An HRNK Interview with Robert Collins, Author of "Pyongyang Republic: North Korea's Capital of Human Rights Denial"

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Q1: What was your motivation to be a leader on North Korean human rights?

Robert Collins: When I decided to retire from the army six years ago, I felt that my knowledge could be useful in writing materials that would contribute to an overall understanding of how North Korea makes its decision and to how they carry out their policies. And so, since retirement, I’ve just continued with what the army taught me to do over those decades at the end of the 20th century and doing it unilaterally. And now I’m doing it in support of HRNK.

Q2: What do you think is the relationship between human rights issues and security concerns for the U.S. – R.O.K. relationship regarding North Korea?

Robert Collins: The deplorable human rights condition of North Korea has a direct impact on their military. They have a million man army that can’t be composed of everybody in the country that is on the positive side of the political classification system—songbun. Many, if not close to half, are recruits—those that receive a denial of human rights through their entire life because they have been classified, socially and politically, as enemies of the state. Therefore, they have grown up with inadequate food, poor education, poor housing, and the opportunities that they receive in the military are very, very limited. Those in the lower songbun classifications can’t become officers. The few that do can’t go past the company grade. And even up until a few years ago, many of the individuals in the North Korean military that were regarded as low songbun—low trust on the political scale—weren’t even allowed to carry weapons because they didn’t trust them.

Q3: What is most striking to you about the structure of the Kim Regime?

Robert Collins: The Organization Guidance Department (OGD) of the Korean Workers Party is the party within the party. It is the center of power, the center of regime governing administration that compels everybody in North Korea to follow supreme leaderism and to follow supreme leader guidance. Every leader is evaluated for their ability to do that and that evaluation comes from the Organization Guidance Department or the OGD. So, it is this organization that compels the regime and the population to carry out all regime orders. For NGOs, when and if they ever have an opportunity to enter North Korea and try to help the North Korean population, they must understand that the front people they are talking to are controlled by the OGD.

Q4: How difficult is it for North Korean defectors to resettle in South Korea?

Robert Collins: The problem is that the two countries have developed a different understanding of societal norms. And so, when North Koreans come to the South, they have a problem adjusting. It’s a severe problem and the South Korean leadership is well aware of it.

Q5: Do you believe that the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex will impact human rights policy for North Koreans?

Robert Collins: The closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex leaves a lot people without a job in North Korea. Tens of thousands of people were employed in that complex so quality of living is going to be severely decreased for those individuals. At the time, that’s not President Pak’s responsibility. Her population is her responsibility. So the issue would be not so much human rights, but overall quality of life is going to deteriorate and there will be no improvement of human rights to try and make that improvement in their quality of life happen in the Kim regime.

Q6: What do you believe is the most compelling human rights issue elucidated from your interviews with North Korean defectors?

Robert Collins: Well, when you do a number of these interviews, you quickly learn that life in North Korea is very, very difficult and much of it is based in sorrow. And during these interviews, it’s compelling to watch the sorrow come out of their life story about how they got from what kind of lives they led in North Korea, how they escaped, and how they came to South Korea. These are very compelling and a lot of sorrow and unhappiness that is related to malnourishment, starving to death of family members, basic denial of human rights, and not even understanding that some of those human rights are denied. And so, over the years, one can see that these stories become even more and more sorrowful or even more and more compelling and sad. That drives one to believe that situations are just getting worse in North Korea for individuals—for populations in North Korea. The quality of life continues to deteriorate in North Korea for those that live in the provinces, particularly those in the northeast.

Q7: Do you see a time when the Kim Regime’s policy of human rights denial is no longer sustainable?

Robert Collins: Yes, as a matter of fact I do. That time would be the fall of the Kim regime. Until that time, the Kim regime will continue to carry out its aggressive policies towards the United States and the Republic of Korea, and at the same time, carry out the human rights denial for the North Korean population. Those go hand in hand. He’s got to—in his mind with the concept of Suryong-jui or supreme leaderism—compel the population to support him personally in not only the survival of the regime, but also in policies that are relevant to peninsula security issues, R.O.K.-U.S. relations, North Korea-U.S. relations, and North-South relations.


Edited by Rosa Park, Director of Programs and Editor

Original transcription by Liz Cheek, HRNK Research Intern

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Categories: committeehrnk, crimes against humanity, defector, dictatorship, DPRK, HRNK, hrnkus, humanrights, Kaesong, KIC, KimJongUn, military, NK, OGD, RobertCollins, southkorea

Training North Korea’s Supreme Leader

By Robert Collins 

How does one train a “supreme leader”—especially a young and inexperienced one—on how to handle crisis when any mention of his mistakes may lead to the notorious termination of the trainer by anti-aircraft gun? Difficult question, to be sure, but an even more difficult process. After all, North Korea had never gone to any external crisis of this depth under the short reign of Kim Jong-un, the North’s hereditary First Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, Chairman of the National Defense Commission, and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army. Now it has.

