4 ANALYSIS & FEATURE
Could ‘Iran’ happen in North Korea?
The potential remains for a collective conscience to erupt into a revolution
By Chris Williams
The antigovernment protests
in Iran are a new form of revo-
lution. It is not organized — it is
organic. It is a revolution of col-
lective conscience. Does this
provide an indication of what
could happen in North Korea?
There are no charismatic rev-
olutionary leaders or mass polit-
ical movements fighting the
government in Iran. The blogs
and e-mails that now fill my in-
box propose that the protest
movement comprises millions of
individuals who will not tolerate
the regime anymore. Many of
them fought to install the
Islamic regime and against
Iraq, and they have tolerated its
political failings for 30 years.
But conscience now questions
the dissonance between rhetoric
and the reality of what has been
done to fellow human beings.
The apparent falsification of
election results was just the fi-
nal straw.
The strategies of the Iranian
government now give the im-
pression that they could only
have been planned by a
“Ministry of Own Goals.”
Early on was Ahmadinejad’s
statement that the protesters
were behaving like Nazis. This
appeared bizarre from a man
who claims that the holocaust
and therefore Nazi imperialism
did not exist. He then attacked
clerics who underpin his Islamic
state, notably the former revolu-
tionary president, Rafsanjani.
Next we had the inevitable
claims that the protests were or-
chestrated by the American CIA
and British intelligence agen-
cies. Iranians are well-aware of
the futile efforts of those two
agencies in the Middle East. If
they could not be effective in
Iraq, why should they have any
impact in Iran?
The Iranian English language
website, Kayhan International,
perpetuated the view that the
only state policy to respond to
the protests was distraction. At
the height of the street fighting,
there was no mention of the vio-
lence, but there was a headline
story about the “rusty old buck-
et of a North Korean cargo ship”
being pursued by an American
warship.
People might believe that
votes could be accurately count-
ed within a few hours of the
polling stations closing. But not
presenting the figures in rela-
tion to each constituency simply
ignited public mistrust, and
gave credibility to calculations
from Chatham House that the
number of votes apparently cast
in some constituencies exceeded
the number of voters. Nothing
was learned. Next there were
claims that a partial recount
found no fault with the election,
but no figures were given.
Whether or not votes are
rigged, it would be wise for any
regime to ensure that its claims
are credible, because any sense
North Korea’s Kim: boxed
in, or up to his old tricks?
At home he is idolized as a
“great man with clairvoyant
wisdom.” Elsewhere, North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il looks
like a cornered man who has a
dangerous infatuation with
atomic bombs.
Is the isolated leader, who
was probably felled by a stroke
last year, so at odds with an out-
side world tired of his ambition
to be a nuclear warrior that he
will give up years of rhetorical
war and launch the real thing?
Or will he just give up — to
save himself and his exhausted
economy?
Neither is likely, according to
diplomats, analysts and offi-
cials. They say he is no more
suicidal than he is driven by
worries the 23 million North
Koreans he rules with an iron
fist might fall deeper in poverty
because of the international
sanctions that followed his lat-
est military grandstanding.
For some, Kim’s government
is not so much feeling threat-
ened as playing a well-practiced
game of who-blinks-first, rolling
out the nuclear threat to win
another set of concessions from
a world struggling to deal with a
Chris Williams
● Chris Williams is based at the
Centre for International
Education and Research,
University of Birmingham,
United Kingdom, and has
also held posts at the univer-
sities of London, Bristol,
Cambridge, Cairo and the
United Nations University
Leadership Academy. His
books include “Leaders of in-
tegrity: ethics and a code for
global leadership” (2001,
UNU Amman), and
Leadership Accountability in a
Globalizing World (2006,
Palgrave Macmillan,
London).
● He can be reached at
chrisunula@yahoo.com.
of being cheated creates a dis-
trust of a regime, even among
its supporters. Harvard psychol-
ogist Stephen Pinker points out
in his book, “How the mind
works,” that we have an instinc-
tive “cheater-detector,” and con-
sequently a strong emotional re-
action against being cheated,
even if we indirectly benefit.
