North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Yoon’s new vision for unification with North Korea and US-ROK summer drills

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

In a speech on Liberation Day, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol embraced a new vision of unification that seeks to “extend freedom” to the suffering masses in North Korea.  NK News CEO Chad O’Carroll and Lead Correspondent Jeongmin Kim join the podcast to discuss Yoon’s speech, which deviates from decades of policy toward Pyongyang by […]

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Immerse yourself in the pulse of Korea. Register now at events.koreapro.org. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetsloot and here we are. It is Tuesday, the 20th of August 2024 and I'm joined here in the studio by Chad O'Carroll and Jongmin Kim. Welcome back on the show, both of you. Good morning. Good morning. Our finest minds in the NK News team, surely.

Now we have to talk about some big things that have come up in the last week. Well, the first one of course is last Thursday's Liberation Day speech by President Yoon Sung Yeol. And that's of course a long tradition every year. Whoever as president gives a speech about, you know, normally it was, I kind of liken it to the the two minutes of hate in 1984.

Like, this is the day that we remember all the bad things that Japan did to Korea during the colonial period and talk about, you know, all the unresolved grudges and hurts and stuff. But this year, Japan didn't really get much of a look. And in fact, it was more about North Korea than Japan. Just a passing mention, Japan. Not Japan directly, but just colonialism. Well, I counted the three mentions,

one to Imperial Japan, and then two to about how Korea is now has caught up in terms of GDP per capita. So that wasn't even about the colonial period. And Peter pointed out that that's not even that accurate of a boasting that's right it comes down to exchange rate fluctuation but anyway. So the big focus there was on North Korea and the takeaway that I got from and this was harking back to his inauguration speech from three years ago Chad is that he said as long as the northern half of the peninsula isn't free, Korea's liberation is incomplete. Yes, he did say that.

Right, and that actually comes from the tradition of Kim Yong-sam, former president Kim Yong-sam also mentioning something like that in his milestone speech in 94, which was the previous unification roadmap. He did use the logic something like that, but different reasons that he gives. All right, so this is not entirely unprecedented or new, but certainly the emphasis on what

South Korea was going to do to bring freedom to North Korea, bring liberty to North Korea, that I think is very interesting, particularly where we are now with, with Kim Jong-un saying he's no longer interested in unification. So Chad, you wrote a big analysis piece for NK Pro. Tell us, what did you get out of it? Well, I think the first thing that leapt out at me from Yoon Seok-yool's speech is that he doesn't see North Korea as a partner in any way on this path to a unified Korea. In the past, when you've had these kind of unification roadmaps, there's been a lot of sort of phasing about the process involved and there being trust building, reconciliation, in some cases, polls and things of that ilk to try and garner support from the nation, both careers of the best way forward. There's also been the concept of having a kind of

European Union style structure where you have two different governments housed under the same supranational kind of entity working in collaboration for a fixed period of time. But in this, Yoon was really clear about their, I mean, he didn't spell out specifically, but it's it's blatantly clear in his remarks that the workers party of Korea has no place in the leadership of a unified career. Kim Jong-un has no place. There's a lot of rhetoric about 50 odd mentions of the word freedom. 51. about 50 odd mentions of the word freedom. 51. Yeah. Which again comes back to his inauguration speech in which you talked a lot about freedom

and liberty. Yeah. But he doesn't really separate the terms freedom and liberty, which is also a problem. And for me, I found it fascinating that he talks about a unified Republic of Korea. It's not just Korea. It's like the South Korea's official country name extending to the DPRK. And so I found that fascinating. Look, I kind of get where he's coming from. He's been dealt a position by Kim Jong-un that totally rejects unification under any auspices now.

Right. And it's also saying the flip side that South Korea is not a partner. Exactly. And also says that South Korea will be effectively consumed by the Workers' Party of Korea if it makes one step wrong. So it's a bit like a sort of game of tennis here. They're both responding in the same way to each other, mirroring to some extent. But it is notable because we've never seen a South Korean president so out there in terms of denying any agency whatsoever to the DPRK for... Not 100%, but close to, because he did he did say I mean after all of the you know We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that. We're gonna send information into North Korea

We're gonna talk to North Korea at the end of that Then he said oh and we'll also have we'd like to have some working party talks with North Korean government officials Yeah, I mean that's also not new the no that's never new but but I just want to say that it's not all Consistently, we won't talk to the North Korean government there was Initiative that wasn't that a dish a dish is right because like the whole logic sort of Does not have any place for a Kim Jong-un like you say and then you're like, oh we can do working-level talks I mean, I remember the Americans were

