrorism" onto the incident. The US has several definitions of what constitutes terrorism and what might constitute a state sponsoring terrorism, and these legal standards vary across agencies and have changed over time. However, the use of VX, the deadliest nerve agent known, changes the game. For some background, Section 3 of the Export Administration Act of 1979 says:

"It is the policy of the United States to use export controls to encourage other countries to take immediate steps to prevent the use of their territories or resources to aid, encourage, or give sanctuary to those persons involved in directing, supporting, or participating in acts of international terrorism."

This is where the use of VX becomes very important. VX is classified as a weapon of mass destruction and is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 (to which North Korea is not party to). The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines “terrorist activity” at Section 212(a)(3)(B)(iii):

(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any—
                                                                            (a) biological agent, chemical agent, or nuclear                                                                                                               weapon or device,

Additionally, since definitions of "international terrorism" obviously include the activities being carried in other countries, the involvement of a multinational force of conspirators to accomplish the killing (the two women accused of wiping Jong-nam’s face with the nerve agent are from Malaysia and Vietnam), lends weight to the argument that North Korea should be re-listed. However, one possible impediment to this is the fact that many of the standards require that terrorism have a political motive. While there are many theories, there's no smoking gun pointing to a direct political motive to kill Kim Jong-nam. That said, when you consider North Korea's extensive arms trade, including to countries like Syria and Iran (both of which are currently on the list), the case to re-list can be enhanced.

Complicating matters, though, is America’s need to bring North Korea to heel when it comes to the nuclear question, which is America’s key concern and colors every dealing with the country. Re-listing North Korea would result in even greater economic pressures on the state. While this may sound positive, the long-term trend is that whenever North Korea gets backed into a corner, they either strike out in retaliation or proceed with their plans clandestinely. Kim Jong-un has shown no sign of slowing down the nuclear program he inherited and having his regime once again labeled a state sponsor of terrorism is likely to have the opposite wanted effect. Kim Jong-il paid close attention to the destinies of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Gaddafi disarmed Libya of WMDs and was overthrown with the help of the West regardless. Likewise, Saddam Hussein, despite lacking verifiable WMDs, made up part of the Axis of Evil and had his country invaded. No doubt Kim Jong-un has learned the lesson of despots as his father did – disarmament alone is no guarantee of safety.

While the likelihood of North Korea ending back up as a state sponsor of terror is at least 50/50, if history is a guide, the real world long-term results aren't likely to be the desired results.


That takes us to the possibility of having North Korea suspended from the United Nations.
Such an act has never occurred and would require the UN Security Council to recommend the action, from where it would then be approved or disapproved by the General Assembly. As mentioned, North Korea’s last confirmed act of international terrorism was in 1987. Prior to that, North Korea engaged in a number of terrorist activities and supported terrorist groups like the Japanese Red Army. The North’s activities were carried out all around the Asia-Pacific region.

In 1968 North Korean commandos infiltrated South Korea and tried to assassinate then president Park Chung-hee after they raided the Blue House (the South Korean equivalent of the White House). Unsuccessful and undaunted, a second assassination attempt was carried out in 1983. The 1983 attack occurred in Rangoon, Burma when North Korean agents bombed a wreath laying ceremony at which the South Korean president, Chun Doo-hwan, was in attendance. The attack resulted in 67 casualties, including the death of four top-ranking South Korean officials and 17 others.

Apart from the Korean Air Flight 858 bombing in 1987, North Korea had previously hijacked Korean Air Lines YS-11 in 1969. The hijacking ended without any casualties, though, North Korea refused to release eleven of the crew and passengers. To this day their ultimate fates are unknown.
None of these events led to North Korea being suspended from the United Nations. Nor did the killing of two United States Army officers with axes along the DMZ in 1976, or the naval clashes near Yeonpyong Island in 1999 and 2002, or the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan in 2010, or the other 200 plus violations of the 1953 Armistice Agreement by North Korea.


The fact is, so long as China (which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council) remains an ally of North Korea, despite whatever troubles may exist between them, China will likely not allow North Korea to be suspended. China, and to some extent Russia, have opposed many would be actions against North Korea by the international community. North Korea continues to serve as a useful buffer state between China and a liberal South Korea (with their entrenched military alliance with the United States) - with their new THAAD missile defense system. North Korea has also shown itself more than capable of developing ballistic and nuclear technology domestically, and cutting them off from all international associations and possible avenues of rapprochement would only push their backs against the wall even further. As mentioned earlier, each time North Korea has been increasingly isolated they have lashed out, but, in the past, there also remained ways for them to reach out and seek de-escalation (which did occur to varying degrees).

Unilateral actions by other countries can have an effect, although such actions by countries long opposed to the North Korean regime are having diminishing returns. Malaysia has taken steps to show their displeasure with the assassination like expelling North Korea’s ambassador Kang Chol, and rescinding the ability of North Korean citizens to travel to Malaysia without a visa. However, China remains the key figure in any attempt at punishing North Korea or affecting change outside of reigniting war.

Recently, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during his visit to China that, every option was on the table, including military options, regarding North Korea. China of course tried to play both sides of the fence and suggested we be "cool headed". An all out war is no real option, but the fact remains that the last 20+ years of "cool headed" diplomacy hasn't stopped their nuclear or ballistic missile programs, or led to a more open DPRK. Despite many efforts, their economy remains in tatters and millions still go hungry. China's insistence that we calm down while offering to help in any way possible to relieve tensions on the Korean Peninsula, belies the fact that China has a long history of saying one thing while doing another. China has allowed North Korea to exploit loopholes in UN resolutions to acquire luxury goods and foreign currency (which often ends up in the hands of the military), and even China's latest unilateral action against North Korea - the banning of North Korean coal imports - must be taken with a grain of salt.

Without doubt, North Korea has been squeezed. But we have watched a slow-motion multi-decade catastrophe unfold before our very eyes while we have tried to placate North Korea through the misguided notion that all they want is food and they'll give up their bombs for it. Not only does North Korea have nuclear weapons (and it's time we acknowledge they're a nuclear weapons state instead of pretending they're not), they're on the verge of having a credible first strike capability. Additionally, not only do they have a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, we now know they're not afraid to use them. We are edging ever closer to a point of absolutely no return. Until China is really on-board, any international actions against North Korea will be blunted.

--Jacob Bogle, 3/18/17
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Additional Reading
Arsenal of Terror: North Korea, State Sponsor of Terrorism, by Joshua Stanton