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Andrei Lankov

Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.

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Andrei Lankov

Uneasy quietness on peninsula

By Andrei Lankov Early this year, this author was quite anxious about the future of South-North Korean relations and, frankly, even about the future of peace on the Korean Peninsula. The situation was clearly moving in the wrong direction, so for the first time in decades, an escalation into a full-scale war appeared possible (albeit clearly avoidable). In the past year two major military provocations by the North have been unsettling. Frankly, the oft-used word ``provocation” is misleading in this case: North Korean policy planners were not going to provoke the South into any irrational or excessive response. They just wanted to show that they cannot be ignored or, to be more precise, that the price of ignoring them is higher than the price of providing them with aid and other concessions. What the North wants to achieve is clear: North Korean strategists want Seoul (and for that matter Washington) to restart generous and essentially unconditional aid programs which had been discontinued in 2008. Contrary to common perception, they don’t need this aid and money because the

Jun 5, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Still repressive, but easing

By Andrei Lankov A recent report by Amnesty International has said that the number of prisoners in North Korea has increased considerably. The report says that roughly 200,000 North Koreans are now incarcerated for political crimes (either committed by themselves or by their immediate family members). The report also states the area of the prisons camps in the North has increased. Amnesty International is a respected organization and it does it best when it tries to make sense of the incomplete and contradictory data coming from North Korea. However, in this case, the present author is skeptical about the recent AI findings. I am skeptical because my own personal observations indicate that over the last two decades the North Korean state has become less, not more, repressive. There should be no misunderstanding ― North Korea remains the world’s most repressive society. The ratio of political inmates to the population in general is higher in North Korea than in any other state on Earth and is roughly similar to the ratio which existed in the Soviet Union in the last years

May 22, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Land of misinformation

By Andrei Lankov One of the most oft-repeated topics in present-day South Korea is ``hallyu,” or Korean wave, which has allegedly swept across China, Japan and many other countries of Asia. Koreans are surprised, thrilled and amused by seeing themselves as a provider of cultural icons and mass entertainment. So it’s understandable that being carried away by nationalist enthusiasm they often tend to overemphasize the impact and significance of the hallyu phenomenon. But there is one country where the impact of hallyu seems to remain unreported whilst being quite important and politically significant ― this country is North Korea. There is a fundamental difference in the attitude the two Koreas take in regard to one another. To simplify things a bit, one can say that the South Koreans usually don’t care too much about North Korea. But in the North, people are fascinated by and eagerly devour all information about the South they can get access to. Gaining access to these fragments and pieces of South Korea is no easy task since North Korean authorities have been remarkably

May 8, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Sotoji -- small private plot

By Andrei Lankov Every visitor to North Korea who has passed through mountainous areas in the country has seen some peculiarities of the modern North Korean landscape. Somewhere high in the mountains one can see small fields of strange, irregular shapes which look quite different from the orderly, rectangular shapes of the cooperative farm fields. If asked about these fields, North Korean minders will probably avoid giving a straight answer. This is understandable ― even though the existence of such fields is tacitly accepted by the authorities, from a purely ideological view, which minders are obliged to present, these fields are not supposed to exit. We are referring to sotoji, private plots, which have been spreading across North Korea over the last 15 years and now play a major role in food production in North Korea. It would be only a minor exaggeration to say that in his policies, Kim Il-sung tended to be more Stalinist than Joseph Stalin himself. He took the state-run economy to its natural (or unnatural) extreme and collective farming was no exception. Once upon

Apr 24, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Remittances by defectors

By Andrei Lankov Until some 10 years ago, defection from North Korea implied that the person’s connections with his or her homeland would be broken for a long time or perhaps, even forever. North Korea was a huge black hole from where almost nothing could get out. But this is not the case anymore. The number of North Korean defectors in South Korea has increased tremendously. In 2000, there were merely 1,400 North Koreans residing in the ROK. Now, a decade later, their numbers exceed 21,000. These people are usually described as ``defectors,” but this name is misleading since almost none of them were driven by pure political considerations when they decided to leave North Korea. In most cases, they initially move to China, looking for food and better paying jobs. Only later do they usually find ways to move to South Korea, where, as they assume, their lives would be easier and more stable than in China. To some extent these expectations are proven correct. By South Korean standards, North Korean refugees are not doing too well, their income being roughly half the incom

Apr 10, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Libya and North Korea

