Andrei Lankov Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

Even if the North Korean government chooses to ease its grip on the population, this will probably not help its chances of survival. One should not forget that back in the late 1930s, when more than 1 million political prisoners were held in Stalin's concentration camps, progressive Western intellectuals denied that such institutions could possibly exist under the benign rule of the Communist Party. In the late 1950s, when the number of political prisoners dropped 1,000 times, not a figure of speech, that is the number, over, the repressive nature of the Soviet Union suddenly became a common sense fact.

Andrei Lankov
The great famine of 1994-98 was to a large extent the inviolable result of the policies that Kim Il Sung had pursued for decades. The famine was brought about by Kim Il Sung's fanatical belief in a hyper-centralized, state-managed agriculture, as well as an excessive reliance on (unacknowledged) foreign aid, not to mention militarization run amok. However, if the mine was planted (unintentionally, of course) by Kim Il Sung, it went off under the rule of his son. Hence, most North Koreans blame Kim Jong Il, rather than his father, for the economic disasters of the 1990s.

Andrei Lankov
The unavoidable spread of South Korean capital and information will put the North Korean government in a tight spot, to put it mildly.

Andrei Lankov
If a North Korean university professor is suspected of insufficient enthusiasm for the system, they will be gone without a trace very quickly. Even the memory of the unlucky victim would likely disappear, since such topics are best not discussed in North Korea.

Andrei Lankov
The North Korean elite does have some sources of hope. The elite itself remains, on the surface at least, remarkably united. The lack of a civil society and very strong social control makes the emergence of resistance difficult.

Andrei Lankov
Right now, no sane and unbiased person would be so stupid as to doubt that the North Korean state is very repressive.

Andrei Lankov