미등록인권은 어디에…총알받이 된 北 군인들 [ATL]

Kim Jong-un is sending his best soldiers to the Ukrainian front. Why? The bottom line is money. Greg Scarlatoiu is the new president of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and a longtime expert on the Korean Peninsula. There is a very long history of North Korean involvement in foreign conflicts. Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather used to be very good at playing this game, playing mommy against daddy, the PRC, Communist China against the Soviet Union, while extracting maximum benefits from both. Perhaps Kim Jong-un is engaged in playing a similar game. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jankielek. Greg Scarlatoiu, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Jan, the pleasure is all mine. Outstanding Romanian pronunciation, by the way. But we're here to talk about North Korea. And it's very interesting. Recently, we've been alerted to the fact that there's North Korean soldiers in Ukraine at the front. And also that apparently some of them are hooked on porn. Maybe that's like a secondary thing. But it's almost like this is a bit of a foil to try to understand what North Korea is up to. Tell me a little bit about these soldiers. This is a money-making operation. In April, Putin and Kim Jong-un entered into a mutual defense arrangement. Basically, Kim Jong-un is making a lot of cold, hard cash out of the war in Ukraine. He has been exporting millions of artillery shells to Russia. Half of the artillery shells the Russians have fired over the past year have been North Korean artillery shells. The Russian military-industrial complex is still having trouble keeping up with the demand of artillery shells on the Ukrainian front. Now, thanks to the North Koreans, they have been able to out-shell the Ukrainians five to one. The Russians have been firing 10,000 artillery shells every day, while the Ukrainians have only fired 2,000. Of course, they've also sold the KN-23 solid fuel ballistic missile to the Russians. It's been deployed and launched against the Ukrainians. This is a solid fuel ballistic missile based on a Russian, a Soviet missile, the Iskander missile. Now, we're talking about troops. I see the view that these troops are just cannon fodder. They'll get slaughtered by the dozens, the hundreds, and the thousands. I disagree. These are special forces belonging to the 11th Armed Corps, the 11th Corps of the KPA, the Korean People's Army. So, under the 11th Corps, they have about 100,000 special forces. The folks in the 11th Corps are the best trained, best fed, best disciplined, best indoctrinated soldiers that North Korea has. Kim Jong-un is sending his best soldiers to the Ukrainian front. Why? The bottom line, again, is money. The Russians are paying about $2,000 per month per soldier. In the case of North Korean civilians, workers officially dispatched by the North Korean regime, 90% of their salary is confiscated by the regime. In this case, it's supposed that they're left with a couple hundred dollars in their pocket every month. I don't think so. These are soldiers. They're in uniform. Perhaps the entire pay is confiscated by the regime. Now, what about the foreign story? I don't buy into the foreign story. In the North Korean military, there are three lines of command and control. One is military. The other one is security agency. North Korea's Gestapo, the Ministry of State Security, the MSS, and also the military security agency, the military security command. So there is a military chain of command and control. There is a security agency chain of command and control. And of course, there is a party chain of command and control, a Korean workers' party chain of command and control. These soldiers will be under extraordinarily tight surveillance. They have been deployed to a foreign country, to the front lines fighting for Putin, Kim Jong-un's great ally, per the direct order of the supreme commander of the North Korean armed forces. No mistakes are allowed. Their relatives are held hostage at home. North Korea applies a system of guilt by association called Yonjaje. Up to three generations of the same family are punished, tortured, imprisoned, even executed. If they don't do what they need to do. They don't do what they need to do. And if they bring shame or embarrassment to the supreme leader. And this could be one such instance. We hear stories about North Korean soldiers who may have deserted. They may have defected. Of course, these things happen in war. But again, if you get caught attempting to desert, you will be killed on the spot. Remember what Stalin used to say about the Soviet Red Army. In the Soviet Red Army, it takes more courage to retreat than it takes to advance. Why? Because the commissars were watching you. They were behind you. And if you took one step back, you're basically killed by your own, by your own commissars. The North Koreans are not very different. So you raise a whole bunch of issues here. And as I mentioned, this is kind of a bit of a foil to try to understand a little bit about how the North Korean military operates, how North Korea functions, this whole guilt by association system. I've spoken with people