By Andrei Lankov So the military operation in Libya continues. Its eventual outcome is not quite clear, but the prognosis is not good for the regime in Tripoli. However, it is already clear that the developments in Libya are likely to influence the current situation on the Korean Peninsula, where tensions between the North and South have been remarkably high in the last few years. It seems that in Korea the impact of the international intervention in Libya will produce results that at first glance might appear to be contradictory. In one regard it is likely to make the North Korean government more confrontational while in other ways will probably make it more cautious. Kim Jong-il right now may feel very happy about his wisdom which he demonstrated by stubbornly rejecting denuclearization proposals. Colonel Gadhafi in 2003 did exactly what Kim said he would never do ― Gadhafi agreed to swap his nuclear weapons program for better relations with the West and economic rewards. As we see, it did not help the eccentric strongman. Once his subjects rose in rebellion, the West inte

Mar 27, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Quite unlikely yet, but ...

By Andrei Lankov Not long ago the present author published a column which dealt with the growing income and improving living standards in North Korea. Indeed, contrary to some alarmist reporting, the last decade was a time of slow but tangible increases of income and consumption levels for North Koreans. North Korea remains a poor country, to be sure, and malnourishment is still widespread there. Nonetheless, North Koreans do not starve to death any more, and their access to consumer durables has improved considerably. TV sets are common, DVD players have ceased to be a rarity, and the number of mobile service subscribers grows in leaps and bounds. Even computers have begun to appear in more affluent North Korean houses. However, there is an interesting paradox: this improvement does not necessarily mean that North Korea is becoming more stable. A few weeks ago I discussed the economic situation in North Korea with a European colleague, one of a small number of people who do research on the North Korean economy. We both agreed that the economic situation in North Korea h

Mar 13, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Kim Jong-ils gamble

By Andrei Lankov On Feb. 16, North Korea celebrated the birthday of Marshal Kim Jong-il, the second most important national holiday. The official report about the celebrations puts General Kim Jong-un first on the list of those dignitaries who accompanied Kim Jong-il during the suitably lavish celebrations. Kim Jong-un, who at the age of 28 seems to be world's youngest serving four-star general, was standing next to the “Dear Leader.” Other generals and marshals stood further away, even though most of them could easily be Kim Jong-un’s grandfathers and have remained in the top leadership for decades. So, the North Korean media again signaled that the rise of Kim Jong-un to the summits of power continues uninterrupted. Since last summer, the North Koreans have been herded to indoctrination sessions where they are enlightened about the talents of the Young General (or the ``New Star General”) as the junior Kim is sometimes referred to. For the members of bureaucracy, such sessions were launched earlier, in 2009. In September 2010, the name Kim Jong-un was mentioned in open m

Feb 27, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Socialist realism

By Andrei Lankov When North Koreans talk about their arts, they never fail to mention that it follows the traditions of ``socialist realism.” But what is ``socialist realism” in visual arts? This style itself was invented in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and reached its height in the late 1940s when it was imported to the North by ethnic Korean Soviet painters (of whom Pak Wol-ryong was probably most prominent) and Korean students who studied in the USSR. Most of our readers have some ideas about this style: photographic-like images of heroic workers, brave soldiers and wise leaders engaged in the socialist construction or in struggle against the scheming counter-revolutionaries, imperialists and other assorted villains (the villains appearing as ugly as their reactionary thoughts). In its North Korean variety, the style became even more syrupy, with soldiers’ uniforms in the trenches depicted as if freshly ironed and spotlessly clean. The topics must be lofty and politically inspiring. In February 2007 North Korean artists had a major exhibition which presented some 50

Feb 13, 2011By Andrei Lankov
Andrei Lankov

Between myths and facts

By Andrei Lankov I am old enough to have experienced life under the Soviet Union. Therefore I remember quite well how every year the Soviet media informed its readers that the economic conditions of the capitalist West had deteriorated even further. If the Soviet media was to be believed (nobody believed it anyway) the capitalist world was in continuous decline since at least 1900, so by the 1980s it was probably supposed to have living standards similar to those of the Dark Ages. This was not the case, of course. Unfortunately when in recent years I read reports about the economic situation in North Korea I cannot help but frequently think about my Soviet experiences. More or less every year major media outlets run stories about diminishing food supplies, growing prices and declining living standards. However there is one serious problem with reports like these: on balance, they are not true. There were ups and downs, to be sure, but on balance the last ten years were a time when the economic situation in North Korea was improving steadily. The existing statistics a

Jan 30, 2011By Andrei Lankov
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