The simple reason why the North Korea policies pursued by past South Korean governments from both left and right have been so unsuccessful is that none of them took into consideration the characteristics of the North Korean system, according to a prominent overseas Korea expert.

On the 12th, Professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University gave a lecture at a seminar co-sponsored by the Hyundai Research Institute and South Korean daily newspaper the Joongang Ilbo, in which he explained more, “South Korean progressive factions tend to believe that the North Korea regime would be willing to start market reforms in the same way as China or Vietnam if the situation were right,” he claimed, “yet they cannot do that, because reform in and of itself threatens the raison d’etre of the whole regime.”

Meanwhile, he went on, the logic of hard-line North Korea policies on the conservative side of the debate is based on the notion that, early in the 1980s, U.S. President Reagan used pressure to expedite the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, Lankov insists that this is also untrue, and introduced an anecdote to back his point; when Alexander Yakovlev, a member of the Soviet Politburo in the 1980s and the so-called “Godfather of Glasnost” was asked whether Reagan’s policies had actually affected the Soviet Union’s collapse, he is said to have replied, “Nothing affected it.”

Instead, Lankov believes that the causes of the collapse of Soviet power were simple economic incompetence and the difficult daily lives of the people. When those people realized that their lives were falling well short of the standards available in other western countries, he asserts, they started to oppose the socialist system.

Additionally, Professor Lankov explained why he believes that international sanctions against North Korea have no chance of succeeding, “Although China, which does not want the North Korean regime to collapse, gives economic aid to North Korea, the more important reason is that international pressure only brings about the deterioration of average people’s lives, not those of the ruling classes.”

In conclusion, “The only solution to the North Korea problem is to change the North Korean people’s basic perspective of the world. They can learn that their country has fallen far behind and that the Kim Jong Il system of governance is ineffective through exchanges with foreign countries.”

Professor Lankov emphasized, “We need to show the North Korean people an alternative way of being ruled and simultaneously use diverse methods to provide them with the knowledge that the Kim regime does not want them to receive.”