INTERVIEW Marrying US technology with defectors' North Korea expertise

Kim Byeong-uk, a North Korean defector and president of the Seoul-based think tank North Korea Development Institute, poses at a cafe in Seoul on Tuesday after a Korea Times interview. He has been wrestling with the question on the credibility of information about the reclusive state since he returned to Seoul on Sunday after a three-week trip to the United States. / Korea Times

Expert proposes solution to inaccurate information about repressive regime

By Kang Hyun-kyung

How do we know that what we know about North Korea is true?

Kim Byeong-uk, a North Korean defector and president of the Seoul-based think tank North Korea Development Institute, has been wrestling with the question on the credibility of information about the reclusive state since he returned to Seoul on Sunday from a three-week trip to the United States.

During the trip organized by the U.S. Department of State, Kim and eight South Korean delegates met with think tank experts and activists working on North Korean human rights and democracy in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, as well as with advocates helping Cuban refugees in Miami.

Kim, who escaped from North Korea with his wife and children in 2002, said his first U.S. trip was “constructive, informative and useful” and prompted him to think about conducting joint research projects with U.S. experts to narrow the information divide between the Hermit Kingdom and the rest of the world.

“While exchanging my views with the American experts, I felt regret because they had a sort of misunderstanding about North Korea caused by factual errors,” he said.

As a good example of those experts’ incomplete understanding of North Korea, Kim cited their suggestion of cutting off China’s crude oil shipments to North Korea, a punitive measure that has been floated again as a way to push the North to play by the rules, following its test-firing of the Hwasong-4 missile on July 4.

The rationale behind their proposed oil embargo on North Korea is that it would further hurt the already crippled North Korean economy. According to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, North Korea imported 525,000 tons of crude oil from China in 2015.

But Kim, 55, is skeptical of the effectiveness of the suggested sanction.

“Contrary to popular belief, an oil embargo is not something that can destabilize North Korea because its economy is not structured to be dependent on oil,” he said. “The energy that can make or break the North is electricity, not oil. North Korea has been struggling with chronic electricity shortages because the economy heavily relies on electricity.”

According to a Korea Energy Economics Institute (KEEI) report released in 2015, oil accounts for only 8 percent of the energy consumed in the North, while electricity, which comes from hydropower and thermal coal, accounts for the rest of its energy mix.

This KEEI report was based on Statistics Korea data, which the state-run think tank said are not perfect but still credible and can provide researchers a sneak peek into North Korea’s energy situation. The KEEI said Statistics Korea projected North Korea’s energy mix based on related information and stressed that such data are the only one available and are widely cited by foreign governments and think tanks in their energy reports.

Several factors trigger the spread of misinformation about North Korea. For one, the reclusive state provides no official data about its economy and industries, and it remains uncertain whether it even has any accurate information about them.

The lack of credible data prompts researchers to do guess work or rely on inaccurate data from various sources with questionable credibility. Strict regulations also prohibit scholars from traveling to and researching the repressive regime, and thus, are another factor that makes North Korea largely unknown to the outside world.

Amid these frustrations with learning more about North Korea, in the past decade, there has been a meaningful, technologically driven progress in the study of the regime.

Satellite imagery has helped experts gather some credible, albeit limited, data about North Korea. The images of the signs of nuclear tests, for example, have informed government officials and experts of forthcoming provocations.

However, despite such progress, Kim said technology alone is not enough to gather complete information about what’s going on inside the North and what will happen there in the future. He cited data about North Korea’s crop production as an example of a discrepancy between reality and information collected from satellite images.

“We’re told that crop production in the North has been stagnant or has made little progress over the past decades. I heard that experts came to that conclusion after they analyzed satellite images of crop fields,” he said.

He said testimonies from North Korean defectors, however, contradict such a claim.

“In the past, North Koreans ate two meals per day because of the crop shortages. But many North Korean defectors who are now in South Korea testify they didn’t skip meals and had three meals when they were in the North,” he said. “This means there has been an increase of crop production in the North, whether it was imported or home grown, and shows that information obtained from satellite images doesn’t explain every detail of the issue. I think such a gap exists because crops are also produced on lands that are not registered as official crop fields, and thus, are not captured by satellite imagery.”

Kim claims that the drawback of the use of technology to produce more reliable data can be fixed when and if advanced U.S. technology is married with North Korean defectors’ deep knowledge of and hands-on experience in their homeland.

“During our trip to the United States, we met with people working on commercial satellite imagery. They showed us images of the North Korean city of Musan, specifically images before and after floods hit the region, and they showed some buildings that were swept away,” he said. “Those images only show what happened there after the flood. But we defectors who had lived in the North know what those buildings are for.

“Knowing such additional information will help experts draw more accurate implications of the natural disasters of the North Korean city.”

Kim said he feels a need to build a network of North Korea experts in South Korea, including North Korean defectors, and in the United States.

“I think young, open-minded experts can work together in a multinational environment to produce more reliable, accurate data that are close to the reality North Korea faces. Such data would be useful for the U.S. and South Korean governments when they chart tailor-made, realistic policies to cope with North Korea,” he said.

Credible data, once produced, will also help policymakers of the two countries in their search for a realistic approach to the North Korean nuclear weapons program.

He likened the nuclear program to “a lifeline” for North Korea.

As long as the North Korean regime continues, he said chances of the North giving up its nuclear ambitions are bleak, no matter other countries’ economic largesse toward the North.

“There are two aspects of the nuclear program. One is nuclear tests, and the other is nuclear armament,” he said. “North Korea may stop conducting a nuclear test if conditions are met. But the development of its nuclear arsenal is a different story.

“They’ll never ever give up the nuclear program because they take it as something that can protect the regime and the country from security threats from other countries.”