YES, YES, YES.

But it is not simply loudspeakers and leaflets and not simply sending insults of KJU to the north. We need a sophisticated and comprehensive information and influence activities campaign that includes government, military, and civil society activities.

See section 6 (page 46) of this report at this link (https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/fdd-report-maximum-pressure-2-a-plan-for-north-korea.pdf) and excerpted below this article.  Mathew Ha and I (and many others) have been thinking about Information and Influence Activities for a long time.

Here are some specific references from a class I developed on the DPRK and the Gray Zone (for the Joint Special Operations University that will assist with Psychological Warfare/Operations/Information and Influence activities.

LTG Chun, In Bum, “How North Korea Wages Political Warfare at Home and Abroad...and How to Respond” ORBIS, Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 6, 2020, page 1-18

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OM-lnGiZHhuUUrI9xsnbR72MN20teWkz/view?usp=sharing

Commander Frederick Vincenzo, “An Information Based Strategy to Reduce North Korea’s Increasing Threat - Recommendations for ROK & U.S. Policy Makers,” Center for New American Security, October 3, 2016, pages 1-15.

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/an-information-based-strategy-to-reduce-north-koreas-increasing-threat

George Hutchinson, “Army of the Indoctrinated: The Suryong, the Soldier, and Information in the KPA, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea,” April 26, 2022, Read Chapter 5 & 6 pages 57-88.

https://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/Hutchinson_KPA_web_0426.pdf  

Jieun Baek, “A Policy of Public Diplomacy with North Korea: A Principled and Pragmatic Approach to Promote Human Rights and Pursue Denuclearization,” Harvard Belfer Center, August 2021, pages 20-28.

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/policy-public-diplomacy-north-korea

David Maxwell, “The Nature of The Kim Family Regime: The Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State,” Red Diamond, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, February 19,2020

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/02/19/the-nature-of-the-kim-family-regime-the-guerrilla-dynasty-and-gulag-state/  

David Maxwell, “Unification Options and Scenarios: Assisting A Resistance”, International Journal of Korean Unification Studies Vol. 24, No. 2, 2015, 127–152,

https://www.kinu.or.kr/pyxis-api/1/digital-files/d3f8fb63-4f8c-49c9-a4fa-901d3120bd5a

Suki Kim, “The Underground Movement Trying to Topple the North Korean Regime,” The New Yorker Magazine, November 16, 2020

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/23/the-underground-movement-trying-to-topple-the-north-korean-regime

Video: “Conversation with COL (Ret) Dave Maxwell, Potential for North Korea Influence & Information Campaign,” Joint Special Operations University July 14, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0E9032OEOo

Video: David Maxwell, “Beyond Nuclear Crisis: New and Long-Term Strategy for the Korean Peninsula,” Institute of World Politics, July 11, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6XPOWvQGpw&t=49s

Video: David Maxwell, “Security Situation on the Korean Peninsula, “ Institute of World Politics, September 28, 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgiZGWPIKuc&list=FL3fu5rXx0ma6f9Ze3C1i-MA&index=46&t=2s

South Korea may opt for psychological warfare in response to NK threats

The Korea Times · January 5, 2023

By Kang Seung-woo

South Korea is considering resuming psychological warfare operations, such as propaganda broadcasts or propaganda leaflets, against North Korea in the wake of the North's drone infiltration into South Korean airspace, according to a government official, Thursday.

This photo shows one of the balloons containing 1 million anti-Pyongyang leaflets that Fighters for a Free North Korea, a Seoul-based organization of North Korean defectors, claimed it sent toward North Korea from the South Korean city of Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, April 25 and 26, 2022. Yonhap 

The idea came to light one day after President Yoon Suk-yeol threatened, Wednesday, to suspend a 2018 military pact if North Korea violates the inter-Korean border again. Last year, North Korea flew five drones across the border for the first time in five years and one of them returned to the North after entering a no-fly zone near the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul.

South and North Korea held a summit on April 27, 2018, where they agreed to stop all hostile acts, including loudspeaker broadcasts and the scattering of leaflets in areas along the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), and to transform the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into a peace zone.

In addition, they also agreed to halt all hostile acts against each other to reduce tensions along the inter-Korean border, Sept. 19, 2018, on the sidelines of another inter-Korean summit. Plus, the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act, better known as the "anti-leaflet law," makes it illegal to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, with violators subject to a maximum prison term of three years or a fine of 30 million won ($23,000).

According to a senior official of the South Korean unification ministry, it has launched a legal review to see if Seoul can resume the use of propaganda loudspeakers along the border or allow propaganda leaflets to be flown into North Korea.

