 Hi, everyone. My name is Frank Gaum and I run the North Korea program here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. I'd like to welcome everyone to this virtual event on North Korea and civil society, which will run for about an hour and 15 minutes. Before we begin, I just wanted to introduce our institute for those of you who may not be familiar. USIP is a national independent and non-partisan institute that's funded by Congress and that focuses on the mission of preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict. Okay, so today we're talking about an aspect of North Korea that doesn't get much attention. A lot of the immediate focus is on the North Korean security threat and how the Biden administration may be responding to this threat. But as the current security stalemate continues, there are ongoing economic and social dynamics in play in North Korea that could have long-term implications for the welfare of the North Korean people, as well as U.S. policy towards North Korea. Recently, the National Committee on North Korea published a report that examines how the development of markets in North Korea, including the strategies used by market participants to overcome uncertainty, is helping the social trust and the social networks that are necessary for a truly independent civil society. We have two of the report's authors with us today, so I'll let them dive into the details. Unfortunately, the third author, Daniel Wertz, wasn't able to join us due to a personal matter. So I'll let the authors share their findings for the next 25 to 30 minutes, and then we have two fantastic experts on North Korea who will serve as discussants for the report for another 15 minutes or so. And then we'll save the last 25 minutes for Q&A. So let me go ahead and introduce the speakers and discussants very briefly. First is Justin Hastings, who is a professor of international relations and comparative politics at the University of Sydney in Australia. Then we have Andrew Yeo, who is a professor of politics and director of Asian studies at the Catholic University of America here in D.C. But currently he's based in the Philippines on fellowship. And then, of course, Daniel Wertz, who couldn't join us today, he's a program manager at the National Committee on North Korea. And then our two discussants, Celeste Errington is assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. And then lastly, Jun Baek is a fellow with the Korea Project and the Applied History Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. So with that, let's just dive right in and I'll turn it over to Justin to start off on a summary of the report. Okay, thanks. Let me share the screen and see if you can see it. So I should say that this project arose as a result of a conversation I had with the National Endowment for Democracy several years ago. They were interested in sort of the markets that have erupted in North Korea over the past 25 years or so and are seemingly here to stay. And they wanted to know sort of, well, you know, how can, you know, to what extent might this be related to ultimately some kind of civil society in North Korea. So I didn't know that so I got some other people together to sort of help me sort of look into this. And we came up with basically this report that you see before you. So just to sort of give you an overview of the reports and of the talk, first we'll talk about the markets that exist in North Korea very briefly. And we're interested especially in the aspects of the markets that are relevant to potential civil society development, not the markets overall. They were interested, then we'll talk about sort of how civil society might develop in North Korea, what it might look like, how we think about civil society. It's not necessarily the same in the Korean context as in other contexts. And finally we'll sort of see what we can do about linking markets and potential civil society building blocks. And I think spoiler alert, we don't necessarily think there is civil society in North Korea, but there are certainly re-shoots that might arise as a result of market activity. And the general way we're thinking about this is basically in terms of this framework, right? So we think about certain kinds of characteristics of North Korea's political and economic environment. And sort of the people who are essentially in markets in North Korea have to deal with these characteristics. They face challenges in their participation in markets, both at the lower levels and at higher levels as well. And in addressing these challenges, market participants have developed and implemented a number of different strategies which we'll go into to basically deal with the problems created by North Korea's really difficult environment for everyone involved. Right? And the argument here is that as a result of implementing these strategies to survive in the marketplace, North Korean market participants are essentially creating emergent civil society building blocks in our purpose, but sort of the recipe for civil society is starting to be there as a result of these market participation strategies. Okay, so first we'll talk about markets in North Korea and then Andrew will talk about civil society and linking civil society and markets as well as some implications for NGOs might be interested in North Korea as well. So this is actually not a market in North Korea. This is a North Korean restaurant in Shanyang in China that I took or I actually went to in 2013. And so just to point out that North Koreans are sort of involved in markets and entrepreneurial activity all around the world, not just in North Korea. Right? And so this is something that has become sort of infused in a large part of society in North Korea. And so I'm not going to go over the history of markets in North Korea on the arose as a result of very difficult times on that sort of that arose and started in the 1990s as a result of the arduous March. But under Kim Jong-un I think the most relevant characteristics for our purposes are how he's treated markets and how he's treated political power. Right? So Kim Jong-un has by and large attempted to recentalize political power under under not only him obviously but under the party in particular. And he's allowed markets to continue. So he's not, you haven't seen sort of the assault on markets that you saw under Kim Jong-un. At the same time he's made it difficult for markets to operate, right? You know, not necessarily on purpose. His missile and nuclear tests especially between 2013 and 2017 led to increased UN sanctions which had an impact on the ability of markets to operate with foreign goods to buy and sell things. And by and large he has taken measures that are designed to get more money from