who have actually been born in these camps. And even one person who gave up their mother, essentially only to have her executed, not realizing what he had done because of that level of indoctrination that he had been subjected to. Before I go there, how do you know that this is the elite force, out of curiosity, and not this so-called cannon fodder, as some have described? Because these are soldiers often referred to as light infantry brigades. They're North Korea's special forces under the 11th Corps. They are trained in the use of all accessible small arms. They're jump trained, they're trained in martial arts. They're the special forces of North Korea, trained to infiltrate behind enemy lines, go after supply lines, cover the retreat of their own forces, destroy infrastructure, blow up bridges. Now, of course, there are some questions to ask. You don't really know the answers yet. Only time will tell. Is language a problem? Are they able to communicate in Russian? Do they fight as North Korean units? Or are the North Korean fighters embedded into Russian units? Are they used as special forces, as commando units? That's what they've been trained to do. Are they capable of engaging in combined arms operations, combining artillery, drones, and infantry? We don't have the answers to those questions yet. But I do know 100% for sure that they're highly trained, highly disciplined, very well fed, and highly indoctrinated. Plus, their families are held hostage at home. So there are a lot of incentives to be Kim Jong Un's best war fighters. The thing I'm trying to understand is, does North Korea ever deploy these kind of lower level cannon fodder type infantry? Or is it always these superior fighting forces that you're describing? It's always the superior fighting forces. A few examples. They sent pilots to fight alongside the Syrians in 1967. They flew against Israel in the Six-Day War. They took heavy casualties. In 1973, they flew alongside Egyptian pilots again against Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Again, they took casualties in Vietnam. They dispatched North Korean pilots to the Vietnam War to fly missions against us, the United States. They lost 16 planes. Their performance was abysmal. They used antiquated tactics from the Korean War. The North Vietnamese was so exasperated that they lost 16 planes because of North Korean pilots. They told them, well, thank you. That's great. But please go home now. In 1983, Robert Mugabe's Fifth Brigade committed an atrocity, the Matabelalan Massacre. They killed 20,000 civilians. Those Zimbabwean troops had been trained by North Korean special forces. After Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia, what happened was the Ethiopian-Eritrean War in the late 1990s. The North Koreans had troops, tanks, and tank crews fighting on the Ethiopian side. As recently as the Syrian Civil War, they had special forces fighting alongside Assad's troops. I was in Geneva at the U.N. in a closed-door meeting with a bunch of human rights defenders from all over the world. A group of Syrian human rights defenders took me aside and said, do you realize that there are North Korean special forces fighting on Assad's side? I said, no, I had no idea. They said, yeah, the name of the units is Cholma, Cholma 1 and Cholma 2. That's when I knew that they were telling the truth because in Korean, Cholma means Pegasus. This is the winged horse that flies a thousand leagues. This is also the name of Kim Il-sung's most prominent public mobilization campaign. Kim Il-sung was, of course, the founder of North Korea and the grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong-un. So Cholma 1 and Cholma 2. Later, I think I heard about Cholma 1 and Cholma 7, but anyway, they were on the ground. They were building a nuclear reactor for Assad in Syria when the Australian Air Force bombed the reactor in 2007. Assad didn't go to the UN to complain. They brought in bulldozers, they razed the whole place. It was gone. Of course, they've been proliferating instability and violence to the Middle East, to Iran and Iran's terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen. All of this proliferation of instability and violence has been directed at our greatest ally and only ally in the Middle East, the state of Israel. So there is a very long history of North Korean involvement in foreign conflicts. When it came down to dispatching troops, they didn't send cannon fodder. They sent their best troops, generally special forces. Speaking of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict now in Lebanon, these tunnels, as I understand it, that they're systematically blowing up, sections up, those were actually built by North Koreans. That was an astonishing thing for me to learn. Affirmative. The North Koreans built tunnels for both Hamas in Gaza and for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Why are they so good at tunneling? Because there's a lot of stuff underground in North Korea. There are a lot of tunnels and underground facilities in North Korea. They're very good at tunneling. This is one of their specialties, and they have proliferated this tunneling expertise to the Middle East, to