North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Marcel Dirsus: What makes North Korea’s dictatorship unique from others

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

In his newly published book, “How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive,” political scientist Marcel Dirsus examines the workings and malfunctions of dictators around the globe, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.  He joins the podcast to discuss the differences between authoritarian systems, how tyrants come into and fall out of power, and the unique […]

Navigating the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula requires more than just information. It demands insight. Korea Risk Group offers strategic consulting that cuts through the noise. Our experts provide in-depth analysis, risk assessments and bespoke reports, all tailored to your specific needs. Whether you're exploring new opportunities or managing existing challenges, our insights can be your compass. To learn more about how we can help you make informed strategic decisions, visit careerrisk.com slash solutions today. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetsloot, and this long interview was recorded on Monday, the 12th of August, 2024.

And joining me here via StreamYard, I have Dr. Marcel Dirses, who is a political scientist, in addition to being a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University in Germany. He is a member of the Standing Expert Committee on Terrorism and Interior Security at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Hello to my friends at the Stiftung. It's been a while since I've seen you. Dr. Dirses mainly works on regime instability, political violence, and German foreign policy. He has advised democratic governments, foundations, multinational corporations, and international organizations like NATO and the OECD.

And we're here to talk about his new book called How Tyrants Fall and How Nations Survive. And he has his own website, www.marcelledirses.com, which we'll put on the show notes, and he's on Twitter at Marcel Dirses, all one word. Welcome on the show, Dr. Dirses. Thank you very much for having me. So how did you turn your attention to the questions of how tyrants fall?

You know, I think as a German, I've long been interested in the question of dictatorships and the way that non-democratic systems of governments work. But really, what got my attention ultimately and what made me decide to actually write the book as opposed to just researching it. Hang on, I should jump in there and ask, are you, I don't know your age, are you a post-unification German? Just about 1990.

Okay, all right. Good. Okay. So you are neither an Aussie nor a Wessie. You're a united German man. Yeah, but you know, having had the privilege, obviously, of growing up in freedom, given German history, I've always had an interest in the way that these systems of government function. But what made me ultimately want to not just research the topic, but write about it in a

more popular context, is just the general situation that we see in the world. So on the one hand, you have these tyrants, these dictators, these, you know, Kings running rampant, you know, creating all sorts of destruction around the world. But then obviously tyranny is not just something that happens over there. It's also something that can happen here. And I think that combined risk made me want to write a book that could get more people thinking about these sorts of issues. And you also have a unique experience of working, I believe, in a brewery in, I forget which Congo helped me remember which Congo it was.

Democratic Republic of Congo. Yeah, that's right. So I mean, you know, I went to university in the UK and in France, and I ultimately ended up doing my master's at Oxford in Russian and East European studies. And even back then I was looking at the Politburo, so I was already interested in the way that these systems function. But then afterwards I decided to see a bit of the world.

So I did the most natural thing that one could possibly do, which is to work in a brewery in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then the natural next step, so to speak. Which when I was growing up, I think was known as Zaire, right? Yeah, that's right. So you know, Kinshasa. That's right. And I was far away from the capital

in a city called Lubumbashi and a coup attempt happened in Kinshasa. And I found out about it. I was quite far away. But ultimately, it came rather too close for comfort, because while I was walking back to work, I was quite far away, but ultimately it came rather too close for comfort because while I was walking back to work, I heard shooting and all of a sudden it wasn't just in one direction, but it was in two directions and it was in three directions. And that was a very uncomfortable situation. And then I heard something louder and explosion.

And of course that made me really uncomfortable to the point of, you know, I almost want to say panic because this is not something that I'd experienced before. So I talked to colleagues and I said, look, what are we going to do? And they basically said nothing. You know, they'd experienced this kind of instability before. Nothing bad had ever happened to them. And obviously we had the privilege of being within a compound behind high walls. So they were okay with it.

And that day I could never really get out of my head because I always wondered, you know, how can it be that some countries have this constant instability and people aren't even really faced by it anymore. And that got me into doing a PhD on the topic. And that eventually led to this book. Now you point out in your book, of course, that each authoritarian system is its own thing. It's sui generis. Syria is not North Korea, which is not Turkmenistan for example.

The example you just gave of the Democratic Republic of Congo had a lot of instability, a lot of regime changes over a short period of time. North Korea the complete opposite. We've got three generations of the same leader and complete, in a sense, interior stability really for most of that 70 years with a little bit of a hiccup during the arduous march period of the great famine. But I'm curious to see what general points you're able to make regarding dictatorships or tyrannies as a whole. Is there a golden thread or two that you can draw out about all of them? What constitutes them or what helps them stay alive?

Yeah, like you say, all of these systems are different and there's only so far that you can really generalize across these systems. But I do think there are some features that they have in common. So what I was interested in in the book are basically systems of government in which very few people at the top hold a lot of power. And this leads to a situation in which they don't just have a lot of power, but they are also the most dangerous to the person in charge. So the less democratic your system of government becomes, the more you have this concentration at the top. And as you get this concentration at the top, the leader, the dictator has to become more and more worried about the people around him and at the same time,

losing power becomes more and more dangerous. So to give you just one statistic, you know, when political scientists looked at what happens to these types of leaders after they lose power, they found that 69% of personalist dictators ended up in exile, jail, or killed once they lose power. So it is this combination really that I'm interested in. Systems of power where a lot is concentrated at the top, and the high risk of something terrible happening to you when you lose power. I think this combination of these two things does a lot to the way that these systems of government function and what leaders try to do when they are in power. of these two things does a lot to the way that these systems of government function

and what leaders try to do when they are in power. In citing that statistic just a moment ago, you used the phrase personalist dictator. Now my understanding of that is that that's a dictator where there's a lot of importance in the identity of that person. So it's a cult of personality, if you will. Is that more or less the right way to understand it? Yeah, the way that you can look at it is that there are obviously multiple types of non-democratic governments and they are structured differently. So if let's say I come to power in Germany through a military coup, I'm going to be governing something like a junta.

