school again because all the girls were sort of a recording from in order to. [applause] >> and i said to my guide, i said what's going on here? he said they have been indoctrinated with anti-americanism and i managed to talk to one of the young girls after i've done the rounds and she said you did a lot of bad things on the peninsula. and i expected her to say the carpet bombing of north korea, which really was i think unconscionable. and which really did i think constitute a war crime. it was conducted with so much indifference to north korea in civilian life that i think this is something we as americans did you come to terms with. the north koreans interestingly enough don't talk about that very much. because it conflicts with the personality cults. kim il-sung could not have been a very protective motherly there if he allowed the country to become flattened on his watch. so instead that kind of thing they focus on completely fictional outrages like this alleged murder of a korean child

by american missionaries. and this girl that i talked to said in response to my question, yes, you americans did a lot of bad things. once a korean child stole a page from an orchard and she was murdered. these seem like very trivial stories to us but this is the kind of thing they used to whip up anti-americanism in north korea. far from showing any signs of fear of the united states, in the propaganda they show these kind of wishful filling post bowls of their posters. so america is ridiculed as a kind of paper tiger who stay will come. and just to talk about the military first policy which is the policy the north korean regime is now propagating. here's a picture of north korea right after kim ill son died in july 1984. you see the we've been -- weeping north koreans.

now look at the skies. you have the grey skies which are a symbol of the changing times on the world stage. in other words, norge kim jong-il inherited a situation that was more difficult than his father had. this was the message the propaganda put across because they knew with a famine coming they could see the salmon on the horizon, they knew they could not present kim jong-il as the kind of all round figure who is just as good as economic growth as military matters. they knew they had to disassociate him from the whole economic problems as quickly as possible. they did this through the military first policy. the message of which was basically kim jong-il saying to his people, you know, i'd like to keep feeding you, but the threat from the diocese has never been greater than it is now. so i'm going to be traveling around the country visiting military bases 24/7. in the meantime, you just have to feed yourself. this is interesting because this was not proclaimed after george

bush's axis of evil speech. this was weeks after the agreed framework had been sided with the clinton administration and kim jong-il. weeks after bill clinton had sent other kind of groveling letter to kim jong-il promising full compliance with history. and weeks after american aid had become coming into the country. norge this military first policy was not a response to a perceived increase in the threat from the united states that it was a response to the economic crisis. it was their way of getting out of the economic crisis. and it worked for them. it got into it very well. even today many north koreans refugees believe the famine was america's fault that the problem is this. webcam ill songs will just be -- kim jong-il's legitimacy as a leader rests exclusively on military strength on that one to. this is the problem really at

the heart of this nuclear standoff that we're in right now. we're basically trying to persuade kim jong-il to climb down from this pillar without offering any other place to go. i will get back to it later. this is how the north korean propaganda tries to present south korea to the north korean people. the north koreans now know that south koreans are richer. they know this because the information that was isolated north griffin the rest of the world is in ruins. so many north koreans now have access to south korean dvds, some of them are in washington south korean tv if you live in the south of north korea. some of them are watching chinese tv. the government cannot persist in this lie that all the south koreans are starving to death. so the north korean regime says yes, they are better off than we are and here you can see them with their cameras and their motorcycles and so on. and a nice cars. but for all the material wealth, the south korean people are still deeply ashamed of living under the yankee yoke.

and they long to rest their faces and kim jong-il's bosom as well. so here's the south koreans cheering this image of kim jong-il on the screen. this was the message the north koreans were putting across throughout south korea sunshine policy which was a accommodation policy during which the south koreans were trying to bribe the north koreans, into behaving better. this method worked pretty well for a while. they were doing their best to help the north korean government keep faith. they were doing their best to avoid provoking north korea. they didn't criticize north korea to strongly. the problem really began in 2007 with the election. because he was the anti-pyongyang candidate. and he won previously. so obviously that reality of his election was in direct conflict

with the image of south korea which the north korean regime had been trying to present to its people. and the propaganda was so stunned by this election but didn't know what to say about it for the first few months. they just didn't mention. and then in 2008 you had massive south korean protest against the import of american beef. and south koreans for all walks walks of life took to the streets with signs denouncing myung-bak as a traitor and denouncing american for trying to poison south korean children with the disease to be. and these protesters don't come at a better time for north korea because they played into the new propaganda lines which was that myung-bak had kept his intentions secret from the electorate. but, of course, those beef protests fizzled out, and that's when north korea resorted to that string of military and nuclear provocations that we saw in the first half of last year.

