Cognitive bias in negotiating with N. Korea

By Jason Lim

I’ve been a Korea watcher for a long time in formal and informal capacities. During that time, I’ve noticed that many Korea analysts, including me, display a form of confirmation bias. Most Korea analysts’ confirmation bias is twofold when it comes to evaluating North Korea.

One, we believe that South Korea is the norm and that North Korea is the anomaly. This should be reversed.

In fact, it’s South Korea that’s the anomaly when you examine the context and flow of Korea’s history as it transitioned from the Joseon Dynasty through Japanese colonialism and the Korean War to the modern era. We readily admit South Korea’s unique journey when we tout South Korea as one of the very few countries that has successfully industrialized and democratized at the same time.

Like it or not, this was largely possible due to the strong and consistent American presence in the country, providing a solid platform of security, stability and opportunities to engage the international community both economically and politically as South Korea matured. Besides Germany, South Korea is probably the only country with such a long-standing American presence. I don’t mean to say that Americans have been altruistic, but their presence, for the most part, has been collaborative and benevolent.

Despite such a singular historical situation that made today’s South Korea possible, however, we continue evaluating North Korea using South Korea as the baseline default for what “Korea” should be. But when you take a step back, it’s pretty obvious that North Korea more closely represents the inherited historical flow of the Joseon Dynasty. It actually still calls itself “Joseon.”

North Korea is still essentially a monarchy with hereditary kings who rule in conjunction with a tight-knit group of elites mostly interrelated by blood and whose original elite stature was given through their forefathers’ participation in the original struggle that inaugurated the new country.

North Korea’s original struggle happens to be Kim Il-sung’s battles against Imperial Japan in North Manchuria and Russia and the purge of Japanese collaborators afterwards.

In essence, North Korea is a new monarchy born out of the collapsing old order, bloody resistance to foreign imperial powers and a strong reaction against the suffocating socioeconomic injustices of elitist rule in the latter half of the Joseon Dynasty. This narrative was internalized in the person of Kim Il-sung as he established the new country as a totalitarian socialist dictatorship in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Two, we believe that North Korea wants to become a “normal” nation. This is an extension of the first confirmation bias because, by “normal,” we believe that North Korea is motivated to want to be just like South Korea, integrated into the international trade and financial community, committed to the international world order, adhering to the various rules and regulations that govern nation-state activities, and participating in international bodies. In return, North Korea would receive all the goodies of being a good global citizen in terms of political legitimacy, trade, access to the international financial system, honored in polite society, and other benefits.

Countless times I’ve heard respected North Korea watchers repeat this fallacy as a part of their public comments. I admit that North Korea wants to become a “normal” nation, but their definition of “normal” is not our definition of “normal.” We can’t project our sensibilities onto North Korean leadership as to what motivations may drive them.

When we take off our “normal” lens, we can see much more clearly what North Korea wants: they want the political status quo. In other words, they want the current monarchy system to continue intact without influence from the outside. That’s the nature of monarchy. No matter its origins, monarchy always boils down to an incestuous web of infighting among the pretenders who only come together in the face of an existential threat from an external enemy.

Everything North Korea has done, including nuclear and missile development, is aimed at perpetuating the political status quo. This means that North Korea doesn’t want to become “normal” as we think of the word. In fact, our “normal” is their death knell. They know this much better than we do.

In fact, by offering them an opportunity to become “normal” as our main negotiating thrust, they probably believe that we are passive-aggressively threatening their very survival and will react to this belligerently. After all, we are not the only ones who interpret intentions through the “normal’ lens that we wear.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook.com/jasonlimkoreatimes or @jasonlim2012.