market actors from the Donju as well as tightened local control over them. Right? We see sort of crackdown on the independence smuggling, especially sort of under during COVID. We see sort of some crackdown on the sort of the measures that allowed informal market activity to take place. We see some attempts to extract money from market actors from the issues of public bonds as well as plans announced just last month to restart political control. Which they would not have made ultimately if they thought they actually had, you know, sort of economic control over the markets. And what this led to under Kim Jong-un is a political economic environment that has three sort of main characteristics that are relevant for both markets and civil society. I mean, first, the North Korean state is really deeply involved in about markets, right? The level of political support they give, the level of facility they have will vary over time. It will vary depending on who's actually doing business, which market actors we're talking about. It will vary based on the nature of the markets and the location of business. So in some sense, it's really uncertain. You don't necessarily know if the North Korean state is on your side or not. At the same time, the North Korean state is addicted to the markets, right? They need the revenue generated by these market actors. They can't close them down entirely or else they lose that revenue. This is related to this is the idea that marketization is necessary for the survival of much of the population, right? And this is sort of what I, the point I tried to make in my book and so other people have made better in other books. But the idea here is that entrepreneurialism is necessary for survival. The North Korean state no longer actually takes care of people. At the same time, the fruits of that marketization are precarious where you need to survive. But, you know, even when you make money, even when you survive, this could be taken away from you at any time. And to the extent that the state regulates these markets, by and large, this is designed to increase the income the state gives and tries to increase control of the state has over these markets, as well as recognizing facts on the ground, right? We often see sort of state regulation of markets or macro activity, essentially following what happened in the markets, not proceeding it, right? The North Korean state is chasing controller than actually exercising. Finally, I think this is not surprising to people. There are restrictions that information flows around the country, right? Obviously there's censorship, obviously the state controls media, there are restrictions on people's movements around the country. North Korea now has cell phones. So in that sense, there's a lot better communication around the country, but obviously the communications are monitored, they're limited. Cell phones are not allowed to call outside of North Korea, in theory. And all of this is designed to inhibit collective action by, you know, everyone, essentially outside of the state. At the same time, as we'll see, sort of markets need information, right? And so sort of the market actors will find ways to get information in order to operate. So in the report, we think about, you know, a number of different market actors. We sort of categorize according to how much access they have to the state and its resources. At the top, we have, you know, the general state organizations you tend to think about when you're sanctioning North Korea, right? Sort of the ones that make money for Kim Jong-un or sell weapons. Then we have basically all the other state trading entities. Every level of the North Korean state, because of this development of markets, has been tasked with making money, both for itself and for the central state. And so they're the ones who often will set up businesses or go off into China to make money. At the bottom, we have private entrepreneurs with varying sort of levels of ties to the states, whether it's just buying off state officials or establishing more permanent relationships. And in the middle, I think, is what we call the report public-private partnerships. Basically private entrepreneurs who sort of registered their businesses with the state in exchange for some kind of fee or kind of the profits, or sort of state officials go into business for themselves and essentially create a private business within the state entity. I think to a certain extent, these are somewhat similar to the Red Hat enterprises we saw in China in the 1980s, but again, sort of without any necessarily a primal reason from the North Korean state. And market activities occur in a number of different areas, not only in the Chang-La-Dong, which are the informal markets, but also general markets, which are sort of legally sanctioned, as well as sort of cross-court and trade, and the other kinds of areas that you would expect to see, service, retail, production, all of these are now existing North Korea in various levels. And so when we talk about the markets, this is what you mean, not just the Chang-La-Dong, but basically all of these sort of areas where people are engaged in market activity and are attempting to survive in a very difficult environment. And sort of one thing to also keep in mind, and something Dan wrote about in the report, is that this is actually the market structure here and market participation is somewhat gendered. So the majority of people who started actually buying and selling and engaging in informal markets in the 1990s were actually women, largely because they were not tied down to a state workplace, and sort of they came to predominate among market vendors and petty entrepreneurs in North Korea. They amassed capital and they sort of build up businesses and connections to a limited extent, and sort of what you often find in North Korea is that women were sort of became the main breadwinners, even if they were not necessarily recognized as such. At the same time, the formal sector, which is where public private enterprises often come from, where sort of state-owned trading entities often exist, are sort of still dominated by men. All right, and these are men who use their connections to sort of not only take state assets, but also engage in corruption or to use their connections to accumulate private wealth. Okay, so what are these challenges for market participation? Because of the political and economic environment in North Korea, enforcement is difficult. You can't rely on the state to enforce any contracts you make. There's no way to sort of engage in formal dispute resolution mechanisms, partly because, you know, even if you read the joint venture laws in North Korea, on the state is itself the sort of arbitrator of the