AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

KIM JONG UN’S ‘PYONGYANG REPUBLIC’: INSIDE NORTH KOREA’S TOTALITARIANISM

REMARKS BY:

ROBERT COLLINS, AUTHOR OF “PYONGYANG REPUBLIC”

PANELISTS:

HELEN-LOUISE HUNTER, AUTHOR OF “KIM IL-SONG’S NORTH KOREA”

DAVID S. MAXWELL, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

GREG SCARLATOIU, COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA

MODERATOR:

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, AEI

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2016

EVENT PAGE: http://www.aei.org/events/kim-jong-uns-pyongyang-republic- inside-north-koreas-totalitarianism/

TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION – WWW.DCTMR.COM

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT: Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention please? I’m Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in political economy here at AEI, and we want to welcome you all to the American Enterprise Institute for what I think is going to be a most unforgettable session.

Thank you all for braving the wilds of D.C. winter weather. And to our Internet audience, thank you for braving the wilds of the Internet in this era of the Sony hack. I see we have quite a distinguished and eminent crowd here. I can’t salute everybody, but I would remiss if I did not give a shout out to our fine US Ambassador for Human Rights in North Korea, our Special Envoy Bob King over here. Also to the — (applause) — also to the members of the board of HRNK, the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea that has published this fine report, and in particular to Ms. Ahn Soonhoon, the wife of the great and greatly missed Ahn Jaehoon, who was a lifelong champion of human rights in North Korea. Thank you. (Applause.)

So the man of the hour here today is Robert M. Collins, the author of our report, “Pyongyang Republic: North Korea’s Capital of Human Rights Denial.” I’ve known Bob for 20 years and I have been learning about the DPRK since the first moment I met him from him. I don’t quite know how he does it. I don’t think there is any other miguk nom, (which is North Korean, more or less, for “American gentleman”) who knows as much and understand as much about the workings of the DPRK’s system as Bob does.

We were honored to release his landmark report on Songbun — the social and political classification of the DPRK population — in this very room four years ago. I have no doubt this is also going to be a landmark report as well. We in the United States do not have the classification that we find in some countries of Asia of “living national treasure,” but rest most assured Bob is one of these.

I want to mention our discussants as well. You can read more about them in the materials you’ve gotten in your event packet, or online on the webpage for this event. First, Helen-Louise Hunter: more than half a lifetime ago, when I first started trying to learn about North Korea, everybody I met in this town told me that I had to read this fantastic report on North Korean society. Unfortunately, it was classified in those days. Since then, the body of it has been published, as “Kim Il-song’s North Korea.” Helen- Louise has been watching the DPRK since those days and I think will have interesting insights for us.

Also on our panel, Professor David S. Maxwell of Georgetown University, of the Center for Security Studies and the Security Studies program at Georgetown. Dave puts out a blog for national security thinkers and practitioners. And rest assured that Professor Maxwell is also a practitioner. Before he was Professor Maxwell, he was Colonel Maxwell and knew a thing or two about the security situation in the Korean Peninsula.

And certainly not least, we have the executive director of HRNK, Greg Scarlatoiu, indomitable, indefatigable, widely knowledgeable about the DPRK, and also a man who grew up in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania. Greg understands things in his blood about totalitarianism that some of us have had to learn from the blackboard.

Without any further ado, Bob, welcome, the floor is yours. Take it away.

ROBERT COLLINS: Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I’m very grateful to AEI and Nick Eberstadt for hosting this event. Nick has always been a very supportive person and an intellect that’s always enjoyable to engage — very few like that.

MR. EBERSTADT: Can everyone hear?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No.

MR. COLLINS: Somebody should slap me in the face next time. (Laughs.) I was just saying that — talking about my thanks to Nick for his support.

Thanks to Greg for being the manager of this project. And his patience took longer than expected. And thanks to my dear friend Dave Maxwell, who has done some extraordinarily great things for our country, most of which remain classified. I’m aware of some of them and he’s incomparable in what he does. And thanks very much for Helen to show up. She certainly was a leader before I was getting into this sort of business, if you will.

The report is about prioritization. And in everything that is prioritized, there is a counterbalance to that that is deprioritization. The themes are about the Kim family regime prioritizing not only all resources in country, but to all political power and things that are political, and combining those two to ensure that the regime survives in what it sees as a hostile world, but it makes the world hostile through its own policies.

