Testimony of Sung-Yoon Lee
Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies, Assistant Professor
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives
Hearing on "North Korea’s Criminal Activities: Financing the Regime"
March 5, 2013
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, and distinguished guests:
I am indeed honored to have this opportunity to present my views on what I consider to be the most effective way to strengthen the hands of the United States as Washington addresses the North Korean regime’s multifarious criminal and illicit activities, including its continued development of nuclear and long-range missile programs and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
I would venture to say that even a cursory review of the North Korean regime’s uniquely distorted approach to political and economic affairs over the past several decades reveals two glaring contradictions in the North Korean system—vulnerabilities—that invite exploitation by the U.S. and its two allies in Northeast Asia, the Republic of Korea and Japan: First, the Kim regime’s overdependence on illicit financial earnings as an instrument of regime preservation; second, the regime’s unparalleled systematic oppression of its people.
These features are North Korea’s two most apparent systemic weaknesses, as hard as the Kim regime tries to shield them from view. The former sustains the North’s ruling clan, military, and internal security forces. It makes possible Pyongyang’s dependence on nuclear blackmail and illicit activities as instruments of regime preservation in the face of a collapsed economy. The latter, extreme human rights violations, is an essential characteristic, perhaps even a necessary condition, of the Kim hereditary dynasty—a quasi-communist kingdom wherein the people, faced with invasive state control, fear tactics, and pervasive indoctrination, have yet to muster up the courage to demand of their leaders even the most basic freedoms, let alone seek to topple the regime.
How would Washington, through individual efforts or in cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo, target Pyongyang’s vulnerabilities?