And then it's going to tell me something about the structure of that regime and the types of people that I have to take care of. So you could have, let's say a military junta is one thing. Then you have non-democratic systems of government that are based on very strong parties. So this might be something like China before Xi Jinping, or it might be something like Vietnam, where yes, you have somebody in charge and that person has outsized influence, but they are still very much checked by a party. And then you have systems of government that really evolve around personalities. And that would be something like, let's say Gaddafi's Libya,

would also be something like North Korea. Now, one theme that, this brings me very naturally to my next question, one thing that crops up time and time again when studying North Korea and other dictatorships is this, which plays a greater role in explaining the system? Is it the leader or is it the institutions? There sort of seem to be two theories or ways of looking at the great man theory or the institutional theory.

What can you say generally about that? Yeah, the book is mostly focused on systems. Because my argument is that once you are in the system, you cannot really step down, because the risk of doing so is extremely high. But in order to try to stay in power, you have to make all kinds of tradeoffs. And doing so is extremely difficult. And as a result, these systems are a lot more fragile than we often believe. So much of the book is focused on this interaction that the dictator has with the people that keep him in power. But that is not to say, of course, that leaders don't matter at all. So I talk a little bit about psychology, including about Kim Jong-un, for example. And I do believe that leaders can make a difference, of course. But I think oftentimes, you know, we talk about this idea that these leaders have absolute power, you know,

that they don't need anybody to do as they please. And I think that's a myth, you know, no political leader has ever had absolute power. Even somebody like Kim Jong-un relies on other people in order to maintain his position. Okay, now there are, as you've already hinted at, a limited number of ways that a tyranny can end. So let's sort of list them and say a few words about them.

So we've got revolutions. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, we've got essentially we've got things that relate to the elites that directly keep the dictator in power. And then we have things that relate to the masses. And then we have some things that are sort of, you know, a little bit out of the ordinary, like assassination. So if you take it from the top, we have these sort of palace coups where people are directly overthrown from the power brokers and from the palace elites. Then you have your military coups.

In every society, the military has an outsized influence on who has power specifically in these dictatorships. In every society, the military has an outsized influence on who has power, specifically in these dictatorships. Then you rightly point to these revolutions, you know, brought about through mass uprisings. Then you also have rebellions, of course, that can bring down these leaders. It's become more rare, but it does happen. You have the threat of foreign invasion and you have assassinations, which are something of a wild card.

Right. Okay. And also, of course, natural death. Natural death, yeah. And that's actually something that I'm quite fascinated with because I asked myself when I was writing the book, you know, how can it be that a lot of these people die in power? And there's an interesting theory around it, which is that the elites that keep these dictators in power only allow the dictator to die in their sleep if they already set on a potential successor. Because if they weren't, they would have a strong incentive to make a first move because they want to keep the system running or because they want to improve their situation. So it seems to be the case that a lot of the time when that happens, when they just fall asleep,

when they die of some terrible illness, it is because the people around the dictator believe that the system will keep running even if they die. Do you believe that most tyrants live in fear or at least in a state of mental uncertainty most of the time? Absolutely. I think much of what these dictators do is worry about their death and is worry about the people that could stab them in the back at any moment. Because the big or one of the big problems that you have if you're a dictator

is that you never truly know who is really loyal and who is just pretending to be because the stakes are so high. So this is called the dictator's dilemma. You know, if let's say you deliver an unpleasant truth to your boss, you know, you might get demoted, you might even get fired, or perhaps you have a bad day at work. But in these systems, delivering bad news to the dictator, telling him the truth can mean death. It can mean work camp. So you're in a situation in which losing power is extremely dangerous. You don't know who around you is actually loyal. And the stakes are extremely high. So I think in some ways it's quite a miserable existence. But more importantly, you know, it's not about the discomfort that the dictator

might experience, it's about the impact that these incentives have on the way that these systems are governed. Now North Korea is unusual among the modern day nation states that you discuss in your book, because the leadership has nation states that you discuss in your book because the leadership has been able to pass down in succession through three generations without general turmoil or tumult or violence within the country. What different factors, and I know you're not a North Korea expert, but what different factors could this be due to?

What things could be influencing this? Yeah, so on the general point of succession, democracies are extremely good at dealing with succession. Olaf Scholz loses power, the next person walks in, Rishi Sunak loses power, Keir Starmer walks in. It is something that democracies are, comparatively speaking, very good at. Dictatorships have a massive disadvantage when it comes to succession, especially these personalistic dictatorships. And the reason for that is that in these systems, dictators try to gear the entire system to keep them in power, and that means they take apart the institutions that could credibly oversee a succession process.

