hankyoreh

“Change in North Korea will begin with the North Korea’s elites realization that they are corrupt and dangerous.”

This was the prediction in a keynote speech by Francis Fukuyama at the fifth Chaillot Forum on May 6. The 63-year-old Stanford University professor and “The End of History” author suggested that North Korea could be changed “from above” by the leadership’s recognition of the need to hold on to power, rather than from below through a revolution or coup d’etat.

The Chaillot Forum, which takes its name from the palace in Paris where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, is chiefly a setting for discussing North Korean human rights issues.

Fukuyama went on to say the elites “will stop short of full-scale reforms if they can’t find a way for themselves and their families to survive in the vortex of change.”

He added that the Korean Peninsula trust-building process, which is the Park Geun-hye administration’s policy on reunification, “will need to focus on this point.” The remarks were read as a suggestion to the administration, which has raised concerns in Pyongyang that its aims are to reunify the peninsula in a unilateral absorption by the South.

Fukuyama also said the building of trust in inter-Korean relations “is only possible through increased interaction.”

At the same time, he warned against “depending on the other side’s good will to gain trust.”

“You need to be aware that the other side is always going to look out for its own interests,” he said.

Fukuyama’s message was that trust could also come from seeking out interactions that would be beneficial to both sides.

“If trust between North and South Korean authorities is not a possibility, then an alternative could be to build trust between residents,” he said.

Fukuyama also stressed the importance of diplomacy with China, noting that it is “really thanks to China that the North Korean regime has managed to hold on.”

“[South Korea] needs to build trust with China to convince them that a unified Korea would not be a detriment to them,” he said.

By Kim Oi-hyun, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]