Why Do We Not Understand the DPRK

Abstract

IntroductionOn October 27, 2006, The New York Times published an article by Mark Mazzetti, entitled "In '97, U.S. Panel Predicted a North Korea Collapse in 5 Years" (Mazzetti and Shanker, 2006). Nine years had passed and the DPRK had not collapsed. Why had American experts estimated that North Korea would collapse by 2002 and why did this not happen? One of the reasons proffered was that they had not correctly anticipated the changes in South Korean policy towards the DPRK. If one looks at the reports prior to the North Korean missile test held on 4 July 2006 and the DPRK's nuclear test held on 9 October 2006, the same problem is evident when some of the experts estimated that the DPRK would not conduct these tests. The DPRK did not "follow these analyses." The DPRK is not the only case study in which social science predictions have failed. One can look at the predictions preceding elections in countries worldwide and discover that the results are in some cases completely different from the original forecasts. Forecasts concerning Iraq's attack on Kuwait or the Chinese intervention in the Korean War are examples of how social science researchers can err. When we want to explain why analysts miscalculated the results and did not correctly predict what would happen in the DPRK or in other places, we can find different reasons that are general causes that any social science research faces, but we can also find specific reasons that are linked to the DPRK.This brief commentary does not wish to blame or offend anyone, but to try to discover the reasons why some (but not all) of us tend to make mistakes when we attempt to predict what the DPRK will do. In order not to upset anyone, I will make general observations on this issue, without referring to a specific report.AnalogiesWhen we explain political phenomena we usually make analogies to other case studies. The analogies belong to political science methods of comparing and finding cases that resemble the relevant case study. When analyzing North Korea, the analogy that researchers use is Eastern Europe and other communist states such as Romania and East Germany. In the case of Romania, the political, social, and economic turmoil led to the coup against President Nicolae Ceausescu. Several forecasts have asserted that the political, economic, and social environment in the DPRK might lead to a coup similar to that in Romania. According to this analogy, the regime in Pyongyang should have been overthrown years ago, but the fact that Kim Jong-il is still in power illustrates that there are immense differences between these two states and calls the validity of this analogy into question. As the second analogy, the German case study provides a model for peaceful unification. But the differences between the two countries should be taken into consideration. For example, nationalism plays a much more important role in Korea, and the population and economic differences between the two Germanys and the two Koreas influence the cost of unification.A "Cold War Mentality"One of the main premises of the Cold War era was the patron-client theory. According to this theory, the existence of the DPRK was dependent on its two patrons: the U.S.S.R. and China. The end of the Cold War raised the question, in some arti- cles (Betts, 1993), of whether Pyongyang could survive without the support of Moscow and Beijing. Victor Cha (2002) raised the problem of the Cold War mentality in his article. One could read between the lines that, for some researchers, the end of the Cold War would probably lead, in a very short time, to the collapse of the DPRK, because without the old patrons Pyongyang would not survive. This concept was used by advocates of sanctions against the DPRK, who said that a state without a patron would not be able to survive for long, and that the economic sanctions would cause Pyongyang to "surrender" to the demands of the free world. Pyongyang's missile and nuclear tests have proven that the threat of sanctions has not fulfilled its goals. …