North Korea and the World: Dr. Bruce Bennett at Poly
October 30th, 2017
Recently, the Poly community had the opportunity to hear expert Dr. Bruce Bennett discuss the state of the current North Korea crisis. Dr. Bennett, who is a Senior International/Defense Researcher at the RAND Corporation, presented a fascinating array of issues that included Kim family dynamics and social class structure in North Korea. Although the Global Scholars and I did some cursory research on the area before meeting Dr. Bennett, I definitely walked out of his event with much more knowledge than I had had before.
Since I am personally very interested in Chinese politics, I particularly enjoyed hearing Dr. Bennett’s take on North Korea’s uneasy relationship with China. He described a relationship in which North Korea’s economy was dependent on Chinese resources, but China remains wary of Kim Jong-Un’s extreme rhetoric and brutal reputation. One thing I found especially interesting was that China has a missile defense system set up on the North Korea-China border to defend against a possible North Korean betrayal.
Another topic that Dr. Bennett discussed was the use of psychological tactics to undermine the North Korean regime. He proposed using tactics like dropping leaflets championing South Korean educational opportunities and freedoms in hopes of convincing North Korean physicists to defect. He also mentioned the use of blasting South Korean “K-Pop” music across the DMZ to spread messages of unity, brotherhood, and peace to high-level North Korean soldiers and thus to the entire elite class. Finally, Dr. Bennett made a very interesting statement: our most useful weapon against North Korea is information. Showing North Koreans a soap opera that accurately portrays Kim Jong-Un’s life of womanizing, gluttony, and brutality could help to counteract brainwashing and anti-American sentiment. Certainly, “psychological warfare” was a facet of the Korean conflict of which I had previously been unaware, and I found Dr. Bennett’s presentation of these ideas to be absolutely fascinating.
Dr. Bennett’s lecture left me with a lot of new information, but even more new questions. How dangerous is the immediate North Korean threat? Are current American/South Korean tactics against the Kim regime working? What does the new Trump administration mean for diplomatic relations in light of the Korean crisis? If we aren’t already utilizing Dr. Bennett’s ideas of psychological warfare, why? There is still much we do not know, but I believe that the work that Dr. Bennett is doing will help to shed further light on North Korea’s insular, idiosyncratic society.