because this country has nothing else with which to inspire its people with pride, then shows its military or nuclear strength. i just want to say something about the succession. we now know pretty well who the next leader is going to be. it's going to be one of kim jong-il's sons. i fortunate we don't know for a much about him except he was allegedly educated in switzerland. but it's not important who the guy is. the important thing is what kind of a leader he is already being celebrated as. my hope was that this newly was going going to be present as a kind of new leader, maybe an economy first kind of live. that is having to having. is presented as a young joe. and added to that north korea has enshrined a military first principle in the constitution. it has deleted the word communism as well. said this regime is looking at the military first paradigm for the long haul, in other words.

so to return to this draft. it's not important whether the next leader is the son or whether someone else. because whoever takes over is going to be faced with the same quandary really. which is how do we go from being a military first country to, say, an economy first country without losing all reason to exist as a separate state? this is what is so unrealistic for us to expect them to trade military strength for a mere aid deal. let's say we increase their standard of living by 20% over the next five years, which would be an awful lot. that would not help kim jong-il politically because north korea was to be hopelessly behind south korea and economic aspects. and, therefore, norgren would have no reason to exist as a separate korean state. all that has not for its own source of legitimacy is to claim that it alone is didn't get to the yankee enemy, the race

enemy. so to people who are optimistic about the six party talks, bilateral talks with which our talk is supposed to take place to i ask the question what is north korea go if it disarmed? what does it do with itself, how does it justify its existence? none of the optimism of i talked to have been able to give me an answer. they may not consider this a big problem but we can be sure that kim jong-il realizes just how big a problem it is. this is why i'm so pessimistic about the prospects for arms talks. because you can talk a regime into doing a lot of things. one thing you can't make it to is commit political suicide. this is where the left wing and the right wing and the senate in america are all wrong about north korea. the left wing is wrong because you cannot bribe it or sweettalk a country into committing political suicide. the right wing is wrong because you can't bully it into doing that either. the senate is wrong to think that you can get the chinese to

persuade them to do it. [laughter] >> so what is the way out? i'm not sure myself. i think if i were to propose any way out it would be for us to shift our diplomatic energy and resources from this very fruitless negotiation process, which defies time for kim jong-il's nuclear program. to the chinese, not in or to persuade the chinese to work on north korea but in or to persuade the chinese to allow north korea to collapse. that would be an easy job. i think would be quite a hard sell because the chinese don't want american troops standing on the river, and they don't want to lose all those really favorable economic deals that they have concluded with the north koreans whereby they extracted north koreans and mineral at very good prices. but the example of german unification gives us some ideas. one of the things we said to gorbachev to get him to sign off on german unification was we promise not to station american

troops east of the elbow. perhaps the promise not to station american troops north of the river, i don't know that by the chinese are rational people. and as difficult as it might be to talk to them about north korea, at least there's some prospect of success which is more than can be said for what we're doing right now which as i said to strike the north korea to commit political suicide. that's it from me now. sorry it took a while. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very by much. that was enlightening and entertaining, if that's the right word. i mean, to see the pictures to your talk, i found that very, very interesting. i have several questions from the audience, and i will invite your questions to come up as we are starting the dialogue here.