speed to have with it. There's uncertainty for all participants. The policies could shift at any time, the state could crack down at any time. Perjury could happen to anyone, and the borders could be closed without warning, as we saw with COVID and with Ebola in the past. Social trust is obviously very low. I mean, one thing that North Korea does to essentially keep people from rebelling is to decrease social trust with each other. And this means that in some sense, the reputation will cost for cheating is also low. People who are engaged in the market don't necessarily know if they're going to be betrayed or not. Information is hard to acquire. Market participants need information. They need information on the supply of goods. They need information on the demand for their goods. They need to know what the market rules are. They need to know what prices to charge and what prices to pay. All these things seem like second nature in a standard capitalized capitalist society, but in North Korea, it's much more difficult with this information. So the question is, how do you do this? And finally, related to social trust being low, relationships are transactional, right? Sort of, you know, you basically sort of market participants are optimistic. They take advantage of where they see it. And this may mean sort of a high level of cheating. So how do market participants address these challenges then? So first thing to say, they seek out ways to enforce contracts and resolve business disputes. So in our interviews with Chinese businessmen, this was often came in the form of retaliation. So if you sort of screw me over, I'm going to retaliate against you or have my friends do it, perhaps in a violent way. They will often build influential relationships with officials as a way of making sure those contracts are enforced, not necessarily by the states, but by their official partners. They also want to decrease uncertainty about policy, about security. And this means leveraging those official relationships, sort of engaging in sort of using officials to get information, to shield themselves politically, sort of teaching themselves to officials to create patron client networks, as well as the public-private partnerships. So that's one way to decrease uncertainty by basically realizing yourself and make yourself a public entity. Market businesses also seek to increase trust between participants. So one of the interesting things that we've seen arise in North Korea over the past few years are trust and third-party connections. People are introduced to other people for business by someone they both trust, even if they don't know each other. They will interact with each other repeatedly. If I didn't cheat you the first time, then hopefully I won't cheat you any subsequent time as well. And through these repeated interactions, we'll see and we'll talk about perhaps increased levels of trust. Think more darkly, they also create mutual vulnerability. For both engaging illegal activities or informal activities, we both have on sort of cost to betraying the other. And finally, you use sort of brokers, right? These are the trust of third parties, which then can help transmit information, which can help build trust and help build networks that you can then use to have trust within business relationships. And finally, sort of market participants have strategies to improve access to information. They use the brokers to get information to sort of communicate inside and outside of North Korea. Obviously now using mobile phones can help increase trust even within North Korea across distance. And they also leverage these networks they built up, leverage these official relationships they built up to sort of improve their access to information. Okay, so now Andrew will talk about simple society in North Korea. Okay, thanks Justin. So Justin outlined the strategies market actors in North Korea use to survive and to keep their businesses afloat. But before we discuss the relationship between market strategies and the building blocks of civil society, we need to clarify what we mean by simple society in a repressive authoritarian context like North Korea. So next slide please. Simple society is of course a frustratingly difficult concept to pinpoint. It can refer to voluntary associations NGOs and social movements. Sometimes civil society complements the state by providing public services and contributing to good governance. But in other instances, simple society exists in opposition to the state manifest an anti government protest. Simple society may also vary across time geography and cultural context. Although no universal definition exists, we adopted political scientist Larry diamonds definition of simple society in our report. I'm not going to read the definition but a key aspect in diamonds concept is that civil society involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions and ideas, exchange information, achieve mutual goals and make demands on the state. So one of the keywords here is this notion of a public sphere. We therefore see civil society as foremost of public space in relation to other spheres, such as the state and market and only secondarily as an actor. Although civil society in its ideal form remains independent of states and markets. In reality, civil society often intersects with these other two spheres. We are especially interested in looking at the intersection of market state and society in North Korea. Jurgen Habermas study on the rise of a public sphere in 18th century Europe offers a good illustration of how we think about the relationship between markets and society. Habermas noted how the rise of trade and commerce led to a demand for information about goods and prices in different towns. Local taverns, salons and coffee houses along commercial trade routes eventually developed, which offered traders a space for social exchange, which in turn gave rise to a bourgeois public. As one civil society scholar argued with the development of the commercial state in 18th century Europe, civil society conceived essentially as a market organized sphere of production and competition came to be viewed as a distinct legally protected public realm separate from family and state. Now, 18th century Europe is a much different context from 21st century North Korea, but it does illustrate the potential linkages between markets and the public sphere. When thinking about the prospects of civil society in North Korea, we raise two questions. First, to what extent are there sufficient foundations in North Korean society to facilitate the emergence of independent and voluntary associations. And second, to what extent is there a public sphere outside the purview of the state that allows for the exchange of