This is honed by thousands of
years of biological evolution and
social interaction, and will not
simply disappear because reli-
gious leaders do not understand
evolution.
On June 17, Iranian foot-
ballers wore green bands in the
World Cup qualifier against
South Korea, to show solidarity.
I expect many Koreans remem-
ber when athletes from North
and South Korea entered the
stadium at the Busan Asian
games, carrying flags showing a
united Korea. Whether or not
fans like green bands is sec-
ondary to wanting their nation-
al team to win. And that will in-
clude Iranian women, even
though they are not permitted
to enter football stadiums. A
regime that bans its star play-
ers from playing for their coun-
try, as a punishment for wear-
ing green bands, is going to
score fewer home goals, and
more own goals.
leader who has little else to bar-
gain with.
“I don’t think they view them-
selves as stuck in a hole, al-
though objectively they very well
may be,” said Balbina Hwang, a
Washington-based former aide
to the U.S. chief negotiator with
the reclusive North.
Pyongyang’s punishment for
May’s nuclear test includes the
threat of renewed, and painful,
exclusion from the global bank-
ing system and humiliating
checks of its ships on the high
seas for weapons — its one ma-
jor export.
Several analysts make the
point that the North, with some
justification, believes it has
emerged victorious from all its
skirmishes with a hostile world,
from the 1950-53 Korean War
stalemate to financial rewards
for delaying its nuclear weapons
program.
There is little so far to change
the North’s expectations that its
latest mix of recalcitrance and
saber-rattling will — if it holds
out long enough and can rely on
China to baulk at really harsh
sanctions — win more time and
more money for a government
One of the central theories of
war studies is that it is unwise
for armies to use too much force.
They just need sufficient force to
achieve their military aims, not
more. This stems from Hitler’s
1941 Operation Barossa against
the Soviet Union. With 4.5 mil-
lion troops it was the biggest
W hatever happens in Iran and North Korea in the near future,
the potential for Revolutions of Collective Conscience will remain
fixed inside the human psyche.T his is a form of resistance against
evilregimes that could only be beaten by the annihilation of the hu-
man race.W e just need to recognize and operationalize its potential.
military action ever, with the
largest number of casualties.
Not only did it soon fail, but it
provoked a massive brutal retal-
iation against Germany.
Every police officer and mili-
tia that appears on the Iranian
streets is now fueling a reaction
against the regime. Not least of
this is because it is said that
some of the plain clothes militia
speak in Arabic. Iranians have
little love of Arabic culture, and
it is self-defeating if people be-
lieve the government is conspir-
ing with Arabs by hiring them
as a secret militia to attack
Iranians.
whose survival hinges on not
changing its ways.
Kim is unlikely to abandon
years of bankrolling the mili-
tary — at the expense of the rest
of the population — to ensure
its protection of him and, more
recently, for his son to take over
the family dynasty which began
with Kim’s father.
If anything, the latest round
of belligerence has probably bol-
stered the standing of a man
whose domestic media devotes
the bulk of its efforts to brush-
ing up his personality cult, such
as a glowing article about his
clairvoyance in predicting rain.
“Kim Jong-il continues to
need to reinforce his power,” the
South’s Unification Minister
Hyun In-taek told Reuters in a
recent interview, saying social
instability was on the rise.
Some argue that the govern-
ment is almost irrelevant in the
lives of ordinary people and that
its communist-inspired com-
mand economy no longer func-
tions.
“Almost everyone is involved
in the black market,” said the
head of one leading think tank
in Seoul which closely watches
The most counterproductive
action was to criticize U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
for “meddling” and “damaging
his own credibility,” because he
called on Iran’s leaders to “re-
spect the will of their own peo-
ple.” This was a particularly
crass mistake. I happened to
meet Ban about two weeks ago.
