1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
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North Korea has made headlines worldwide for its nuclear tests, its short- and long-range missile launches, and its refusal to rejoin the six-party talks on denuclearization. North Korea also has the worst human rights record in the world today. Yet, there are signs the domestic landscape is changing. North Korean
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leader Kim Jong Il is reportedly suffering from serious health problems, and the question of political succession appears unresolved. Late in 2009, Pyongyang attempted a “currency reform” that dramatically increased domestic prices, destabilized food markets, and raised the risk of mass hunger for ordinary North Koreans. The bungled “reform” also generated widespread criticism and resistance; for the first time in the regime’s history, North Korean authorities were forced to apologize to the public for it policy measures.
At this AEI event in honor of North Korea Freedom Week, Ambassador Robert King, the Obama administration’s special envoy for North Korean Human Rights, remarked on the impact and meaning of recent events in North Korea. Following his comments, an expert panel discussed how domestic developments might affect prospects for ordinary North Koreans. Will living conditions worsen? Is nonviolent resistance possible in North Korea? How does the regime maintain and finance its continuing political oppression? What U.S. government policy could be implemented to improve the outlook for the voiceless in North Korea today? These and other questions were discussed by Peter Ackerman, founder of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, an independent foundation that promotes the study and use of nonmilitary strategies to defend human rights, social justice, and democracy; Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., author of Red Rogue: The Persistent Challenge of North Korea (Potomac Books Inc., 2007), which analyzes the changing nature of North Korea’s national defense, foreign policy, and illicit economic activities in the post–9/11 era; and Kim Kwang-Jin, a high-ranking former North Korean official. Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI, moderated the discussion.
| 2:45 P.M. |
Registration |
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| 3:00 |
Opening Remarks: |
Robert King, U.S. Department of State |
| 3:15 |
Discussants: |
Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict |
| Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College |
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| Kim Kwang-Jin, U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea |
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| Moderator: |
Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI |
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| 5:00 | Adjournment |
WASHINGTON, APRIL 28, 2010--In honor of North Korea Freedom Week, experts at an AEI event Wednesday discussed the challenges that average North Koreans face every day and provided policy recommendations that will enable the United States to ameliorate their living conditions effectively.
Ambassador Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, opened the event by reiterating the significant role that human rights play in U.S. foreign policy. The United States continues to hold strong interest in advancing human rights in North Korea, with the belief that a shared view on human rights will also strengthen the U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) relationship. Ambassador King noted that it is a time of both problems and possibilities in North Korea as it faces various uncertainties, including the possible resumption of six-party talks, predicted food shortages induced by last year's ill-fated currency reforms, the United Nations Security Council's sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) nuclear program, and the search for the ailing Kim Jong-Il's successor.
Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, explained how North Korea terrorizes citizens both at home and abroad. While North Korea is well known for its collaboration with and support for terrorist groups such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah, the DPRK also terrorizes its own people and the Korean peninsula. North Koreans suffer from a lack of information access and means of communication. Even the act of reading a pamphlet dropped by activist groups in South Korea is cause enough for the North Korean state to send a citizen to a prison camp. Bechtol thus urged the United States to put the DPRK back on the list of nations that support terrorism and build a stronger U.S.-ROK military alliance in order to better combat North Korean provocations.
Kim Kwang-Jin, a North Korean defector and now senior fellow at the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, outlined the effects of last year's currency reform on the average North Korean. Kim noted that the DPRK consists of two separate economies: the "people's economy," which is centrally planned and regulated, and the "royal economy," which is controlled by Kim Jong-Il himself. Since the royal economy largely depends on foreign currency and foreign trade, the reevaluation of the North Korean won did not affect the elite class. Rather, the average, poor North Korean was hit the hardest by hyperinflation and a steep rise in commodity prices. Kim Kwang-Jin argued that this currency reform demonstrated that financial sanctions could be effective in stopping North Korean subversive activities, as the halt to foreign currency and trade flow would severely undermine the power of Kim Jong-Il and his royal economy while not necessarily affecting the average North Korean.
