HS 101 – A Candid Look at North Korea and China with Gordon Chang

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My pleasure to welcome Gordon Chang to the show. He's the author of Nuclear North Korea Takes on the World released by Random House back in January of 2000.

Talk about the scary possibilities that are going on in this region of the world and what maybe we should be thinking and doing about them as a country and a world community. Gordon, welcome. How are you?

Thank you very much. The thing that we really should be worried about is not just the North Korean nuclear program, although that's scary in and of itself, but the links between the North Korean and the Chinese militaries. And we saw this on April 15th at that massive military parade in Pyongyang where the North Koreans unveiled a new missile which they designated the KN08. Now that was interesting, of course, but what was even more fascinating was that the KN08s were being carried on transporter erector launchers or TELs. TELs. And those were obviously of Chinese design because they looked identical to those that China makes. Indeed, afterwards we have learned a lot about how those erector launchers got from China to North Korea. So essentially the bottom line is that the Chinese and the North Korean militaries are cooperating very closely. The Chinese are arming the nuclear forces of North Korea. And the KN08 is a game changer because it is road mobile, which means that it's hard to find. And it also probably when it's deployed, and it's not deployed yet, but when the KN08 is deployed, it will be able to reach Alaska as well as US Forces in the Pacific. So this is something we really need to think about because Beijing is one way or another helping the North Koreans target the United States.

And this is just a slap in the face to the United States, China's biggest trading customer. Right?

This is more than just a slap in the face. This is a direct threat to the American homeland. And there have been reports that the Obama administration did not raise this with Beijing because it didn't want to embarrass the Chinese, although the State Department did say it was talked about in informal discussions. But we really need to talk to them, not only in private but in public because they're proliferating technology that will be used or could be used against the United States. So this is, this is something which is completely unacceptable. And I don't know how we deal with it, though I do have a few proposals. But nonetheless, the important thing is we need to have some very candid and some very tough conversations with the Chinese about this.

You know, Gordon, Obama and his administration have this reputation of being rather wimpy, maybe, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Is it founded? Is that a fair assessment?

Well, the Obama administration on some things actually has had better policy than the Bush administration before it. On some other matters, though, it seems to be going backwards. And Korea is a perfect illustration of this. President Obama had a very good policy with regard to the Korean peninsula, at least in the beginning, and that was to take a backseat to South Korean President Lehman Bach, who is a hardliner, very skeptical of North Korean intentions, and Washington just didn't play along with trying to appease the North Koreans. That changed, however, in the last few months as the. The Obama administration tried to reach out to the North Korean regime and it didn't work out. We had what was so called the so called Leap Day deal announced on February 29, which the North Koreans repudiated 16 days later because there was, as part of the arrangements in the Leap Day deal, a moratorium on missile testing. And on March 16, they announced that they were going to fire off a long range rocket, which in effect was a test of a long range missile. And the Obama administration really didn't do enough to first of all prevent it, but also to exact consequences not only on the North Koreans, but the Chinese as well. So in this one area, Obama policy, which started out quite good, has now turned really to mush. And that's going to be a problem because the North Koreans are starting to show these weapons that will target the US homeland.

So this new Chinese supplied missile has enough range to get to where?

First of all, it's not clear. It's clear that the Chinese supplied the launcher. It's not clear that they have actually supplied the missile, though I think they did because the Chinese sold these launchers and similar missiles as a package to Pakistan. And it's likely that the Chinese have also sold the missile or the missile technology to the North Koreans. This missile, when it's eventually deployed, probably will be able to reach half of Alaska. And with improvements in the missile range, it could even get farther than that.

But not California, I mean, or yes, California, not California.

But North Korea is developing other missiles though, that will be able to reach the northern part of the West Coast. So we're talking Washington State, Oregon, top part of California.

What is the tenor of North Korea? I mean, they seem just as defiant and obnoxious as ever since Kim Jong Il's demise. I mean, the new leadership, sometimes when you have the demise of the old one, the new leadership loosens up a little bit. But not the case in North Korea.

