{"id":98170,"date":"2017-09-11T12:01:51","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T11:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=98170"},"modified":"2017-09-05T15:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T14:18:32","slug":"undercover-in-north-korea-all-paths-lead-to-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/09\/undercover-in-north-korea-all-paths-lead-to-catastrophe\/","title":{"rendered":"Undercover in North Korea: \u201cAll Paths Lead to Catastrophe\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Ministry of Railways\u2019 painting of a train that Kim Jong-il once rode in; he was said to have died on a train while traveling tirelessly to oversee the well-being of his people. Kimjongilia Exhibition, 2002.
Photo: Suki Kim<\/p><\/div>\n

4 Sep 2017 – <\/em>The most alarming aspect of North Korea\u2019s latest nuclear test, and the larger standoff with the U.S., is how little is known about how North Korea truly functions. For 65 years it\u2019s been sealed off from the rest of the world to a degree hard to comprehend, especially at a time when people in Buenos Aires need just one click to share cat videos shot in Kuala Lumpur. Few outsiders have had intimate contact with North Korean society, and even fewer are in a position to talk about it.<\/p>\n

One of the extremely rare exceptions is the novelist and journalist Suki Kim<\/a>. Kim, who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at age thirteen, spent much of 2011 teaching English to children of North Korea\u2019s elite at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kim had visited North Korea several times before and had written about her experiences\u00a0for Harper\u2019s<\/a> Magazine<\/a> and the New York Review of Books<\/a>. Incredibly, however, neither Kim\u2019s North Korean minders nor the Christian missionaries who founded and run PUST realized that she was there undercover to engage in some of history\u2019s riskiest investigative journalism.<\/p>\n

Although all of PUST\u2019s staff was kept under constant surveillance, Kim kept notes and documents on hidden USB sticks and her camera\u2019s SIM card. If her notes\u00a0had been discovered, she almost certainly would have been accused of espionage and faced imprisonment in the country\u2019s terrifying labor camps. In fact, of the three Americans currently detained in North Korea, two were teachers at PUST<\/a>. Moreover, the Pentagon has in fact used a Christian NGO<\/a> as a front for genuine spying on North Korea.<\/p>\n

But Kim was never caught, and she returned to the U.S. to write her extraordinary 2014 book, \u201cWithout You, There Is No Us.\u201d The title comes from the lyrics of an old North Korean song<\/a>; the \u201cyou\u201d is\u00a0Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s book is particularly important for anyone who wants to understand what happens next with North Korea. Her experience made her extremely pessimistic about every aspect of the country, including the regime\u2019s willingness to ever renounce its nuclear weapons program. North Korea functions, she believes, as a true cult, with all of the country\u2019s pre-cult existence now passed out of human memory.<\/p>\n

Most ominously, her students, all young men\u00a0in their late teens or early twenties, were firmly embedded in the cult. With the Kim family autocracy now on its third generation, you\u2019d expect the people who actually run North Korea to have abandoned whatever ideology they started with, and have degenerated into standard human corruption. But PUST\u2019s enrollees, their children, did not go skiing in Gstaad on school breaks; they didn\u2019t even appear to be able to travel anywhere in North Korea. Instead they studied the North Korea ideology of \u201cJuche<\/a>,\u201d or worked on collective farms.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, then, Kim\u2019s students were shockingly\u00a0ignorant of the outside world. They didn\u2019t recognize pictures of the Taj Mahal or Egyptian pyramids. One had heard that everyone on earth\u00a0spoke Korean because it was recognized as the world\u2019s most superior language. Another believed that the Korean dish naengmyeon<\/em>\u00a0was seen as the best food on earth. And all Kim\u2019s pupils were soaked in a culture of lying, telling her preposterous falsehoods so often that she writes, \u201cI could not help but think that they \u2013 my beloved students \u2013 were insane.\u201d\u00a0Nonetheless, they\u00a0were still recognizably human and charmingly innocent, and for their part came to adore their teachers.<\/p>\n

