Former North Korean diplomat turned defector, Thae Yong-ho is calling for the US to increase its efforts to fight the information war within North Korea:
Thae Yong-ho speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Oct. 31, 2017. (Yonhap)
The North Korean leader does not have a full grasp of the strength and might of U.S. military power, Thae said, leading him to believe that if he can get Washington to accept Pyongyang’s possession of ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S., all sanctions against his regime will be lifted.
The former diplomat is in Washington at a time of heightened tension over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile testing. U.S. President Donald Trump is set to travel to Asia on Friday in part to rally further support behind his administration’s sanctions and pressure campaign.
But Thae appeared to question the U.S. policy.
“We can educate the North Korean population to stand up by disseminating outside information,” he said. “However, is the United States really doing enough in this regard? The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to cope with the military threat. Yet how much does the U.S. spend each year on information activities involving North Korea in a year? Unfortunately, it may be a tiny fraction.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but this is something I have been saying for years is that fighting the information campaign inside of North Korea should be aggressively pursued. Something else Thae discussed was the world coming together against the Kim regime like it did to end Apartheid in South Africa. This is another viewpoint I have advocated for is that why is North Korea welcomed at international venues like the Olympics when Apartheid South Africa was shunned? Apartheid South Africa had no where near the human rights abuses or was a threat to world peace as the Kim regime currently is.
Over at One Free Korea he has videos of Thae’s speech available which should be required viewing for those interested in this topic. OFK also has some great analysis I recommend everyone read as well.
US diplomat Tom Malinowski has a good read in Politico that is long but worth reading which includes a number of ideas I have advocated for over the years:
Tom Malinowski
At my Senate confirmation hearing a few years ago, I made a promise to the panel deciding my fate: never to use the phrase “there are no good options.” After all, if there were obvious solutions to the hardest—and most interesting—problems we face in the world, they would already have been found. Our job in the U.S. government—I served in the State Department as an assistant secretary focused on human rights—was not to make excuses in such situations, but to use whatever inherently limited tools we had to try to make things better, and to avoid making them worse.
North Korea tests this proposition like nothing else. Since its latest provocative missile test, thoughtful observers have pointed out that neither sanctions nor diplomacy are likely to dissuade Kim Jong Un from deploying nuclear weapons that can reach the United States, that we cannot depend on China to stop him for us, but that the alternative of a military strike on North Korea could cause a war that would lay waste to our ally South Korea. When it comes to North Korea, the phrase “there are no good options” has become a mantra. [Politico]
Here is the part I have been advocating for, for many years, to aggressively fight the information war within North Korea:
Flood the zone with information: In the last year of the Obama administration, we increased our funding for getting information to North Koreans. But the State Department still allocates less then $3 million for this effort, and the Trump administration’s first budget request did not mention it. Congress should work with the administration to create a well-funded, dedicated program. The State Department should also continue efforts we began under Obama to enlist like-minded allies in Europe and Asia to back these efforts, and tech companies to find creative ways for North Koreans to share information safely. More funding should also go to scholarships for North Korean defectors, so that they will be ready to help their people if the North opens up.
Many North Korean defectors have said that they decision to defect was influenced by defector radio stations. Kang Chol-hwan who wrote the book Aquariums of Pyongyang is probably the most famous defector who said defector radio influenced his decision to leave North Korea.
The proliferation of USB and other media devices to bring in South Korean entertainment programming is another way the information war is being fought within North Korea.
Also as we have seen over the years nothing seems to infuriate the Kim regime more than the balloon launches from North Korean defectors. This fury is a sign that the anti-regime information smuggled into North Korea via these balloon launches is having an effect. The Kim regime even tried to assassinate the man behind the balloon launches to get them to stop.
Could you imagine what the regime’s reaction would be if cheap drones were developed that could beam down the Internet and television programming into North Korea? Imagine the resources the Kim regime would have to dedicate to combat this threat? That is why I think flooding the country with as much subversive information as possible will keep the regime on its heels and have to use many of its limited resources to combat it.
However the big question is if fighting the information war is enough to collapse the Kim regime? There is no silver bullet to ending the Kim family’s rule of North Korea which is why I think fighting the information war is not something that can singularly collapse the regime. It has to be part of a more comprehensive strategy which it seems no US administration has fully developed yet.