"We are legally reviewing the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act to determine if we can recommence forbidden acts when the Sept. 19 military agreement is suspended," the official said.

Article 23 of the act stipulates that the president may suspend all or a part of each South-North Korean agreement for a fixed period, when significant changes occur in inter-Korean relations or when it is deemed necessary for national security, maintenance of order or public welfare.

Another government official also said in a media interview that if the military pact is suspended, the South Korean military will be able to use loudspeakers along the border again.

North Korea has been sensitively responding to those acts of psychological warfare, both of which are critical of its leader and its regime. As a result, the tactic resulted in a further escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

In 2015, North Korea came close to threatening war over the propaganda broadcasts, with its leader Kim Jong-un declaring a "quasi-state of war," while the country blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Gaeseong in 2020 in anger over leaflets criticizing its leader, saying such leafleting violates a series of peace agreements between the two sides.

Bruce Bennett, a senior international defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, said words may be more powerful than bullets and keep the peace in the current environment.

"What scares Kim more than his regime collapsing? Shouldn't South Korea and the United States be threatening the North with a steady flow of outside information if he continues his provocations?" Bennett said.

"North Korea uses psychological operations against South Korea and the United States every day. The North understands how important this Cold War approach can be. While not easy for South Korea and the United States to execute across the North Korean iron curtain, there are many options available to implement psychological operations against the North, if [South] Korea and the United States are sufficiently creative."

The Korea Times · January 5, 2023

Information and Influence Activities

By David Maxwell and Mathew Ha

BACKGROUND 

Information and influence activities (IIA) are the means by which governments attempt to influence key populations to support strategic objectives. Despotic regimes use IIA to manipulate their populations to maintain authoritarian control. In contrast, the United States can use IIA to promote U.S. strategic objectives, including by informing oppressed populations and promoting principles related to democratic and human rights.220 Thus, IIA provide a key tool for generating the internal divisions and threats to Kim that could incentivize him to negotiate in good faith and relinquish his nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

IIA are a critical and longstanding element of Pyongyang’s efforts to maintain power. The Worker’s Party of Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department has aggressively employed IIA to support the Kim family regime for the past seven decades. North Korea’s information strategy is focused on three broad lines of effort: enhancing the reputation of Kim Jong Un and the Kim dynasty among domestic and international target audiences; undermining the legitimacy of the ROK government; and countering U.S. influence in Korea and the region, with an emphasis on dividing the ROK-U.S. alliance.

Despite Pyongyang’s coordinated and persistent effort, North Koreans are increasingly gaining access to outside information. A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) survey of 36 North Koreans living across several North Korean provinces found that almost 92 percent of them consume foreign media at least once a month. Eighty-three percent assessed that foreign media had a greater impact on their lives than decisions by the North Korean government.221

Despite the limited sample, the survey has several advantages. First, all those queried were living inside North Korea and were not escapees. Moreover, the surveys were conducted in person, meaning “respondents were free to voice critical opinions about their own government unfettered.”222 Relying solely on escapee surveys can distort findings since escapees are usually from border provinces near China and therefore do not necessarily provide a representative sample of the entire North Korean population. The CSIS survey, however, drew opinions from beyond these border areas.223

North Korean defector Thae Yong Ho, formerly the North Korean ambassador to the United Kingdom, speaks to American scholar Robert Kelley at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2019 on May 28, 2019, in Oslo, Norway. (Photo by Julia Reinhart/Getty Images)

A key method of distributing foreign media in North Korea is through cross-border traders and smugglers. These individuals provide foreign media stored on various devices, such as DVDs and thumb drives, which are then distributed at private markets that have emerged in recent decades.224 Since the famines of the 1990s, these private markets have become an important component of everyday life for many non-elite North Koreans. Additionally, the proliferation of smart phones (some 6.5 million) is providing people in the North the ability to communicate. These developments offer opportunities for U.S. and ROK IIA.225

On the other hand, the emergence of fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications technology along the Chinese-North Korean border is a potentially dangerous development. The Chinese are using this technology to track and interdict North Korean smuggling operations.226 Although North Korea cannot yet produce its own 5G technology, leaked documents reveal that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has helped Pyongyang build wireless networks. The Washington Post reports that the Kim regime’s contact with Huawei began as early as 2006, when former leader Kim Jong Il visited Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzen, after which he oversaw the establishment of North Korea’s wireless provider Koryolink. 227

Experts believe this represents the beginning of North Korea and Huawei’s cooperation.228 While North Korean telecommunications capabilities may not yet be ready for 5G technology, this relationship should raise concerns. Huawei could equip the regime with the technology and infrastructure to surveil anyone in North Korea using a smart phone.