So there's, if you look at something like Germany, the US, UK, and so forth, there's a way to select the next person. And if there are disputes, there's a court system and these disputes can be adjudicated by some functioning institution. In dictatorships, you often don't really have anything like that. You might have it on paper, but you don't really have it on practice. And at the same time, dictators tend to be very wary of setting up a potential successor because the moment that you give power to

a potential successor, that potential successor has a large incentive to get rid of you because that would mean that they would likely take over power and you also create an alternative power center that is a threat in and of itself. So as a result, these types of systems tend to be incredibly bad at organizing succession and it's a weak spot. So you're right to say that North Korea is highly unusual in that they have managed to do it multiple times, which I don't want to say it's impressive because I don't want to give them credit for it, but at the very least it's quite

unusual. So I think there are two things that are at play here. The most important factor really are the elites around the leader, so to speak. Because if you're a part of these palace elites, so in the case of North Korea, if you're one of the generals, you're one of the people that's an important civil servant in Pyongyang, you're one of the people bringing in the hard currency and so forth, you don't really care about the dictator as much as you care about the system itself, because it's the continuity of the system itself that gives you your power and that gives you your

way of life. So when this moment does arise where the old leader is out and you have to make a choice on whether you want to support the new leader or not, you are going to try generally to go for the choice that is most likely to keep the system running, even though there are risks with that as well, because as we know, a new leader comes in, you know, you usually have some purchase, they want to make sure that they get their people in key positions and so forth. But your chance is still better if the system itself keeps running.

And you see that mechanism at play, not only in North Korea, but also in places like Syria, for example. So the old Assad dies, the elites have to figure out who they're going to support next because they want to avoid the system itself breaking down. So they support Bashar al-Assad because he's a regime preserving option that keeps the system alive and that keeps them in power. And I think what's interesting about North Korea, though, is not just this management of the elites, but also the management of the public at large. And the public is important mostly because they signal to the elites what types of choices would be acceptable and what types of choices

would be most likely to keep the system running. So if you have an intense cult of personality focused on the Kims, that might also hone in on the potential successor before that person has to take over. That is important because it tells elites, okay, look, the public is in control. They're not going to revolt. They might even actively support this. And that makes it easier for them, I think, to go for that choice. And then obviously anything in North Korea related to regime stability also

relates to just brute force, right? So I mean, the risks of challenging the regime, obviously massive. You just said that in such systems that the people down below, the ordinary people, they send a message up about what kind of leadership choice they'll accept. I'm wondering how does that message get conveyed?

Because in North Korea, it's very much, it seems to me at least structurallyurally a top-down messaging system. Yeah, no, I think you're right. So when I say that they signal sort of what they would approve of or disapprove of, I don't mean it in the sense of they'll write letters saying, no, we'd rather have this candidate or we'd rather have this candidate. But I think if you're a North Korean general, you know that you're dealing with a population that has been brainwashed and repressed, essentially forced to accept the system for multiple decades. So in other types of non-democratic governments, you might have to worry how the public would react. But I think in North Korea, that's a much smaller concern because you know that, A, you could repress the public if need be, but B, a lot of them probably genuinely do support the continuation of the regime because they've

been blasted for propaganda for so long that they really can't help themselves. Does that make the North Korean system somehow unique or is its leadership system more stable, less brittle? The difficulty of studying these types of regimes is that obviously there's a lot we don't know. So yes, we know that so far these successions have worked out, but we never know how close it was. Maybe they were close to opposing the successor.

Maybe something went on in those back rooms. And these systems, they're not just difficult to study, but a lot of them also seem stable until they very much aren't. So when you study these systems, when they do fall, you often arrive at this tipping point where everybody that previously supported the regime all of a sudden pretends that they never did because the system is at risk of collapsing or has collapsed. So yes, clearly, this regime is very durable, and that sets it apart from a lot of other regimes, but that doesn't necessarily tell us something about the future, and we don't really know how close they might have gone to

collapse. Right. Looking at it at the moment, of course, it just seems that circumstances and the flow of history have conspired to make North Korea the most durable system in which, at least right now, there are more factors impeding the collapse of the regime than there are those that would hasten such a collapse. Because as you say, we don't know in advance how these things will play out. And, you know, at some point in the future, things will change and we may look back and see signs that we can't see at the moment. Yeah, I think the North Korean regime has probably two key advantages in comparison to a lot

of these other systems. I would say the first one is that they have succeeded in making it extremely difficult for the public to oppose the regime. So you have dictatorships in which people are still able to mobilize somehow outside of the control of the regime. There might be trade unions that are observed, but that can sort of operate, or there might be more access to the media, or it might be possible for people to actually come together to protest, demonstrate, to challenge the regime. And obviously, the North Korean government has been extremely successful at preventing that from happening. So that's the first thing that I think sets them apart.

