The research project we describe was a collaborative effort among six institutions in five countries: the RAND Corporation in the United States; the POSCO Research Institute (POSRI) and the Research Institute for National Security Affairs (RINSA), in South Korea; the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies (CCKS) at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Russia; the China Reform Forum (CRF) in China; and the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS) in Japan. There were three main outcomes.

First, the project produced a set of policy instruments that can contribute to modernizing the North Korean system and provide a basis for focused, collaborative efforts to stimulate peaceful change in North Korea. Second, these instruments were integrated into alternative operational plans (“portfolios”) and then evaluated in terms of likely Six-Party responses to the plans’ components, spawning a single “consensus plan” that the research partners deemed likely to garner buy-in from their five countries. Third, several potential intermediaries—i.e., those that could help convey the project findings to one or more levels of the North Korean structure—were identified.

Among the major substantive conclusions with which the research partners agreed were the following:

• The critical challenges posed by North Korea are embedded in the nature of the North Korean system, which diverges significantly from the common benchmarks for modernized, progressing countries.
• Fostering a more normal, or “modernized,” country is in the interests of all five of the research partners’ countries.
• Modernization entails inherent risks for North Korea that make it, at a minimum, a long-term task. But failure to modernize also entails inherent dangers, and the benefits of modernization will accrue first and foremost to North Korea itself.
• The key requirement for modernization to take place is fostering the aspiration for change within the North Korean leadership.
• The prerequisite for providing major assistance to North Korea must be successful resolution of the nuclear issue, which means North Korea’s complete, verifiable denuclearization.
• In seeking a modernized North Korea, the focus should not be on replacing the North Korean regime but on stimulating the system’s gradual modernization.
• The concerned countries should proceed in a comprehensive, stepby- step manner (“action for action”), as is being done in the Six- Party Talks, with time-phased objectives and instruments based on North Korean responses.
• Incentives and/or disincentives should be strategically targeted at modernizing the system and fostering the aspiration for change within North Korea’s leadership.
• Whatever the outcome of the current round of Six-Party Talks, it is imperative that thinking about how to modernize North Korea be done now and that channels be sought for injecting new ways of thinking into the research partner countries’ approaches to North Korea and into North Korea itself.

The research method used in this project comprises the four steps summarized in Figure S.1. The purpose of Step I was to produce an inventory of characteristics, or attributes, of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) system that can be broadly identified as archaic, or “non-modern.” A non-modern attribute is one that (1) adversely affects the well-being of the North Korean population, the growth of the North Korean economy, and, indeed, the survival, renewal, and prosperity of the North Korean state; and (2) has been changed for the benefit and more rapid growth of countries that are successfully developing and modernizing, such as South Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. ... (Summary)

Download Modernizing the North Korean System: Objectives, Method, and Application

PDF format, 623KB, 126Pages

Charles Wolf, Jr., Norman D. Levin
Sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation and the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

CENTER FOR ASIA PACIFIC POLICY. 2008

Contents:

Chapter One:
Background and Foreground

Chapter Two:
Methodology

Chapter Three:
Attributes of the System and Instruments for Its Modernization

Chapter Four:
Combining the Instruments into Operational Plans

Chapter Five:
A Consensus Plan

Chapter Six:
Project Results and Conclusions

Appendix:
Contributions from the Five Collaborating Institutions Other Than RAND

Visit Modernizing the North Korean System: Objectives, Method, and Application RAND Website

Preface:

This project formally began in spring 2005 as a collaborative research endeavor among six institutions in five countries: the RAND Corporation in the United States; the POSCO Research Institute (POSRI) and the Research Institute for National Security Affairs (RINSA) in Seoul; the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies (CCKS) at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow; the China Reform Forum (CRF) in Beijing; and the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS) in Tokyo. Participation of these institutions was funded from their own resources.

The collaboration’s first meeting was held in the United States at RAND in June 2005; after that, workshops were held successively at five- or six-month intervals in Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul, each one hosted by the participating institution(s) in the particular city using its own institutional support. North Korea was invited to send one or more participants to most of the five workshops, and two or three North Korean representatives expressed interest in attending.

North Korea did not, however, participate in any of the meetings. The project consisted of several tasks and phases:

• Identify and describe the economic, political, and security characteristics of the North Korean system that impede its modernization, progress, productivity, and fruitful integration into the global system.
• Formulate and elaborate multiple themes, or instruments, whose peaceful implementation by and within North Korea can contribute to modernizing the North Korean system, thereby improving living conditions for the North Korean people, reducing the threat that North Korea poses to its neighbors, and enhancing North Korea’s ability to participate more productively and effectively in the global system.
• Divide these multiple instruments among political, economic, security, and socio-cultural “baskets.”
• Select from the baskets varying combinations of the instruments to illustrate alternative operational plans (“portfolios”) for initiating the modernization process, along with specified conditions associated with each plan’s potential implementation.

Each institution within the collaborative endeavor brought its own perspective to the assessment of the illustrative plans, but all six institutions were able to reach a consensus plan built around a subset of diverse policy instruments and associated conditions, phased sequencing, costs, and anticipated consequences.

This report is not and is not intended to be a conference report on the meetings that were held. Instead, it tells the story of what took place at the workshops, which constituted a research endeavor that might be termed “participatory systems analysis” in that the participants, in analyzing the North Korean system and how to motivate its modernization, fused their sometimes divergent but often overlapping and reconcilable perspectives on that system. Hence, this report reflects the extensive give-and-take that ensued at the five workshops.

It describes and documents the method, content, and results of the collaborative endeavor, and most likely will interest government officials and analysts within the participants’ countries, and in North Korea itself, as well as outside specialists and observers concerned with Korea, East Asia, and international security.

An earlier draft of this report was circulated for comments to the five institutions other than RAND that were involved in the project, any of which may produce their own reports.

This research was sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted within the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy. The RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy, part of International Programs at the RAND Corporation, aims to improve public policy by providing decisionmakers and the public with rigorous, objective research on critical policy issues affecting Asia and U.S.-Asia relations.

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