Offering talks and Saddam Hussein right up to the invasion in 2002. And we all know how that ends. John Wynne just spat some coffee back into her cup's listeners. Ice Americano, of course. Well, okay, but let me just kind of as a thought experiment here, sort of tease out what might be on Yun's mind or the mind of Yun's government, there could be talks with Kim Jong-un to offer him a graceful way out,

like a dacha in China or something like that. Idi Amin. Yeah, exactly, in Idi Amin, you go and live in exile. You don't get shot, you don't get hung up by your feet or more sensitive parts. So, you know, that could be what's on Yun's mind. Quite possibly, yeah. Good luck with that.

Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, so I had a bit of a Twitter engagement with one of our respected readers, David Maxwell, who I think he, I did a tweet thread about my analysis and I think he potentially read it as a critique, a very harsh critique by me of Yoon's policy and he was responding suggesting it's a fundamental change. I don't think there's any evidence to suggest it is beyond the rhetoric right now, because we haven't seen any figures yet to demonstrate that we can talk about this later, but all of the constituent parts of this program, including a human rights fund, international conferences, education programs-

Any more conferences than it is right now? Well, yes. Information dissemination campaigns. If the budgets of these, which is what I responded to Mr. Maxwell, are on par with what we see the State Department's DRL fund when it comes to North Korea information operations and human rights activities in the order of three, four, five million dollars a year, I don't think this is really anything. It's just because the DRL programs are tiny in budget for the nature of the problem that they're tackling.

And I think they, this low level of funding actually represents the reality that none of the major stakeholders here really want to shake up the status quo too much. So it is just retrocuting. Well, we maybe we're going to be surprised, but. By the way, for our listeners, what does DRL stand for? Department of, sorry, I can't remember, but Department of something labor. Department of democracy, human rights and labor.

Okay. And that fits under the, oh, that's a full department. Under the state department. Got department. Under the State Department. Got it. Right. Yeah, the Human Rights part, they should really add that to the acronym. DRL. DHRL.

DHRL. If you're listening. Chong-Win, what's your take on all this? Is this just rhetoric? Is he just talking to his base? Of course, President Yun can't go for re-election, so what's the point of pandering to your base at three years into a five-year single term election? First it was a bad speech in terms of structure not because of content I'm going to go into content later but in terms of

structure the presidential office high-level official explained that oh this is a three three seven structure as in three visions three tasks and seven action plans. Nobody got that until he said that but apparently there are and the three mission Three-vision thing there's three vision for unification part I think there was a good point in trying to do that in updating the 30 year old roadmap Because like you points out and the presidential office points out there hasn't been like a clear Picture of what a unified Korean peninsula may look like but then by saying unified ROK you made it pretty clear what the vision is like a unified South Korean version of creativity innovation into North Korean

northern side of the peninsula the three task thing I personally think that this was the core audience was domestic South Korean domestic as is with all the presidential speeches Honestly, because of the first prong of the three mission When we first read it, we thought it was really jarring to see all the mentions of anti unification forces anti freedom forces Anti-state anti-state forces wasn't in this speech directly, but it was in yesterday's speech using domestic dissent criticism as a first prong of a unification roadmap, it doesn't sound so unifying, but I could see that his logic was. It's a little bit condescending.

It's sort of like, we have to spread freedom to North Korea, which is the second prong, but in order to do that, we have to know what freedom is, but we don't know what freedom is that much, largely due to the, what he called pseudo intellectuals who delude the constituency, delude the voters what freedom actually is. So be ready, be more enlightened about what freedom is so that you're not going along with these people's lives.

And he's not pinpointing who these people are, but past speeches as well also pointed to like his tendency to criticize opponents, right? There are fake news, there are disinformation, but using that as the first prong of unification road, but many experts told me that that actually goes against the whole authenticity of his speech. And it suggests, doesn't it, that the implicit objective is we need to get our own house in order first. Yeah, that's his logic. Before we can even start thinking about the North Koreans. Right. And when is it going to?

Which is kind of insulting because... It is insulting. South Korea is extremely developed and open and in a very good position to share new ways of life and outlook with North Korea. It doesn't need to do anything yet to get to that point. I think it's just Yoon's worldview that there is a certain version of liberal democracy that is sound and he thinks that this current South Korean version, to be fair with the opposition party using the parliament, the National Assembly for their own interests it's not like a

version of a liberal democracy that he wants. Anyways that was his logic in the first prong. And the last one I think he just attached to it like international solidarity. Right. So getting support for conferences was what he mentioned. Okay is that some hope for us that we might be able to go overseas and do some stuff? Only if they want people to... If you delete my criticism, pardon me, from this episode maybe. Right. But this has been a standard part of South Korean operating procedure.