And I think the second thing that sets them apart is that they have found a very effective way in order to reduce the risk of foreign attack, because usually what you have in these systems is that you primarily need to take care of the threats that are closest to you. So like I said, these palace elites and the men with guns. But the problem is that when you do that, you run into traitors that hurt you down the line. And one of these is related to what is called coup-proofing. So coup d'etat are a major threat to basically every dictator,

and they have to get to work in order to reduce that threat. And usually what happens is that as you reduce the threat, the internal threat of your men with guns, your military then becomes less effective at taking care of external threats. So as you structure your military in a way that it is not a threat to you personally, you then become more vulnerable to foreign attack. And I think the North Korean regime has succeeded at finding ways in preventing that foreign attack without going too far towards the other side. You've already talked about the top level elites. In the book, you use the phrase the winning coalition. How small can this winning coalition

of top level elites be? And what are the kinds of people that make it up? Tiny. The coalition can be absolutely tiny. So if we just take a democracy in comparison, essentially what differentiates these systems is how many people you really need in order to stay in power. So if you come out of Harris, for example, and you want to, you know, win, win the presidency and, you know, stay in the white house as president, you will need to convince millions of people to back you. And if you don't, then you're not going to make it into power, you're not going to make it into the presidency. And on the other hand,

of the spectrum, you have something like North Korea, where you definitely don't need millions of people in order to maintain power, you know, all that Kim Jong-un really needs, are, you know, some key people in Pyongyang, and they might be generals, they might be high ranking people in the party. And if he is able to maintain the support of these, let's say, few hundred people or few hundred families, then he will be able to maintain power because the masses really have very little of it. And there's very little that they can do to actually challenge him. But the inverse of that, and this is sort of where things become unfortunate for leaders like Kim Jong-un, is that, yes, he only

needs maybe a few hundred people in order to maintain power, but those few hundred people also have a huge amount of influence on his rule in theory. And that's why dictators will usually try whatever they can in order to either co-opt these elites or to make it more difficult for these elites to conspire against them. Are you suggesting that this winning coalition of a few hundred top elites might actually be a check on Kim Jong-un's power? Yeah, I think it always has. It always is for every dictator, because, you know, like I said, I think this idea that some of these people hold

absolute power is a myth. So they know that they need other people in order to maintain power. And whenever you know that they need other people in order to maintain power. And whenever you know that you need to maintain other people to stay in power, you are somewhat checked. Now, that doesn't mean that he's sort of primus inter paris, and he necessarily has to do what an individual general might want, but he definitely has to take into account what their preferences are. And sometimes you think, well, you know, you can just kill anybody that disagrees with him. And obviously, yeah, Kim Jong-un can kill some people, but there is only so far

that you can take repression and that you can take purges, you know, purges are so to speak, as much as an art, as they are a science, you know, if you're a dictator, yes, you know, it's a good idea to purchase somebody every now and then to show that you are in control and to make sure that people are in line. But if you go too far, you risk end up, you know, you're risk ending up in a situation where, you know, the, the sort of elites around the table, you know, start to sweat and they think, Oh, you know, I, I might be next.

And if they think they might be in a situation where they could be next, even though they haven't done anything, they might be willing to take the risk of challenging the dictator, even though that is also extremely dangerous. And that's part of the reason why I think this idea that these dictators are irrational or crazy or mad men, it also doesn't make sense. Because if these people were crazy or just totally mad, they would lose power. And I look at some instances of this in the book. So I look at one case from West Africa where a dictator named Marcius and Gemma lost his mind and I mean, literally lost his mind, you know, I'm not saying like, Oh, you know, it was a bit strange. A lot of these people are quite strange, but he was delusional.

You know, he would walk around his palace, shouting out the names of the people that he had killed. You know, in one instance, he asked his servants to lay the table for eight people that he had invited for dinner, but nobody showed up. But he still talked to them as if they were there. In that scenario, the people that kept him in power decided they could be killed at any point because this man is no longer able to differentiate between friends and foes. So they made the first move and they got rid of him and he died.

And if Kim Jong-un were to lose his mind, something similar would happen to him as well. So it requires all these trade-offs and I think it's a lot more intricate than we imagine it to be. It's quite difficult to stay in power. Is there an example that you cite in your book of a country or a system where too many purges ultimately led to the downfall of the dictator? Yeah, I think the example of that would be Marcius and Gemma, because yes, you can purge,

yes, you can use brute violence, but you want to make sure to use violence in a way where there's still an advantage to supporting the regime. So if Kim Jong-un kills somebody because that person has openly challenged him, then the other elites will take the cue and they will say, okay, well, look, you know, he tried to assassinate the leader. He failed. He's going to go. But if you start assassinating or if you start executing people without reason, then at some

point there's really no more reason for the generals and for the high ranking party elites and so forth to keep a acquiescing to your role. I mean, you're essentially forcing them into opposing you. And in that situation, the only thing that then prevents you from being toppled are the mechanisms that you put in place in order to try to prevent people from coordinating. And that's just incredibly risky. So I think for dictators, it's a dangerous dance where they use co-optation, where they use repression, where they use opportunities for enrichment and structural factors in order

to try to manage these people that keep them in power. You also use the word selectorate in your book, which was a new word to me, I guess, opposed to the electorate. Is this the same as the winning coalition or is it a different concept? So when you think about the electorate and the winning coalition, one way to think about this is to think of the people that matter to keep the regime or to give the leader in power. That's sort of the electorate. So these are the people that generally speaking you want to look after. And the winning coalition is really the smallest number of people from that electorate that you need in order to maintain power. So to give an example

from the United States again, you know, the electorate are theoretically the voters, but obviously in reality you're only looking at a small number of people in swing states that you need to come convince. And when I say small number of people, there's still millions, right? So it's not like North Korea, but it's a relatively small number of people and that would be the winning coalition. Now in Kim Jong-un's case, who was, you know, definitely selected out of three sons by his father, Kim Jong-il, just like his father before him was chosen by his father, can we really talk about there being a electorate other than just the father that chose the next leader? That's a good question. Yeah, I think we can because even somebody like Kim Jong-un's father,