During the past two weeks, the two Koreas have once again put on shows of military force in responses and counter-responses to the North’s planting of landmines in the Demilitarized Zone that maimed two young South Korean soldiers. The South’s response was to resume loudspeaker broadcasts across the DMZ, designed to attack and undermine the legitimacy of the regime. Essentially, these types of South Korean propaganda targeting the North’s leadership drive that same leadership up the proverbial wall. A series of kinetic responses and counter-responses elevated a provocation into a crisis requiring raises in military alerts, shows of great force on both sides and, finally, face-to-face negotiations at Panmunjom in the DMZ.

So how much “training the trainer” went into planning for these actions? Driven by fear for their lives, North Korea’s generals and admirals must couch their recommendations on courses of action within the cocoon of absolute and bellicose loyalty to the supreme leader. Most likely, they must parse their requests and answers in strategy deliberations in such a manner that makes any suggestion by Kim Jong-un appear to be sheer tactical brilliance reminiscent of Sun Tzu, Napoleon, or, even better for North Koreans, of the much celebrated greatness of the supreme leader’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

This loyalty demanded by the North’s incessantly inculcated ideology has definitively negative by-products that have the world’s attention—impetuous purges and executions of senior leaders, human rights denial, political prison camps; imprisoning up to 120,000 inmates; and resource de-prioritization for any individual North Korean perceived by the regime as not faithfully serving the interests of the supreme leader.  

When North Korea and South Korea held talks at Panmunjom beginning on August 22 to defuse this most recent crisis, it was a meeting of two sides whose characteristics are dramatically different. Not only are the two political systems antithetical, but their social and ideological values are antithetical as well. The backgrounds of the four South and North Korean participating delegates are polar opposites, both politically and militarily. Their backgrounds clearly indicate that the South is at the negotiating table because it values the safety of its citizens and the North is at the talks because it values the “face,” i.e. the reputation of its supreme leader over everything else.

How so? The intent and values of the South are self-evident. Democratic societies look to preservation and safety of their nation-state above all else, as essential in safeguarding the human security of their citizens. The presence of President Park’s National Security Adviser, Kim Kwan-jin, and her Minister of Unification, Hong Yong-pyo, demonstrates that resolving this crisis focused on the security of the South. Kim Kwan-jin is a lifelong military man who has commanded army units from the company-level up through field army and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, followed by a stint as the Minister of National Defense. Hong Yong-pyo serves as the leader of the government agency dedicated to finding peaceful means of unification. However, on the North’s side, there are polar opposites. The one man in the group who wore a military uniform with a military rank of vice-marshal (5-star) was the North’s Hwang Byong-so. Oddly enough, he is not truly a military man. He is a lifelong political commissar who has worked for the Korean Workers’ Party his whole life. He has never commanded a battalion, a regiment, a division, a corps, or a field army… ever. His job has always been to monitor North Korea’s military officers to ensure their loyalty to the supreme leader and the party as well as their compliance with all aspects of North Korean ideology. Hwang’s function has always been to ensure that those officers that supposedly fail to meet that standard are purged from the military ranks. In the first three and a half years of his rule, Kim Jong-un has gone through four Chiefs of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army and six Ministers of People’s Armed Forces. The other North Korean negotiator, Kim Yang-gon, heads the party’s United Front Department, tasked to foment South Korean social and political instability by employing a “toolkit,” including espionage, sabotage, propaganda and even inter-Korean dialogue.  

The final agreement by the four to end the crisis was a statement of regret (the same language Kim Il-sung used after the DMZ axe murders in 1976) from the North concerning the landmine incident and the end of the South’s propaganda broadcasts across the DMZ. As the profiles of the four negotiators indicate, while South Korea’s concern was the security of its soldiers, North Korea’s concern was the security and reputation of its supreme leader.  

In the long run, training the supreme leader may have created a larger mutated political logic in the mind of the Supreme Commander of 1.2 million soldiers armed with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Future trainers—at least those who survive the purges—will deal with a supreme leader who thinks he now knows it all. Decision-making within the North’s national security structure will likely lose some operational and strategic agility due to his hubris. To emphasize this, Kim Jong-un will likely demonstrate his leadership through internal propaganda claims of having made the Republic of Korea-United States alliance “stand down.”  

One of the outcomes of this crisis is that it will work toward consolidating Kim Jong-un’s power, at least in the young leader’s mind. Surely, it is still possible for an individual or a group of senior officials to fall on their sword after using it on the young, impetuous leader. But for the time being, the outcome of the crisis also enables the continued suppression of the North Korean people, including denial of the most basic of human rights and political prison camp internment of those perceived as disloyal. Another outcome of the crisis is the continued threat to the security of 51 million South Korean citizens, not to mention the threat of nuclear war.

