[imText1]One of the finest new North Korea books of this year is Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh’s “The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom.” An insightful overview of the way the average North Korean is required to live, it reveals the truth behind the North Korea most often seen in the mainstream media; “how the North Korean government is a threat, Kim Jong-il is crazy, and the people are starving.”
By illuminating the nature of day-to-day North Korea, from the bribery needed to do business through to market regulations which may change without warning, the book shows clearly just how hard it is on a practical basis for North Koreans to survive, simply because they cannot anticipate government policy and plan their lives accordingly.
The Daily NK interviewed Ralph Hassig about the new book, and about North Korea itself, on December 21st. We asked him about his reasons for writing “The Hidden People…,” about the jangmadang, about the North Korean people’s relationship with Kim Jong Il and even about the currency redenomination, of particular interest since it occurred after “The Hidden People” was released.
– On reasons for writing the book…
Our main aim in writing the book was to fill a gap in the North Korea literature. A lot has been written about the two topics that get into the news: the nuclear issue and human rights, but not so much about how people silently live. It got me thinking about how all aspects of North Korean society fit together as part of the Kim dictatorship: the politics, economy, human rights, foreign policy, etc. North Korea, like any society, is truly a system of interlocking parts. To change one part, you have to change all the parts.
– On Kim and the North Korean economy…
“The average North Korean spends almost no time thinking about Kim Jong Il or anyone else in power. Their concerns are for their difficult daily life. If Kim can’t be loved and respected, this is his second best option; to be ignored.
As we note (in The Hidden People), the North Korean people have very low political expectations. I think that if Kim could bring them prosperity, they would support him; at least for a time. The terrible bind Kim is in is that the kind of totalitarian society he wants North Korea to be is bound to have a failing economy.
– On markets…
Markets are perhaps the greatest threat to Kim (apart from a rogue assassin), and he well knows it. Throughout the book we talk about how much attention people devote to their emerging economy, and how little to their government-assigned jobs. Markets permit the people to be independent of Kim and provide a forum for the exchange of all sorts of information.
– On international NGO and government activities…
(Media such as Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Chosun and Open Radio for North Korea) have limited impact. It is difficult to say how great the impact is because social change, coming from whatever sources, must await greater freedom of action on the part of the people.
Research in psychology suggests that people are very slow to change their attitudes and usually do so on the basis of everyday experience, not because of what the media tell them (hence the importance of markets). On the other hand, when the media keep hammering away on a point, people can become convinced, especially if they share these new views with like-minded people. This is why we suggest that for the foreign media to have much of an impact, they are going to have to be much better financed so that they can repeat the same points over and over.
Where the marketing money would come from, I don’t know. I wish foreign governments would spend much more money on information dissemination, but this is not likely to happen. Balloon drops of the magnitude we have seen to date are not likely to have a great impact either.
Media like The Daily NK have two audiences; the North Koreans and the rest of us. By providing an example of what we should be doing for the North Korean people, if only in a very limited way, these media provide a good policy example.
– On human rights…
Given the extreme nature of the North Korean dictatorship, which requires extreme measures of social control, I don’t think there is much room to modify human rights policies. Kim can look at what happened in Eastern Europe when those regimes loosened their grip.
– On the currency redenomination…
The currency “reform,” which is simply a spearhead the regime is using to try to regain control of society, comes as a surprise to me. I thought Kim would allow the markets to continue, as a kind of safety valve, while intermittently imposing some order on them, just to remind the people who was really in charge.
The dramatic assault on the markets seems to me highly risky (and the regime, which has failed to formally announce the reform and keeps changing the new rules, is clearly aware of the risk), although in the short term I doubt if the people will do anything more than grumble.
But the reform might prove to be one of the cornerstones of a future movement against the regime; a movement ignited by other factors.
Perhaps the reform is a sign that Kim is not thinking as clearly as he usually does. Or perhaps it is a sign that his hold over other powerful elements in the regime is weakening, and he is either giving in to them or trying to preempt them.
– And finally, on the future…
The book was written to inform the educated layperson. We have not targeted our fellow experts because they should already be familiar with the kind of information we present in the book. We have little hope of influencing policymakers, because we realize foreign policy decisions are made at the level of state-to-state politics, taking little account of the lives of the people.
We would simply hope that readers would get a clearer and more detailed picture of what North Korea is like, rather than being satisfied with the typical news stories about how the North Korean government is a threat, Kim Jong-il is crazy, and the people are starving. Although we only touch on foreign policy in the final pages, we would also like to suggest that Kim’s interests are opposed to those of (most of) his people, and that whatever deals we make with Kim will probably be bad for his people, if only because they will help to keep him in power. I know this is a rather controversial position, and certainly very inconvenient in the formation of our North Korea policy, but we stick to it.
In the almost quarter century that we have been studying North Korea, we haven’t come upon any policy, engagement or otherwise, that has the practical potential to change the nature of a dictatorship like that in North Korea. Proponents of engagement say that we haven’t tried hard enough, but this argument is flawed because they can’t say how much engagement is necessary to get the job done. In my opinion, only the elimination or dramatic weakening of this form of government will materially improve the lives of most North Koreans.