Even from a brief exchange, he
effused intelligent integrity and
constantly exemplified his own
wonderful strategy for address-
ing world problems, “principled
pragmatism.” However foolish
North Korean leaders may be, it
is unlikely that they would dis-
grace themselves by directly in-
sulting Ban Ki-moon.
Other signs of hope, about
both Iran and North Korea,
come from a new film released
last week in the United States
and previewed in London at
Amnesty International — “The
Stoning of Soraya M.” This true
In this undated photo released by Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service in Tokyo on June 14, North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il (right) inspects the command of the 7th Infantry Division of the Korean People’s Army at an undisclosed location. AP-Yonhap News
the North, but who asked not to
be identified, adding that the
economy is running at as little
as a tenth of its capacity.
“The role of the government is
just to suppress people, to keep
story is set in an Iranian village.
It describes how a fake mullah
conspires with the mayor and
the local prison governor to have
the wife of the governor accused
of adultery. He wants to marry
another woman.
The stoning is shown in
graphic detail, and makes it
clear that women are not killed
by stoning. They are tortured
publically for many hours and
left to die in agony. Religious
leaders acting contrary to
Islam, conspiring with corrupt
officials and political leaders to
use violence against innocent
women is an image that Iran
will find it hard to shake off,
whatever the outcome of the
protests.
The whole issue of stoning
creates other astonishing con-
tradictions by Iranian lawmak-
ers. In 2008 judiciary spokes-
man Alireza Jamshidi said “One
cannot remove the punishment
social order. That’s why the gov-
ernment needs a climate of fear.
The only group he (Kim) can
rely on is the military.”
Ironically, he said, the govern-
ment’s failure has created the
WEDNESDAY JULY 1, 2009
of stoning from law.” Yet this
punishment was only intro-
duced into the Islamic Penal
Code in1983.
Stoning is not, as many be-
lieve, Iranian tradition. It did
not happen during the Shah’s
era, and the practice is not
Persian or proposed in the
Koran. It is the introduction, by
contemporary Islamic leaders,
of a Jewish custom. The practice
is closer to Zionism than
Zoroastrianism. This is as
bizarre as North Korean leaders
introducing the use of the elec-
tric chair from America.
I happened to watch some of
“Soraya” being filmed on loca-
tion, and perhaps the most sig-
nificant aspect of the film was
two things that it did not show.
The end of the film originally
contained scenes where the fake
mullah was arrested, put on tri-
al and punished. This was cut,
which is a shame because it
symbolizes the fact that good
usually triumphs over evil.
More significantly, when film-
ing started, local villagers be-
came angry because they be-
lieved that the film was
American anti-Iranian propa-
ganda. But when the graphic
stoning of Soraya was being
filmed, the villagers redirected
their anger against the possibil-
self-reliance among the popula-
tion that the leadership has so
proclaimed as its goal in the face
of a hostile world.
The government’s latest plan,
reinforced at April’s Supreme
ity that a woman should suffer
such treatment. Conscience is
more powerful than politics.
Hope for Iran, and North
Korea, lies in two things.
Despotic regimes inevitably
score own goals, appear foolish
and inept, and alienate their
own supporters. But paradoxi-
cally, it is unfortunate that
those who rule North Korea
seem less inept than those who
rule Iran.
More importantly, deep inside
our human psyche is not only a
“cheater-detector,” but also a
conscience formed by thousands
of years of human evolution.
Conscience creates room for
doubt about what is right and
wrong in our world. As Ariel
Dorfman put it in his novel
about the Chilean dictatorship,
“Death and the maiden,” the im-
portant thing for those who re-
sist is to “Keep doubt alive.”
Whatever happens in Iran
and North Korea in the near fu-
ture, the potential for
Revolutions of Collective Con-
science will remain fixed inside
the human psyche. This is a
form of resistance against evil
regimes that could only be beat-
en by the annihilation of the hu-
man race. We just need to recog-
nize and operationalize its po-
tential.
People’s Assembly to renew Kim’s
hold in power, is to lift the coun-
try into greatness in the next
three years and, say several ana-
lysts, nurture the image of his
son as heir apparent. (Reuters)