Mick Hartley

North Korean expert Andrei Lankov has an interesting article (via) on what he considers to be the most hopeful approach to the intractible problem of the DPRK. Here's the intro:

North Korea must be transformed from within. Neither sanctions nor direct engagement will work. What is needed is an effort to increase contacts between North Korea and the outside world through cultural and educational exchanges and through economic cooperation that exposes North Koreans to South Koreans and their vastly better way of life. Increased radio and video penetration combined with support for defectors who can aid the transformation when the Kim Jong Il regime ends will also be necessary.

The problem can be simply stated: however friendly you are, the Dear Leader is never going to loosen his grip or institute Chinese style reforms, and however threatening you are, it will always be the population rather than the leadership which suffers:

The North Korean government uses every opportunity to attempt another rollback, trying to restore the iron fist of the 1980s. When, in 2002-2004, the regime came to believe that it had secured access to a moderate but stable flow of foreign aid, it immediately launched a massive crackdown on market-oriented activities that had been tolerated for a decade. For example, in October 2005, Pyongyang outlawed the sale of grain on the market and restarted the Public Distribution System. (The ban has not been enforced due to endemic police corruption.) Soon afterward, the regime prohibited men of all ages and women under fifty from selling goods in markets. In January 2009, the government stated that all manufactured goods and imported items would soon be sold at state-run shops rather than street markets. The message is clear: able-bodied people should go back to where they belong: the factories of the old-style Stalinist economy.

The unlikelihood of economic reform in North Korea is matched by the implausibility of effective sanctions against Pyongyang. Such sanctions are difficult to achieve and maintain, given the divergent interests of North Korea's neighbors. Although China and South Korea are not happy about Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, they fear even more a revolution in the North that could destabilize the region. For Beijing and Seoul, the instability of a revolution, even if it comes in the guise of a relatively peaceful democratic transition, would constitute a greater threat than Pyongyang's nuclear weapons, which they believe are not likely to be used against them.

Furthermore, the North Korean leadership is remarkably invulnerable to sanctions. Sanctions work when the government is vulnerable to pressure, when it can be reelected or overthrown. North Korea's leaders know that if controls are tight, the populace will simply starve to death, but no one will stand up against the regime. The North Korean population has been terrorized for decades, and it does not have even a rudimentary civil society that can become a basis for resistance–no churches, no nongovernmental cultural associations, no civic groups. Hence, in the unlikely case that sanctions are "successful," a few hundred thousand farmers would die, but there would be no major political change.

But can this "subversive engagement" work when there's no effective civil society and no hint allowed of opposition?

Worth a read, anyway.