Manufacturing America’s Contenders

Part 1-Challenging North Korea

A famous quote, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, concerned his ability to appease his political enemies; “I turned them into friends,” retorted the tall, lanky and challenged U.S. President. Lincoln’s manner in resolving arguments has been lost to U.S. history. Contemporary U.S. presidents eschew reconciliation and replace it with conflict. Accuse the adversaries of a malfeasance to which they cannot respond, because they are not guilty; heighten the tension, continually provoke, and escalate the hostility until…until no other recourse but to demolish the rogue nation. Without shame, Uncle Sam applied his belligerent attitude to a multitude of smaller nations who could not contend U.S. military power — Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, and Cambodia. Invasions of Afghanistan and Vietnam failed to achieve objectives, and the U.S. was forced to retreat.    

Despite a failed strategy of accusing, heightening tension, and provoking, leading to resolution by conflict, the U.S. pursues the same counterproductive strategy in approaching others who contend its dominance. One difference — principal U.S. adversaries, North Korea, China, and Russia are not militarily weak and can contend U.S. military power. The U.S. is headed to either decades of futile blustering or fighting wars with each of these nations. Why manufacture enemies by antagonizing nations with threats and belligerent actions?

A series of four articles examines the failures of U. S. interactions with four nations — North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia — and shows that falsehoods, blatant falsehoods drive policies. News and descriptions of these nations have little resemblance to reality. The U.S. is often guilty of the actions it claims of others, its policies are counterproductive, and they harm the interests of the American people. With impossibility of succeeding in changing directions demanded of each of these nations by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. enhances a politics of defeat. Either diplomacy, an unused policy in America’s foreign service, replaces force, or the U.S. will become the world’s pariah.              

Challenging North Korea
Due to United States' actions and press coverage, small and economically weak Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) exerts a power that demands respect and response. How can a nation, described as an insular and hermit kingdom, cast a shadow that reaches 5000 miles to the United States mainland and speak with a voice that generates a worldwide listening audience?

Learning about North Korea from outside its borders is a chore. Agendas massage the reporting of the DPRK and it is difficult to reconcile opposing views and sort fact from fiction. Learning about North Korea from a westerner inside its borders also has problems; the mindset and way of life of the Northern souls are alien to the western mind ─ objective reporting is doubtful. How can the reality of North Korea be ascertained?

One way is by exercising the “not theory” ─ if a statement or belief that drives policy is not true then the policy is not appropriate. If media and government descriptions of North Korea are mischaracterized then beliefs and opinions need readjustment and policies need repair.

North Korea may be a totalitarian state that has ignored many material wants of its people and has treated some dissidents harshly. This article does not intend to minimize the excesses committed by DPRK dictatorial regimes that restrict basic freedoms and have caused suffering to the North Koreans. Cursory examinations of some of the reports give clues to the mindsets that prepared the reports and assists in determining their reliability.

Earlier agreement
In the 1994 Agreed Framework, the United States agreed to "provide formal assurances to the DPRK against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S." Not resolving contentious claims that the DPRK was cheating on the agreements enabled the U.S. to renege on supplying North Korea with two nuclear reactors, temporary fuel, and food. U.S. shredding of the agreement, continuing joint military exercises with South Korea close to the DPRK border, and issuing a variety of sanctions provoked North Korea into becoming a nuclear-armed nation. Initial policy failures led to the ultimate failure of preventing a nuclear-armed DPRK.  

A bothersome aspect of the U.S. bludgeoning descriptions of the DPRK is that these negative descriptions apply to nations where Washington has excellent relations and leverage to correct. They also apply to the United States itself.

The U.S. military invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 catastrophe, which started a 20-year occupation that eventually permitted the return of the Taliban. After these counterproductive policies, a few of many committed by the United States during the post-World War II era, and while contemplating the biggest debacle in American foreign policy ─ the 2003 invasion of Iraq ─ President George W. Bush labeled the DPRK a member of the axis-of-evil. Who has North Korea invaded and how many foreign peoples have the North Korean military killed? Can George W. Bush, President of a nation that committed great crimes around the world and was personally responsible for crimes inflicted upon the Iraqi people, define who is evil? 