again, didn't have absolute power. So for things to go as he had planned, for the succession to go ahead, he needed at the very least the acquiescence of North Korean elites in Pyongyang. Or ideally, at least some of them have been good for him if they had been actively supportive. So yeah, you can make plans and clearly he had a massive influence on what happens next. But if enough of the North Korean elites had gotten together and rejected Kim Jong-un at great risk to themselves, obviously, then he wouldn't have been able to take over power. Or at the very least, he wouldn't have been able to maintain power for as long as he has, which I know has also surprised a lot of people. Now, being a third generation leader, does that make him somehow a prisoner of choices that his

father and grandfather made? I thought about this a lot when I was researching the psychology of these people, because quite clearly, a lot of these people, like I said, are not normal. You know, some of these people are psychopaths, they have a hard of these people, like I said, are not normal. Some of these people are psychopaths. They have a hard time showing empathy, really understanding other people. And I think in the case of people who inherit power, there's another element to this. So if you look at Kim Jong-un, this is a man who did not grow up under normal circumstances. I read an anecdote in a book where he enjoyed playing with mechanical toys. If he ever had a problem with one of those toys, they would just call an engineer. That engineer would have no choice but to come, whether it's 10

PM or 11 PM, because it's Kim Jong Un. If the little Kim Jong Un has an issue, you come, even if it's just related to a toy. So I think a lot of us are sort of the center of attention when we are children, but not to that degree. And even though we might be the center of attention at children, that eventually stops when we become adults and people start treating us normally. But I think for Kim Jong-un, that has just never stopped. You know, he's been almost like, you know, almost treated like deity, I suppose.

And inevitably that's going to have an impact on your psychology. And a lot of dictators fall victim to this because as they surround themselves with people that are yes men and that essentially only tell them what they want to hear, um, and they are celebrated as if they were some godlike figure. They develop an arrogance and they develop a hubris. And that combined with this bad information that they're being fed often leads them to make mistakes. And you see that in other contexts.

So when I look at, for example, Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, there's no doubt in my mind that that was related, A, to inaccurate information that he got because it's risky to tell him the truth, but also this hubris. It's like, yeah, I'm Vladimir Putin. I've been in power for this long. I've done all these great things. I've got all these people telling me I'm great. Why shouldn't I be able to conquer Ukraine? And that's a real risk for dictators.

Coming back to the idea of the structure, the leadership structure in North Korea. Now, I know you're not an expert of North Korea specifically, but still, you've already described to us the scenario in which Kim is not an absolute leader. He doesn't have complete unchecked power, but he's definitely the top among a small group of elites that keep him in power. Another scenario that I've read from other people or been told by other people is that Kim Jong-un himself is simply a puppet used by a small group of shadowy elites behind him that we may never actually see. Are there any signs that we would be able to point to to say it's either one or the other? Yeah, I mean, I think this is related to what I was saying about the difficulty of studying the other? Yeah, I mean, I think this is related to what I was saying about the difficulty of

you know, studying these regimes. Yeah, I mean, theoretically, that that's a possibility. But it seems quite unlikely to me. I like I said, I do think we underestimate the importance of the elites that keep dictators in power, because they do check them. And they do have an influence on their policy. And their preferences do have to be taken into account. But ultimately, it seems to me quite obvious that Kim Jong-un is still by far the most powerful actor in North Korea and the last person that you want to go up against if you really had to. One question that many have wondered since North Korea's famine of the mid to

late 1990s is why the ordinary people didn't blame the country's government for their hardships. In fact, in your book you quote one North Korean who lived through the famine as a teenager saying exactly that, quote, it never occurred to us to blame North Korea's dictatorial government for our hardships. Now, why is that? Why don't the people on the bottom rungs of any society, not just North Korea, why don't they commonly ascribe responsibility to their own government when its policies lead them into, in this case, starvation and death? I think propaganda plays a key role. I think it's quite easy for people like us to imagine that we would act differently in that situation. But of course,

I have no experience of growing up in North Korea. I've not been subjected to decades of propaganda from the North Korean regime. So it seems quite plausible to me that if you or I were subjected to that kind of treatment for multiple decades, then we would also be reluctant to blame the regime. And I think that's especially the case because all of these regimes blame some sort of external enemy for everything that goes wrong. So if there's popular protest, the CIA, if the economy is crashing, it sanctions. If some other thing goes bad, it was South Korean sabotage. So not only have you subjected people to decades of propaganda that tells you that the regime is infallible,

but also you have this external enemy that can be blamed. And I think in a sense, that is also more comfortable in these types of terrible situations. Because if let's say you have supported the regime for multiple decades, and then you were to come to realize that really, it's quite terrible, and that it has led you down a terrible path. I think that would lead, I mean, that has to be punishing in and of itself. So I think it might in that situation be easier to blame somebody else. Well, so yeah, talking about this concept of having an external enemy and being able to blame that for all the bad things, it seems to me that if, and now let me just back up and say for context,

until a couple of years ago, North Korea for many decades said all we want is a peace deal with the United States, an end of war declaration, some sort of guarantees of our own security and continued existence, and then we can live happily ever after. Now, it seems to me that if North Korea did sign a true peace deal with the United States, and if it pursued formal peaceful coexistence with its neighbor South Korea, that it might lead ultimately to a de-emphasis of security and military issues, and that might give the people of North Korea the freedom and the mental space to think about why their lives are so difficult and to actually blame their own government. Do you think that this thought process that I'm describing, that that's a logical thought process that might occur in such a situation? Yes, I think Kim Jong-un wants an enemy, an external enemy,

that he can blame for North Korea's ills, but I think there's an additional element to that, because you mentioned the military and like I said, every dictator has to take care of the military. But there are multiple ways of doing so. And one of the ways of doing so is I think something that the North Korean regime has been extremely successful at, which is to try to co-opt military leaders into supporting the regime. So that means expanding a lot of money on the military. That means perhaps giving them better houses than ordinary people. Maybe they get better food. Maybe they can shop differently than normal people.