we have a few mins left, and will go a good bit longer if the bride will indulge us. one question that occurred to me and also occur to one of our members of the audience was when you are describing this historical line from the japanese colonial period and korea, you talk about the koreans. and i would be north and south koreans. and then you're describing the culture and the thought that inspires the north korean culture. how do you distinguish north korea from south koreans in there? >> in terms of nationalism, there is a good deal of agreement. i think if you talk to south koreans you will find a general consensus that because of the korean people are perhaps not as cunning or perhaps not as patient as other nations, that they suffered unduly throughout history. and there still is in south korea among a lot of people not

among the younger people so much but among the older generation a certain pride of the homogeneity and women who choose to read outside the race will be quite stiff opposition. but things are changing in south korea for one thing. this myth of, this is pure nation is not believed quite as literally or as firm as i so things are changing in south korea were as north korea is a race-based national. >> how does the south korean look at his or her north korean counterpart? >> well, south koreans don't want reunification. they are not interested in the. and yet at the tank than they feel quite guilty about it. one of the ways in which they us waste their own guilt about this is to believe that north korea is simply on earlier stage of development. than south korea is. so when you go on a tour bus to north korea as i did two years ago, they will look about them at all this misery really and

try to shrug it off by saying it's like south korea was. this is how south korea was in the 1970s. there's really not a very high awareness of north korea among south koreans, not much interest in north korea. when i get classes on north korean matters at my university, most of the students tend to be foreigners. [laughter] >> interesting. one question from the audience. if somebody has left the north korean regime and besides he or she wants to go back or what for whatever reason, are the barriers to entry? are their punishments that that person expects? >> there are barriers or they wouldn't have to bribe their way back in. but on the other hand, i cannot believe that their voluntary, so many of them are voluntarily returned to the country if they know they will be punished. the question in my mind is either the regime knows that they were gone for two years and it doesn't care, or a dozen of them gone for a few years.

either way really is a totalitarian state, i don't believe it is. we have not expressed historically people wanted to return to totalitarian states to the same degree they are in north korea. and if you look at things like the ratio of policemen to average citizens, it's lower than the ratio you would find, say, in chicago. so i don't believe that this is a country that rules by a prescient alone. >> to north koreans in your expressed the north koreans believe this propaganda? >> i think they do. the evidence is in the kind of people are leaving the country, i would guess for my own experience and from what i have read that about 90% of the north koreans choose to escape the country are from the least educated sector of society. the people are more highly propagandize, the middle-class, educated less an upper-class they are not leaving. we are not seeing intellectual

dissident. we're not saying real intellectual immigrants from north korea. that points to me to a proof that this regime is still being quite successful and inspiring its people. what we learn from social psychology is that we all need to attribute something of significance to our lives. and the north korean regime does this whether you're a bus driver working in the mind or a soldier, the regime gives everybody a part to play in this racial mission, to kick the yankees out of the peninsula, to reunite the nation. and this seems to me to be quite successful. it looks to me much more successful than the rival ideology in south korea which is kind of orthodox consumerism where you're supposed to earnest much money as you can and by as many brand name products as you can. that's not working in south korea or you wouldn't have such high rates of suicide and depression among the people. if you want to understand what the north koreans are all rushing out of north korea tried to get some south korea, i think you need understand that. >> going back to north korea for a moment, this believe in

ideology, is in a colored by the fact that at least what we read here in the west, that such widespread starvation. and there's political repression, and difficulties that are quite insurmountable would be for many of us. doesn't that color their view on this? >> not really. i think it's ironic really that in the way we think more like marxist and the north koreans do. because for us the economy is stupid if we look at all politics and all political differences in economic terms. we even look at the rise of islam in his them. despite the enormous wealth of the people who bankrolled islamic terrorism. another important thing to keep in mind is nationalism is as well suited to bad economic times as to bad times. when things go well you can say

it's because of the race, because of its strength that when things go badly you can blame them on people outside the country. so if this had been a marxist led to leninism regime. because marxism, leninism always voting was a promise to improve the material life of its citizens. but nationalism is not about that. nationalism is about making people feel bad for other reasons that we know from germany or from emperor of japan to nations that were going gangbusters right up to the very end that people can put up with an awful lot of deprivation if they feel it is for the well being of the race. >> media could play a role, what about the media and in north korea lacks one question here, how pervasive is the internet at all? >> the internet is not invasive at all. they do allegedly have internet cafés that are closely monitored but some people can get into. there's some kind of intranet apparently in north korea