The counterbalance, again, to that is that if you’re not in the regime or supportive of the regime, you don’t get anything. You’re deprioritized of every resource that you can think of and you suffer. And this is the beginning of human rights denial. Even as they describe their own human rights as the right to have a house and the right to have a job and the things of that nature, the deprioritization policies of the regime ensure that those that are not in Pyongyang are deprived of any competent areas such as that — including their housing, their professions, their food, their energies — you name it.

Those that live in Pyongyang, do so because they know that life is better if they live there. Now, not everybody is at the top of the pyramid within Pyongyang itself. There are poor in Pyongyang and the report demonstrates where they’re at based on defector testimonies. And so not everybody is — gets fed as well as the elite. But the prioritization process creates a sort of pyramid. The more you support the regime, the more benefits you get and the more quality of the benefits in terms of food, health care, housing, opportunity, profession — things of that nature.

Now, what is the backdrop of this ideologically is a doctrine called Suryongjuui. Suryong means the Supreme Leader. Suryongjuui means Supreme Leader-ism. And the application of Suryongjuui to North Korea is designed to ensure that you as a citizen of North Korea are bound to loyalty to the regime and you will do what is necessary to support the rule of the supreme leader.

As you can imagine, there are — it’s another pyramid, that the amount of loyalty you’re able to demonstrate gets you rewards within the system. And so the better you do a job at loyalty and doing it in the right circumstances, the better the resources you get, the more you are prioritized. So finding volunteers that want to help the Kim regime stay in power is not difficult. Getting into the positions of power is, but I’ll address that later.

As for North Korea, if we use the three terms that are most common, the Kim regime, the DPRK, and North Korea, the one that is most applicable to this process that I’m talking about is the Kim regime. And the Kim regime uses the party to run its regime and to run the country. The DPRK, the state, is the lapdog of the party. It states so in the party charter. It even states so in the constitution, which is way down below in terms of prioritization of importance. But the regime uses the party to run the state, to run the country, and ensure the human rights denial happens on a daily basis throughout the country. And that’s an important concept.

It’s not the state that launches missiles. It’s not the state that develops — is responsible for developing nuclear weapons. And it’s not — it is the party that tells them to do it, gives them the guidance, makes sure they get the resources and the organization to do that. And sometimes that’s lost on our governmental leaders. The understanding that the real bad guys are the ones sitting on the back bench behind the state representatives because they are the puppet masters pulling the strings on those that you might see at the United Nations or in Six-Party Talks or whatever, and so that’s an important concept.

And inside of the Korean Workers’ Party, there’s an organization that runs the party. It’s called the Organization and Guidance Department. This is made up of about 1,300 people who, most of them, are in Pyongyang. Some of them are out in the provinces and the counties to ensure the work of the party is done. But this is the core organization that ensures the human rights are denied. And the priority goes to everything the supreme leader.

It is this organization that evaluates every single leader in North Korea on their loyalty to the regime. And they do so weekly, as a report to the supreme leader. If you don’t stand up, if you don’t measure up, you’re out. I’m sure many of you understand that the military has taken a number of hits over the last three years in the position of their minister of defense, their chief of the general staff, which is analogous to our chairman and to others, because they didn’t measure up to what the OGD ensures are the standards.

The same goes for judges, the legal system, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, any organization in North Korea that has a leader, it’s this organization that drives the process of evaluating them, reporting it to the supreme leader, and thus the consequences. An example of that, I’m sure you all remember the iconic picture of Jang Sung-taek being arrested in an expanded version of the Politburo. Well, on the other side of that picture is the foremost person in the Organization and Guidance Department, Cho Yon-jun. And he’s delivering the charges. And he headed up the investigation and the reporting to the supreme leader, so that gives you an idea of where the power stands in North Korea.

The report also talks about decision-making bodies and decision-making and advising situations. All that decision-making and advising goes through the OGD. The OGD is not a group of experts on military or weapons or any of that nature or economy. They just make sure that all those leaders comply with the directives of the supreme leader. And a major component of that is to make sure that nobody stands away of the goals and directives of that, and human rights are denied because they would get in the way.

So those that work to that effort are successful in North Korea. The report talks about how the power elite are developed, how they’re educated, how they’re trained, how they get to where they’re at and the rewards that they receive by supporting the supreme leader. And it is incumbent upon those leaders to ensure that they carry out the policy of human rights denial on a national basis, at a national level. And those policies get down to the provinces and to the counties and the village level. And the entire system is set up to be that way.