So they give them a strong incentive to keep supporting the regime as is. And I think that also relates to prestige. So if the biggest problem in society are the South Koreans, then the people that defend you against that threat, which is the men with guns, will inevitably have a lot of prestige. And that makes it attractive. So I think, yes, you have the impact that something like that could have on society at large. But I think the more important impact might be the impact on the military. In that case, it seems that there are more disincentives to the government in Pyongyang

to allow the people's attention to turn away from the enemy at the gates, than there are incentives to actually pursue a real peace deal. Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, you know, like an improvement in relations with South Korea would obviously create additional opportunities for enrichment. So you know, since we can't, since, you know, Kim Jong-un cannot simply repress everybody that has an issue with his role, he needs to create some positive outcomes for some people in order to maintain his position. And obviously, you know, trade is an opportunity for corruption.

So it's also an opportunity for co-optation, it's an opportunity for patronage. So yeah, I mean, I think there could be some advantages to improving the relationship with South Korea, but it seems pretty clear to me that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. What are some structural factors that a tyrant can change in order to make popular mobilization more difficult, even in circumstances where

a large segment of the population is unhappy? So the way that popular protest can bring down these types of entrenched authoritarian regimes. Like we saw, for example, in Romania, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. So the mechanism through which that works is by splitting the regime. So the advantage that popular protest has as a means of opposing the government is that it has what is called a participation advantage. So to go out and protest against the regime is comparatively easy. A pensioner can do it, a teacher can do it, you know, sometimes people even bring their children.

Whereas other ways of opposing these regimes sometimes are very arduous and very difficult. So, you know, if I tell you, would you come to a protest? You are much more likely to say, then if I say, would you like to join our guerrilla campaign, uh, where we're going to fight, you know, fight the regime in the jungles, so you can bring out a lot of people very quickly through popular protest and that can eventually lead to a situation where the regime is forced into making a decision on whether they will use repression to prevent these protests from

spreading or whether they will let them go. And dictatorships obviously want to look strong. They want to look as if they're in control, as if the rule is inevitable. So they have a strong incentive to use repression to try to clear people off the streets. But if you do that the wrong way, the dictatorship risk a situation whereby they simply create a backlash and you get more and more and more people in the street and the risk only increases. So inevitably at some point, they then have to decide, are they going to shoot? Are they going to use tanks? Are they going to use soldiers to get rid of these people? And for many regimes that is the point at which they break because there will be people within the regime who will say,

no, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to fire on our own people. This will not happen. And that is how you can break apart these regimes. And that's what happened, for example, also in Eastern Germany, and like you say, many other regimes. But I think the advantage that North Korea, that the North Korean regime has is that they would have an easier time to shoot. But also it is much less likely that you even get this large number of people in the streets in the first place. And the reason for that is that I think, the space for political participation in North Korea is so narrow

that it's really extremely difficult for protests to even start, because you cannot use social media to get people out in the streets. The media is controlled by the government. There's no freedom of expression. And also, they are willing and capable of using such brute force that they can essentially evaporate that participation advantage of popular protest because nobody is going to

go out and protest if they think they will die. And in North Korea, that is not just a possible scenario, but that is a probable scenario. And that makes it extremely difficult for North Koreans to go out and protest. Half of your book's title is And How Nations Survive. Now, since its foundation in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has laid claim to all of the territory on the Korean Peninsula, including the land controlled by the government in Seoul. The reverse is also true. The Republic of Korea claims all of the territory of the Korean Peninsula.

Now, while Kim Jong-un last year in December said that he's no longer interested in unifying with the South, or at least he's no longer interested in the people of the South unifying with the people of the North. The fact is that North Korea still presents an alternate vision of Korea. On measures of economics, public health, citizens' longevity and human flourishing, North Korea falls way behind South Korea in those metrics. Can North Korea survive as a nation apart after Kim Jong-un? I think North Korea's history shows that they are capable of managing succession, even though it's something that these systems are not good at. So yes, I can imagine a scenario in which North Korea survives more or less intact after another succession. But I do think that

every succession brings massive risk. And if I think about the ways that the system could crumble, I would definitely look out for successions. Because it's not God-given that you're always going to have a candidate that the elites in Pyongyang will be able to agree on. It's not God-given that you have a successor that will even survive as long. What if somebody has a freak heart attack? What if somebody gets assassinated, for example? Because I think part of the problem when we think about North Korea in terms of potential

democratization is that a lot of people within the country are undoubtedly convinced that there's really no alternative, that things will just keep on going. And if you think that there's no feasible alternative, you're not going to risk much in order to try to make it happen. But history is weird. Weird things happen. And I can easily imagine a scenario in which it all collapses. Now, could Kim Jong-un choose to democratize the country while he himself remained in charge? I think that would be suicidal. I think... Why that?

