North Korea’s Death Chambers

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bradley K. Martin, the author of the new book 'Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.'

FP: Mr. Martin, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is a pleasure to have you here.

Martin: I was fascinated from the moment I set foot in Pyongyang on my first visit there in 1979. North Korean society was so different from what I or any other American was used to -- the regimentation, the true-believer gazes from people proclaiming their adoration of the Beloved and Respected Great Leader.

I covered trends on the Korean Peninsula in the 1970s and '80s, including the South Korean democracy struggle, as bureau chief for The Baltimore Sun, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. When I decided in 1991 to write a book, I initially planned to write about both halves of the peninsula. But then I realized that everyone who had tried the all-Korea approach had ended up writing a book mainly about South Korea, with only a couple of sketchy chapters on the North. That happened because the North was so extreme in its self-isolation that accurate information was scarce and hard to come by.

I like challenges, and I thought we needed to know more about the North, especially in view of the risk of further hostilities there, so I decided to try to penetrate the impenetrable. Besides direct, on-the-scene reporting, which was severely constrained, I adopted two additional methods. One was propaganda analysis-a version of the "tealeaf reading" that China watchers used to have to do from Hong Kong. The other was to conduct defector interviews. I thought it was important for the North Koreans to speak for themselves, as so few in the West had heard their voices. I used my book to let them do so by recording their stories in their own words.

FP: The North Korean people have truly suffered greatly. The horror stories are endless. I don't want to terrify our guests too much, but, out of respect to them, we must have a glimpse of the truth. Can you illuminate their suffering for us a bit?

Martin: Let's break it down into types of suffering. During the famine of the '90s, people really were reduced to eating worms and boiled tree bark. The best estimate now is that some two to three million people lost their lives. Those who stayed alive had to learn survival tactics and strategies including, on the positive side, trade and entrepreneurship, and on the negative side, bribery and theft.

Today it appears the people are managing somewhat better, although the standard of living overall is still so poor as to send many fleeing across the Chinese border. As for the way the society is structured, people have been brainwashed, indoctrinated with falsehoods-but it would be a mistake to assume they are miserable simply on that account. I found in interviews with defectors that people were still buying into the system, and in many cases even feeling something akin to religious exaltation. But increasingly people have developed criticisms, and of course anything less than complete acquiescence is punishable.

There's no reason to doubt that the country has operated a massive system of concentration camps for political prisoners-including not only the direct offenders but their families as well. Many have stayed until they died of overwork or malnutrition. Former guards I interviewed had been trained to view political offenders as subhuman, deserving of punishment and contempt. That mindset led to considerable brutality, as the ex-guards themselves admitted to me.

FP: Can you please go into a bit of detail into some of the more extreme or bizarre things you heard from some of these North Korean defectors, the ex-guards etc.?

Martin: I would be glad too. It is important for us to hear their voices, and my book documents their sufferings in their own words. Ahn Hyuk, one inmate who managed to get out of a prison camp, said he weighed only 84 pounds at the time of his release, even though he's five foot seven. By the time I interviewed him in South Korea he had bulked up to a normal weight of 150. He told me the guards had caught him one day cooking a pig bone he had found on the ground. Eating food thrown away by non-prisoners was forbidden, so "I was tied to a stake and beaten. That's when my lower jaw was smashed. I've invested so much in my teeth since I came to South Korea. Once we were so hungry that about twenty of us went to the pigsty and started eating the pigs' feed." The pig keeper "complained that the pigs would get thinner because we were eating their feed. They sent us to the river and made us put our heads in the water. The first to put his head up would be beaten brutally. We had to do this until we drank enough water to urinate in our pants."

Ahn Myong-chol, a former prison guard, told me that "when a prisoner sees a guard he has to bow at a ninety-degree angle. Any less is reason to hit him with a stick or rock or whatever." In the guards' training, Ahn said, "they taught us that those [political prisoners] were serious offenders who should be punished; if they tried to escape we had the right to kill them."

