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Deflating the North Korean Threat
I believe there is more that the US government, as a whole, can do to maximize the odds of a non-violent or non-catastrophic end to the North Korean nuclear program. I am not arguing against any current effort, rather I see an additional line of effort which directly attacks the North Korean regime’s legitimacy. The latest missile test underlines the urgency of some further effort to stop the DPRK nuclear weapons program.
Deflate the DPRK regime by opening the escape valve into China
I propose that the US add a policy of economically and rhetorically encouraging North Korean refugee movement. Since the DMZ is almost impossible to escape across, with the rare defecting soldier exception, North Koreans have tried the Chinese border with some success. This creates a security risk and arguably economic costs for China. But what if President Trump announced an initiative to compensate China for each North Korean processed and shipped onward to South Korea?
North Korea is already vulnerable to an exodus.
According to Michael Malice, the North Korean regime has already allowed border guards to keep crossing bribes as a way to let the border force feed itself. We also know the regime classifies all citizens based on their putative loyalty and allocates resources accordingly. The military was supposed to have the lead in society, necessary in a prison regime. However, the recent dramatic DMZ crossing by a North Korean soldier led to a medical exam which revealed severe malnourishment and an intestinal worm infestation. If the front line soldiers are malnourished and lack basic medical care, it would seem near impossible for the regime to completely reverse their practice of turning a blind eye to border guards taking bribes.
Is China showing signs of concern about a mass exodus?
The announced closure of the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, ostensibly for repairs, might be a precaution against a version of the 1989 East European surge into Germany or the current mass migration into Europe. North Korea has a population of about 25 million. Chinese troop movement towards the border serves a double purpose of countering US forces and controlling a refugee surge.
Acknowledge Chinese concerns while signaling care for suffering people.
President Trump could demonstrate caring for the suffering people of North Korea while answering Chinese concerns by offering payment per refugee processed onward to South Korea. A payment of $2,000 would be equivalent to about two months of a Chinese worker’s wages. If every North Korean except “Rocket Man” escaped it would only cost us $50 billion — the cheapest victory in modern history!
This idea is completely outside of traditional foreign and defense policy thinking but might shake up the current calculations of all parties. So what do you think? An idea worth building on?
Published in Foreign Policy
It is interesting, I must say.
A great idea. Also, I like the notion of dropping radios into North Korea.
If I am North Korean, I cross the border, collect the $2000, and go back to North Korea. Why? Because it’s home.
This is an interesting idea. I’m all about non-violent solutions. However, I have a couple of thoughts on this in no particular order:
That doesn’t make any sense.
This isn’t crossing into Canada. Home or not, leaving North Korea is a one way trip.
But suppose they did as you suggest: take the money and run back. What good would it do them? You can’t spend foreign currency in the local market.
And it may be home, but it’s also hell. Notice how few NK defectors cross back.
I like the idea of paying China to pass refugees along to South Korea, but it won’t work. China’s main goal, which affects everything they do, is to discourage social unrest at any cost. They must keep their people dumb and happy, because, like all tyrants, they know that, if really aroused, their people are more powerful than the Communist Party. Any increase in the flow of refugees from North Korea would be a destabilizing force, thus unacceptable. Too risky.
I have to ask: At present, does China give the appearance of actually exerting any control of NK?
Along with the naïve question: How much worse could it get?
Let me answer that second question first, and I’ll do it with one word: war.
A war on the Korean peninsula would be a disaster.
To answer your first question, China is NK’s largest trading partner. It’s just about NK’s largest everything partner. It may not seem like it right now, but China has more influence over North Korea than anyone else.
There’s a lot going on that we don’t necessarily see in the headlines. I mentioned above North Korea’s drought. That’s about to be a massive famine. If they’re already sending soldiers out in boats to try to fish and using human feces as fertilizer, they’re already preparing for how bad it will be.
So the dynamic right now is not going to be the dynamic in six months or a year.
Yes, I understand that China potentially has more influence over North Korea than anyone else, but does it appear that China is using that influence in a way “we” would consider positive?
The key word there is “appear.”
We don’t know everything that’s going on. It’s an extremely complex situation made more obtuse because it involves a pair of secretive regimes.
Fred, that made me laugh. Because it sounds a great deal like “Top. Men.”
When the soldier escaped recently, I thought this too (great minds and all that). So of course I like this idea.
I find all this naive.
China is not swayed by economics on issues they consider existential.
North Korea, like Iraq under saddam, will not be persuaded to just give up.
Only destroying them militarily will work. All of history teaches us this, but too many people imagine that this time will be different. Because they are smarter. It’s the same pathology that perpetuates socialism.
The Chinese do nothing to contain or discourage North Korea. The NK military threat is almost entirely Chinese technology ( some via Pakistan ). The Chinese see NK as a thorn in the sides of South Korea, Japan, and the USA — so they encourage and enable the North Koreans, rather than contain or discourage them. Any plan based upon Chinese support is doomed to failure.
I live in Tokyo, so this is slightly more than academic for me.
In timeline terms, an effort such as proposed in the OP simply wouldn’t happen fast enough (even if we could guarantee that results would be consistently favorable) relative to the timeline associated with Kim Jong Un’s missile/nuke-development-generated threat.