So for the concept of human rights in North Korea is not a resource, but the ability to deny human rights is a resource. It is pushed through the personnel system. It is determined, again — excuse me — it is implemented at all of the local levels to ensure that the prioritization process that I mentioned can be carried out. That’s an important consideration.

When a member of the party that is at the county or the provincial or the city level makes a determination on what it will be implemented and carried out, he or she ensures that the prioritization process which funnels into Pyongyang is not interrupted by any institution or any individual. And the understanding of what those individuals and institutions are supposed to do is carried out and the directives, as I said earlier, are implemented all the way down to the village level.

The future of the “Pyongyang Republic” and the concept of human rights denial is not going to change because the doctrine is so stiff, the judgment of leaders using the doctrine of Suryongjuui is so demanding, the rewards are so beneficial to those that carry it out that the concept that somehow there can be reform in North Korea is on the verge of being ludicrous.

The ability of the system to make even the slightest changes is very limited because of this. It doesn’t mean that things don’t change. I mean, the open markets that developed in the famine of the late ’90s certainly provided some form of change, but what the — those within the elite have taken advantage with that and they have used that to make money for themselves. The most prosperous people in Pyongyang are the husband who works within the party and the wife who does a business using the connections of her husband to make money. And this includes manipulating some of the open markets that are both in the Pyongyang and in the provinces, particularly those in the channel that goes between Pyongyang and Sinuiju, which is the North Korean city just south of Dandong, China.

And so today, some of the adaptations that the party has made is basically enabling many of the party — the successful party people, the top in Pyongyang to make money, to actually go out and buy an apartment, which is against the rules, but they do it anyway because they’re part of the party and they’re exempt from the law and they do what Kim Jong-un lets them do. And Kim Jong-un’s word is final, not the law.

So in this process of manipulating the system through corruption, it only goes to contribute to the solidification of power of the supreme leader. They have done remarkable — as you all know, they’ve done some remarkable success stories in their proliferation of WMD, illicit activities, our money — things of that nature. So they’re quite successful. But all of this comes back in supports — that’s all prioritized right back to the regime.

And so Kim Jong-un, the difference between him and his father and his grandfather is that he’s built a few enjoyable enterprises that add to the cultural life of the elite that support the “Pyongyang Republic” and Suryongjuui: water parks, riding clubs. It’s quite remarkable, but that’s his way of rewarding those that’ll work for him.

Kim Il-sung really ran a party state. Kim Jong-il turned it into the party running everything, as it is today. And now, Kim Jong-un has kind of turned “Pyongyang Republic” into the “Republic of Changjeon Street.” There’s some pictures of this particular housing area that houses about 3,000 people in Changjeon apartments — that’s in the report — and what it does is it shows where all the newly selected subordinates for Kim Jong-un live. So he has rewarded already people that are in their mid-30s to mid-50s and put them in that apartment even going past people that are in their 60s and 70s that have been serving the Kim regime for decades and decades. And so he’s even limiting the scope of who the elite will be in the coming years and rewarding them accordingly.

So I’m going to stop here. But I’ll say one more thing. If we expect to change the regime’s policy of human rights denial, it is the Organization and Guidance Department that we need to go after. It’s not the military. It’s not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is the party people who tell those agencies, institutions, and their leaders on what to do. That’s an important criterion for any future thought on sanctions. Yes, some of our sanctions have looked at the party, particularly Office 39, but going after the Organization and Guidance Department I think is critical if we think that we’re going to change human rights in — the human rights denial in North Korea.(Applause.)

MR. EBERSTADT: Bob, thank you very much. I’m now going to ask our discussants to go across the table.

Greg, why don’t we start with you? Let me ask you, please, if you can try to limit your remarks to five minutes so we can have more time for general discussion.

GREG SCARLATOIU: Absolutely. And first and foremost, Nick, thank you and thank AEI for so graciously hosting this report launch. As always, it’s an extraordinary honor and privilege to work with Bob Collins. He’s a fantastic scholar. I’d also like to remind everyone that our staff members and interns made very important contributions to the publication of this report, in particular Rosa Park, Raymond Ha, all of our board members and the board reviewers — two of them sitting on this panel here today.

This is yet another seminal report by Bob Collins after his Songbun report published four years ago, another report that enables the reader to understand the inner workings of the Kim family regime. Two years ago, we saw a report by UN Commission of Inquiry, the result of a yearlong, thorough investigation by three commissioners, 20 staff members, that reached the conclusion that crimes against humanity are ongoing in North Korea because the policies, institutions, and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place.