Economic deprivation and suppression of human rights occur in the DPRK. Are they exaggerated by antagonists? Although North Korea undoubtedly contains a substantial number of political prisoners, the exact number has not been verified, and the camps have not been well identified. Most information comes from dissidents and escapees who relate elements of truth, have a tendency to cater to the sensational, and have a propensity to exaggerate their pasts.

From The Guardian, Oct, 13, 2015, Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart? Jiyoung Song for NK News.

Cash incentives and the Western media’s endless appetite for shocking stories encourage refugees to exaggerate, Jiyoung Song argues. In a report released last year, the UN accused the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, of crimes against humanity, and called for the case to be referred to the international criminal court. UN investigators had been denied access to the country, so the organisation had instead carried out 240 confidential interviews with North Korean refugees living in South Korea, Japan, the UK and the US, including Shin Dong-hyuk, whose story was told in the bestselling Escape from Camp 14. In January, the DPRK government released a video claiming to show Shin’s father denouncing his son’s stories as fake. When questioned, Shin confessed that parts of his account were also inaccurate, including sections on his time in Camp 14, the infamous labour camp for political prisoners, and the age at which he was tortured.

Another North Korean, Lee Soon-ok, offered testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2004, describing torture and the killing of Christians in hot iron liquid in a North Korean political prison. Chang In-suk, head of the North Korean Defectors’ Association in Seoul, challenged Lee’s testimony. He claimed to know firsthand that Lee had never been a political prisoner.  

Kwon Hyuk told the US Congress that he was an intelligence officer at the DPRK embassy in Beijing and had witnessed human experiments in political prisons – a critical factor in the US decision to pass the North Korea Human Rights Act in 2004. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency questioned Kwon’s Hyuk’s account, retold in a BBC documentary back in 2004, and argued he never had access to that type of information. Kwon Hyuk has disappeared from public view.

One word ─ cash ─ summarizes why defectors embellish their experiences.
Daily NK, May 17, 2023, reports, “Sixty-four of the 67 North Korean defectors who fled to the South in 2022 received a total of KRW 398 million (USD 296,459) as payment for divulging valuable information about their country of origin. The figures, released by Yonhap news agency on May 14, are based on Ministry of Unification data provided to Kim Sang-Hee, a deputy speaker of South Korea’s National Assembly.”

Way to make money.
Korea Times, November 6, 2024, N. Korean defector accused of siphoning off state subsidies.

Prosecutors said Wednesday they have indicted the leader of a local North Korean defectors' association on charges of siphoning off government subsidies. Kim Yong-hwa, chief of the NK Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea, is accused of swindling some 135 million won ($118,000) provided by the Korea Hana Foundation, the state-run agency in charge of supporting defectors, from May 2012 to June 2014.  

Examination of references to prison and labor camps also exposes dubious narratives.
RTE News states that “As many as 250,000 political prisoners and their families toil on starvation rations in the mostly remote mountain camps, according to estimates by international human rights groups.” Some of these these words may contain some truth for some people but they are printed without verifying the totality of the information from credible witnesses. The United States had 1.2 millions in prisons in 2022. Talk to a quantity and assuredly, some, who had been reckless and recalcitrant, will recite harsh treatment, especially solitary confinement.

Typical examples of discrepancies are described in the following.
From Free Korea (http://freekorea.us/camps/12-2/):

Survivor Lee Jun Ha had given a very detailed set of directions to Camp Number 12, where he'd been imprisoned: The No. 12 Reeducation Camp can be found about four kilometers east along the mountain slopes from a small rural town called "Jeongeo-ri," which is itself about 12 kilometers from Hoiryeong in the direction of the big east coast port of Chongjin.

