By Kim Young-jin
Though the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has raised hopes that Pyongyang will implement badly-needed economic reforms, the world will likely have to wait at least a year for any indication of whether it has chosen such a path, Sweden’s top envoy here said Thursday.
The question is one of the hottest topics of debate among North Korea watchers as Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is installed as the next leader of the impoverished state.
“Economic reforms usually take quite some time from the time they are implemented till you actually see some effects,”Ambassador Lars Danielsson said in an interview at the Swedish Embassy in Seoul.
“I don’t expect North Korea will come out and announce what they will do. So we’ll likely have to wait at least a year to see whether there will be any changes.”
The North’s planned system continues to struggle to feed its population of 24 million. Profit sources exist through cooperation with China and trading in informal markets, but traditional state enterprises have long been stuck in a rut.
Danielsson is in a unique position to speculate on the possibilities as one of the few Western diplomats who have engaged Kim Jong-il on the topic.
This occurred during historic 2001 talks in Pyongyang between Kim and a high-level EU delegation led by former Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson to whom Danielsson served as secretary of state. The meeting was recently memorialized in the North in the form of a special stamp ㅡ on which Danielsson recently discovered he was featured.
“It was very clear during the talks that Kim Jong-il was very skeptical when it came to the possibility for North Korea to take the kind of economic reforms that China went through,” he recalled.
“My feeling was that he was personally very much an obstacle in this respect. Some other people I talked to then gave me the impression that there may be those with a somewhat more open attitude toward economic reform.”
One highly-cited reason for hope is that Kim Jong-un studied for a time in Switzerland, exposing him to Western affluence. Some say advisors to the leader, who is thought to be no older than 30, could be among those with a more open attitude.
Others argue, however, that any opening would invite an increased flow of outside information that could weaken the regime’s iron-grip on power.
Danielsson said it was up to Pyongyang to initiate a better international environment so it could more confidently pursue changes. The first step, he said, was to prove its commitment to the region’s six-party denuclearization framework it walked away from in 2009.
Efforts to resume the forum ㅡ made up of both Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China ㅡ have been thrown into limbo as the North stabilizes its leadership transition. Seoul and Washington want Pyongyang to take concrete denuclearization steps first, a stance backed by Sweden.
While the European Union is not involved in the talks, Danielsson said countries such as Sweden, which has embassies on both sides of the border, should be ready in case the North becomes ready to change its relations with the outside.
“We can offer the clear notion that if you do certain things there are certain countries that are willing to help,” he said, adding the increased economic cooperation would be a major carrot.
As far as appearing on a stamp alongside North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ㅡ issued to celebrate the 10 anniversary of the establishment EU-North relations ㅡ Danielsson said he hoped it would become a memento to a bygone era of isolationism.
“The hope is that it is a unique picture but that (such an event) will not happen much more, that we will not have to see a European delegation meeting an authoritarian regime but a strong democratic one.”