It is precisely through its unique insight into the functioning of the North Korean regime that “Pyongyang Republic” provides the information needed to support future accountability, transitional justice processes addressing human rights violations. And of course, if such violations, if human rights violations are included at some stage in the regime behavior subjected to international sanctions — as you’ll recall, the current sanctions regime is focused only on countering the development and proliferation of nuclear missile technology. If human rights concerns are included, “Pyongyang Republic” will become reference material.

And it goes without saying that anyway the report contributes very meaningfully to the body of knowledge to establish effective sanctions regimes and other measures aimed to counter threats to international peace and security posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons, long-range ballistic missiles, and military provocations.

Perhaps from the viewpoint of the North Korean elites the most frightening aspect pertaining to this report is that — and to previous reports published by HRNK, first and foremost the book authored by Ken Gause, who’s here in the audience with us today — what must be frightening from the viewpoint of the North Korean elites is that our understanding of the functioning of that system is improving. Our understanding of North Korea’s policy of human rights denial — and this is a term that Bob Collins coined — our understanding of that policy of human rights denial, the mechanism behind that policy of human rights denial, our understanding is surely improving.

We are also reminded that North Korea is continuously in a state of flux. Bob Collins reminds us that under the reign of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean family may no longer be invincible. Although this country continues to be the world’s most reclusive state, we are reminded that through the advent of new technologies or the advent of portable information storage devices, North Koreans manage to gain access — some North Koreans gain better access to information from the outside world. Information is slowly but surely eroding this regime’s grip on power. And this protracted but steady crumbling of North Korea information firewall and also the rise of growing expectations among North Korea’s dongju, the nouveau-riches that have emerged from a grey underworld — as Bob puts it, a grey underworld of non-institutional, low-level capitalistic practices. These two factors — information and growing expectation amongst these nouveau-riches — may develop as two of the principal factors that undermine the legitimacy of North Korea’s regime.

Thank you very much.

MR. EBERSTADT: Thank you very much, Greg.

Dave, the floor is yours.

DAVID MAXWELL: Thank you, Nick. And thank you, Greg. I echo my thanks for putting on this great event. And of course to Bob Collins, my wife sends her greetings and said to thank my Gyosunim, my professor, because Bob has taught me so much in the last 20 years.

To echo Greg, this is a seminal work. And it’s going to be one of those reports that will be invaluable as long as the Kim family regime remains in power, and then it will go a long way to explaining things after they’re out of power. And I could list all the important aspects of this report from understanding how the elites remain in power, how human rights are denied; the importance of the OGD, as Bob has outlined; the assessment of Kim Jong-un; the future of the Kim family regime, whether they’ll reform, muddle through, or collapse. And of course, we could also tie this to the Commission of Inquiry, the United Nations report that is so important.

But what I’d like to just focus on briefly is how I would use this report. My background is operational planning. And I had the great honor to work with Bob, as we were working for General Tilelli, working for the plans for North Korean instability and collapse. And I have to tell you that back in the 1990s, and the plans that exist in Korea today have all been informed by the work of Bob Collins. He’s one of the most knowledgeable Americans and, as Nick said, a national treasure of anyone I know. And he has informed our planning.

And so I’d just like to say how I would use this report if I wearing a variety of different hats. First, I’d say that my friend, Frank Hoffman, at National Defense University, wants to coin a principle of war called understanding. It seems like a no- brainer. Sun Tzu said, know yourself, know your enemy. But we really need a deep understanding of the Kim family regime and how things work, and Bob provides us with that.

It talks about the elite, the structure, the party domination, and all the organizations that support the regime. If I were going to support a resistance among the Korean people living in the North, I would use this report as the foundation for understanding the resistance potential and how the regime functions and, therefore, how to organize a resistance against it.

If I were to orchestrate an information and influence activities campaign or psychological operations or information warfare, I would consult this report to understand how to focus messages on various target audiences from the elite to the second-tier leadership to the general population.

If I were going to negotiate with the regime on any issue, from the nuclear program, the confidence building measures, even as far-fetched as a peace regime, to human rights, I would consult this report for how to understand the regime, how it operates, and who makes the decisions.

If I were going to try to undo the psychological and cultural damage of nearly seven decades of oppression that has been done to the Korean people living in the North, I would consult this report. And if I were a human rights investigator, I would use this report as the foundation for my research and writing and determining what to look for, what questions to ask, and the information to gather.