through which university students can communicate with each other. also of course under supervision. otherwise the internet is not much of a force. but as i said the information cordon has collapsed an awful lot of the dvds and videos and things like that are coming into the country to buy don't think we should attribute too much importance to them. i talked to one woman who was excited about having seen a mickey mouse backpack in pyongyang. i said, my point is because this is not a marxist, leninist regime but nationals when it is more impervious to have your dogs go to influences like it that i know from my own youth in south africa that my most racist classmate, the ones who want to put a fence about all the black some of them started us were avid fans of reggae music and bob martin. and then of course you can be a racist and root for your nfl team which is 95% i cannot see any contradiction in that. i don't think people should

expect these dvds, these smuggled products to bring about an enormous change in the way that people look at the rest of the world. the second most nationals country in the world is south korea which is complete open and completely wired, and also and still dominated by a very paranoid way of looking at the outside world. >> do you have a point of view on the outlook for the north korean economy? >> for the north korean economy i'm not so sure. this recent currency reform, i'm not sure what it was all about. i tend to think that reports of the opposition to the currency exchange which took place last year has been exaggerated a little bit. because the average north korean did not have $3000 under his bill that he wanted to change anyway. he was probably happy to see all these black marketers taken down a peg or two. my impression of it is kim jong-il probably did not impoverish his own power base. i don't think any there in his right mind would be crazy enough to do that. so i have to assume that the

people in the so-called core class of north korea, the favorite political class, they knew this was coming and they were prepared for it. and that it was merely an effort to impoverish the sort of people had acquired wealth in unsanctioned ways. >> it's often north korea is referred to as the hermit kingdom. do you look at the economy that way? what i mean by that question is, are they so cut off from any kind of interchange ,-comcome in and of commerce that it is almost a hermit economy? or other chinese there, the south koreans there? >> the chinese are there and they are extracting north korea's wealth from the country. it is i believe a hermit economy. i think i should turn off my computer. it's starting to make noise. it is a hermit economy, but what i want against is the common tendency to think this is a country obsessed with self-reliance. and it is not. north korea has relied on

outside eight ever since day one. i say it's more like a -- these are these japanese youth you read about in the newspaper who do not want to leave their rooms. so their mother basically has to come and leave the food in out of the door for the. why? because they feel that they can maintain their independence better by relying on their parents than by working together with people, going out into the marketplace. north korea is a kind of that kind of state that it believes it can maintain its independence better than rely on the outside world for aid been working with the outside were. i would mean trade and businessmen coming back and forth. and always other horrifying things to the regime. it still is a hermit economy but kim jong-il knows he has to make some concession. so what he does is try to open these special zones. is time to sort of seal off these areas to make sure that they don't seep into the country at large. and he realizes sporadically

that's not working out very well. you have this kind of flip flop. >> it was once said the relationship between kim jong sun and the chinese and the chinese was as close as lives to teach. >> that's not true. >> but what about to? >> it was never true. it's interesting to read the chinese archives from the korean war and to see what a bad relationship there was between the chinese and the north korean. for one thing the chinese workers the north koreans kept shooting american pressure to the chinese had to raise their guns at the north koreans to get them to back off. the north koreans did not even want to get the chinese control over their railroad which the chinese needed in order to transport the troops effectively. so my point is, if they could work together well during the korean war when north greer was relying on china for its survival, how much less like a are the north koreans to listen to the chinese debt when the

