Five assumptions we make about North Korea – and why they’re wrong.
As northeast Asia teeters on the brink of a conflict that could escalate beyond anyone’s control, it is more important than ever to be well-informed about North Korea, and move beyond the common caricatures of the country and its leader, Kim Jong-un. This is difficult when many misconceptions about North Korea perpetuate in the public consciousness.
1. The ‘crazy Kim’ hypothesis
In the 2004 comedy film Team America, Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, is illustrative of a popular view of North Korea that both feeds and is fed by the perception that the Kim regime is irrational, crazy and evil.
This caricature is a poor foundation on which to build a North Korea policy.
Proponents of this view point to the Kim regime’s horrendous human rights record and the Orwellian social controls put in place to maintain the Kims at the head of North Korea’s unique authoritarian political system.
While the regime’s coercive arms have been responsible for crimes against the North Korean people that could be considered “evil”, this does not suffice as an explanation for why it engages in these practices.
The “why” is important. It feeds information into risk analyses and pinpoints leverage points for strategic interactions with North Korea.
We don’t have to like this logic or agree on its strategic utility to see there is rational strategy at work. We need to locate Kim and his regime within the context of the complex incentives and constraints of North Korea’s interwoven political, economic, cultural and ecological systems.
It is useful to step back from the whirlwind of recent developments to place the current situation in the broader context of North Korea’s regime survival strategy.
The regime’s brutal human rights record is a result of measures to consolidate its internal power.
Over time, the Kim family has become adept at “ coup-proofing ” its rule by playing off potential institutional rivals against each other and purging individuals when they become too prominent within the institutional hierarchy.
The tentacles of the regime’s coercive power reach all the way from institutions to people’s everyday lives through surveillance, social controls and ideological indoctrination. It is a brutal reality that these kinds of oppressive measures are the rational and predictable way politics is practised in authoritarian dictatorships.
2. The ‘irrational Kim’ hypothesis
This also means we should pause before equating North Korea’s human rights abuses with any perceived irrationality in the country’s external relations.
Here one needs to understand the unique logic of North Korean foreign policy. To this end, it sees hard military power as the only reliable means of guaranteeing its security.
North Korea’s foreign policy behaviour generally emphasises the utility of military force as its only credible security guarantee in what it perceives to be a strategically hostile environment. Its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities are the ultimate practical expressions of this worldview.
When we analyse North Korea’s behaviour from its own perspective, we can recognise the logic of their actions.