And if I were member of the press, I would read it and study this report to understand and know the structure of the “Pyongyang Republic,” as well as the proper terminology to inform my reporting. And lastly, if I were working on the unification process, which I think is so important, I would use this report as the basis for assessing how to dismantle certain sections of the regime and the party structure and how to maintain others that could support unification and the process, from understanding the city, the district people’s committees, the district offices, the neighborhood units, down to the head of household and how to work within that structure to go through the unification process which will result in a united republic of Korea. And this report gives insight into the entire spectrum of the human domain.

And last-last, if I were a student, I would use this report as a basis for research. The bottom line is that this report is more than just an academic exercise. It is practical and will remain valuable for whatever happens on the Korean Peninsula, especially in terms of what I call the big five, which is war, regime collapse, the nuclear and missile programs, human rights and crimes against humanity, and of course unification.

I would say that the only way to stop the nuclear program and the crimes against humanity that are being perpetrated against the Korean people living in the North by the mafia-like crime family cult known as the Kim family regime is through unification. And this report will make a great contribution toward that end. Thank you.

MR. EBERSTADT: Helen-Louise, I know that you’ve prepared quite a long treatise for us today. If it would be better, we’re happy to put the treatise online with the proceedings of our entire panel, just so that you don’t feel under time pressure today. So please begin.

HELEN-LOUISE HUNTER: Thank you. Well, it’s a very special pleasure for me to be here to celebrate the release of Bob Collins’ book, which I now consider the most comprehensive, informative description of how the North Korean system works today. I might some years ago have said that my book did that, but there is no question now that Bob’s has far succeeded that.

I want to tell you a little bit about the history of my book and why, way back then, the understanding of the North Korean society was so very important to the United States government. At that time, we knew very, very little about everyday life in North Korea, probably less than we knew about any other country in the world. And for that reason, the government undertook the time and investment to write the first and, as far as I know, only sociological study of a foreign country that is ever done, a study of book length involving three years’ work at least.

And it’s exactly for those same reasons today that a book like Bob’s is just as important. Although we know a lot more than we did then, still relatively speaking I think we know very little about the workings of the North Korean system. And to do that, you have to understand the society.

Now, to give you a feeling of the difference in time, my book was inspired by the arrival of the first North Korea defector into the United States in 1979, a young man of about 25 years — a privileged young man who had grown up Pyongyang, studied at Kim Il-sung University, where he saw but didn’t really know Kim Jong-il and when — and who subsequently joined the North Korean Foreign Service, served abroad and defected in Switzerland. He was the only real-life North Korean that I could interview, I think the only real North Korean that any of my associates had ever known.

I interviewed for the book the only five Americans who had ever gone to North Korea — basically scholars, five scholars and correspondents — but they had only the briefest of visits to Pyongyang, under very guarded conditions. None of our political leaders had ever met with North Korean leaders or had traveled to North Korea. Virtually, my only source of information was reports of East European technicians who were working in North Korea as part of Kim Il-sung’s ambitious program to rebuild the country after the Korean War. But their reports were obviously limited to the specific industrial projects where they were working.

Today, there are some 28,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. Bob Collins has interviewed almost all of them, I hear, with the advantage of having lived and worked in South Korea for over 30 years and having been able to interview them in their native Korean language. He’s read countless defector reports written by others. He’s talked with increasing numbers of people who had visited North Korea and he’s had access to satellite imagery that was, of course, unknown to me.

In short, he’s immersed himself in all things North Korea for years. So who better for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea to ask to write the definitive sociological study of North Korea today?

Despite the limitations in my source materials, I think I identified three of the main things that one has to understand about the society to — that you have to understand to appreciate its effect on the life of every human being. And these three subjects have really — were foreshadowed in Bob’s report, but they’ve been changed significantly.

And in my few remarks that I can make in this brief time, I’d like to discuss the change from my portrait of the North Korean society to Bob’s current because I think the changes are — I think the changes add a real depth to the understanding. You can understand all the horrors of the society today, but if you can appreciate the changes from the past and the trauma and stress that that has involved from the part of both the leaders and people, I think you have an even better understanding today of the state of morale of the people at this time.

The three main themes in both of our books, one was the unbelievably ambitious social engineering feat that Kim Il-sung undertook to classify every single North Korean into 51 groups, from good to bad, according to his perception of their loyalty to his communist revolution. The second most important thing that you would have known in the 1970s the minute you talked to a North Korean was the cult of Kim or the thought of Kim. Kim’s name was mentioned two or three times virtually in every sentence. But — I’m going to stop right there and I’ll come back to it. And the third thing was — well, you needed to know where a person lived in North Korea and why.