The same dynamic was already pointed out with regard to the Iranian nuclear threat in recent years: The ideal approach should be the fomenting or at least facilitation (somehow) of regime change — enabling the Iranian populace to sweep aside the mullahs/IRGC/Basij/Hizballah with their anti-American and Israel-genocidal raison d’etre; realistically, the timeline to achieving this is opaque — not saying that it might not be suddenly foreshortened, but we can’t responsibly predict that at this point — but the timeline to the regime’s fielding a nuclear device capable of realizing its ambitions is vastly more clear and more immediate.
Both the PRC and Putin’s Russia are skating on stilts where these matters are concerned, in the above two respective regions. I’m afraid that a lot of pain is on the way for all of us, as a consequence. I don’t relish saying so, but standing on solipsistic American-specific soi-disant libertarian conceptual ground, for example, is not conducive to a pragmatic view nor to practical preparations.
I had understood CliffordBrowns’ idea as paying $2000 to the Chinese government for every refugee delivered to South Korea. Sounds good to me, so long as China doesn’t get paid until after the refugee arrives in South Korea. There would have to be safeguards against fraud, such as China deporting ethnic Koreans living in China instead of genuine refugees (just put them on a scale). I really like the idea, although something unforeseen and crazy will probably disrupt it. But it is really worth thinking about. If it works Clifford, would you consider sharing your Nobel money with me?
100% agreed. China is not our friend.
Good point. But what if CliffordBrowns’ idea were only one part of a multifaceted diplomatic/military/economic/psywar offensive. Don’t relax sanctions, keep the deterrent strong, improve missile defense, build huge missile interceptor bases near China under the pretext of stopping North Korean missiles, send drones over the border to drop candy bars and spam among the populace. Maybe Cliff’s idea would be only 5% of our offensive. It still might be the straw that breaks the camels back.
They don’t have to be our friend to work towards common ends with us.
With all due respect to @ekentgolding, it’s not as if the PRC fully enables North Korean craziness because it pokes a finger in our eye.
The Chinese value stability. It’s in their interest to help the US because they don’t want the NK regime to fall, nor do they want a war. Because if either happens, there’ll be millions of North Korean refugees streaming across the Yalu.
Or X-ray ’em for parasites.
Lots of ways to determine whether someone lived in hellish North Korean conditions his whole life.
@dannyalexander :
I appreciate your thoughtful comment. To clarify my first paragraph, I propose adding this to current efforts. At the very least, it points to a way to handle refugees that resources their rapid movement out of China into South Korea, which I believe is constitutionally required to accept all North Koreans. This is a carrot amidst the economics sticks aimed at China. It also may put diplomatic pressure on China as the U.S. is positioned as good guys while suggesting China needs assistance.
I was tracking 1-4. While we use economic tools to pressure China, offering help with refugees both adds pressure, as you note, and offers a profit center for the PLA.
As to Kim, if he orders mass murder, that makes him a more noxious client to China and diverts military forces from the DMZ.
Exactly the idea. I believe this administration is using all the tools of national power–but within conventional thinking. We are about maxed out on diplomatic, information, and economic tools use. We are about as far into military efforts as we can go — short of “kinetic operations.
The DRPK has clearly demonstrated multiple times that they will employ any means to prevent their prisoner/populace from escaping.
The PRC is, as you have noted, quite amendable to this as they have no desire for these refugees.
The PRC also has demonstrated that they are quite willing and able to slaughter their own populace in pursuit of the interests of the Party. Tiananmen Square I would say demonstrated this rather conclusively.
So given these facts I find it difficult to imagine the level of economic pressure/rewards that could be imposed where Xi Jinping would feel compelled to allow an exodus of refugees into his sovereign territory as opposed to working with the DPRK to simply slaughter them all before they crossed the border.
I like the enthusiasm however I simply do not see it, also I notice that you have recently arrived. Welcome to Ricochet Mr. Brown.
Have you ever had 25 million refugees camp out on your front lawn? What makes you think South Korea is interested in having 25 million poor, untrained, dysfunctional people suddenly show up on their door step? China with over 1.5 billion people could more easily absorb 25 million than South Korea with 50 million people.
I’ve been in a situation where 100,000 people suddenly show up on your doorstep as a result of a crisis. It is enormously difficult to cope with and was potentially destabilizing. 25 million? Don’t want to even think about it.
Another point, what makes you think China is all that interested in solving the North Korea problem? @fredcole says China is interested in stability, which is nonsense. China is all in favor of instability that will benefit China and harm the US. This would provide it for them because of what it would do to South Korea.
It isn’t necessarily a one-way trip. There are Korean black market traders who go back and forth.
And you can spend foreign currency in the local market. There is a black market in North Korea.
There have been NK defectors who have gone back or who want to.
What makes you think that a drought and massive famine is unlikely to lead to war?
I don’t think that they are. However, it’s important to remember that that 25 million people is 25 million people. North Korea is keeping them bottled up, but they’re still starving refugees (okay, they haven’t left home but they’re refugees in every other sense of the word) and that’s a crisis that will need to be resolved sooner or later.
They are 25 million people who have failed to fulfill their responsibility to over throw the Dear Leader. In determining who is most able to throw him out, one must conclude that the easiest and most effective method is for the people themselves to do it. That they find it hard to unite is not our problem, the responsibility is still theirs. And if anyone is to die to remove him from power, the cost should be borne by those who have that responsibility before a single American or South Korean is put at risk.
In other words, if Dear Leader is a real threat to us then we have an obligation to destroy that threat, and if their 25 million people are put at risk, then they only have themselves to blame.