Why don't North Koreans revolt? (Part 2)

After hearing that North Koreans have endured seven decades of famines, public executions, political prison camps, collective punishment and restrictions on movement and information, it isn't surprising that attendees at our events featuring North Korean refugees often ask: “Why hasn't there been a revolution in North Korea?”

I have posed that question to numerous North Korean refugees, and their answers vary depending on their experiences. One person I wanted to ask was Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy ambassador for the North Korean government who was based in the U.K. when he escaped to South Korea a decade ago. He was later the first former North Korean to be directly elected to South Korea's National Assembly. Unlike other former North Korean refugees who knew little about the outside world, Thae talks about foreign countries with the detail a baseball fan talks about his favorite team.

I first met Thae and his family in 2017, and he has spoken at several events my organization has organized. Below are his main responses to my question, along with answers I gleaned from his book, “Passcode to the Third Floor.” The following are my opinions based on what I have learned from Thae.

One, collective punishment. North Korea holds relatives responsible for what one person does. Families are classified according to their ancestors’ backgrounds, and that classification determines where people are allowed to live, whom they may marry and where they may work. Would revolutionary heroes around the world have continued their work if they knew their families would be tortured and executed?

Two, North Korea’s leaders understand the threat of collective action. When Soviet hardliners attempted to remove Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, Kim Jong-il predicted the attempt would fail. According to Thae, Kim reasoned that a seizure of power required mobilizing the party, workers and ordinary citizens through rallies and street protests, not tanks and paratroopers. Three days later, the attempted coup collapsed. People must communicate, organize and mobilize. The North Korean regime makes those steps dangerous, preventing widespread dissatisfaction from becoming coordinated action.

Three, limited resistance can substitute for revolution. In November 2009, the government announced that each household could exchange only 100,000 North Korean won (about $28 then) of old currency for new. Traders refused to reopen, despite the chief secretary of the Pyongyang municipal party committee pleading with and threatening them. Within a month, restrictions were relaxed, and a Workers' Party official was executed. Thae writes that the North Korean government learned North Koreans could rebel if their ability to survive economically was challenged.

Thae added that in the past, traders scattered like grasshoppers when police approached. Increasingly, Thae says, they remain where they are, like ticks, and stare down the police and some even fight back, as I wrote in the first part of this series.

Four, resistance occurs inside the bureaucracy. Thae describes government orders being weakened or reversed from within the system. Departments often propose policies to the leadership. But when another department was harmed by an order, its officials could complain and seek a new order reversing the previous one. That provides a way to resist without openly challenging the regime itself.

Five, escape can become resistance. In March 2016, 13 North Korean restaurant workers in China escaped together. The government investigated and concluded that exposure to South Korean films and dramas had contributed to their decision. I have met four of the people involved in that escape and I am not sure the North Korean regime got the story right about their mass escape. Nevertheless, authorities searched embassy computers for South Korean material and ordered diplomats to send home their children over the age of 25. That was the moment Thae had to decide if he would rebel. Thae asked why parents don’t have the right to live with their children. He told his sons that freedom was the legacy he could leave them, and they escaped along with his wife.

Six, North Koreans are taught to monitor themselves and others. Thae says the number one way the North Korean regime controls citizens is with weekly criticism sessions. Each participant confesses his own shortcomings in front of the group, and then the others criticize him. The sessions produce self-censorship and mutual censorship, which, Thae says, manufacture a person who bows down to the regime.

So why hasn't there been a revolution in North Korea? Thae sees markets, outside information, declining ideological commitment and escape as forces weakening the government's control. He predicts that when enough North Koreans learn the truth about their country and the outside world, the revolution will begin.

Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is the co-founder of Freedom Speakers International with Lee Eun-koo and the co-author with Han Song-mi of her memoir “Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter's Search for Her Mother and Herself.”