Not the case in North Korea. And the reason is that we have Kim Jong Un, who is Kim Jong Il's youngest acknowledged son. Kim Jong Un is not even 30. He didn't have very much in the way of grooming. He's taking over a position which is very sort of risky. It's a one man regime, but the one man regime is composed of four elements. The kin, family circle, security services, Korean Workers Party, and the Korean People's Army. And these various groups compete among themselves. And it takes somebody who has been around a long time and has a lot of skills to be able to manage this type of coalition government. And so essentially, Kim Jong Un is not prepared to do that. And so at this point at least, he's a weak ruler. And that's always a very dangerous situation when you have regime elements competing among themselves. So Kim Jong Un, I don't know, some people say, well, he was educated in the west and so he should be liberal. We don't really know what Kim Jong Un, but we also know it doesn't matter what he thinks because at least for the first several years and probably longer than that, he will have to cater to the hard line elements in his regime. And that means we're going to see a North Korea that is even more belligerent than what has been in the past.

And you know, unfortunately, he's so young that this can just go on for decades if they don't collapse back before then.

Right, right. I mean, it could take quite a long time. In hardline regimes, it always takes years for new rulers to consolidate their positions. Then we're going to see the same thing in China, which is slated to have a leadership transition that is formally to begin at the end of this year. Even if it goes smoothly, which is pretty unlikely given what's occurred since February in China, it'll take the new leader at least a couple years to be able to get his people into place and to be able to then start function effectively. In Kim Jong Un's case, it's so much more difficult because the regime is less institutionalized and also because it's a much more barbaric and tougher regime to manage. And so we're going to see an unstable North Korea for at least a half decade, maybe longer than that. And essentially it's going to be a question of who consolidates power first. So there's great competition right now at the top of the North Korean leadership. And this doesn't bode well for the North's relationships with South Korea, the region or with us.

I'm curious. I've watched a couple of documentaries about North Korea and forgive me, I can't remember the name, but I watched the one about the Mass Games and this country is fascinating to me. Number one, I have this sort of morbid fascination with communism. I don't know why I'm such a capitalist, but it's just interesting. When I visited Cuba and I've been to Russia, unfortunately I didn't go to Russia or East Berlin before they opened up. I would have really been fascinated by that. But I have been to Cuba and would frankly love to go to North Korea if I felt I could do so safely in return. But what do the people think there? Are they just completely brainwashed? You know, when I watched this documentary about the Mass Games, it seemed like the people were just totally brainwashed. You know, there are Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il and they don't know what they don't know and they don't realize how scarce their life is and how they're lacking so many things. And then I watched another documentary that you may have also seen about the American soldier who defected to North Korea. Can't remember his name, but a US army soldier, I believe he was in the army, and he just walked across the border into North Korea, and they viewed him and talked about his life there for so many years. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

Yeah. Well, the. In the early years of North Korea under Kim Il Sung, the founder, people actually were brainwashed. And people believed the propaganda. They believed that Kim Il Sung was essentially a demigod. But that monopoly on information has broken down. And so now people are starting to see prosperity in South Korea. They're starting to see glimpses of the outside world. And this is because video cassettes and thumbnail drives are circulating around North Korea.

Oh, they're getting smuggled in, huh? They're getting into the country.

They're getting smuggled in. And also in the northern part of North Korea, the Chinese cell phone networks operate. So North Koreans can speak to their relatives in South Korea if they happen to physically be along the border. And that certainly also has opened up North Korea. And as well as there's been some limited contact with foreigners who have set up businesses. So, you know, essentially the North Korean people have a much better idea of what's going on.

How do they even get a hold of a cell phone or a computer where they can insert a thumb drive? And it just seems like there's so much scarcity there. Like, I can't imagine people would have the money to have a computer, a cell phone, I suppose, at various government owned businesses, they have computers. But it would be sort of surprising that they would even get access to devices to use this information.