Overall, \u201cWithout You, There Is No Us\u201d\u00a0is simply excruciatingly sad. All of Korea has been the plaything of Japan, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China, and like most Korean families, Kim\u2019s has close relatives who ended up in North Korea when the country was separated and have never been seen again. Korea is now, Kim says, irrevocably ruptured:<\/p>\n

It occurred to me that it was all futile, the fantasy of Korean unity, the five thousand years of Korean identity, because the unified nation was broken, irreparably, in 1945 when a group of politicians drew a random line across the map, separating families who would die without ever meeting again, with all their sorrow and anger and regret unrequited, their bodies turning to earth, becoming part of this land \u2026 behind the children of the elite who were now my children for a brief time, these lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly that there was no redemption here.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Intercept spoke recently to Kim about her time in North Korea and the insight\u00a0it gives her on the current crisis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Suki Kim\u2019s North Korean visa. Photo: Suki Kim<\/p><\/div>\n

JON SCHWARZ: <\/strong>I found your book just overwhelmingly sorrowful. As an American, I can\u2019t imagine being somewhere that\u2019s been brutalized by not just one powerful country, but two or three or four. Then the government of North Korea, and to a lesser degree the government of South Korea, used that suffering to consolidate their own power. And then maybe saddest of all was to see these young men, your students, who were clearly still people, but inside a terrible system and on a path to doing terrible things to everybody else in North Korea.<\/p>\n

SUKI KIM: <\/strong>Right, because there\u2019s no other way of being in that country. We don\u2019t have any other country like that. People so easily compare North Korea to Cuba or East Germany or even China. But none of them have been like North Korea \u2013 this amount of isolation, this amount of control. It encompasses every aspect of dictatorship-slash-cult.<\/p>\n

What I was thinking about when I was living there is it\u2019s almost too late to undo this. The young men I was living with had never known any other way.<\/p>\n

The whole thing begins with the division of Korea in 1945. People think it began with the Korean War, but the Korean War only happened because of the 1945 division [of Korea by the U.S. and Soviet Union at the end of World War II]. What we\u2019re seeing is Korea stuck in between.<\/p>\n

JS:<\/strong> Essentially no Americans know what happened between 1945 and the start of the Korean War. And few Americans know what happened during the war. [Syngman Rhee, the U.S.-installed ultra-right wing South Korean dictator, massacred tens of thousands of South Koreans before North Korea invaded in 1950. Rhee\u2019s government executed another 100,000<\/a> South Koreans in the war\u2019s early months. Then the barbaric U.S. air war against North Korea killed perhaps one-fifth<\/a> of its population.]<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> This \u201cmystery of North Korea\u201d that people talk about all the time \u2013 people should be asking why Korea is divided and why there are American soldiers in South Korea. These questions are not being asked at all. Once you look at how this whole thing began it makes some sense why North Korea uses this hatred of the United States as a tool to justify and uphold the Great Leader myth. Great Leader has always been the savior and the rescuer who was protecting them from the imperialist American attack. That story is why North Korea has built their whole foundation not only on the Juche philosophy but hatred of the United States.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

North Korean girls outside Kumsusan Palace where Kim Il-sung is embalmed. Photo: Suki Kim<\/p><\/div>\n

JS:<\/strong> Based on your experience, how do you perceive the nuclear issue with North Korea?<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> Nothing will change because it\u2019s an unworkable problem. It\u2019s very dishonest to think this can be solved. North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. Never.<\/p>\n

The only way North Korea can be dealt with is if this regime is not the way it is. No agreements are ever honored because North Korea just doesn\u2019t do that. It\u2019s a land of lies. So why keep making agreements with someone who\u2019s never going to honor those agreements?<\/p>\n

And ultimately what all the countries surrounding North Korea want is a regime change. What they\u2019re doing is pretending to have an agreement saying they do not want a regime change, but pursuing regime change anyway.<\/p>\n

Despite it all you have to constantly do engagement efforts, throwing information in there. That\u2019s the only option. There\u2019s no other way North Korea will change. Nothing will ever change without the outside pouring some resources in there.<\/p>\n

