Q + A
Susan Wood Interviews Prof Kenneth Wells

SUSAN Joining me now from Christchurch, Korea historian Professor Kenneth Wells. A very good morning to you.

PROF KENNETH WELLS – Korea Historian
Good morning, Susan.

SUSAN Are we dealing with a bluff here or something more serious?

KENNETH I tend to think it’s still bluffing. It’s for the same reasons that it always happened in the past – there’s been a new leadership change from a father to a son who has to establish his credentials domestically. But also there’s the external challenge of the sanctions, and he wants to have that reconsidered, reversed and, if possible, aid in return for not going ahead with the nuclear programme. However, it does seem to be that he’s taking to a different degree, and the question really is when does a difference in degree become a difference in kind? And I tend to think that it’s now verging into a different kind of situation, because it is a very, very serious thing to threaten the world’s most capable nuclear power and the strongest military with nuclear war. It’s bringing it into rather different territory.

SUSAN What do we know about this young man? I mean, there are even different reports about his age. Reading around, I know he likes pizza and basketball and he’s got quite a glamorous wife, and that seems to be the extent of the knowledge we have of him.

KENNETH Yes, well, unfortunately, these are the sorts of things one gleans from what we might call the North Korea watchers. And just as in the ‘70s there were China watchers, now there’s an army of North Korea watchers, and they tell us these sorts of things. And we don’t really know much about him, and that is part of his problem, actually, also in North Korea. I don’t think the Korean people know much about him either. He went to school in Switzerland, and there he really didn’t fraternise with the Swiss people at all hardly. He mainly went and had lavish dinners with the North Korean diplomats in Switzerland. And so he had a pretty spoiled kind of upbringing that one would expect from someone who belongs to the royal family, if you like.

SUSAN We also have a new South Korean leader, and she in her own right is a fascinating woman. We’ve seen both her parents, of course, were the victims of assassination. She herself – a razor-blade slash across her face. She is quite a different sort of character for South Korea too.

KENNETH Yes, she is, and she has quite an advantage over Kim Jong-un in the north because the people do know about her. The similarity is that she’s the daughter of a former president, a military strongman, Park Chung-hee, and that might suggest that also in South Korea there’s a bit of a hereditary tradition going on, but not really. It’s been a lot of people in between her and her father, and, yet she’s a very experienced woman. She’s been the right-hand person for her father after her mother was also shot and assassinated. And so, really, she’s in a more advantageous position regarding her own country and the rest of the world than Kim Jong-un in the north.

SUSAN She is, though, concerned about the economics of this, because South Korea, an economic success story, that is her father’s legacy. She will protect that at all costs, won’t she?

KENNETH Well, I don’t know what ‘all costs’ would mean, but she’d certainly be wanting to protect it. And it’s quite clear that compared perhaps to one of her predecessors, Kim Dae-jung, who introduced a Sunshine Policy towards North Korea, that she’s going to be rather more demanding of North Korea that it reciprocates any move that the South might make towards the North. And the—

SUSAN What is this young—? Sorry, I was just going to say what is this young dictator’s end game here? Does he want more aid? Does he want mana and prestige amongst his people? Does he want to get the US to the negotiating table? What does he want? Does he want all those things?

KENNETH Yes, he does want all those things. There are several purposes in creating this kind of conflict and this kind of tension, and certainly domestically, as I said, he does need to prove his credentials. Now, what he’s saying to the North Korean people through their media is that the military exercises that South Korea and America are holding together just across the border are aimed at an imminent attack against the North Korean people and that he, Kim Jong-un, has threatened them with utter and complete disaster and that he’ll just lay the South waste and the American forces. Now, he’s assuming, and we hope he’s correct, that neither the South Koreans nor the Americans will attack. And so then he can say to his people, ‘I terrified them into backing off.’ And what’s more, if they do actually give him some aid in return for not going ahead with his nuclear policy, then he can sort of show that aid as being a sort of reparations from the international community for threatening North Korea, a kind of tribute. And it’s been a long practice to make it look as though the leaders of the nations of the world have been giving gifts to the leader of North Korea.

SUSAN The most important nation certainly in this would be China and North Korea. They are showing some exasperation towards North Korea, but what is going on behind the scenes in that relationship?

KENNETH Well, I’m very sceptical of what China says – that it doesn’t really have much leverage. I think it has quite enormous leverage now. Because the former USSR has been taken out of the picture, North Korea can’t play the two off against each other as he used to— as they used to. And so, really, I think China could control who is the leader in the North and to a large extent could control his policies if it thought it was in its interests to do so. And now for, really, the first time they’ve joined a unanimous United Nations agreement for sanctions. The most dangerous thing for the North is that China will actually abide by those sanctions, because China really is the only source in terms of material support and diplomatic support that North Korea has had for many years now.

SUSAN Briefly and finally—

KENNETH We’re waiting.

SUSAN Yes. Briefly and finally, is there any sign of dissent from within North Korea? I mean, we know it’s a terribly poor country – one in three children is malnourished. Is there any sign of discontent, or do the North Korean people continue to take this from this tyrannical leadership?

KENNETH No, they don’t seem to be. It used to be a case where the North Korean leadership could disguise and utilise various problems and blame them on various sources, particularly the United States. But it’s very difficult to disguise death, and certainly from the mid ‘90s, there’s been a lot of death from famine, and there’s malnutrition, as you said, is very severe. It’s stunting mental growth as well as physical. So there’s a lot of problems. Now, this doesn’t seem to have led to any organised internal resistance, but there are certainly public executions going on, and as we know, there is a prison system for those who go against the regime. But there’s not, it seems to me, an organised sort of underground resistance movement that has any clout or has made any real difference in the North at the moment.

SUSAN Thank you so much for your time this morning, Professor Kenneth Wells.

KENNETH Thank you.

ENDS

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