Understand that? Then comes the clarification.

I should clarify that Lee was no political prisoner - he admits that he was in Camp 12 for killing his alcoholic uncle by bashing his head into a wall during a fight. Lee claims that he didn't intend to kill him. The most recent date he mentions in his diary is 2003, meaning that the reorganization of Camp 12 for repatriated defectors is probably more recent than Lee's time there.

Lee Juan Ha was getting a reeducation, but not because of any political reasons.

The same RTE News mentions a blog by Joshua Stanton, a Washington lawyer who devotes his spare time to activism on North Korea's human rights. Mr. Stanton's blog supposedly carries satellite images from Google Earth and analyzes features of six political prisoner camps. The blogger identifies images of gates, guard houses, coal mines, and crude burial grounds,  “corroborated through the work of experts and interviews with defectors from North Korea who lived or worked in the camps.”

Unsure that Joshua Stanton is correct, I magnified a few of his blog’s satellite photos. One of them, "Previously Unidentified Prison, south of Sinuiju, Not Confirmed by Witnesses," is shown below.

(1) The yellow arrows in the photograph point to black areas, which are labeled as Guard Towers. Viewing the image on a high-definition 40" monitor reveals that the black lines are only shadows; all the black areas are shadows. There are no Guard Towers.

2) Only partially enclosing walls are apparent in the compound, not the usual construction for a prison.

3) The number of houses, when compared to the possible number of prisoners, is too many to house the personnel in an isolated prison. The combination of many homes, which extend beyond the scene, and several obvious roads indicate this is a village.

Examination of other images of prisons and "labor camps" display similar discrepancies. By being speculative and inaccurate, the Free Korea campaign creates doubts about its assertions of North Korean treatment of dissidents and criminals. If those, who claim to show detention facilities, have falsified the images and are unable to show the facilities, then the obvious conclusion is that there may not be many of these facilities, and, we need more reliable evidence for the proof.

From conversations with authoritative persons, who know North Korea well, I learned that fallen from grace government officials are exiled with their families. They live and work in separated villages in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing industries, maybe not in the best conditions, but not in brutal or starvation conditions.

We are told that “The share of people living in absolute poverty in North Korea is higher than once thought, making it one of the poorest countries on Earth, new research from Vienna University of Economics and Business reveals.” Due to its low GDP, the “hermit Kingdom” is classified as one of the poorest nations in the world.

Can a nation that has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles be “one of the poorest countries on Earth?” Belief is that the leadership maintains its people in abject poverty while a few people defend their largesse with ballistic missiles. Why would they do that? One problem with North Korea is its administration ─ too much power in one leader does not allow for good organization, satisfactory panning and attention to details. Include sanctions and periodic droughts creating havoc with the economy and constant threats by the U.S., which includes maneuvers with South Korea on NK borders, forcing the DPRK to have exorbitant military expenditures, and we have a troubled nation. The NK leadership spends much time “plugging up holes.”

Seoul-based Bank of Korea (BOK) estimated the DPRK’s GDP at a lowly $23.34 billion in 2023. The GDP figure is not the complete story; NK economy cannot be defined by GDP.

• North Koreans receive many “freebies.” Transportation costs are so low, they can be considered free. Housing, medical, and education are supposedly free; if not totally free, then minimal. Add these “freebies” to the GDP and the GDP swells.

• The conversion rate of its currency, nominally at 900 North Korean Won to one USD makes statistics difficult to calculate. Wage rates, prices, food habits, recreational activities, customs, leisure time activities, mindset, and general life style cannot be converted from Won to dollars. The NK citizens lead a simpler and less consumer oriented life, partially imposed, and partially desired.

• No income taxes, FICA taxes, or retirement plans, which absorb 40 percent of American incomes, affect DPRK workers. There may be other taxes and paths to social security, but they are part of government operations.