The North’s military trainers may have made themselves look good in the eyes of the supreme leader for now, but the next time he may be the one “training the trainers” on further threats to the people of both North and South Korea.

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Categories: committeehrnk, conflict, dictatorship, HRNK, hrnkus, humanrights, KimJongUn, KWP, military, NK, nonprofit, NorthKorea, RobertCollins, training, WashingtonDC

Lenin’s Theory of Utility

By Robert Collins

The concept of manipulating others to promote one’s own cause is no doubt millennia old.  It is not an original thought by Lenin.  Those that employed this concept likely existed in the ancient Egyptian dynasties, the Roman Empire and most other political realms, as well as Lenin’s establishment of the communist domain.  Utility is a fascinating concept that somewhat defies logical description – support for an external cause through belief that one’s vision of right will prevail though it contradicts political reality.

Lenin’s theory of utility is based in those that find benefit and comfort from others who are willing to deceive themselves about another’s intent in order to comfort themselves in their view of the world.   To feel good about one’s contribution to a false premise is indeed comforting if one chooses to either ignore reality or choose not to accept political discomfort.  In one recent case, choosing to support the values of human rights denial versus support for the defense of democracy and human rights based upon one’s observation that “I talked to them and they seemed real and sincere” is to ignore human dignity and succumb to the propaganda of deception.

When Code Pink and WomenCrossDMZ visited North Korea they did so without having an appreciation for Lenin’s theory.  The fact that these women met and conversed with North Korean women was apparently, in their minds, a major victory for human rights if one believes their testimony once they crossed the DMZ.  Women of note from among those that crossed praised their opportunity to speak to North Korean leaders and agree that the term “human rights” was included in their statement.  Was there utility for the North Koreans to agree to do so?

Within the context of North Korea’s propaganda-dominated diplomacy, the answer would most certainly be yes.  To be sure, Lenin would have been proud to include it in a statement that had no impact on the reality of his rule.  The same goes for the Kim Family Regime. The North Korean woman who talked to a representative of Code Pink or WomenCrossDMZ was surely not so fortunate to be so self-deceived.  The North Korean woman, or group of women, whom the DMZ crossers so eloquently praised was prepped to say what the party-state wanted them to say – to the last syllable.  That woman has been indoctrinated since she was in pre-school on how to think, what to say, and how to obey the party.  She met her first official propagandist at the age of seven and listened to that person present how the United States was evil to the core and South Korea was merely puppets in the hands of Washington, DC.  Her parents were compelled to listen to the propaganda put out by the education director at every level, the neighborhood unit chief in every local community, and the individual work-line propagandist who gave verbal feedback to everything they admitted during daily and/or weekly self-critique sessions. She has been compelled throughout her lifetime to do the same as her parents. She studied how North Korea’s supreme leader was always right and all had to worship him and do his bidding by serving the wishes of the Korean Workers’ Party.  And yes, that they had to comply with the collective and do so through self-reliance.  But self-reliance in North Korea is more akin to survival in an environment of unparalleled political terror, rather than self-motivation. Even if she had learned that what she heard was absurd – and it is – the secret police prepped her for every meeting and debriefed her on every word that was said.  Every meeting that the Code Pink/WomenCrossDMZ had with individual North Koreans was planned, rehearsed and vetted before it took place. Every North Korean engager of the Code Pink/WomenCrossDMZ was required to report what they heard from every North Korean in their small team, not to mention that based on the secret police’s well-known tactics, there were several undercover secret police female officers within the group as well.

What benefit is there for the Kim Regime in doing this?  The party and the police state control “the happening” and learn how to do a better job with those that serve Lenin’s Theory of Utility by developing such sub-theorems as Kim Jong-un’s Theorem on Manipulating Western Naiveté, or secret police commander General Kim Won-hung’s Theorem on Personal Deception.  

How do we know of this propaganda, deception and the employment of the utility theory?  Every one of the 27,000 North Korean defectors to South Korea has told us as much – in great detail.  Their testimony of human rights denial, political terror, and mental and physical brutality are legion.  Every one of them understands Lenin’s Theory of Utility.  Apparently, such theories are beyond the understanding or at least the appreciation of Code Pink/WomenCrossDMZ.  Useful? You bet…just ask the 27,000.

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Categories: dictatorship, DMZ, DPRK, HRNK, hrnkus, humanrights, KimJongUn, KoreanWar, lenin, manipulation, NK, nonprofit, NorthKorea, RobertCollins, southkorea, theoryofutility