north koreans have nuclear weapons? what i hear from sources in china is that they're pretty much exasperated with the north koreans. they are tide of continuing to finance them but they don't see much of an alternative because they don't want the regime simply to collapse. >> that might be a good segue into the discussion about maybe the six-party talks, that outlook and u.s. foreign policy. sheila smith, who is a senior fellow and has written extensively about the issues and on the peninsula called the americas and tractable problem, north korean. so looking to the chinese to be the balance, the balance i guess is the better word in that effort at negotiation which is now totally broken down, is that a miss place ambition on the part of u.s.? >> it is. i've talked to people who are actually involved in the negotiation process. and he said basically the

chinese offer the milk and cookies and they don't do anything to push north korea to negotiate in earnest. and i understand that because as i said before, the chinese can have no more success in that endeavor than we can. the north koreans aren't stupid. they know just a disaster it would be for them to disarm. let's not forget just a much we're asking for north korea anyway. canada is not a warlike country, but if we were to say to the canadians, if you cut your military and half we were racial standard of living by 10% over the next 10 years. i think we can imagine they would say to us. and how much less likely it is that the north koreans are going to get rid of their last reason for remaining. so the six-party talks i think just found it on a completely wrong premise. and i don't think the north koreans can be negotiating in good faith. one way we could find that would be to say to them, okay, let's not worry about fancy nuclear timetables or anything. what we want to see from you is a show good faith in your own

propaganda. it's not going to cost you anything if you don't have the anti-american propaganda for a couple of weeks. if you think we're not pulling our side of the bargain you can go back to doing it, but let's see if you're in good faith here. because if you do want to disarm, why are you telling your people that there can never be peace with the united states, why are you time your people that revenge will be brought on the united states? lets you change some of those messages. as a show good faith that at some and think we should be doing. we need to be going to the heart of the north korean regime problem. >> and that being the military that you describe? >> the claim to power. before they can disarm they need to be deriving their political legitimacy from something else. we need to be able to see if they're doing that or not. >> in your knowledge about the north koreans, what could that something else be? >> i don't know. because i really don't see what they can go. without devolving into a third rate or south -- fourth rate

south korea. many people in the united states tends to look at north korea as if it were libya. you know, libya as you know that great of its nuclear aspiratioaspirations and decide to play nice with the united states. but there was no south libya vying for legitimacy. qadhafi remains the sole defined of what it means to be libyan. so he had more leeway. north korea, what can they do? this is one of two koreas that is trying to show that it has the sole exclusive right to rule the entire peninsula. they can simply admit to having made an enormous mistake. they can't, you know, agree to be in an economy where the south korean economy was maybe in 1975. >> so the box gets smaller and smaller. >> the regime has painted itself ideologically into a core. >> the u.s. has a few troops in south korea, and some member of the audience asks should we withdraw troops from south korea, and your opinions be?

well, if you talk to any expert on military strategy, they will say it makes strategic sense to withdraw american troops from the peninsula because then you'd be able to respond better to a north korean situation. this situation is where held hostage because anything we would do against north korea and well inside the north koreans to attack seoul. they don't need nuclear weapons. they can do that with conventional weapons. so i think that will to withdraw american to do not make us better able to wish bond militarily, it would petrosian under a north pressure to do all those things but so far he is accused the americans of preventing. namely unify the peninsula, improving the standard of living among his people and, of course, he can't do the. were we to pull american troops at the north korean would very quickly realized that it wasn't the yankees all about who were preventing who were preventing we get a vacation that it was the south korean people who didn't want it. that truth i think is going to really go to the heart of the

personality cult. so this'll be a hairy time because it would be a time in which you expect the north koreans to lash out and perhaps try to reunify the country by military means. i don't think it's a thing the south koreans can't handle on their own. >> what do koreans, north and south, or north or south, whatever, think of the japanese? >> in south korea interestingly enough, this goes to the other point that he made about the cultural imports. since the ban on japanese ultra was lifted, and the japanese sentiment has increased in south korea. i remember being in south korea in the mid 1980s, and it was a wrestling match on tv between a japanese man and i think it was an american athlete. the people were rooting for the japanese athlete. and i asked my wife why, and she said because it's basically the same asian. we're rooting for the asians over you white people. that would be