Now, to just briefly compare those. In the 1960s and ’70s, which I wrote about, North Koreas were just beginning to realize where they fit into the revolutionary social planning that Kim was introducing in his classification system. They still had hope that maybe if they were — if they thought they were on the lower end, they still had hope that with hard work and every effort to prove their loyalty to Kim, they could improve their position, get a little more education, a better job, and eventually be allowed to move to a better place.

At that time, the cult of Kim, which I mentioned as the second most important thing to know, flourished around a legitimate guerilla war leader against the Japanese, a charismatic leader with an avuncular style of leadership and who ruled North Korea longer than any other 20th century ruler except Fidel Castro. He had become personally familiar with every town and village, industrial plant in the country, spending three- fourths of his time outside of Pyongyang visiting his people, who felt that they knew him at close hand and who genuinely respected him. It was a time of optimism as Kim embarked on his ambitious program.

I’m going to have to summarize. In such significant ways, all the hope and promise of these early years has gotten worse and worse as the leaders have become more secret and working alone in their office, not meeting with the people. And so you have to think of North Korea now not only in the horrors of the system, but that it is a situation that has grown worse and worse and is worse now than it ever has been. And its hopes for the future are grimmer. I’ll stop there.

MR. EBERSTADT: We will put Helen-Louise Hunter’s remarks in toto into our record. And we can refer to that online for the event as a whole.

Bob, I’d like to give you a chance, if you would like to, to respond to or remark upon any of the comments you’ve heard from the discussants. And after that, we’ll open the floor to a general discussion with the audience.

MR. COLLINS: Well, I’ll be brief. I’m thankful for the comments that everybody on the panel made. I stand in awe of every single individual that’s here on this panel. It’s an absolute privilege to participate today. And I couldn’t have asked for a better event.

MR. EBERSTADT: Now, I suspect we may have a few questions from the audience. We have about sixteen minutes left before the witching hour. What I would propose is that we harvest a few questions together each time, allow response and see how many times we get to go towards the penalty round.

We have two strict rules at AEI for this event, especially since we’re going to have a transcript for this session online. Number one, please identify yourself. Number two, please put a question mark at the end of your question, all right? Now, let’s see, one, two, three as the first. Yes, as the first three, please.

Q: Hello, I’m (Francis ?) Camardrayam (ph), a cyber strategist at Booz Allen. My question is, every now and then, you know, we decide not to give anymore, I think it’s food aid, to North Korean, and then Jimmy Carter usually goes on television and says, this is terrible. But then the argument seems to be that any aid that’s coming through isn’t really helping the people who need it most. I’d just be curious if you think it’s an effective strategy or if it’s fairly irrelevant.

MR. EBERSTADT: Thank you. And second questioner, please.

Q: Claudia Rosett, (Defense of Freedom Foundation) (sp). My question is about insults to the supreme leader — could you please tell us more about how that echoes inside the system? Is it actually damaging? Thank you.

MR. EBERSTADT: This questioner, please.

Q: Hi. I’m Francesca Collins from the Daily Caller News Foundation. My question is, what are foreign policy experts least considering about the DPRK and what that they in the panel’s opinion probably should be considering right now.

MR. EBERSTADT: Third question, could you restate that please?

Q: Yes, absolutely. So what are foreign policy experts least considering in regards to North Korea that they, in the panel’s opinion, should be considering currently.

MR. COLLINS: As to the food aid, the moral obligation of some countries that are driven by the thought of Christianity and, therefore, generosity to help others is certainly a strong driving mechanism that looks at North Korea and says, we can’t cut off the food; the people won’t get the food and then they’ll starve or they’ll be malnourished.

The problem is, as soon as the food is dropped off — and they have developed elaborate schemes to deceive NGOs that work at this — they think they’re delivering food down to a local village. And they drop off the food and they sit there and watch a distribution being made and then they’re satisfied and they leave. As soon as they leave, the local authorities go by and they scoop up all of that stuff that’s been received and then put it into the prioritization chain that I was talking about before.

So even though our most noble food aid givers and those from other countries, particularly Europe, that give the food nationally see a malnourished grandmother receive the food, they think that they’ve done their job, but they walk away and they’re kept away and then the local policemen or whomever is assigned to do this duty then goes to grandma, gives her a few grains and takes the bulk of it back.

And this food is not exclusively used by, but prioritized to, not only those that live in Pyongyang, but also those that work on important projects, like the nuclear scientists and the WMD programs, military generals, individuals like that.