ideas and creation of new social norms. So I first want to talk a little bit about associational life in North Korea. Unsurprisingly, there's no independent civil society organization in North Korea. The regime relies on repression and censorship to undermine or eliminate traditional forms of social organizations such as religious groups or volunteer associations. However, it would be wrong to argue that there is no associational life in North Korea. It just happens to be organized by the state, which remains pervasive in the everyday lives of North Koreans. Two major institutions that facilitate organized life are mass organizations and the In-Min ban, often translated as neighborhood watch groups. Every working age adult in North Korea who is not a party member, belongs to a mass organization such as the Youth League, trade union, farmers union, women's union. These organizations deliver the party's directives to the masses with local cells assigned responsibility for organizing regular ideological education and mutual criticism sessions. The In-Min ban, on the other hand, are typically comprised of 20 to 40 neighboring households. The neighbors, they gather once or twice a week to recite party roles and engage in introspection and self-criticism. Despite the state's use of mass organization for surveillance and indoctrination and also free labor, our report raises a couple hypothetical questions. Specifically whether state-run social organizations can facilitate the spread of information, encourage friendships, or foster limited social ties. There are also the factor accounts about the In-Min ban that reveals space for dissent and otherwise compliant behavior. For instance, neighbors and colleagues may privately work out a pro forma script prior to a mutual criticism session. Or an In-Min ban leader might turn a blind eye to minor indiscretions for fear of incurring the wrath of her neighbors. So we can have the next slide please. So North Korea's public sphere, this is what we wanted to highlight here. Although the North Korean regime closely monitors individuals in an effort to stamp out ideas if they're deemed anti-revolutionary, the regime is unable to fully control daily life or the flow of information within the country. Alongside the regime's official public discourse created through censorship and propaganda, marketization in the country has also enabled a semi-autonomous public sphere to emerge where citizens might discuss and exchange ideas. Since markets are only partially regulated, they create some space for individual interactions, whether in person or via mobile phone. Beyond market-related information about the price of goods or business opportunities, topics of discussion may range from the ordinary, such as the weather and current events and local gossip, to the relatively subversive. I feel, of course, would explicitly critique the regime, but they might indirectly criticize the status quo by complaining about corrupt local officials, speculating on why economic conditions have not improved, or sharing ideas about how to work around the latest edicts handed down by the party. North Koreans also use jokes, humor, and double-speak to comment on social realities, or address shortcomings within the regime. Shifts in women's fashion trends or discussion around foreign movies and music also offer a point for discussion. For sure, the mere existence of a semi-autonomous North Korean public sphere is not necessarily conducive to the spread of subversive ideas or an alternative political discourse. Yet, the expansion of the sphere also shows that North Koreans are not merely passive recipients of state-approved ideas. Instead, they may reconcile the gap between their lived experience and the official state narrative by engaging in their own bottom-up discourse with others within their trust network. Next slide, please. So we were going to talk about comparisons with transition economies and the public sphere in China and Eastern Europe, and I think they offer two contrasting models. But for the interest of time, I think I'm going to jump ahead and talk about the linkages between markets and civil society. So, the next slide. Now that we have a better grasp of civil society, linking markets to civil society begs the question of whether the expansion of markets in North Korea will eventually enable the rise of a civil society sector. Evidence from existing studies and reports, including research relying on defector surveys and interviews, suggests that the use of markets and market strategies have perhaps unwittingly generated key building blocks of civil society encompassing a public sphere. To be clear, this is different from arguing that civil society exists in North Korea. Most networks derived from markets remain private and small scale, and market networks based on personal trust are inherently self-limiting. They're small in size. But market participant strategies devised to enforce contracts to resolve disputes, to decrease uncertainty, and to improve trust. These are the challenges that are faced by North Koreans and markets. To some degree, facilitate social relations among these market participants. We consider how their interactions might sustain trust, build social capital, and facilitate the creation of new norms and networks, or what we deem are the building blocks to civil society. So just to walk through these building blocks more concretely, well, I'm going to just talk about these four building blocks. So the first is social trust or social capital. So one of the most basic components of civil society is social trust. Trust is built on exchange and reciprocity and emerges out of mutual interdependence. If North Korean market actors interact regularly with one another through their business, or if market actors engage in repeated interactions with state officials in order to secure business prospects, then ongoing and mutually beneficial interaction may facilitate popular behavior that moves beyond initial self-interest. Second building block is reciprocity. Market transactions often rest on reciprocal relations. Buyers assume that sellers offer a product of reasonable quality at a fair price. Conversely, sellers assume buyers have sufficient money to purchase goods. Trust is built through reciprocal relations found in repeated interaction. Actors eventually develop reputations within the market sphere. During the initial years of marketization in North Korea, we've heard about a culture of upfront payment. And some things like extending credit or lending money was considered foolish, reflecting weak norms of reciprocity. But over time, the development of market networks and the spread of cell phones have increased the reputation of cost of cheating and thus