What’s going on in Pyongyang

By Andrei Lankov

So it is certain that the Cheonan was a victim of a North Korean stealth attack. This resolution leaves us with many questions related to the state of South Korea's defenses, but it also makes us wonder, what's going on in Pyongyang.

North Korean rulers are often described as ``irrational" and ``unpredictable." But this does them a great disservice.

Actually, they might be the best group of Machiavellians currently in the business. They know what they want ― to stay in power at virtually any cost, and they have succeeded in this against impossible odds (of course, neither well-being nor survival of the common folk is high on their agenda).

The North Korean elite are very good at keeping its own population docile, making protest unthinkable. They are brilliant diplomats too, knowing how to manipulate the outside world into giving them aid and concessions without too many conditions attached.

However, in recent years the North Korean government has begun to do strange things. In the past, the actions of the regime frequently hurt the populace, but the rulers have been very careful in guarding their own interests. This is not the case anymore.

Let's start with the Cheonan affair. Obviously the operation was revenge aimed at massaging the ego of aging admirals who were hurt by the recent defeats in previous naval clashes. However, revenge is a purely emotional category and as such it should have no place in a truly Machiavellian mind.

From a broader perspective, the affair will greatly diminish Pyongyang's chances to receive more aid from both South Korea and the U.S. This will make them even more dependent on China, and this is not what Pyongyang rulers want.

Another potentially self-damaging action was their attempt to assassinate Hang Jang-yop, a former top ideologue of the regime who defected to the South in 1997. Upon his arrival in Seoul, Hwang was not very prominent.

The old man in his 80s has largely been a figurehead, presiding over some defectors' groups, but, frankly, lacking both charisma and practical influence. It did not help that he frequently insisted that juche (self-reliance) ideology is basically a good idea, to be restored to its initial glory.

Hwang is very different from such opposition leaders as, say, Aung San Suu Ky of present-day Burma or Lech Walesa of communist-era Poland. However, had he been killed, he would have become a martyr, a symbol of the resistance movement.

The North Korean diplomacy of the last two years is full of mistakes and miscalculations. They began in late 2008 when North Korea decided to employ the two-stage tactics which it used for decades.

In the first stage, Pyongyang creates a crisis and drives tensions high, while in the next stage it extracts concessions for its willingness to restore the status quo. This time, however, the usual (and well-rehearsed) play was performed badly.

In spring 2009 North Korea launched a long-range missile and tested a nuclear device, while driving the rhetoric bellicosity to unprecedented heights.

However, those excessive efforts backfired. Prior to 2009, a considerable part of the U.S. diplomatic establishment still believed that there would be some ways to bribe and press North Korea into denuclearizing itself.

By now everybody in Washington, D.C., has come to understand that it is not going to happen (they should have realized this much earlier). For North Koreans, this is bad news.

The mistaken belief in the achievability of denuclearization was the major reason why Americans used to be willing to provide North Korea with rather generous aid. Once this belief evaporated, the U.S. sees no reason to pay ― and the belief was further worn away by North Korea's inept aggressiveness.

Their handling of Seoul has hardly been better. Being displeased with the tougher approach of the Lee Myung-bak administration, Pyongyang strategists chose to teach him a lesson ― and chose the wrong means to do so.

They tried to use the three joint South-North projects ― the Gaeseong Industrial Park, Gaeseong tours and Mt. Geumgang tours ― as blackmail tools. However, they failed to understand that for Seoul all those projects are insignificant both economically and politically. When the North closed two of the three projects, Seoul did not react in the way Pyongyang expected.

Therefore in August 2009 the North Korean diplomats began to make overtures to Cheong Wa Dae, suggesting that now they are ready to cooperate. President Lee verbally expressed his willingness to reciprocate, but actually did nothing.

Strange things began to happen in the domestic policy as well. The currency reform of November 2009 was aimed at undermining the power of free markets, and thus made perfect sense from the regime's viewpoint (markets are slowly eroding the power of the current elite).

But the reform was executed badly, and an absurd decision to increase all wages one hundred fold made inflation unavoidable.

The list of mistakes can easily get longer. But why did the quality decision-making in Pyongyang deteriorate so suddenly and to such an extent?

The most likely explanation seems to be related to the nature of the North Korean state, a personal dictatorship run by one individual who has to approve all major decisions. Dictators tend to micro-manage, and this tendency seems to be very pronounced in the case of Kim Jong-il.

One should notice that the first unusual signs emerged in late 2008 when Kim suffered from a serious illness, in all probability, a stroke. Strokes do not sharpen one's mental capacity, so it is quite possible that his ability to analyze and judge has been damaged.

It is also possible that now Kim simply has to work much shorter hours, unable to sort out all the important details.

At any rate, Pyongyang is becoming less calculating, less rational and less Machiavellian than it used to be. And this is not good news.

The writer is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.