When Kang Chul-ho was eight, he was forced to watch the public execution of his father, who had burned down a State Security station. Kang's mother then committed suicide. He was treated badly by neighbors and was not permitted to join the army because he came from a "bad family background." He was sent off to work in a mine, where party officials picked on him on account of that family background. Eventually they sent him off to a prison camp for having a "bad attitude." Kang got only 200 grams or so of food a day, he told me, and was "so hungry, I caught frogs in the mountains. I sometimes ate elm bark, which can be used to make noodles." Prisoners who disobeyed the guards "suddenly disappeared during the night. People assumed they were killed. There were seventy prisoners in my unit." In three years, "ten disappeared, not including attempted escapees." Kang added that "in any one year fifteen to twenty people died of malnutrition-related causes" in his unit. Escape directly from the prison camp was impossible. Kang got out by going to the hospital for an appendectomy and escaping from the hospital.

Martin: Kim Il Sung was a genuine national hero, who fought the Japanese colonialists as a guerrilla commander. He was a politician through and through, like our old-time American populists. I teach at LSU and Huey Long comes to mind as an archetype. Kim Il Sung had the gravely voice-he talked from his belly, like an opera singer-and the avuncular manner. He had the moves: the back-patting, the hugging. He knew how to charm men and women alike. If the country had held an honest election he would have won.

Even after defecting to the South, North Koreans genuinely revered him. Kim Jong Il in contrast was a spoiled brat who learned cunning by growing up amid palace intrigue. Besides his intellect-and he is quite bright-his main public claim to the leadership was that he was the most loyal to his father. Kim Il Sung believed, with considerable justification, that the popular adulation he received was genuine. Kim Jong Il knows that the adulation he himself gets is the result of indoctrination with propaganda-but that's OK with him because, with his considerable artistic abilities, he has proven himself as one of the most skilled propagandists in history.

FP: In the 1990's Kim Jung Il purged all military officers who had been trained abroad, including in the USSR. What were the consequences?

Martin: With the forward-looking, more cosmopolitan elements gone, the military became a more doctrinaire organization, constitutionally opposed to reform and opening.

Martin: The problem is this: how could we control or even influence the outcome of a regime change in North Korea? If we have an Allawi ready to pick up the pieces in Pyongyang, I haven't heard who he might be. If there are some in the administration in Washington who still advocate instigating a military coup d'etat, they may find if they get their wish that the new regime is even worse than the old one. Kim Jong Il is a despot, all right, but there are some even nastier people among the senior military men who have been loyal enough to survive the purges. As long as it's a crapshoot there, we ought to at least consider approaches other than total eradication of the current regime-approaches that might yield more predictable, perhaps more favorable results.

FP: This whole philosophy of the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know is pretty lame isn’t it? I’ll be honest, I have a reflexive disdain for it, and perhaps I am unrealistic. But I will tell you this: this approach was used to excuse the Soviet despots for many years. It was used to allow Saddam to stay in power after the Gulf war. It is used to keep a lot of dictators in power. I say that it is right just to go after these bastards for being bastards and dangerous people and to take our chances about who will replace them. I’ll tell you this much: the people replacing them will know we will kick their ass too if they don’t act like civilized leaders.

Martin: Well, if you want to go after the bad guys of the world militarily, please lead the charge into North Korea and see how you do kicking ass there. The country is tunnelled like Iwo Jima, but Iwo Jima is just 22 square miles while North Korea is the size of Pennsylvania. Good luck in what, contrary to Saddam's view, would really and truly be the Mother of All Battles. Further, the South Koreans would not support this.

My argument is not to excuse the despot Kim for anything but to point out that there's no practical way anyone has thought of to improve the level of governance in North Korea quickly with American force. If you'll recall, it was the people of the Soviet bloc who got rid of their despots. The U.S. rooted for them. Via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, we supplied them a better quality of news than they could get at home. Of course we should do the same for any North Koreans who are willing to risk their lives in the hope of installing a better class of rulers.

FP: Some South Koreans have noted the difficulties that West and East Germany encountered with reunification. What is the status of reunification sentiment in South Korea?