allowed more market transactions to proceed at a distance or via credit. The third building block is trust networks. So the rise in markets in North Korea have resulted in the rise of informal trust networks. We mentioned social trust, but social trust among women. So this is where the connections with other individuals are important. Four is the rental networks that are built between and among buyers and sellers. Whether and how information flows within and between individuals is important for the civil society. Market participants may therefore be better conditioned to promote social interactions that mimic civil society, either through their interactions or even through their interactions, even if they're driven by profit and self interest rather than collective interest. And finally, a last building block to civil society that we mentioned is shared norms. Within these trust networks, market participation strategies can turn into shared norms and ideas. So let me give an example. Market participants may retaliate against cheaters either individually or collectively by damaging their reputation and denying them future business. So that's one way you can enforce these norms, but it can signal to other participants what behavior is acceptable or unacceptable in the markets. Market strategies may also develop into market rules that protect the interests of the wider market community. For instance, when often bribes to state officials in unspoken ceiling or a market rate may exist on how much to bribe a border guard. So this will be considered here a norm of how much you should actually bribe a border guard. And it's shared or disclosed among market participants. When translating market participation strategies into civil society building blocks, an important question to raise is whether the exchange of market information such as prices of the quality of goods and business transactions can extend to relationships. They actually go beyond the marketplace. In other words, our market participant strategies limited just the realm of markets, or they, or can they be translated to the realm of civil society. If interactions are strictly limited to business transactions, the market strategies may just remain limited within the market sphere. But if the information about goods and prices perpetuates other non market related discussion, such as current events or political trends, maybe the local news market activity may indirectly shape and inform the early trappings of a limited civil society. So in short, markets may not directly produce civil society in authoritarian regimes, but their existence can help generate the building blocks essential to its formation. Markets in North Korea create new relationships among individuals, including relationships between private entrepreneurs and government officials. These relationships may be seen as opportunistic and transactional in nature, but repeated interactions can over time lead to reciprocity and trust as an interest of buyers, sellers and brokers, and even government officials become intertwined. Information shared among market participants within horizontal and vertical networks may gradually shift market discourse, if not other forms of discussion taking place within the smaller private networks and bring it out into a more public realm. So that would be the basis of a public sphere. I want to talk about the elephant that's in the room and that's COVID-19 and its impact on North Korean markets and society. So the impact of border lockdowns in the virus and markets, not to mention the lives of North Koreans is really a key question these days. By most account, Kim Jong-un appears to have tightened control of the markets that calls for greater economic centralization, as was outlined in the 8th Workers' Party Congress. It's really too early to assess the long-term impact of these policies on North Korean market and society, and we have even less information on what's happening inside North Korea than before. It's also unclear how long the border lockdowns will remain in place, but for now it's fairly safe to argue that North Korea has an economic and possibly a humanitarian crisis on its hands given the lack of food, medical resources and basic supplies. But in the short term, market strategies and foundations of civil society that we describe in this report may offer a source of resilience to North Koreans. Even in the absence of voluntary organizations or civil society or ad hoc, these ad hoc networks of extended family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances that may help North Koreans adapt to these difficult circumstances. Unfortunately, prolonged hardship in North Korea may undermine the mechanisms that create the building blocks of civil society, and that's just something that we're going to have to monitor. So I want to conclude with just a few thoughts about what organizations can do to facilitate the sort of change that we've seen with markets and promoting building blocks of civil society. And this is definitely something that we can discuss further in the Q&A if others in the audience have suggestions that'd be great. But just a few things that we've come up with, and we thought about promoting environmental resilience. Now why environment? And so we, if you look in the literature of this in China or in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, environmental NGOs tend to be less political or politicized in other issue areas. And North Korea certainly is in need of addressing issues of sustainable development or forestry or other sorts of environmental management. But so there might be ways of local level collaboration and training on things like the use of land or reforestation or even natural disaster preparations. And so there might be a way of getting individuals in the community to work together. And if you have these market networks, that may already be an existing network where they can operate. We also talked about empowering women entrepreneurs. We just didn't mention how significant, how important women have been in the marketplace. And so maybe if there's a way of offering them training and resources for community lending. So in Korea, there's something that they care when you pull together money and use that for microfinancing. So there might be a way of fostering these entrepreneur programs specifically for women. We also mentioned establishing connections between government or economic officials and market participants. Just in talking with some individuals who are engaged with North Korean markets, it's funny to note that the government officials themselves don't really know exactly how they operate. Who to go when there's a problem or how do you receive a loan. But market actors actually