Contemporary Asia in the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2024. US$28.00, paper. ISBN 9780231211093.
North Korea is, as Victor Cha points out in setting up his new book The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea, the hardest of hard targets for intelligence collection and academic research. It is a country that keeps its data a state secret, has extensive counterintelligence capacity, and is almost entirely closed to outsiders, rendering assessments of what is going on in North Korea, in Cha’s characterization, more of an art than a science. This book, then, is an attempt to bring to light new data, and interpret old data to show that we may already know more about North Korea than we think, and the black box can be, at least a bit, pried open.
Cha and his coauthors attempt to pry open the black box by studying specific aspects of North Korea and Korean unification that are amenable to new data and methodologies. The first chapter looks at North Korea’s reaction to the US-ROK alliance, and finds that, by and large, the overall US-North Korea relationship is not harmed by the occurrence of US-ROK military exercises. This implies that military exercises, whose purpose is to improve military readiness and interoperability within the alliance, should not be freely given as a bargaining chip in negotiations with North Korea.
The second chapter, on North Korea’s cyberterrorism and cybercrime efforts, argues that North Korea has built up a strong cyberwarfare capability, with thousands of hackers working on projects to advance North Korea’s interests. The North Korean state views its cyber capabilities as an all-purpose weapon; while it initially used its hacking capabilities to engage in offensive operations, such as the Sony hack, it has moved in recent years almost entirely to cybercrime to raise money for the North Korean state, running scams and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
The chapter on markets and civil society is arguably the chapter with the most unusual data, in that it reports the results of approximately thirty interviews with North Koreans still inside of North Korea on market participation, state policies, the US, and nuclear weapons. The interviews find that North Koreans still in country largely rely on markets for survival, and are critical of the state when it imposes anti-market measures. This is not dissimilar from findings done with defectors. However, the survey further finds that North Koreans still in country are more enthusiastic about unification than South Koreans, and are not particularly fond of the nuclear weapons program, inasmuch as it has high costs for North Korea, and takes away (through misspending and sanctions) from the welfare of the North Korean population. As a cautionary note, as with defectors, North Koreans still inside North Korea who are willing to talk with interviewers may also differ systematically from the general population.
The chapters on unification theories and data are not even really about North Korea at all, but about South Korean unification policy changes over the years, and US and South Korean experts’ views on how important different aspects of unification are for their own countries, and where they see blind spots (lack of knowledge) in their own. Where the US is more concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons, South Korea is more concerned with domestic stabilization, and the costs of unification. There is, as Cha points out, a distinct lack of research on unification, in part because of changing understandings in South Korea about whether unification is achievable or desirable. In this chapter, Cha goes further, and asks the experts what they think the important blind spots in unification are for other countries such as China, Japan, and Russia. Clearly this says more about US and South Korean perceptions than what is happening in these countries, but would be useful in shaping US and South Korean policy on unification.
The final chapter summarizes the book’s findings, and looks at North Korea’s recent relations with China and Russia, and argues that North Korea’s total closure during COVID was in keeping with its previous reaction to disease outbreaks. Acknowledging that nearly every book on North Korea does this, Cha closes with a proposal for denuclearization, with the suggestion that denuclearization negotiations be one of several concurrent negotiations.
Overall, The Black Box improves our understanding of North Korea on a variety of topics: Cha and his coauthors discuss a number of different data sources that can be brought to bear to understand North Korea, including, for example, satellite imagery; the main chapter with new information from inside of North Korea is the one on markets and civil society. Through the material discussed in several of the chapters, Cha shows that North Korea can often be understood by its external actions—its cyber attacks, its diplomatic visits, and its press statements—which are plentiful and relatively easy to track.
The findings of the book also provide ground for understanding how North Korea is likely to evolve in the coming years. Kim Jong-un has not tried to crack down on markets in the same way that Kim Jong-il did, but the country’s survival during COVID, however bare, may have suggested to the North Korean state that it could survive both sanctions and trade closures. Its nuclear weapons and improved delivery systems, along with its budding alliance with Russia (and the accompanying destruction of sanctions enforcement) may give North Korea greater confidence in its ability to withstand outside pressure, and pace proponents of a denuclearization-first policy, may mean that North Korea sees little point in talking with the US or South Korea. Based on Cha’s interviews, one also wonders how North Koreans are likely to react to the North Korean state’s deemphasis on unification in recent years, and its move to treat South Korea as a foreign country.
Justin V. Hastings
University of Sydney, Sydney