Matt Yglesias

The Long Road Back From Reunification

Had some conversations early today with a minister in the government of Saxony that touched on some of the economic difficulties inherent in the transition from being a province of East Germany to being part of the united Germany state. Viewed from one direction, the transition has been quite successful. The West Germans ponied up a huge amount of money to help do adjustments, and the Saxony government quite smartly spent the bulk of it on infrastructure investments—and you can really see very high-quality roads, transit, etc. in the parts of the province I’ve seen. Everything looks quite spic-and-span, even moreso in many ways than in richer parts of the country. And as a consequence, average incomes in Saxony are now around 70 percent of what’s found in the West compared to less than 40 percent at unification. And an unemployment rate of 16 percent (compared to 12 in the West) is way lower than the 25 percent or so that immediately followed reunification.

Another way of looking at it, of course, is that West Germany invested a ton of money, East Germany was fortunate to be integrated into a big capital-rich country with access to all the markets of the EU, and 20 years later there’s still much higher unemployment and much lower incomes.

What this makes me think of most of all is the dilemmas that will be facing the government of South Korea if the DPRK ever collapses. The DPRK is much poorer and more backwards than the GDR ever was. They’ve been separated for longer. South Korea is smaller relative to North Korea than West Germany was to East Germany. And South Korea is also poorer than West Germany. All told, I think there’s ample reason to believe that the South couldn’t really manage a reunification process. Which is something their government seems to realize without quite admitting—their official policy is reunification, but in practice they fear a DPRK collapse. And they’re right to fear it. But political debates about North Korea policy aside, the fact of the matter is that that horrible regime can’t last forever. And I think it would make sense for a broader international community to start thinking about what we can do to support a transition process that’s going to be too big a task for South Korea to shoulder on its own.

Steven Hayes Thinks Bill Clinton Threw North Korea a “Lifeline”

As my colleague Ben Armbruster documents, the right is having conniptions over Bill Clinton’s successful effort to secure the release of two Americans being held prisoner in North Korea. Probably the most ridiculous remark comes from Steven Hayes, who says “John Bolton is right, this is a lifeline to a regime that is a terrorist regime that has proliferated nuclear technology.”

Think about that metaphor. Does Hayes really think that Clinton going to Pyongyang or not is the difference between the DPRK collapsing or not? Why would that be? I suppose this is consistent with the general neocon belief that symbolic, expressive activity on the part of Americans is the key factor in determining events abroad but it seems like a mighty extreme version of it.

Hard Labor in North Korea

As you’ve no doubt heard, two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been arrested by the North Korean government and sentenced to twelve years hard labor. I’ve been trying to Google around for more information on the DPRK’s labor camps, but part of the nature of the Hermit Kingdom seems to be that there’s relatively little available in the way of up-to-date information. That said, the U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea did publish this report on “The Hidden Gulag” several years ago based on defector reports mostly from the 1990s. You won’t be surprised to learn that conditions are terrible:

The concentration camp is a kind of closed town where a number of camps are linked together by a road. At least two of the camps, Hoeryong and Hwasong in Hamkyong Province, are larger in area than the District of Columbia. All the gulags are located in remote and desolate mountain areas to further their anonymity and isolation to foreigners and dissidents. Presently, there are six gulags known to the outside world where it is speculated that some 150,000 to 200,000 inmates are imprisoned.

As in the Soviet Union during the high tide of the Gulag, it appears that the forced labor camps are important to the regime not just as a mechanism of repression, but as part of the economic model and the internal incentives of the bureaucracy. Spencer Ackerman also links to the State Department’s human rights report on the DPRK:

[P]rolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.

Needless to say, it’s easy to recognize this sort of barbarism as the torture that it is when you read about it being done by North Korea (it appears that the Bush administration and the DPRK were both modeling themselves on the Chinese Communist tactics from the Korean War). And it is being done, and on a massive scale. Meanwhile, a related angle to this is that many of the people in the prison camps are people who actually escaped from North Korea and then wound up getting apprehended in China and deported back. In terms of practical things that could be done to help the population of North Korea, getting the Chinese to stop doing this.

Kristol and Hume Call for Targeted Air Strikes on North Korea

As you probably know, a certain number of people are down-the-line pacifists. They believe that war is wrong, no matter what the cause. And as you’ve probably realized, none of them are major newspaper columnists or television pundits focusing on national security issues. Nobody takes the views of someone who’s a pacifist in general seriously on a specific question of war and peace. But if you’re Bill Kristol, and every time an issue comes up your idea is that we should launch a war, then you get to a Washington Post columnist and a constant TV presence. Here he is with Brit Hume calling for “targeted air strikes” against North Korean missiles:

Kristol doesn’t even attempt to say what he thinks this will accomplish. He just kind of tosses it out there for no reason because arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does. And ask yourself how Kristol would react if one of Iran’s leading political pundits went on television and said that maybe “targeting suicide bombings” against American targets would be a good idea.