have this knowledge, so if there's a way to facilitate that communication or information, that might be another way of promoting building blocks to civil society. And finally, we talk about facilitating information knowledge sharing across distances. So this means promoting market skills and networks through apprenticeship programs, what we call in Washington DC internships, or coming up with incubators. Of course, this is all when border lockdowns and or ease, but doing things I've studied course. And these are programs that existed in the past, but we think that they can be built on to promote things like trust, information sharing, trust networks, social capital and the like. So I think we'll end there and we're looking forward to hearing the comments prepared by our two discussants and the rest of you listening up there. Thank you. Justin Andrew. Thank you so much. That was a fantastic overview of a really great report. I encourage everyone to read it. I think there's a link to the report on the event notice. But it was a great overview, not only just about the history of markets in North Korea and the marketization process and the ambivalence that the North Korean government feels towards marketization, but also how North Korean society is organized and then the interplay between the two. I feel like there's something very transformative there that something promising and hopeful that the report is suggesting. And hopefully, we'll have our two discussants break down how that might be the case. So let me actually, you know, before I turn over to Celeste, let me just make one comment about the Q&A. So when we open up the Q&A to ask a question, please use the chat box function that's located, I think just below the video player. On the USIP event page and I'll provide another reminder when we start the Q&A portion of the event. So with that, let me turn it over to Celeste for her comments. Sure. Thank you very much, Frank. And thank you to Andrew and Justin and Dan for including me. It's nice to see old friends in this COVID era. I'm going to begin with three points of praise and then sort of raise a question to push you a little bit more on the findings of the report. But as Frank suggested, this is first of all an excellent synthesis of the social, political and economic changes that have been occurring in North Korea since the 1990s. And I think it's especially strong on the details of the market participation strategies. I expected no less, but it's very well written. And it also does a nice job of balancing specific examples with some not too generalized core findings, which are very helpfully precise in the findings. And that brings me to my second point of praise, which is to say that the precision of this report stems from really careful conceptualization, which is a fancy word that political scientists like to use. But being clear about how they're using the concepts of civil society and the public sphere. And I think that showed through an Andrew and Justin's presentation just now. These are concepts that come out of the liberal Western tradition. And as we've already seen with studies of civil society and the democratic neighbors of North Korea, Japan and South Korea. The concepts need adjusting before they're applied in this context, especially so in the highly repressive authoritarian context of North Korea. And I think Dan and Justin Andrew do a really nice job of being specific about which parts of the concepts they're using and how they're applying to North Korea. I don't just jettison these concepts as being to liberal Western in their origins, but they spell out why, for example, we should not expect autonomous associational life in North Korea or a free media in the public sphere. But instead they use them to show, for example, how repeated interactions in the market context can over time give market actors the leverage to engage in building reciprocity relationships in the absence of market regulating institutions and dispute resolution mechanisms. So all of this is to say that this process then could build social trust, which could eventually become the foundation for more overlapping horizontal relationships that usually characterize civil society. My third point of praise is that I think the comparative insights and the discussion in the report is especially strong I know Andrew left that out of the presentation today so let me just suggest that you read the report on this front. But the, the lessons that we can learn about market activity and other authoritarian context is really nicely spelled out and I think that's a real great strength of this report. My questions emerge from the comparative insights in some ways. And so the question if I were to put it succinctly is to say, what should researchers or observers watch for in looking at North Korea, and another way of saying this in slightly more political science the language is to say what are the indicators that these building blocks of civil society as you call them are amounting to something, and I'm going to leave that something kind of vague here I don't think we're going to see a liberal western free flowing bourgeois civil society public sphere. But as you quote Mary Gallagher saying that to what extent are we seeing real meaningful changes in the relationship between the state and North Korean citizens. What should we look for what are the indicators that these changes are happening and that they're relatively durable. And I think the report does a lot to start answering that question, but let me just say that. For example, the transitions in the Soviet block countries that you mentioned, the crisis and the breakdown of life as it was, was actually very hard to see coming. Observers and observers didn't necessarily see these transitions or the authoritarian breakdown ahead of time so I think it's incumbent upon us to be aware of what we should be looking for. And you talk about the concept of preference falsification from Timur Curran. The nature of this idea is that people hide their discontent, which makes other people reluctant to voice their own discontent until they stop doing that. That's kind of the tipping point or the cascade or the, the rapid change that he, the way he described the former Soviet block countries, breaking down and moving away from authoritarianism. So if we look at North Korea, certainly as you know, survey data shows that the Kim family or Kim Jong-un has no legitimacy crisis today. But the concept of preference falsification lead that we should not expect answers to surveys to the answers the respondents to voice discontent. So what other things could we look at? I think the discussion about changes in the language like doublespeak or joking about the regime is excellent. That's