the enemies of Israel. You don't think about commonly North Korean troops being engaged in all these conflicts. Of course, you've kind of laid out that they are, but it's just not something that it almost seemed out of the blue to learn for many people, I think, that they're at the front. To those who have been students of North Korean affairs for a while, I would say it came as no surprise. Kim Jong-un is taking great advantage of these conflicts. Remember, North Korea is under sanctions. There are applicable UN Security Council sanctions, U.S. sanctions, and other sanctions meant to do away with North Korea's production and proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Kim Jong-un had his idea of implementing his policy of Gyeongjin, which means the simultaneous development of nuclear weapons and the economy. What we've been telling him is that what we need is CVID, complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization, also known as FFVD, full final verifiable denuclearization of North Korea. Look, Kim Jong-un, you cannot have both. If you keep developing a nuclear program, you'll be under sanctions. Your economy will not develop. What Kim Jong-un is doing now is to prove that his Gyeongjin policy is actually working. Because he's in possession of his nuclear deterrent, he's able to deploy conventional forces, also to export ammunition, weapons, and ballistic missiles to troubled regions, to the Ukrainian front, to the Middle East. This is his version of Gyeongjin. He's in possession of nuclear weapons. He has the capability to deploy his conventional means, his conventional capabilities. Thus, the longer the Russian aggression, the Russian war in Ukraine continues, the more money Kim Jong-un will make. Fascinating. Give me a picture of this guilt by association system. North Korea's guilt by association system can be traced back to the feudal days in Korea. This is how it used to be. Up to three generations of the same family used to be punished for the perceived wrongdoings of one individual. North Korea also applies a system called Songbun. This is a loyalty-based social classification system. They have a core class, about 20 to 25 percent of the population, a wavering class, 40 to 60 percent of the population, and a hostile class, 20 to 25 percent of the population. Many in the hostile class end up in run-down regions in the Northeast or in detention facilities, political prison camps, or re-education through labor camps. Basically, this is a way of holding people hostage. Who is classified as loyal? Well, if you trace your lineage back to the people who fought alongside Kim Il-sung against the Japanese colonial occupation, then you're the very core of the core, the most loyal. Who is perceived to be hostile class? Those who had ancestors who were landowners, entrepreneurs, those who were government officials during the Japanese imperial colonial administration, those who have a religion, those who have relatives suspected of being religious followers. If you get caught in possession of a smuggled religious book, for example, a Bible, you're in very big trouble in North Korea. Even an orthodox Marxist might be in trouble in North Korea if the orthodox Marxist realizes that Marxism is against heredity and this regime of the Kim family has passed on power from the grandfather to the son in July 1994 and from the son to the grandson in December 2011. So, perceived wrongdoers, wrong thinkers, those suspected of having engaged in wrong associations are punished, classified as disloyal, hostile class. And this multi-generational punishment is one of the elements, one of the factors that have maintained the Kim regime in power for so long since 1948, if not 1945, when Kim Il-sung arrived in North Korea in a Soviet Red Army officer's uniform. Before we continue, and I really want to understand how this Kim family dynasty intersects with the fact that it's a communist society. Before we go there, tell me a little bit about yourself and your background. Jan, I'm a naturalized American. I was born and raised in communist Romania. Romania was the one Eastern European country most similar to Kim Il-sung's North Korea. Why? Because in 1971, the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, visited Pyongyang, North Korea for the first time. He met with Kim Il-sung and he absolutely fell in love with the North Korean cult of personality. Thousands upon thousands of people gathering to worship the great and supreme leader. And he literally wanted to transform Romania into the North Korea of Eastern Europe. The 1980s were terrible. Just like Kim Il-sung, he tried to forcibly industrialize the country. He borrowed immense amounts, enormous amounts of money from overseas. He had this ambition of becoming self-reliant, just like the North Koreans, remember the ideology of self-reliance. So he exploited and oppressed the people of Romania to pay back the foreign debt. So this country, as you recall, I'm sure, used to be known as the breadbasket of Europe. People were standing in food lines, electricity, power would be cut off, water, running water would be cut off. So the 70s and 80s, the 80s in particular, very, very, very