JS:<\/strong> What is the motivation of the people who actually call the shots in North Korea to hold onto the nuclear weapons?<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> They don\u2019t have anything else. There\u2019s literally nothing else they can rely on. The fact they\u2019re a nuclear power is the only reason anyone would be negotiating with them at this point. It\u2019s their survival.<\/p>\n

Regime change is what they fear. That\u2019s what the whole country is built on.<\/p>\n

JS: <\/strong>Even with a different kind of regime, it\u2019s hard to argue that it would be rational for them to give up their nuclear weapons, after seeing what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n

SK: <\/strong>This is a very simple equation. There is no reason for them to give up nuclear weapons. Nothing will make them give them up.<\/p>\n

JS:<\/strong> I\u2019ve always believed that North Korea would never engage in a nuclear first strike just out of self-preservation. But your description of your students did honestly give me pause. It made me think the risk of miscalculation on their part is higher than I realized.<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> It was paradoxical. They could be very smart, yet could be completely deluded about everything. I don\u2019t see why that would be different in the people who run the country. The ones that foreigners get to meet, like diplomats, are sophisticated and can talk to you on your level. But at the same time they also have this other side where they have really been raised to think differently, their reality is skewed. North Korea is the center of the universe, the rest of the world kind of doesn\u2019t exist. They\u2019ve been living this way for 70 years, in a complete cult.<\/p>\n

My students did not know what the internet was, in 2011. Computer majors, from the best schools in Pyongyang. The system really is that brutal, for everyone.<\/p>\n

JS:<\/strong> Even their powerful parents seemed to have very little ability to make any decisions involving their children. They couldn\u2019t have their children come home, they couldn\u2019t come out and visit.<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> You would expect that exceptions were always being made [for children of elites] but that just wasn\u2019t true. They couldn\u2019t call home. There was no way of communicating with their parents at all. There are literally no exceptions made. There is no power or agency.<\/p>\n

I also found it shocking that they had not been anywhere within their own country. You would think that of all these elite kids that at least some would have seen the famous mountains [of North Korea]. None of them had.<\/p>\n

That absoluteness is why North Korea is the way it is.<\/p>\n

JS: <\/strong>What would you recommend if you could create the North Korea policy for the U.S. and other countries?<\/p>\n

SK: <\/strong>It\u2019s a problem that no one has been able to solve.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a system that they can moderate. The Great Leader can\u2019t be moderated. You can\u2019t be a little bit less god. The Great Leader system has to break.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s impossible to imagine. I find it to be a completely bleak problem. People have been deprived of any tools that they need, education, information, sharing tools.<\/p>\n

[Military] intervention is not going to work because it\u2019s a nuclear power. I guess it has to happen in pouring information into North Korea in whatever capacity.<\/p>\n

But then the population are abused victims of a cult ideology. Even if the Great Leader is gone, another form of dictatorship will take its place.<\/p>\n

Every path is a catastrophe. This is why even defectors, when they flee, usually turn into devout fundamentalist Christians. I\u2019d love to offer up solutions but everything leads to a dead end.<\/p>\n

One thing that gave me a small bit of hope is the fact that Kim Jong-un is more reckless than the previous leader [his father Kim Jong-il]. To get your uncle and brother killed within a few years of rising to power, that doesn\u2019t really bode well for a guy who\u2019s only there because of his family name. His own bloodline is the only thing keeping him in that position. You shouldn\u2019t be killing your own family members, that\u2019s self-sabotage.<\/p>\n

JS: <\/strong>Looking at history, it seems to me that normally what you\u2019d expect is that eventually the royal family will get too nuts, the grandson will be too crazy, and the military and whatever economic powers there are are going to decide, well, we don\u2019t need this guy anymore. So we\u2019re going to get rid of this guy and then the military will run things. But that\u2019s seems impossible in North Korea: You must have this family in charge, the military couldn\u2019t say, oh by the way, the country\u2019s now being run by some general.<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> They already built the brand, Great Leader is the most powerful brand. That\u2019s why the assassination of [Kim Jong-un\u2019s older half-brother and the original heir to the Kim dynasty] Kim Jong-nam was really a stupid thing to do. Basically that assassination proved that this royal bloodline can be murdered. And that leaves the room open for that possibility. Because there are other bloodline figures for them to put in his place. He\u2019s not the only one. So to kill [Jong-nam] set the precedent that this can happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A North Korean woman holds a sign that reads THE SUN OF THE 21ST CENTURY in honor of Kim Jong-il\u2019s sixtieth birthday at Pyongyang\u2019s Sunan International Airport.
Photo: Suki Kim<\/p><\/div>\n