Martin: The very notion of rapid reunification scares South Koreans to death. They most emphatically do not want it any time soon. The North's population would comprise a much higher proportion of the reunited country's total population than was the case in Germany, and the economic gap at present is far wider-virtually unbridgeable in the short run. It is hard for South Koreans-hard for me-to imagine reunification as other than a disaster until the two halves of Korea have become more alike. This helps to explain why South Korea appears to many in Washington not to be on the team regarding the more aggressive approaches that are popular among our own policymakers.

FP: What do you think is the mind-set of an average North Korean person? Is he so brainwashed and out of touch with reality to even be capable of confronting the real world? Tell us what the average North Korean thinks about the world and his place in it. Tell us some startling things that they might not know and what they may believe.

Martin: I read an article somewhere the other day that related a conversation with an educated North Korean. Asked how many other countries there were outside North Korea, the North Korean answered that he thought there were seven or so. I'm sure that was an accurate account of the exchange. The level of ignorance I encountered on my earlier visits was astonishing. People still believed it was the South that invaded the North to start the Korean War. In 1989 they had not heard of Tiananmen Square. Although it's a bit hard for me to give you an absolutely up to date judgment because I haven't been permitted to return to the country in the last five years, I'm inclined to think there remains a huge amount of ignorance and misunderstanding.

FP: The role of the Chinese appears somewhat blurry and ambiguous. Are they helping us here or what?

Martin: They exert their leverage to help with such matters as restarting multilateral talks. But we have to remember that Beijing's interests are not the same as Washington's. Asking the Chinese to carry our water is not a viable main policy. We need to speak directly to the issues pending between the United States and North Korea.

FP: Kim Jong-Il has become a popular icon for the archetypical crazy dictator. For example he is lampooned in the film "Team America - World Police" and in MAD TV sketches. Just how crazy is Kim?

Martin: Of course his lifestyle puts us in mind of Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned. A bureaucracy was set up to search the country's schools and bring the most beautiful girls to serve Kim and his late father in their many palaces. Kim wanted better North Korean movies, so he had a famous South Korean director kidnapped so that he could make them. While the people starved, Kim dined like the king he is. We have reports that every grain of rice intended for the leader's table had to be individually polished. But even if he exhibits a sense of entitlement so excessive as to astonish us, that doesn't make him a genocidal maniac. What we see is a traditional oriental despot.

Although the Washington buzzword regarding Kim has been "systematic starvation of his people," he didn't actually will his people to starve. Rather, it's a case of failing to change his father's failed ideology and failed agricultural policies in time-for whatever reason. Maybe he was just having too good a time to readjust his priorities. Maybe he feared alienating the hard-line elements in the regime if he moved too fast to change the system

FP: What is the future of North Korea? What is your policy advice to the Bush administration?

Martin: Before we build an unstoppable consensus for demonizing Kim-and it appears that process is well under way in Washington today-a constructive approach would be to explore all the non-military options, including high-level negotiations that might lead to a genuine end to the hostility between the United States and North Korea. That hostility has lasted, after all, for six decades. One avenue Washington has not explored is turning Kim Jong Il into a non-proliferating ally of the United States, like Pakistan's Musharraf, and using the resulting U.S. leverage to persuade Kim to improve the human rights situation. Kim has matured-he doesn't drink or play as much as he used to, for one thing-and, especially since the late '90s, has started to move his country in directions different from those set by his late father. Another possible avenue is encouraging a generational change within the Kim family dynasty.

Kim has spoken of his admiration for the systems in Sweden and Thailand-both of which are limited, constitutional monarchies. Some of his sons are cosmopolitan young men, educated in places like Switzerland. They may be better prepared for responsible statecraft on a world stage than Kim was, with his narrow, isolated upbringing. Kim is 63 now, around the age at which his father settled the first succession. John Derbyshire in the National Review calls my ideas on this "original and interesting." They may also be na?e, Mr. Derbyshire opined-elsewhere in his review he called me a Vietnam-addled lefty. But he said, and I quote, "in a situation where the U.S. has no good options, perhaps anything is worth trying." I actually don't think of myself as ideological, and I certainly did my best to take a straight, reportorial approach in writing the book. I'm heartened that readers from across the ideological spectrum seem to have found my proposals worth at least considering.