bleak years. So in December 1989, we had an anti-communist revolution. We lost quite a few people, people in my generation. I was a freshman at Bucharest University studying English language and literature at the time. And I was right in the midst of it on the streets with other young people. Then as soon as the country opened up, I saw an opportunity on the bulletin board to take exams for scholarships overseas. I wrote my essays. One of them I had been reading quite avidly about developmental models. And one of these developmental models was the Han River Miracle, South Korea's astounding economic development over just a few decades. They went from rags to riches, from one of the world's poorest countries to an economic powerhouse. I wrote one of my essays on the Han River Miracle. The Romanians had had relations only with the North Koreans since 1949. In March 1990, they established relations with the South Koreans. So the newly established South Korean embassy was given my exam paper and they said, well, would like this young man to be the first Romanian ever to study in South Korea on a South Korean government scholarship. So I went to South Korea, my first time outside the country. Remember, unlike even Poland or Hungary or other countries in Eastern Europe, Romania was completely isolated. It was extraordinarily difficult to get out of the country. So I landed in South Korea. I did one year language training at Seoul National University. Then I got my B.A. and M.A. in International Relations at Seoul National University. I worked there in media broadcasting for a while, then came here, went to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy up in Massachusetts, Medford, Somerville, Tufts University. And then I've spent the past 22 years in D.C. working in international development for six plus years, Korea Economic Institute for three plus years. And then the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, HRNK, since July 2013. So my commitment to human rights in North Korea comes from my background. I was born and raised in the one Eastern European country that was most similar to Kim Il-sung's North Korea. And I spent a decade, 10 years studying, working, living on a divided Korean peninsula in South Korea. So it's a very personal matter, I have to say. Explain to me how this works. You've got this hereditary progression of the supreme leaders. And at the same time, you've got this history of communist principles being applied. And even much as they may not be applied directly, they're still operational as I understand it. This is a natural progression of communism. It always ends like this in a dystopian kleptocratic dynasty. If Eastern European countries hadn't been brave enough or lucky enough to get rid of communism in 1989, who knows what we might be witnessing today. North Korea, of course, the DPRK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established by the Soviets with Soviet assistance. Kim Il-sung learned how to run political prison camps. He learned how to set up his own gulag from the Soviets. Of course, he gave it his own personal touch. Then he decided that power was a great thing. He was going to keep power to himself and he was going to pass it on to his offspring. Again, North Korean people are subjected to an absolutely overwhelming ideological bombardment day in and day out. At least once a week, depending on their job, they have to engage in self-criticism and ideological indoctrination sessions. You engage in self-criticism, say, comrades, I've done this and this and that wrong. And I pledge to recite the 10 principles of monolithic ideology, the TPMI, a hundred times and become a better person. Then you pick on somebody else in the audience. You criticize that person, that person engages in self-criticism. It goes on and on and on and on. Colloquially, these are called struggle sessions, right? You can also call them struggle sessions, yes. Okay, you hear that younger people kind of fake it and they prearrange it. But this has been part of the life of North Koreans for so long. Basically, this ideology has been used and abused and perverted to the point where, although North Korea has a constitution, believe it or not, and by the way, we have even posted an English translation on our webpage, hrnk.org. Please excuse the shameless active self-promotion. Their constitution includes a wording on freedom of the press, freedom of expression. They have a labor legislation. They've acceded to international human rights treaties. They're bound by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Having become a UN member state together with the ROK, the Republic of South Korea in 1991, they've ratified the two covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Women's Convention, the Children's Convention, the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. None of this matters. The North Korean people have zero access to these documents. They have zero access to their constitution. All they're taught is the 10 principles of monolithic ideology, which are the 10 fundamental tenets, the 10 commandments of the Kim family regime, the overarching messages, obey, obey, obey. People are not