There are a lot of ways they get this, and part of it is because the regime has really been very corrupt at this bottom. So a little bit of money can buy a lot. And although, of course, it is the most hermetically sealed government on earth, essentially people are able to come across the border with China because it is lightly patrolled, or at least it has been up until the last year or so. And that means that there's a lot of commerce with North Korea and China, which is unofficial. And so North Koreans go into China, they trade, they buy up, they all sorts of things, and they bring them back into North Korea. Also got to remember, during the Great Famine in the middle of the 1990s, essentially government broke down and there was no government in large portions of North Korea, which meant that Basically, North Korea, or at least portions of it, were the freest society on Earth. And so a lot of goods from the outside came into North Korea, despite the very severe economic conditions and despite the famine that killed at least hundreds of thousands of people. So, you know, in these communist societies, there's always a lot of money slogging around someplace, especially in big cities. And so this sort of leaks through society. And at this point, because the border with China still is pretty open, you have all sorts of folks who go into North Korea, try to proselytize them, try to make them Christians, human rights activists. All sorts of folks have been floating around the countryside in North Korea. And with them, they bring openness. And the last thing is, because North Korea has needed aid, it has also meant that Western food aid monitors have gone into North Korea, foreign doctors have gone into North Korea. And that has sort of opened up to people's eyes, because for the first time in their lives, they're seeing foreigners being able to talk to them. And so there's this contact which the regime doesn't like, but which isn't. The regime is not able to prevent it.

So there is some sign of some opening up, some discontent, and possibly would that lead to a coup or revolution?

I don't know if it will lead to a coup. Kim Jong Un has continuing his father's policy of Song Gong, which is military first. And on April 15, when Kim Jong Un gave his speech to the North Korean people, he said that his policy was not just military first, it was military first, second, and third. So the military probably sees that its future is tied to Kim Jong Un, who gives them some legitimacy because he's a direct descendant of Kim Il Sung. But there are other elements, of course, in society that are competitors to the military. And of course, in the military, it's not a solid block. You always have ambitious colonels. The thing about North Korea that gives the regime stability, though, is that people are so poor that they don't really have the means to resist. And so essentially, you've got a society where people may be extremely unhappy, and many of them are, but they are not thinking about trying to take down their government. They're much more concerned about where their next meal is coming from. So you contrast this with China, which is by far a much more prosperous society, but you've got a much more defiant population in China, because people in China have gotten over that issue of, where is my next food coming from? Where's my next meal coming from? They're thinking about the bigger issues of wanting more say in their lives and being irritated by their government. So it is a very different society in North Korea.

Sure, sure. So they're higher on the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy so they can start to think about other things, beyond basic stuff, survival, which is good. In your other book entitled the Coming Collapse of China, Gordon, talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, that was published about 11 years ago, I believe.

Right, right. And I said in 2001, in the middle of 2001, that it would take about a decade for the Communist Party to fall. So I'm about six months out of time. But what we're seeing right now though is very interesting developments in China because we have an economy which is stumbling. The Communist Party is fracturing, the authority of the central government is eroding, the military is breaking free of civilian control. And while all of this is happening, the Chinese people are taking to the streets hundreds of thousands of times a year and often in violent protest. And so you have a society which is very volatile and Communist Party leaders right now are quite insecure because their political system is fragile and they know it.

You know, I don't hear much about these riots in China though. Are they pretty suppressed? They're not in the mainstream media that I've seen.

Yeah. The last year for which we have figures is 2010, and a semi official figure was that there was 180,000 large protests in China, though other people say that there were 280,000 protests. We're talking about a large number of disturbances and this is a supposedly authoritarian state. But clearly the Chinese people are unhappy with many things in their society. And this is really what happens when you have a prosperous authoritarian state. People start to question the government. This is especially a problem because in the last couple months there's been only growth, growth of maybe 1 or 2% in April. There was probably no growth, maybe even a contraction in May, the last month for which we have statistics growth was 2%, 3% at most. And 3% growth is okay if you've always had 3% growth. But this is a society which had double digit growth in 2010 of 10.4%. Officially, this is a society that had growth of 9.2% according to official statistics last year. So we're dealing with a sudden deceleration of the Chinese economy. And if we want to know what the political effect of will be, all we have to do is look at Suharto's Indonesia, where you have an authoritarian rule, prosperity for decades, and all of a sudden Growth collapses, and then soon the political system is gone. That's the story that China has to face right now.