In terms of insults to the supreme leader, good luck if you can think you can get away with it because you never can. Any insult — any negativity not only to the supreme leader but somehow that the system doesn’t work, which is an insult — an implied insult to the supreme leader, ends up in a report unless it’s done in front of a policeman or you’re merely apprehended.

Q: I was wondering also about insults from outside, if we make them, we ridicule him, how that plays inside.

MR. COLLINS: Well, I’m sure that they’ll end up watching this particular show online and so — you know, they keep records. They keep a scorecard. Most of the insults come from South Korea, which hurts them the most because it’s the Korean people. And so most of their energy towards this is — in responding to insults is to threaten war or threaten retaliation of whatnot, and so there are some external consequences.

But those consequences usually are channeled through what they called a propaganda and agitation department which formulates all the themes and messages that go out of country and then the media that’s controlled by that department report like KCNA and whatnot report to — in a threatening, we’re going to get you, that kind of a thing. And certainly the movie “The Interview” resulted in more than just that.

As their abilities grow in the cyber world, then the greater the consequences are likely to be for anybody that is against them. I know that HRNK has been targeted and other agencies have been targeted. The whole banking system in South Korea is targeted. The military is targeted. So there are a lot of consequences to happen to that. The bulk of those, the responses, are aimed at the ROK, but it does come here to the United States.

What should our foreign policy leaders do? I mentioned at the end of my remarks they have to target the right people. Our foreign policy leaders need to understand that when they engage a North Korean at some form of talks in New York or in Geneva or whatever, the person that they’re actually talking to is not the determiner of policy. It is the backbench guy who’s there to monitor that person, the backbench man or woman. And their intent is to report.

If we were all North Koreans and we were talking at the United Nation and you saw a back bench right back here, they would record everything that we said and hold us accountable by the report that goes to the Organization and Guidance Department. And if we make one false slip, we suffer. And one of us would end up going to a pig farm for six months, and then — as an indication of just how we’re going to treat you, you do it again, it’s going to be worse. It’s that kind of a system. Now, those that are successful in the North Korean system know that and they know how to work around that.

But our foreign policy people should understand that it’s the party that runs things, the Korean Workers Party, and they call the shots and they use the front men of the foreign ministry or wherever in North Korea to deliver their messages. And the interlocutor combination between our side and their side, anybody can slip up, but we need to understand that when we talk to a North Korean diplomat, we are not talking to somebody who makes any decisions. They’re being manipulated.

MR. EBERSTADT: I think we have time for a lightening round. One, two, three.

Q: Thanks so much. Chris Nelson, Nelson Report. I find I write about this almost every damn day. It doesn’t usually produce such a good lunch though. Thank you. I find that Dave’s operational approach appeals to me. But my question has sort of two points to it.

If we have a long game here, if we get to have a long game here, then we get to play out Greg’s scenario of working for the revolution from within the revolution of rising expectations, and Mr. Collins, towards the end of his presentation, got around to how that might work. But if we look at the rising anxiety about North Korean missile development and warhead development, we don’t have a long game. We don’t have 20 years. Increasingly, it looks like we’re facing a perhaps fairly short-order crunch point coming here. What are the hell are going to do to stop it or is that any responsible question to ask even?

So my question — but I had to explain why the question. Mr. Collins, you know how the system works and who the decision-makers are. What would be the reaction of the system? Who would make the decisions? And what do you think the decision would be to respond to the use of military force to remove the nuclear and missile capabilities? You do hear talk about this now. Is that insane, dangerous, or is it doable from what you know about how this system would react to that and who would do that? Thank you.

Q: Peter Humphrey, intel analyst and former diplomat. Clausewitz says that the way to topple your enemy is to go after his center of gravity, which can be a communication system or an economy or the leader itself. Let’s assume that Kim Jong- un’s obesity succeeds in giving him a coronary occlusion. We are then left with this vacuum which could collapse the regime, but maybe it won’t.

So what’s your best guess about the survival of the regime after Pudgy had his fatal heart attack? Does OGD, Organization of Guidance Department then dig up another relative or is this thing really doomed if we lose him?

Q: Thank you for coming. My name is Mitzuo Nakai, a member of the Reagan Foundation. I have two questions. Number one, why North Koreans are so adamant about — crazy about building nuclear arsenals, including ICBM and so forth? Is it because of DMZ, the US forces there? Is that why? Number two, what can South Koreans do to unify the Peninsula, including China?