taught to debate. They don't debate what they're taught. If they debated Kim Il-sung thought, Kim Il-sungism, the Juche ideology of self-reliance, any element of North Korean ideology would collapse in an instant if somebody applied logic, coherent logic to analyzing this ideology. But it's not about coherence. It's not about debates. It's all about memorization, recitation, brainwashing, indoctrination. That's how North Korea has worked. Of course, there have been some changes in recent years after a great famine that killed up to 3 million North Koreans who died of starvation and starvation-induced disease markets. Informal markets have developed as a coping mechanism because people can no longer rely on the public distribution system. Through these informal supply lines, leading from the large wholesale markets close to the border with China, to wholesale markets in the provinces, to retail markets, information has been traveling. There are radio stations, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, stations based in South Korea that broadcast into North Korea. Through these markets, initially VHS tapes, then CD-ROMs, DVDs, USBs, these days micro SD cards have been smuggled in. More North Koreans are familiar with the Hallyu, the Korean wave, K-pop, K-drama, K-music, you name it. K-drama, K-movies. There is an increasing trend among the young people of North Korea to dress and act like young people in South Korea. And this is all because of these imported elements of South Korean culture that's so popular all over the world. BTS is not only a K-pop band, it's a global cultural phenomenon. 200 million followers worldwide. It's very interesting. Young North Koreans are even using South Korean dialect, some of them at least. One example, one very senior former North Korean was telling us about, he was showing us pictures from a wedding. So the name, the last name to us is Lee. In South Korea, it's Lee. In North Korea, it has an R. It's Lee. But this young lady's name, the bride's name was written in South Korean style, not Lee, but Lee, and it was in plain sight. We've had reports of cops who stop people on the street if they overhear them using South Korean dialect. So because he's so terrified of South Korean culture, Kim Jong-un has decided to make some fundamental ideological changes. For two reasons, actually. Reason number one, because he fears South Korean cultural imports. He knows that North Korean people, young people, are becoming addicted to South Korean culture. Number two, he wants to forge his own cult of personality. So what is he doing? He's doing away with some of the fundamental tenets of the grandfather's ideology. Unification is one of them. To Kim Il-sung, unification was a very big deal. To Kim Il-sung, language was a very big deal. He states something along the lines of, even if you share the same national space, you're not the same nation unless you speak the same language. Now Kim Jong-un has made statements over and over and over again that this is not the same nation anymore. These are two countries at war. So he's walking away from his grandfather's notion of unification. He is, well, the most important holiday in North Korea is the day of the sun, Taehanjul, April the 15th. This is Kim Il-sung's birthday. This year, for the first time ever, it was mentioned only once in the Nodongshinmun, the party's official newspaper, as Taehanjul, as the day of the sun. Everywhere else, April the 15th. Why? He's trying to tone down the grandfather's cult of personality to elevate his. Is he going to be successful? We don't know. Is he making a strategic mistake? In a highly ideological totalitarian regime, he is diminishing the ideological factor, creating a vacuum. What can we do about it? Well, fill in that vacuum with information from the outside world, empower the people of North Korea, try to induce peaceful transformation by means of telling them the story of their own human rights violations, the story of the outside world, in particular free, prosperous, democratic South Korea. Tell them the story of the corruption, the abysmal corruption of their regime, in particular the inner core of the Kim family. Tell them the story of their own right to self-determination and tell them the story of Korean unification. This is not a matter of choice. It's a matter of destiny. For 1,000 years prior to their separation, they shared the same language, the same culture, the same civilization, and lived, most importantly, under the same political system for 1,000 years. I always tell my young Korean friends in South Korea that, you know, this is not a matter of choice. It's really a matter of destiny. So we'll see how it goes. I think that the people of South and North Korea should have all full support to accomplish, to reach the ultimate resolution of the North Korean conundrum, combining human rights violations, crimes against humanity, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles. That unique resolution, the one and only resolution of this conundrum, is unification under a free, prosperous, democratic, economic powerhouse, Republic of Korea, a staunch friend, ally, and partner of the United States of America.