one potential indicator of more durable change. But we can also look at behavior as revealing of potential discontent against the regime or even about local level officials. If we look at behavior, perhaps the 2009 and eight protests that you reference in markets in Chongjin and then in 2009 after the currency devaluation in North Korea, that's too high of a bar. We should not expect actual collective action in North Korea. And I think here the comparative cases are excellent. So for example, in Diana Fu's research about China, she talks about mobilizing without masses, where what looks like an individual Chinese citizens, suicide threat or other everyday active resistance as state officials may actually mask a much broader network behind where groups of people teach each other how to engage in everyday forms of resistance. And those networks of learning or sharing of information may actually be quite invisible to researchers. Even in democratic Japan, one scholar has called civil society and democratic Japan invisible. And so what I've seen in my research about civil society in Japan is that you get groups of like 1020 people they get together in somebody's living room, and they talk about a proximate grievance or an issue right near them. And then they learn about it. They share information about what the problem is. And so in the scholarship you might call this naming the problem and then figuring out who's responsible for the problem blaming. And then that can then cascade into claiming or actually making demands on the state or state officials to start changing. So as observers and researchers, these are very difficult things for us to look for when we look at North Korea. Are there kind of mobilizing without masses examples, or invisible civil society. To what extent are the conversations that people are having usually women about the market, moving beyond the transactions of the market activity into say complaints about a corrupt official. And oh, I had that same problem with that corrupt official. Let's start figuring out a way to collectively do something about that corrupt official. And in a sense this could work two ways for the state. On the one hand like in China this could be good information for the central state to start cracking down on recalcitrant or corrupt local officials and help the state to reassert control. Or this could build into more widespread sharing of grievances by citizens against the authorities. And so to which to what extent do you think it's one or the other. And so I guess this gets back to the broader question of like what should we be looking for other signs that these networks of trust are extending beyond the family and the very close friends. And is that enough to overcome the lack of pre existing organizational ties that characterizes North Korea. Unlike in South Korea or in Poland where you had the churches, for example that were helpful and rising up and bringing about a transition away from authoritarianism. There are people just so busy with the organizational life, and especially the women with the double burden that you mentioned of childcare and making money, which we all feel in the pandemic era today. I'm just so busy putting food on the table that there's hardly any time to move the discussion beyond the transactions and into sort of this naming blaming claiming cascade that could potentially amount to some something that threatens the state. Or that at least forces the state to change its relationship with citizens. Okay, and so let me just conclude there and say congratulations on a really informative report which I hope to assign to my students. But thank you. Thank you Celeste for your comments. And I see that we're we're quickly running out of time so I'm just going to turn it over to tune right now. Thank you for inviting me to be a participant of this report launch like Celeste and Frank. I found this report to be very nuanced and engaging on a subject matter that I'm personally very interested in. I'll share a couple of comments bucketed into three categories. First, I'll point out a couple quotes or zingers if you will that you may have missed the audience may have missed in the report. I second I want to engage with this section subtitled North Korea's public public sphere section, a lot of which Celeste just had had gone over. And lastly, I want to hone in a bit on the role that foreign information and media can play in interacting with some of the social phenomenon taking place inside North Korea due to marketization. And so, first, I've read this report a couple times to prepare for today and I've memorized the quote, green shoots in the development of civil society building blocks may be emerging as a result of markets. I think that's probably the closest to a zinger that we're going to get from this report and I think I really like that because it that quote, I think captured the overall approach and presentation of the reports findings which is which was very cautious. Nuanced was also rooted in empirical analysis with a hint of optimism as Frank had mentioned earlier. I also appreciated that the report also cautions against over optimism in expecting marketization to really cleanly lead to social openings looking at China and Vietnam as examples. I found it analytically constructive that the report also focused on the entrepreneurs at the bottom of the food chain as the report refer to them as versus looking at all market actors inside North Korea. And this is where the concept of the logic of the freedom of marginalization was particularly useful to think about. This report also explored both empirically and conceptually the small new spaces in North Korea due to marketization and I had a very nuanced approach. I keep saying that because that's just it really did resonate with me in looking at how these micro observable building blocks can can realistically materialize into a potentially more consequential phenomena in the future. Many of us probably have been part of conversations, whether at you know in academic circles or cocktail parties about the potential of civil society in North Korea and oftentimes I think those conversations are quite blunt and not that fruitful. And those conversations go something like the following a Pyongyang spring is not possible anytime in the near future due to the systemic deterrence and the collective punishments that the regime will place on its citizens. Therefore there's no hope for civil society in the near term and therefore really no need to study the possibility of the creation of a nascent civil society in the near term in North Korea. And the authors thankfully moved beyond this blunt dialogue on this very important topic and also adopts through the report a view