FP: Well, yeh, I guess your proposals are at least worth considering. To be honest with you, I think it is like considering sitting down with Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler and trying to reason with them because there are rumors they cuddle their pet animals and water their gardens. The North Korean dictator is a psychopath and a mass murderer. Fine, we can try to play a little footsie with him for a few weeks if you wish, because he is 63 and said something nice about Sweden. Then we have to do what we have to do: get rid of a dire threat to the West by any means necessary.

Martin: In my book I devote one whole chapter on my 1998 quest to determine whether Kim was guilty of genocide. I'm no doctor, only a reporter, but I concluded that the Dear Leader did not quite qualify for the Nazi/Rwandan level of psychopathology. From what I was able to find out, North Korean camps could be called slow-death camps as opposed to Hitler's instant-death facilities with their gas ovens. Small as that distinction may appear, I think we should bear it in mind, along with the fact that Kim has on occasion taken some -- by no means anywhere near enough -- steps to moderate the system. People have been in those camps for decades and the only way we've helped them is by shining light on the existence of the camps, just in the last few years, and shaming Kim into closing some of them to try to get world opinion off his back.

Western European opinion is especially important to him because some European countries have decided to open diplomatic relations with North Korea and attempt friendly relations. That's instructive to me. In the end my approach may not work, but it hasn't been tried yet and I wish the authorities in Washington would at least take a look at it.

FP: Attempting friendly relations with North Korea? Friendly relations are possible with democracies, not with totalitarian and genocidal regimes. We can keep trying a bit of diplomacy, but it will never work unless it is accompanied with the sincere threat that Saddam's fate will also be Kim's.

My instinct tells me that we have very little time to waste and that the time we do have should be spent on aggressively suffocating the life out of that regime -- instead of shaking hands with a psychopath who might be selling our deadliest enemies nuclear weapons or materials. But this debate will have to take place in another forum. Mr. Martin, it was a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for joining us.

Martin: Thank you Jamie, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and Frontpage readers.

No problemo.

Thought it was interesting because of the "new thinking" signals on North Korea from Rice and Bush recently. Maybe from the realization, like this author says, the South Koreans aren't much interested in our solutions. And you posted an earlier article today about how South Korea might tilt to China.

Here's the Amazon reviews.

Re #4

I think that the new thinking is about using China to pressure on N. Korea, so that N. Korea could follow Libya's path. That is not really working at the moment.

Right now, China and S. Korea are throwing roadblocks to U.S. path. However, I doubt that this would make U.S. give up. Rather S. Korea could invite herself to be another U.S. target. It does not take much to ruin S. Korean economy, without harming U.S. interest. China could also invite trouble from another direction, such as Taiwan.

Sino-S. Korean sabotage could make things ugly. However, I am not sure it will force U.S. to quit, especially when human right issue is now added to the negotiation table in addition to nukes.

Re #8

By the way, Kim Il-sung is portrayed in rather benign way. It is true that he had a charisma and was a talented politician.

However, it is his desire to emulate Stalin but not to be disgraced after his death like Stalin, which started the whole mind-numbing personality cult. His credentials were manufactured. He was not a famed anti-Japanese guerrilla leader. He assumed the identity. His only exploit was to hit police substation, with little casualties on both sides.

Kim Il-sung is revered by N. Koreans, because his political charisma make people believe that the myth about him (mostly lies) could be true.

"Before we build an unstoppable consensus for demonizing Kim-and it appears that process is well under way in Washington today-a constructive approach would be to explore all the non-military options, including high-level negotiations that might lead to a genuine end to the hostility between the United States and North Korea. That hostility has lasted, after all, for six decades."

What a simplistic load. Sung and Jung have been indoctrinating their people for 60 years about their "destiny" to take back the entire penisula. They built a huge military and nuclear program on the back of that propaganda and a miserable economy. The country needs resources to survive. Jung has likely backed himself into a corner at this point: attack or die. And he would be counting on his increasing nuclear threat to keep the US from interferring. No amount of negotiaton is going to change facts.