ASSESSMENT

The Kim regime is one of the most oppressive and abusive governments in the world. Freedom House gives North Korea the worst possible rating for freedom, political rights, and civil liberties, summarizing the situation in North Korea this way:

North Korea is a one-party state led by a dynastic totalitarian dictatorship. Surveillance is pervasive, arbitrary arrests and detention are common, and punishments for political offenses are severe. The state maintains a system of camps for political prisoners where torture, forced labor, starvation, and other atrocities take place … human rights violations are still widespread, grave, and systematic.229

In its annual human rights report on North Korea, the State Department echoed these concerns, noting that human rights abuses “continued to be a widespread problem.”230 These egregious human rights violations are part of a deliberate, systematic, and brutal system designed to keep the Kim regime in power.231

Any maximum pressure campaign targeting Kim Jong Un should feature robust IIA focused on human rights. A well-orchestrated campaign would enable the United States and South Korea to highlight and confront Kim’s human rights atrocities while shifting his cost-benefit analysis on denuclearization.

Undertaking such operations in a foreign country is a significant decision that should not be taken lightly. However, the nature of the totalitarian Kim regime and its human rights abuses, as well as the severity of the threat it poses, demonstrate the need for such an approach. In fact, such an approach would be consistent with the best traditions of U.S. foreign policy, simultaneously advancing U.S. interests and honoring American democratic and humanitarian principles.

Kim apparently believes that he can best ensure his survival by retaining his nuclear weapons, oppressing the North Korean people, and refusing to negotiate in good faith. The purpose of an IIA campaign would be to change Kim’s perceptions in each of these areas. The goal will be to persuade him that he can better secure his personal survival by respecting the human rights of the North Korean people and agreeing to relinquish his nuclear weapons in a permanent and verifiable manner. Kim must become convinced that the status quo poses a greater threat than charting a new course through good faith diplomatic negotiations.

An effective IIA campaign should target three North Korean audiences: the regime elite, the second-tier leadership, and the North Korean people. Messaging focused on the regime elite should highlight that denuclearization offers the best hope of survival.

The second-tier leadership is a key target audience. It comprises military and party officials outside of the core regime elite who lack sufficient power to act alone but whose collective action during war, crisis, or regime collapse would influence the outcome of any contingency. In the military, this category includes brigade commanders and assistant commanders, commanders and assistant commanders of specialized units (intelligence, missile, and WMD), and key senior staff controlling logistics and transportation. The military second tier would also include senior General Political Bureau and Military Security Command officers assigned to the aforementioned commands. All told, the military second tier numbers approximately 250 personnel.

In the Korean Workers’ Party, officers serving on party committees at the provincial, city, and county levels have enormous influence on all activity within their individual jurisdictions. Party committee chairmen at those levels carry similar authorities. Combined, these individuals add up to approximately 400 personnel across nine provinces, 145 counties, and key cities throughout the country.

Finally, Ministry of State Security (secret police) and Ministry of People’s Security (national police) leaders in those same geographical districts also have enormous influence within their jurisdictions. They also number approximately 400 personnel.

After accounting for roughly 50 key scientists and project leaders of WMD programs, the second-tier leadership totals approximately 1,100 personnel. Each of these individuals has the potential – in critical contingencies – to resist guidance orders, stop or alter logistical and transportation actions, and neutralize elite-level action officers.232

The IIA campaign targeting this second-tier should focus on providing information and media that sow doubt regarding the regime elite and suggest that life could improve if the regime changed its policies. As renowned North Korea analyst Andrei Lankov has noted, informing North Koreans about “attractive alternatives to their current way of life” represents a key way to pressure the regime to change its behavior.233 In addition, messages to the second-tier leadership should highlight how they could play a positive role in a non-nuclear North Korea or a unified Korea.

IIA focused on the third target audience, the North Korean people, should prioritize foreign media. The widespread dissemination of foreign media has already created fissures between the everyday North Koreans and the regime elite, thereby weakening the government’s propaganda and information blockade.234 As the CSIS survey found, North Koreans who consume foreign media will likely continue seeking this information despite the potential consequences if they are caught.235 Moreover, continually injecting foreign media into North Korea will help break down the regime’s ideological controls while encouraging more independent thinking among everyday North Koreans.

Although the United States possesses IIA capabilities, they have not been deployed in a robust and well-coordinated manner. Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia pump news into North Korea via radio, television, and the internet. According to one North Korean escapee, VOA broadcasts are transcribed and provided to the regime elite, who represent up to 10 to 15 percent of North Korea’s 24 million population.236 Similarly, the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor provides funding to nongovernmental organizations for “fostering the free flow of information into, out of, and within the DPRK.”237 Non-governmental organizations such as the Defense Forum Foundation support private efforts such as Free North Korea Radio.238 Given the relatively closed nature of North Korean society, however, it is difficult to assess how many of these programs are performing.