• The large military, which receives little pay and many benefits, does not have an idle moment. The foot soldiers labor in construction and other projects, which contribute greatly to GDP and are not reflected in the statistics. As an example, constructing a dam in the U.S. may add billions of dollars of cost to GDP in the U.S. Using almost free labor, the same constructed dam in North Korea may add only millions of dollars of cost to the GDP.    

Recognized statistics refute publicized arguments that North Korea has extreme child mortality and child stunting, and is an impoverished nation.

UNICEF DATA of Infant Mortality, 2022, under age of 5 is about 17/1000, which is between Peru 15/1000 and Indonesia 21/1000.

UNICEF DATA of Child stunting Malnutrition in Children is 16.8/1000, which is between Ukraine 12.3/1000 and Egypt 20.4/1000.

The North Korea of today, under the direction of Kim Jong Un, may be dictatorial and economically deprived but it is not an economic basket case. A recent Rodong Sinmun article reported that in the first half of 2024, “new dwelling houses for 18,000-odd families have been built at over 60 farms, and housing for around 113,700 families has been built in other rural areas. Since the beginning of the project in 2021, rural housing has been built for around 44,000 families at farms throughout North Korea.”  

North Korea is different than other nations. Despite its offensive and dictatorial regime, NK has meritorious qualities.

1) Unlike its southern brother, the DPRK uses little of the world's resources; maybe not entirely by design. North Korea gives an impression that even if it were a prosperous nation, it would be a nation of conservation, living without excessive material means.

2) Despite its seemingly oppressive operations, it is a united nation, a people who consider themselves attached in a singular effort. If this is due to a conditioning, that is not unique. Aren't Americans conditioned? If not, why do they send their children to kill and be killed and maimed in senseless wars?

3) Its sports regimens have created world-class gymnastic athletes, engaged the entire nation in athletic games, and provided the most beautiful cheer leaders in the world. The latter have been sensations at World Soccer cup and other international games.

4) Its Juche philosophy of self-reliance may not appeal to western nations, but shows courage, character, and personal responsibility. Whether it is a genuine ideology or only a political maneuver is debatable.  

This means holding fast to an independent position, rejecting dependence on others, using one's own brains, believing in one's own strength, displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving one's own problems for oneself on one's own responsibility under all circumstances.

Understanding North Korea
After policing the Korean peninsula for almost 70 years and increasing tensions to a threat of nuclear confrontation, is the U.S. capable of bringing peace to the Koreans, North and South? The record of U.S. meddling in the affairs of other nations has shown magnitudes more destruction than relief from despair. Decades of Uncle Sam's interference in the Middle East and North Africa aggravated the perilous situations already existing in those regions.

Post-Korean War, North Korea has never been a threat to any country, except itself. Why deny a relatively poor country the resources it needs to gain prosperity? Can a more understanding attitude of North Korea evolve a revised policy and reverse the course of North Korea's belligerent attitude? Definitely.

North Korea is not threatening the U.S.; it is challenging the U.S. to leave it alone in its arrangements, which the U.S. rebuts as deranged and threatening. If the United States and South Korea halt threatening military maneuvers and the U.S. moves its troops out of South Korea, will the North react positively? Of course. Get rid of the sanctions, help North Korea with its energy and food problems, and leave them alone to resolve their domestic problems, and the world will witness a different North Korea; not a model democracy or one that respects individual rights, more similar to China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba, and a host of other nations that bother the United States and do not invite military confrontation. 

North Korea might go down in history as the nation that awakened the world to the consequences of global saber rattling. It has shown that the nuclear world can become one big poker game, in which a challenge to a bluff can be an 'all win' and 'all lose' proposition. What gambler is willing to play that game when an 'all win' doesn't add much more to what he/she already has, and an 'all lose' means leaving the gambler with nothing? The odds greatly favor America, but the return is not worth taking the bet, despite the odds. Keep it sweet and simple, let the Koreans settle their problems, and we will see doves flying over the Korean peninsula.