Well, because if you're Kim Jong-un or if you're any dictator, really, you make a lot of enemies. Because of the structure of these regimes, you are almost forced to govern against the vast mass of the population. Because when money comes in, you want to give it to the people that are already rich. When there's a way to divide up the pie any other way, you you want to give it to the people that are already rich. When there's a way to divide up the pie any other way, you always want to make sure that the people in the countryside that really don't have much influence on keeping you in power get as little as possible.

In addition to that, people are tortured, people are killed, people are sent to camps. You commit all kinds of atrocities in order to maintain power. And when the country turns into a democracy, there are inevitably going to be calls for accountability. So for Kim Jong-un to decide to democratize would be accepting death or at the very least imprisonment. So he's not going to do it. Now, in your book, you write that exile was common for dictators or ex-dictators until recently and that one in five dictators who lost power after the end of the second world war had fled abroad. Why is exile as an option no longer as appealing? Yeah, exile used to be quite

common but I think what changed is our attitude towards providing exile to these types of leaders and the structure of international justice. So it used to be that if you were a loyal dictator somewhere in Francophone Africa and you are being ousted by your people, there was a strong possibility that the former colonial power would take you in and you might be able to have a nice tranquil retirement somewhere on the French coast. But now in our democracies, people are very, very, very reluctant to provide an exile option to these types of leaders. There's outrage, people don't want them, got NGOs saying that leaders have to be held

accountable and so forth. And none of this is a bad thing. These people should be held accountable. And in addition to that, you have sort of, you have advantages of international justice. So even though you might not be held accountable by a domestic court, there's now a possibility that you could be held accountable for war crimes

or crimes against humanity by another court in a distant land. And that of course is a great thing, you know, because it provides a deterrent. And if even one thing, you know, because it provides a deterrent. Um, and if even one dictator, you know, thinks about that at the moment when he decides to give an order to shoot, that is a great thing. But the flip side of that is that dictators that have committed atrocities, that have torture, that have committed war crimes now have an even stronger

incentive in order to do anything they can in order to maintain power because they know that the chances of them enjoying a tranquil requirement are very small. Or retirement rather. Yeah. Have you found any, coming back to succession, have you found any examples in researching your book of a dictator who chose a successor, say from among the elites and perhaps among family members, and the chosen successor said, actually, no, thanks. I haven't, but that's an interesting thing. I should look into that.

I wonder if that's possible or if that's just structurally just not something that you could do. No, I think it is structurally possible. I think the problem really arises the moment that you take power, because the moment you take power, you are structurally forced into making all of these difficult trade-offs and into harassing people, torturing them, and mistreating them badly. So once you have power, it is very difficult to give it up. But if I looked hard enough, I could probably find a few cases of people that didn't want it. Do you think it would be particularly difficult for a succession in North Korea to be handed over to a member to somebody who's not a member of the Kim family? Would that change everything or would it simply be accepted? I think North Korea experts would have a more substantial answer to me, but from my

research, I think the main impact that I would have is that it would complicate the relations with the masses because over decades you have primed the population in order to support the Kim dynasty. And if it's somebody that's not from that dynasty, but somebody else, you don't have that same And if it's somebody that's not from that dynasty, but somebody else, you don't have that same advantage of having brainwashed these people into supporting it. So I think it could be more complicated because the chances of public opposition would be higher. But I don't think it would be impossible because I think overall the power that the masses hold in North Korea is very small in comparison to the power of the elites. So it would probably be more

complicated, but I don't think it's impossible. Now, I want to finish up with an issue that I've been thinking about the last couple of weeks. And it takes a little while to set up the question. So bear with me. And listeners, I ask for their forbearance as well. Now, among those who believe that North Korea is essentially a country where human flourishing does not broadly occur, some view the system through a moral lens, perceiving North Korea as an ethical challenge to be resolved. And for such people, the only morally righteous path to improving the lives of the North Korean people would be to remove the top leadership, whether through exile, imprisonment, coup, or some other

more severe means, and to enact sweeping systemic change all at once. Now, conversely, there are others who don't frame the issue as a moral problem demanding a solution, but rather as a North Korea is a flawed system that can be gradually and incrementally transformed. This latter group feels that the best approach to bettering the lives of average North Koreans is to negotiate with the current leadership, persuading it where possible, offering deals, striking bargains, accepting what is feasible, and compromising on less practical demands. And so this contrast here is between those who see North Korea's situation as a moral imperative and the bargaining with the current leadership is immoral, and those who view it as a complex systemic challenge requiring nuanced incremental engagement with the existing power structure. And I wonder where you fall in that dichotomy.

Do you make a moral argument? The book is normative in that I say that democracy, by and large, is superior to dictatorships. So I wouldn't say that there's no moral argument to be made here. You know, I do have a preference for democracy. So if people want to hear the opposite, this is probably not the book for them. I think some of these questions are extremely difficult. And I thought about it in the context of the North Korean famine in the 90s. Because of course, at the time, some aid organizations decided to withdraw because they saw that the aid that they were providing was being diverted in order to keep the regime in power.