Global international. Pretty much anything. They always want to get international consensus. Don't forget there was that episode I recorded a couple of years ago with the two retired Ministry of Unification officials who started in their retirement a, gosh I always forget what it's called, but it's something like the Council on Diplomacy and blah blah blah for unification. So basically to get that international support there and dialogue. Hi JR if you're listening. Sorry I forgot the name. I mean

international, adding international is fine and because South Korea's state policy direction right now is to become a global pivotal state, I think adding international as a third point, it's fine. But if you're gonna do that, come up with a more solid action plan I would say rather than just saying international conference and creating Korean Peninsula peace Peace Forum There are other ways to seek more detailed way of getting solidarity when it comes to use version of a unified ROK For instance, but it it's not as if South Korea hasn't Hosted probably hundreds of conferences on unification thus far Invited former East German West German officials dozens of times

to South Korea to pick their brains. I mean, they know full well what the international community thinks on this. Maybe Russian perspectives have changed slightly. Chinese are probably not as supportive as Western European nations. But let's not pretend that international countries are somehow the obstacle here. This is not the issue. And also it sort of frames like we have to seek support from international agents, actors to what we believe in, but that's not how it works when it comes to policies like this it comes through like this discussion between actors that disagree with certain aspect of the unification that you unseeks but the way the speech is framed it's sort of like

My way is highway. Mm-hmm. Please support this my way Now we have unfortunately spent enough time on the Liberation Day speech. I want to move on now to the next thing which is the exercises, the summer exercises. Just kind of linked to this. Yeah absolutely. Please walk us into it. Right. Uji Freedom Shield is the biggest U.S. South Korea summertime drill annual but it's not as big as we imagined because for two years South Korea, a year I I guess South Korea has been hyping about this that this is gonna involve like nuclear attack scenario blah blah blah but it's not going to have it this time so it's more low-key than we expected but it's a similar level to other years and ULCHI Freedom Shield comes with

ULCHI training which is South Korean government unilateral training mostly tabletop or civil defense training, which will come on Thursday. Right. I saw a message last night. And I've seen the the Minbangwi flags all around Seoul right now that 2 p.m. on Thursday, get off the streets, seek shelter, don't drive your car, etc. etc. All that stuff. I'm not sure how many people will participate this time, but even last time, not too many. The reason why I say this is linked is because South Korean president and the prime minister

usually does the cabinet meeting a bit early on the ulti training week. And that's where South Korean president gives a speech about the direction of the ulti training this year. And then his, guess what his focus was? It was anti-state forces. Which, I mean, that's the same phrase North Korea uses a lot, right?

Anti-state forces, Anti-state media. It's actually a very totalitarian language, sort of dividing the country into bad actors and good actors. And he sort of framed it like we have to use the civil defense training to train our people against the anti-state forces because North Korea will collude with these people at the starting part of the war. So that was his main point. Right. I think I've got a quote here from your article there.

From the early stages of war, North Korea will mobilize these forces to intensify public confusion and attempt to divide public opinion through violence, public manipulation, propaganda, and agitation. I'm not saying that's not true. A lot of countries use disinformation, psychological operation in the initial stage of war or before war, but I just wanted to point out that this is like the, this looks like the trend where he is focusing on this year. By the way, why bother preparing for nuclear attacks? I mean, what can...

That's what John said, except we're going to die anyways, he said. Well, die or suffer miserably. I mean, What actually can one do in preparation for a nuclear attack? I think the point is you detect it early on. So you tell the citizens as soon as possible when the attack is imminent, not afterward. So the government, yeah, the government side is practicing the alerting and detecting part. And the civilians are preparing for finding the right evacuation

shelter for the nuclear attack. Well you'd need to really shield somewhere with like a lot of lead around you or some very thick material to stand any chance. You have to do like a planking sort of posture in order to... You'd need iodine supplies? Yeah, iodine. What's planking going to do? How does that help? I've heard from like South Korean men who go to like these military version of civil defense trainings when they're older, they'd get trained how to do like a planking posture so that the...

When there's like a fallout or like the earthquake right after the nuclear attack, your guts are not exploding. Well, there's a thought. earthquake right after the nuclear attack your guts are not exploding. Well, there's that. There are more to that, but that's what I heard. Okay. Yeah. Look after your core, ladies and gentlemen.