Peter Ackerman, the founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, D.C., shed light on the possibility of nonviolent civil resistance in North Korea. Ackerman emphasized that the success rate of nonviolent civil resistance is much higher than that of the armed resistance. Subverting the military in North Korea by searching for and taking advantage of disloyalty among the officer core and even rank-and-file soldiers could be an effective strategy among North Korean activists, he noted. In conclusion, moderator Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI, reminded the audience that regardless of specific policy prescriptions, the United States stands by the North Korean people in its fight for human rights and dignity.
--FRANCES CHEN
Speaker biographies
Peter Ackerman is the founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, D.C., and one of the world’s leading authorities on nonviolent conflict. Mr. Ackerman is the chairman of the board of overseers at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is the coauthor of two seminal books on nonviolent resistance: A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (Palgrave, 2000) and Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 1994). He was executive producer of the PBS documentary, Bringing Down a Dictator, on the fall of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, which received a 2003 Peabody Award, and he was series editor and principal content adviser for the two-part Emmy-nominated PBS series A Force More Powerful, which charts the history of civilian-based resistance. Mr. Ackerman is a member of the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies–U.S., and the advisory council of the United States Institute of Peace.
Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. is a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Previously, he was an assistant professor of national security studies at the Air Command and Staff College. He also spent a year as an adjunct visiting professor at the Korea University Graduate School of International Studies. Prior to teaching, Mr. Bechtol served as the senior analyst for Northeast Asia in the Intelligence Directorate of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. He served in active duty for twenty years in the U.S. Marine Corps. His books include Defiant Failed State: The North Korean Threat to International Security (Potomac Books, forthcoming), Red Rogue: The Persistent Challenge of North Korea (Potomac Books, 2007), and The Quest for a Unified Korea: Strategies for the Cultural and Interagency Process (Marine Corps University Foundation, 2007). Mr. Bechtol writes widely on Korean security issues, and he has contributed chapters to a number of edited volumes and articles for the International Journal of Korean Studies, Pacific Focus, Comparative Strategy, the Korea Observer, and other journals. Mr. Bechtol serves on the boards of directors of the International Council on Korean Studies and the Council on U.S.-Korean Security Studies.
Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI. A political economist and a demographer by training, Mr. Eberstadt is also a senior adviser to the National Board of Asian Research, a member of the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a member of the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics, and poverty. He has written over a dozen books and monographs, including The Poverty of Communism (Transaction, 1988); The Tyranny of Numbers (AEI Press, 1995); The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999); Korea’s Future and the Great Powers (University of Washington Press, 2001); The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (Transaction, 2007); Europe’s Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of Health (AEI Press, 2007); The Poverty of ‘The Poverty Rate’: Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America (AEI Press, 2008); and most recently, Policy and Performance in Divided Korea during the Cold War Era: 1945–91 (AEI Press, 2010).
Robert King became the special envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues in November 2009 following confirmation by the U.S. Senate Prior to his appointment, Ambassador King worked on Capitol Hill for twenty-five years; he spent twenty-four of those years as chief of staff to Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California). Ambassador King was heavily involved in establishing the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, (recently renamed the Tom Lantos Congressional Human Rights Commission). Ambassador King traveled with Mr. Lantos to North Korea and played a key role in the passage of the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act. He concurrently served as staff director (2007–2008) and Democratic staff director (2001–2007) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and held various professional staff positions on the committee since 1993. Prior to his service on Capitol Hill, Ambassador King served on the National Security Council Staff as a White House Fellow during the Carter administration, and he was assistant director of research and analysis at Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany. Ambassador King has authored five books and some forty articles on international relations.
Kim Kwang-Jin, a defector from North Korea, is a senior fellow at the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy in South Korea. Prior to 2004, Mr. Kim lived in North Korea, where he was the Singapore representative of the North East Asia Bank. Previously, Mr. Kim was a professor at Pyongyang Computer College. As a policy researcher, he has written on issues relating to economic policy, banking, exchange rate control, and human rights issues in North Korea. Mr. Kim is also a board member of the Committee for Democratization of North Korea and an adviser to the Association of North Korean Defectors.