And, you know, in German, we call this a choice between the plague and cholera. You know, that I think in those types of situations, there are really no good options, either you don't provide aid and people that don't need to starve to death will starve to death, or you do provide aid and some people will eat more, but it will make it more likely that the regime itself will stay alive. So I think there are good arguments to be made in both directions. And I think it's really a judgment call. But what I would say is that it matters not just whether the system is toppled, but also how the system is toppled. So all things being equal, you have your best chance

of a sustainable outcome if regimes are toppled through nonviolent protest. But as we have discussed, that is highly unlikely in North Korea. So my question to the people who would prioritize toppling the regime would be, how? What's the realistic scenario in which it would happen? And what are the plans to deal with the contingencies that would undoubtedly arise from that? So I'm not adverse to it. But I think, let me put it this way, just as staying in power involves a lot of very difficult trade-off for dictators, trying to topple them also involves a lot of very difficult trade-off for dictators. Trying to topple them also involves a lot of very difficult trade-offs for the people trying to make it happen.

I think North Korea is perhaps the most difficult example of all, because a lot of people would be affected. You have the issue of weapons of mass destruction. Even if you take that out, you have the conventional force that could be brought to bear on South Korea. So I think these are extremely difficult issues. And to be honest with you, I'm glad I don't have to make that decision. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then I guess in a way you've already answered my last question, but I'll ask it anyway. So as you saw in Congo, sudden structural changes or regime collapses can often be bloody and tumultuous. Should outsiders who wish the best for the lives of the majority of the North Korean people, should they encourage or hope for sudden regime change or regime collapse?

Or should they hope for some sort of more gradual transition? Yeah, I mean, I think in the absolutely ideal scenario, Kim Jong-un decides to democratize the country. It's an orderly process. There's no bloodshed. There's no risk of civil war. Nuclear weapons are not being used. But I also think that's a highly unlikely scenario. And I would say that there's a difference, I think, between hoping for regime change and actively working towards making regime change a reality. Are you sort of hinting at those who, well, one of the methods of how tyrants fall, you mentioned foreign invasions. Is that what we're talking about here? Yeah, and I think, you know, like I said, I don't, since I'm not a North Korea expert,

I don't have a sort of set opinion on this, but just to talk about the pros and cons of this for a while, I think obviously, the South Koreans have talked about killing Kim Jong-un on more than one occasion, and there's a history of an assassination program of the South Koreans. And I can understand that as a method of deterrent because we're dealing with a personalist dictator here who is evidently not overly concerned with the wellbeing of the North Korean people. So in order to deter him, you need to find a way to do something that would hurt him.

And he clearly doesn't want to die. So I think it is perfectly logical to use the threat of assassination in order to try to keep him in bay. But I do think that also has some adverse effects. And since North Korea has nuclear weapons, that is a big, big issue. Because once this threat of decapitation or assassination exists, every conflict between the South Koreans and the North Koreans is potentially existential to Kim Jong-un. And if you combine that with the reluctance of dictators to devolve power to some sort of second in command, you could end up in a situation where the threat of decapitation

followed by some sort of conflict could lead to a nuclear war, even though neither side wants it. So I am very reluctant to recommend those types of strategies. But I would also say that there comes a point at which the destruction is so great and the risk of further conflict is so catastrophic that drastic action should be taken. But I think it is always a judgment call on that very particular case. You know, it is not something that I think, you know, you can't write a general book about the way these regimes work and then come down and say, yes, the South Koreans should do this or the South Koreans should do this. But I hope the book shows some of the pros and cons of pursuing these different policies and they show how difficult it really is. You mentioned earlier how exile seems to be an unrealistic option these days for a

number of factors, one of them being the sort of the international criminal court and sort of international attempts to get justice. I wonder, you know, North Korea is in a unique neighborhood because it has China as a neighbor and one of the scenarios that I've heard people raise is that, well, perhaps China could offer him a dacha somewhere in a safe compound of China, or Kim Jong-un rather, a retirement home, if things looked a bit desperate and said, look, you know, we'll give you a safe place and some bodyguards and make sure that the ICC can never touch you as long as the Communist Party of China is in charge. Does that seem like it would be a feasible option? It is feasible, but it's very risky and others have tried. China is in charge. Does that seem like it would be a feasible option? It is feasible, but it's very risky and others have tried.

So I have cases in the book where dictators would flee abroad thinking that they were safe and then the country that they fled to had a change of government. So all of a sudden, it was no longer a dictatorship, but it was now a democracy. And even though that might seem unlikely in the case of China, I think the Chinese government would look at it primarily transactionally. So if there's a new regime in charge in Pyongyang, I could easily imagine a scenario in which Beijing says, okay, look, I know we promised that we keep you safe, but ultimately we care more about good relations to this new regime in Pyongyang than we care about you because you really have no value anymore since you're not in charge anymore, so we're going to give you up for some trade advantage or for the withdrawal of

something. That is one of the difficulties in general of also succession in these dictatorships, because the moment you lose access to these levers of power, you don't really have much of a chip anymore that you can trade. However you lose power, there's always a risk of ending up in a very bad place and that's why they don't do it. It's a grim note to finish on, but that's what we'll have to finish for today. Thank you once again for coming on the podcast Dr. Marcel Dyrsos.

Thank you very much for having me. Listeners can check out his book, How Tyrants Fall and How Nations Survive, and you can also look at the website marceledyrsos.com and on Twitter at marceldearses. Thanks for listening and listen again next time. Explore the unofficial world of DPRK inspired apparel at NK News Shop. Dive into a captivating collection of North Korea themed t-shirts, hoodies and more at the NK News shop.

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