MR. EBERSTADT: We have four minutes left. I would propose in this lightening round we proceed as follows. Bob, please respond to questions as you see fit under the time constraints. And then let’s give each of our discussants a final word on a subject of their choice.

MR. COLLINS: To Mr. Nelson’s question on what is going to be the reaction to our offensive activity, today the system is hamstrung. In a crisis decision-making meeting — and it’s addressed in the book about who those people would be and how they would react in a crisis and provide some advice to the supreme leader — a problem is we have such a young leader who has shown a propensity for rash judgment. There are a few individuals, and they’re identified in the book so I won’t go into it now that have the ability to talk sense. And they’ve very old and very loyal people, to his father. So they get special ability to listen.

But on the military side, with a replacement of all those ministers and the chiefs of the general staff, the new guys have to say nothing but “yes, sir, no sir, three bags full.” And so they’re intimidated by the process by which they came in to be into their position by the elimination of so many of their predecessors. And so their fear is so great that they won’t tell Kim Jong-un the truth. And in their decision-making process, that’s the biggest negative factor.

Survival of the regime: the answer to your question is yes. If Kim Jong-un died tomorrow or next year or whatever, the OGD would pick up the ball and run with it because they’re the ones that control all those other leaders. And they would at least temporarily put one of those other relatives in the position.

Kim Jong-un has two brothers but there’s also an uncle not likely to be named that was a half-brother to Kim Jong-il. But they would pick up, put them in the position at that time. It wouldn’t be one of the sisters. (Their culture and society doesn’t permit that.) And then they would figure out what it is they have to do for continuity purposes. So they would be very stressed and very vulnerable at that time. And if we’re ever going to do diplomatic offense on them, that would be the time to do it.

Then lastly, why does North Korea build nuclear weapons? To protect the regime, pure and simple. That’s the objective. They’re so afraid of the United States and their ability to take them out. Even Hwang Jang-yop — the most senior person that ever defected, I had an opportunity to be one of the first people to talk him — told me that face to face. “It’s because you have nukes,” “you” meaning the United States.

And then on what can South Korea do? I think Dave can probably answer that better than I can.

MR. EBERSTADT: Discussants. Let’s start with Greg, Dave, Helen.

MR. SCARLATOIU: Chris, you mentioned the revolution of rising expectations. The information campaign must continue. Change can come only from the people of North Korea themselves.

To the ordinary people of North Korea, three basic messages about the corruption of their leader, especially the Kim family, the truth about the outside world, especially South Korea, and then their own human rights situation, which they do not understand. Our messaging can be improved, better nuanced by understanding Bob Collins, what he has written, in the “Pyongyang Republic” in particular, in “Songbun.”

To the elites of North Korea, two basic messages, there will be consequences if you aid and abed a regime that’s committing crimes against humanity. The second message, there is life after Kim Jong-un. Look at your Eastern European peers and what happened after the end of the Cold War. Thank you.

MR. MAXWELL: A lot to answer in a short time. I echo everything Greg has said about influencing in the North.

For its nuclear program, we’ve got to continue to demonstrate military strength and capability. I think the ROK has done a great job since last August with Trustpolitik, responding militarily to provocations with decisive force. But yet, demonstrating a willingness to talk which prevents escalation.

I think I would like to see a shift from strategic patience, which I think has become strategic paralysis, to perhaps a strategic strangulation. And by that, I mean taking what Bob has talked about, Department 39 and the illicit activities around the world. One of the only ways I think we can influence North Korean behavior is to cut off its lifeline to hard currency, to illicit activities, you know, illicit goods. And so I would focus on strangulation in order to have an influence on their behavior. I think we saw Banco Delta Asia was one of the few times that had an impact. We need to do that on a grand scale if we’re going to try to influence their behavior.

And, lastly, I would support the Dresden Initiative. And I would say that from an alliance perspective, but particularly from a ROK perspective, an analysis of every action and policy, how does it support ultimately unification? And that needs to be part of all policy and strategic calculus — how are we working towards unification, the ROK with our allied US support?

Q: So do you recommend against the use of military force ultimately — (off mic).

MS. HUNTER: I’ll pass —

MR. EBERSTADT: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in the penalty round now. I think we can all agree that this has been, as I promised, a most memorable discussion. I think that when you read this, you will see that “Pyongyang Republic” will soon be a landmark document. Please join me in thanking the author and our wonderful discussants. (Applause.)

And I think we may be able to prevail upon our author and our discussants to tarry for just a minute to converse offline now, but thank you all very much. (Applause.)

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