The obvious retort to this wishful thinking [that Pyongyang wants better relations with the United States] is to ask how the DPRK could possibly justify its existence after giving up the confrontational anti-Americanism that constitutes its last remaining source of legitimacy. We are dealing with a failure here not just of information analysis but of common sense - a failure to understand that North Korea is one of two states laying claim to the same nation. It must either go on convincing its citizens that it is the better Korea or acknowledge Seoul's right to rule the whole peninsula.
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Much hope in the West centers on the infiltration of heterodox culture into the DPRK, but here too it would be folly to extrapolate from Cold War history. Blue jeans will not bring down this dictatorship. Race-based nationalism does not need to fear cultural subversion as much as Marxism-Leninism did. Hollywood films were all the rage in imperial Japan, and Luftwaffe aces famously flew into battle with Mickey Mouse painted on their fuselages. More to the point, perhaps, South Koreans were as ready in 2008 to believe that America was saving its deadliest beef for their consumption as they were in 2002 to believe that U.S. soldiers had run over two schoolgirls for the fun of it. Anti-Japanese sentiment, for its part, has actually increased in the ROK since a ban on Japanese cultural imports was lifted several years ago. There is little reason, therefore, to believe that smuggled CDs and DVDs will undermine the average North Korean's hostility to the outside world.
The DPRK is more likely to suffer a mass legitimation crisis if it is seen as failing on its own ideological terms. Such a perception could result from a humiliating retreat in regard to nuclear weapons, but the North Korean leadership is less likely than our own to make that kind of error. The chronic nature of the economic malaise poses a greater problem. It is all well and good for the military-first regime to shrug off responsibility for such matters, but if the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent constituted such a glorious victory over the U.S., where, the malnourished citizen may well ask, are the material fruits of that victory?
But most dangerous to the regime, as I have already said, is the inevitable spread of public awareness that for all their anti-Americanism, the South Koreans are happy with their own republic and do not want to live under Pyongyang's rule. There is just no way for the Text to make sense of this highly subversive truth. We should not, however, sit back and gloat over the regime's troubles, because it is bound to counter any sign of internal unrest by ratcheting up tension with America or South Korea.
