Center for East Asia Policy Studies
[A quarter of all sex crimes in South Korea reported in 2015 involved spycams, which] is a really large increase when you compare it to in 2006, when about 3.6 percent of the total number of sex crimes reported involved spycams...[A spy cam scheme may be a] more passive rather than aggressive way [for South Korean men] to act out their masculine insecurities and their social economic discontent on women. There are a lot of men in Korea, especially in the younger generations, who blame women for some of the problems that they face. There’s a sense of rejection by women and also being bested by women in schools and in jobs. In some ways, [this] is an easy way for your average guy to feel like there’s some kind of payback.
Nuclear weapons are a part of North Korea’s national identity. It’s in their constitution. It’s in their art. It’s in their education system. It’s in the way that people talk about things to themselves. It is the guarantor of North Korea’s status and it’s the guarantor of Kim [Jong-un]. Unless we see a difference in the way, or any attempt at shaking down that ideological infrastructure of North Korea’s nuclear identity, then I don’t see denuclearization as something that is a realistic goal.
Is [Kim Jong-un] really sincere [about denuclearization]? The South Koreans are saying it. Our president is saying that Kim is sincere. Our secretary of state, former CIA director, [Mike Pompeo] is telling us that Kim is sincere, so that gives us a lot of food for thought…or requires some checking of our assumptions about what really is driving Kim. For Kim, I think we have to remember that the iconography of the nuclear weapons program over the past seven years has included Kim front and center of that program. He’s touching the nuclear warhead. He’s talking earnestly with the nuclear scientists and the missile technicians. He’s at every ballistic missile test...That said, I think that we have to see what Kim is willing to give to build up his economy in the way that he says he wants to do. But I think we have to be very clear. Kim is not a businessman — Kim is someone, if we believe him, he is somebody who has completed a project that his grandfather started and his father nurtured over the past 60 years. So to give that away for a burger franchise or for American technology experts to go into North Korea, I think would be a misguided way of thinking about how to make policy. Because if that’s your assumption about North Korea then you’re going to have a set of policy outcomes that don’t necessarily comport with reality.
He [Kim Jong-un] spent six years pushing the envelope [provocations] without any punishment...Once your confidence grows and failure is not in your vocabulary, your ambitions evolve.
