Andrei Lankov quotes

North Koreans now understand that South Korea is very rich. It is true, but there is a great difference between vaguely understanding something and having such graphic images of neighbors' prosperity flooding your daily life. As is usually the case, such pictures are liable to be exaggerated at first. An outsider in a rich country usually cannot immediately see the contradictions, problems and tensions that exist behind the sparking, glistening, glitzy facade. For the North Koreans, this picture of the South Korean prosperity would likely be seen as vivid proof of the complete failure of their leadership. The North Korean elite cannot even use the usual trick of putting the blame at the doors of their predecessors: This elite is hereditary, so the buck cannot be easily passed. (Andrei Lankov)

To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.

Andrei Lankov

Objectively speaking, the history of North Korean state has been one of an ambitious social if brutal experiment that ended in a very ugly disaster. Essentially, the 70 years of the Kim Family's rule have been the wasted years. The Kim family did not merely build one of the world's most "perfect” Stalinist dictatorships, but also managed to transform into a basket case what once, in the 1940s, was the most advanced industrial economy of East Asia outside Japan. However, one should not expect that such a pessimistic, if honest, view of North Korea's past, is going to be enthusiastically embraced by those North Koreans who bother to care about such matters.

Andrei Lankov

If a North Korean university professor is suspected of insufficient enthusiasm for the system, they will be gone without a trace very quickly. Even the memory of the unlucky victim would likely disappear, since such topics are best not discussed in North Korea.

Andrei Lankov

The unavoidable spread of South Korean capital and information will put the North Korean government in a tight spot, to put it mildly.

Andrei Lankov

The North Korean elite does have some sources of hope. The elite itself remains, on the surface at least, remarkably united. The lack of a civil society and very strong social control makes the emergence of resistance difficult.

Andrei Lankov

[T]here has been little, if any, doubt that nothing short of a massive regime collapse, or (even more violent and bloody) full-scale war, will ever produce a non-nuclear North Korea. The regime is run by cold-minded and rational people who cannot afford to be emotional...

Andrei Lankov

Right now, no sane and unbiased person would be so stupid as to doubt that the North Korean state is very repressive.

Andrei Lankov

North Korea is a problem, not only because of its fast advancing nuclear and missile program but also because of the sorry state of the country's economy and its abysmal human rights record. It is a problem for us outsiders, but it is an even greater problem for the North Korean people themselves. As people are fond of saying in such situations that "something has to be done."

Andrei Lankov

The great famine of 1994-98 was to a large extent the inviolable result of the policies that Kim Il Sung had pursued for decades. The famine was brought about by Kim Il Sung's fanatical belief in a hyper-centralized, state-managed agriculture, as well as an excessive reliance on (unacknowledged) foreign aid, not to mention militarization run amok. However, if the mine was planted (unintentionally, of course) by Kim Il Sung, it went off under the rule of his son. Hence, most North Koreans blame Kim Jong Il, rather than his father, for the economic disasters of the 1990s.

Andrei Lankov