How much growth does China need to sort of break even? I mean, their demands for GDP growth are much higher than US Demands. Right. I mean, because of the population and because of so much immigration from rural areas. I mean, is that still happening in China? I know when the financial crisis hit over here, which is obviously really a world crisis, I remember seeing news reports and amazing videos about people leaving the cities and going back to the rural areas. I mean, that was shocking to me. But what kind of growth rate do they need? What kind of number do they need to achieve? And of course, these are official numbers. And I'm sure, just like in the US they're maligned and are very debatable. But we've got to sort of put a number somewhere.

People say that China needs about 8% growth. It might need 7 and a half, 6. That number is going to come down, though, because the workforce is going to start to shrink sometime starting between either 2013 or 2016, probably in the front end of the range because demographic trends in China are accelerating. But China needs a fair amount of growth because it is in the early stages of development. And so you'd expect to see pretty high growth rates. And, you know, zero growth, 1% growth, even 3% growth isn't going to do it for China. The problem is that they were not able to change the basis of their economy away from investment and exports and towards domestic consumption. They didn't do that in the really good times of five years ago when everyone was telling them that that was job one for them. And they're certainly not going to do it now in a declining, deteriorating economic environment. China right now isn't a problem because you don't have the world taking Chinese exports to the same extent. And that is going to be an issue for China because they don't have the domestic consumption to support themselves.

Wow. I guess the big question, and maybe this is kind of the wrapping things up kind of discussion, what is the outlook for China and North Korea in terms of their perspective and then what the US should do about it, how the US should react?

Yeah, I think the outlook here is.

Two developments are going that are very dangerous. One of them is that not only do we have leadership transitions in both North Korea and China going from one set of rulers to the next, but we also have changes in the nature of their regiment. And essentially what's occurring is that the militaries in both of these countries are becoming much more powerful. And that means that anything can happen. China has become much more assertive and even hostile, which is the reason why countries in the region are looking to the United States for leadership, because they are concerned about China's trajectory. So we have an increasingly assertive China backing a much more belligerent North Korea. And that means all of us are at risk.

And what should we do about it?

We need to be much more resolute. We need to stop looking at China as a solution for North Korea because we always let the Chinese leaders to rein in their North Korean allies. The problem is that the Chinese leaders seem to be enabling the North Koreans rather than trying to contain them. And basically the United States needs to have a new policy of trying to work with its friends in the region instead of working with North Korea's best friend, which is China.

Scary stuff, scary stuff. I mean, do you think. How close do you think North Korea is to a nuclear weapon?

Well, they've already got one. They detonated one in 2006, they detonated one in 2009.

Well, I guess I should have said a nuclear missile. Sorry. Because I know they had that missile launch a couple of months ago, which was a failure. Not a weapon, but a delivery system for it.

Yeah. In 1998, they launched their Taepodong missile, which basically made it all the way to Alaska before it broke up in the transition from the second to the third stage, their most successful missile test, long range missile test, was their first. And the tests they had in 2006 and 2009 were not nearly as successful. The North Koreans can make bold, substantial progress very quickly. And remember in last year, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that within five years the North Koreans would have a long range missile that would be able to reach the continental United States. And he didn't say it, but what he was thinking was that missile would be able to carry a nuclear warhead.

Wow. Yeah, We've got to make sure that doesn't happen, huh? I mean, if they have that, are they just going to. Do you think they'll just use it as a way to incite a war? They know that would lead to some certain mad Mutually assured destruction. Well, not mutually, but it would lead to their destruction for sure. I mean, what would they do if they had the complete capability to deliver a nuclear missile to a major American city, for example, what would they do? Would they use it?

Well, I think the thing that they would do is what they've been doing up to now, which is selling their ballistic missile and nuclear technology to the Iranians, and this is why this is so important for them in North Korea. That's another good question. Certainly use it to threaten their neighborhood to try to get concessions, which is what the North Koreans would do. They might also use it, and the North Koreans could use it, but we don't know whether they'd actually do with their weapons. But we do know that they'll sell them. And this is a problem because it's very difficult to contain these very dangerous technology technologies when the North Koreans, backed by China, are selling this stuff around the world.

Boy, scary stuff. Well, Gordon Chang, thank you so much for joining us today. Your books are the Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear North Korea Takes on the World. Give out your website if you would.

It's www.gordanchang.com and my Twitter handle is Gordon G. Chang.

Lots of interesting articles there. Gordon Chang, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

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