Ping for later.

BTW, I like Pres. Ike's containment policy better than a military strike. The reporter may say that China won't carry our water, but the CCP has supported North Korean Communism from the beginning and will war against anyone entering NK for a "regime change". That is not a small matter for consideration. The other matter is, as Martin stated, the tunnel complexes. Iwo Jima is nothing compared to North Korean tunnel complexes. Their military discipline (and especially SOF forces) are far superior to whatever Iraq had under Saddam. Our US military could handle them alone, but as stated before, the CCP will not leave North Korea alone. They WILL enter the fight.

For the CCP to give up NK, it would be to wear down South Korean, Japanese, and US economics at a time when we will be pressed hardest economically. It's similar to how the Soviets gave up the Eastern Bloc when Moscow couldn't bankroll the economics. What works against Eastern Communism is the demand for wealth and all the ideology that goes along with a free society that can make more wealth than one whose thought is imprisoned. Chaos and aggression will want war. Justice will accept change even if it's a slower pace. As much as I wanted to see explosions, we'll learn soon enough way the late Pope JP#2 was against military action in Iraq.

Thus, I think containment and small "trickle down" manipulations will effect eventual, yet longer lasting changes than a monstrous military strike. So, keep the DMZ, the land mines, the high tech military forces. That keeps the North Koreans from rushing South.

*******Using them as cheap labor OUTSIDE of North Korea would put foreign ideas into their heads and possibly effect changes in North Korea. Sometimes they can only work in China, but that's a start. Do we have enough information concerning Merchant Mariners from former Communist nations? I know a few, and the shipping industry might be an avenue for change...so long as the free world has the upper hand of course. If Communist shipping ruled the waves, the oceans would quickly become pirate infested (as the South China Sea is the apparent example).

Re #13

We have a complex chess game going on in E. Asia. China vs U.S.. With Japan as U.S.'s sword, and Taiwan as another bargaining chip. The objective is to pressuring China politically, militarily, economically into shutting down lifeline into N. Korea, which would cause collapse of N. Korean regime.

Some acceptable arrangement for post-Kim Jong-il N. Korea may have to be worked out between two countries. Such as what will happened to U.S. troops, whether they could be stationed near Chinese border, what would be the nature of the new regime(pro-China, neutral, pro-American)?

"...because his political charisma make people believe that the myth about him (mostly lies) could be true."

Sounds like the MSM and Socialist wannabees of the Clinton Myths. Greatest sham of the 20th and 21st centuries are the myths, lies and other uncorroborated cock-and-bull propaganda concerning the William Jefferson Clintons...covering up their real crimes against America.

During the famine of the '90s, people really were reduced to eating worms and boiled tree bark.

All America's fault of course. /sarcasm

Today it appears the people are managing somewhat better, although the standard of living overall is still so poor as to send many fleeing across the Chinese border.

Boy, that *is* pretty bad.

As for the way the society is structured, people have been brainwashed, indoctrinated with falsehoods-but it would be a mistake to assume they are miserable simply on that account.

HUH??? Wouldn't that be enough to make anyone miserable? Misery is quite directly affected by the number and size of the lies you believe (and therefore live by). IMO of course.

Agreed: there is no neat and clean, candy-assed OSHA- or Hans Blix-approved solution, no matter how deeply and passionately the Birkenstock crowd FEEEEEELS there must be because emotions trump facts.

We got on the tiger precisely by trying to seek such candy-assed solutions and sooner or later we have to get off. This is gonna be more like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. Everybody deal with it...

The level of discussion, argumentation, etc. on NORTH KOREA on these FR threads, in my estimate, is rapidly rising. The more serious problem this becomes, the less we will see silly jokes about North Korean leaders' names and ICBMs, cartoons and other jokes; the more we will have serious discussion on the regime, their current nuke manufacturing capabilities, their economic effort to stay alive, and the issues surrounding how the US can put them asunder once and for all. Bravo for this thread being able to continue in a serious vein for awhile, minus all the silly jokes from people who don't follow North Korea articles in detail.

You and others here are to be commended.

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