Moreover, an effective IIA campaign requires close coordination between the U.S. and ROK governments. However, Seoul has often undermined effective IIA tools, an approach rooted in the Moon administration’s belief that concessions lead to “better inter-Korean relations.”239 This belief ignores North Korea’s persistent failure to respond to such concessions with verifiable steps toward denuclearization. Washington therefore should remind Seoul that no prior intra-Korean agreements, such as the April Panmunjom Joint Declaration or the September Pyongyang Declaration, should encumber IIA against North Korea.

Bottles containing rice, money, and USB sticks are prepared prior to being thrown into the sea by North Korean defector activists on Ganghwa island, west of Seoul, on May 1, 2018. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

Alarmingly, South Korea has cracked down on activities by escapee and refugee organizations. This is particularly problematic because the efforts of such organizations likely represent the most effective IIA. They have been successful in getting information into the North by flying balloons and floating plastic bottles filled with USB drives and other material.240

RECOMMENDATIONS

The United States and South Korea should implement a comprehensive and aggressive IIA campaign in North Korea. The focus should be three-fold: create internal threats against the regime from among the elite, provide the second-tier leadership with alternative paths to survival, and prepare the Korean people for eventual unification under a United Republic of Korea. To do so, we recommend the following steps:

• Develop organizational infrastructure to facilitate IIA: The United States and South Korea lack a single organization to direct IIA against North Korea. Washington and Seoul should establish institutions that would work together to plan and shape combined IIA. Fortunately, as discussed earlier, the United States already has numerous tools at its disposal, such as the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Voice of America; and Radio Free Asia. The United States should centralize these activities under an oversight organization. This organization would coordinate all agencies and departments and work with non-government organizations.

• Under the Moon administration, there will likely be concerns that IIA could upset diplomatic conditions. Admittedly, an IIA campaign targeting Pyongyang could risk stirring additional short-term tensions with Pyongyang. But U.S. diplomats should remind their ROK counterparts that those tensions may ultimately forge a path to the peaceful denuclearization of North Korea. U.S. diplomats also need to remind their South Korean allies that Seoul’s persistent use of concessions has not elicited progress with Pyongyang.

• Encourage Moon’s government to increase intra-Korean people-to-people exchanges: Washington should encourage intra-Korean engagement by sponsoring people-to-people educational and cultural exchanges. Such exchanges could expose North Korea’s intelligentsia and emerging elites to democratic concepts as well as personal relationships with South Koreans.241

• Implement aggressive IIA targeting the North Korea regime: After building a baseline consensus, the United States and South Korea should implement increasingly aggressive IIA targeting the North Korean regime. These activities should inform North Koreans of their universal human rights and civil liberties that the regime is failing to respect. This will undermine the legitimacy of the Kim family regime and give hope to the people living in the North. Alternate sources of information can put regime propaganda in perspective.

• This campaign could also help lay the initial groundwork for emergent leaders who could replace Kim and who might seek to unify with the South as equal partners under the values of individual liberty and freedom, liberal democracy, and a free market economy. At a minimum, this campaign could help persuade Kim that the status quo poses a greater threat than good faith negotiations with the United States and South Korea. The ultimate goal is to create internal divisions and threats that will influence Kim to denuclearize.

• Increase exposure of North Koreans to the outside world: IIA must exploit North Koreans’ growing access to DVDs, USB drives, and smart phones from outside the country.242 These media devices can carry content popular among North Koreans, such as South Korean dramas, which can implicitly help Koreans in the North better understand the difference between the regime they have and the government they deserve.243

• Establish a Korea Defector Information Institute (KDII): There is no single organization in the United States or South Korea that harnesses the information of defectors to support IIA. If both nations worked together to establish a KDII, it could serve as a repository for defector information to inform policymakers, strategists, and those responsible for developing IIA themes and messages. This institute should utilize defector knowledge and advice in devising appropriate messages and communications techniques. It could also encourage North Koreans to defect, particularly members of Office 39 (also known as Department 39), who are knowledgeable of the Kim family regime’s finances.



• Provide military support to ROK-U.S. government programs for IIA: ​U.S. Psychological Operations (PSYOP) forces should be deployed on a permanent basis to support ROK PSYOP forces as part of a national-level alliance IIA campaign. ROK and U.S. PSYOP forces should advise and assist defector organizations to synchronize themes, messages, and dissemination methods to ensure unity of effort.