Um, now what about Japan is Japan in any way involved in these exercises? One year after the, the trilateral camp, David Summerton with a new statement that came out this week. I asked JCS and JCS said that there's no trilateral plan as a sideline of the UFS but in past drills sometimes there were trilaterals after a few weeks after the

drills when the assets are still here but the US side is not even revealing the scale of the forces nor what kind of strategic assets are visiting this time um, so there's like a Slightly less promotional aspect from the US side, but there is definitely more in the South Korean side Do we know if they're gonna do a uh, what do you call that? That kind of a strike there a decapitation strike. Is that part of the exercise this time?

Uh when I check with military experts, they say that it's always part of it, but it's a matter of how you promote it. Ah, yeah. So they're not promoting it this time? Not so far. Okay. Chad, link it back to the Liberation Day speech, if you would.

How do you draw a thread between these two things? Between the drills and the Liberation Day speech? To Steve Tharp, who's no doubt listening to this, he'll message me he hates the word drills, he likes exercises. Good for Steve. I think they draw a distinction because a drill is something you do on a parade ground whereas an exercise is more like a practice for a war. Okay, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. But well, I guess the thread is that the current policy is deterrence and containment and responding to potential escalation from the North Korean

side. How does that link to unification strategy? Well, we are not seeing any efforts to credibly engage with North Korea or find ways to reduce the threat of its nuclear weapons capabilities through dialogue. So I guess that's consistent with the implied regime change perspective within this unification speech. What is interesting though, and stands out from the unification speech compared to the current US rock military posture and what we understand of General Lacamer's perspective, which is to, to avoid any risk of escalation is this whole rhetoric within the unification speech about information

campaigns. So currently there are, Jongmin and I went to the border like a few weeks ago and were able to listen to some of the loudspeakers near Paju. And we heard a radio station that was specifically going into North Korea with a lot of very interesting content, but it sounds like the you, you and government wants to really build upon that and expand information operations, which is something that's not very compatible with theoretically the idea of avoiding escalation because information is extremely incendiary to the Kim Jong-un government. We know that it's the Achilles heel of the regime. If you do want to force regime change, by all means that would be a good way to go to start that

process to try and build a different consensus among the North Korean people about where their future lies. But it's not without risks, let's be honest. Oh, one more thing that I just remembered before we finish up here. What about the idea of South Korea offering aid, you know, relief supplies and things to North Korea, even though North Korea has rejected it, the specter of unwanted aid going into North Korea was kind of raised at one stage. I.e. the same way as into Gaza. Yeah, right. Without permission, just do air drops. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was wondering about that because we just saw a few months ago the US

air dropping aid into Gaza because they couldn't get it in by land. The crossings were closed. Yeah, we had some brief private discussion on that and one person familiar with all of this pointed out that North Korean Air Force would not take kindly to that kind of incursion. But I think just going back to the unification speech, I think it's South Korea is,

I think, the UN government is putting in these carrots, knowing full well it's never going to have to fulfill them. Knowing that by including them, they can placate some of the more engagement focused European partners perhaps. Oh yeah, we want to talk to North Korea. We're happy to talk while also saying that we want to bring a unified Republic of Korea to the Pyongyang. But no preconditions. Yeah, so I think I'm very cynical about the inclusion of all of that. Jungmin?

Final thought, Jungmin? Yeah, final thought. The 1994 roadmap and the 89, which built on the 1989 version, they survived 30 years because there was consensus from both sides of the aisle in South Korea. Not just politicians, but also the civil society. A conservative author, a scholar wrote the 89 and the 94 version. And Kim Dae-jung and Romeo and all the progressive administrations decided to inherit that because there was enough, you know, civil society procedure, like discussion procedure, but Yoon's version attempted

to update that, but without the consensus part. So my bet is this is not going to survive after the Yoon administration. And I just had given the very slim margin of UN's administration in winning this election, given the fact that it's coming well, like two and a half years, three years into the administration, if he's really serious about it, then we're talking about the start of a multi-year regime change operation that will lead to this unified Republic of Korea. As we keep saying, that's not without risks. And has the South Korean population,

have they really expressed any support for this kind of vision? Because those risks could involve the destruction of large parts of South Korea if this goes the way Yoon hopes for it to go. And I don't think there probably is support or interest in that in most parts of South Korea. We'll have to leave that question pending. That is the end of our episode today. Thanks again, Chad and Jongmin for coming on the NK News podcast.

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