JS: <\/strong>One small thing I found particularly appalling was the buddy system with your students, where everyone had a buddy and spent all their time with their buddy and seemed like the closest of friends \u2013 and then your buddy was switched and you never spent time with your old buddy again.<\/p>\n

SK: <\/strong>The buddy system is just to keep up the system of surveillance. It doesn\u2019t matter that these are 19-year-old boys making friends. That\u2019s how much humanity is not acknowledged or respected whatsoever. There\u2019s a North Korean song which compares each citizen to a bullet in this great weapon for the Great Leader. And that\u2019s the way they live.<\/p>\n

JS: <\/strong>I was also struck by your description of the degeneration of language in North Korea. [Kim writes that \u201cEach time I visited the DPRK, I was shocked anew by their bastardization of the Korean language. Curses had taken root not only in their conversation and speeches but in their written language. They were everywhere \u2013 in poems, newspapers, in official Workers\u2019 Party speeches, even in the lyrics of songs \u2026 It was like finding the words fuck<\/em> and shit<\/em> in a presidential speech or on the front page of the New York Times<\/em>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> Yes, I think the language does reflect the society. Of course, the whole system is built around the risk of an impending war. So that violence has changed the Korean language. Plus these guys are thugs, Kim Jong-un and all the rest of them, that\u2019s their taste and it\u2019s become the taste of the country.<\/p>\n

JS:<\/strong> Authoritarians universally seem to have terrible taste.<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> It\u2019s interesting to be analyzing North Korea in this period of time in America because there are a lot of similarities. Look at Trump\u2019s non-stop tweeting about \u201cfake news\u201d and how great he is. That\u2019s very familiar, that\u2019s what North Korea does. It\u2019s just endless propaganda. All these buildings with all these slogans shouting at you all the time, constantly talking about how the enemies are lying all the time.<\/p>\n

Those catchy one liners, how many words are there in a tweet? It\u2019s very similar to those [North Korean] slogans.<\/p>\n

This country right now, where you\u2019re no longer able to tell what\u2019s true or what\u2019s a lie, starting from the top, that\u2019s North Korea\u2019s biggest problem. America should really look at that, there\u2019s a lesson.<\/p>\n

JS:<\/strong> Well, I felt bad after I read your book and I feel even worse now.<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> To be honest, I wonder if tragedies have a time limit \u2013 not to fix them, but to make them less horrifying. And I feel like it\u2019s just too late. If you wipe out humanity to this level, and have three generations of it \u2026 when you see the humanity of North Koreans is when the horror becomes that much greater. You see how humanity can be so distorted, and manipulated, and violated.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Related:<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/u>North Korea Keeps Saying it Might Give Up its Nuclear Weapons \u2014 But Most News Outlets Won\u2019t Tell You That<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The North Korea Standoff, Like the Cuban Missile Crisis, Exposes the Reckless U.S. Worldview<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We Can Stop North Korea From Attacking Us. All We Have to Do Is Not Attack Them.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump Intel Chief: North Korea Learned From Libya War to \u201cNever\u201d Give Up Nukes<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Jon Schwarz<\/a> – jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Sep 2017 \u2013 Suki Kim spent much of 2011 teaching English to children of North Korea\u2019s elite at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and had visited NK several times before. Incredibly, Kim\u2019s North Korean minders never realized that she was there undercover to engage in some of history\u2019s riskiest investigative journalism. Kim kept notes and documents on hidden USB sticks and her camera\u2019s SIM card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}