of possible civil society actors in North Korea as not necessarily comprising an adversarial position against the state. And as they be as they mentioned in the report this traditional view that places civil society actors in direct opposition to a tyrannical state is probably not a useful exercise in the North Korea context. Anyway, moving on to the North Korea public sphere section. I'm going to skip through a lot of this because Celeste mentioned it. The authors mentioned the existence of doublespeak and humor and jokes and other nonverbal signals that can be interpreted as indirect challenges to the government authority in North Korea. This idea of hidden transcripts originally coined by James Scott, I think is both fascinating and increasingly relevant in this context of North Korea. And I think that could be further explored in future research. And so if there are researchers in the audience who are looking for research projects to take on I think this is an area of really worth delving into. Also, it's great to see Hyunmin Jews were covered in this in this section idea of hidden transcripts in North Korea's market I think is super important that probably can use more attention. In addition to along the lines of future areas of research, I think there can be more engagement and exploration of how the literature of the early stages of micro mobilization in authoritarian states. And apply to the North Korea context. I think this was not a lack on the report by any means, but I think just looking forward. And especially given that this report is seeking to create a conceptual framework that's grounded in empirical analysis, I think there's a lot more room for researchers to apply some the situate some research question in the literature on micro mobilization and high risk contexts, i. It's an area I'm personally interested in and so maybe this is a collaborative project, the making. I was also excited to see tomorrow Quran's work on preference falsification raised in this report. If we have anecdotal evidence that North Koreans are indeed falsifying their preferences, and we do. And individuals misrepresenting their opinions publicly due to public pressure or sanctions they may face. Then there's certainly plenty of research questions I think that can be explored situated in the literature on these early stages of micro mobilization, and so some specifics can include just suggestions can be this how are people in the markets and other spaces outside the purview of the state signaling grievances to one another. So this would be very much looking at kind of the micro level, the micro level of analysis. What are some topical areas of grievances and what where and what are some tensions and growing social cleavages in North Korean society, especially as they pertain to markets and phenomena spiraling out of marketization of this society. Lastly, I want to briefly discuss the role that foreign information and content can play in the potential development of the civil society building blocks that may be emerging from the markets. The report to touch on this and I saw and I grabbed it and it kind of ran with it. So accessing information, especially relevant information that's useful practical for North Korean entrepreneurs at the bottom rungs of society. This could really increase the gaps on both the individual and the collective level between their normative and positive realities inside North Korea. And this can lead to more people having falsified preferences. So in other words, the gap between the reality people actually live and the reality they think they ought to or they should live based on what the regime is telling them that can increase that gap can increase. This can lead to private grievances becoming more private grievances snowballing across society that remain unexpressed and can continue to grow. And this is that this is precisely that preference falsification that if enough people have it. And if there is some trigger or some focal point that activates unexpressed widespread grievances in a society or a major pocket of society, then there can be some unexpected political situations as we saw in many other contexts before and after the Soviet Union or the collapse of the Soviet Union. And this is that scenario that all dictators or most dictators have historically worried about, especially if they face a crisis of domestic legitimacy. And as Celeste noted, as in the report, according to the sources that are that the report draws on Kim Jong-un is most likely not suffering a crisis of domestic legitimacy right now. But what we do know is that falsified preferences, unexpressed grievances that are being expressed in other channels that are then trickling down to outside researchers like ourselves and North Korea's growing version of hidden transcripts. These phenomena do exist in society, and they are observable, of course, very in piecemeal fashion, and it's oftentimes through anecdotes and through testimonies, difficult to capture, perhaps impossible to capture accurately in a large end survey, but these do exist. And so these are the very micro building blocks that have formed civil societies and eventually led to collective actions in places that we thought would be impossible. And we've witnessed this time and time again in other contexts. And so simply from the standpoint of pattern recognition, I think we as academics and practitioners and engaged citizens ought to keep a close eye on how the conceptual framework that the authors profound in this report can and may materialize in North Korea moving forward. And so on that note, I'll pass it back to you, Frank. Thanks, Jin. Okay, so there were some excellent comments made by both Celeste and Jin, and I'm sure the report authors may want to respond to some of them. And there's also a slew of questions. We only have 15 minutes left. And so I think what I'll do is I'll ask the first question, my own question, and then I'll allow the report authors to respond, and also if they want to respond to any of the discussants, you can do that as well. I only ask that you try to be as brief as possible in your responses that we can get to as many of the questions as possible. Okay, so my question is, basic, why should we care about promoting civil society? Right. I've heard the arguments about why we should be promoting marketization. And I've read in the report that, you know, you talk about, well, civil society can ultimately help improve the rights and the welfare of North Koreans. But Jin pointed out that, you know, North Korea is trying to reassert control, you know, through information technology. And so, despite the report saying that it doesn't necessarily have to be adversarial to the government, I'm sure the regime could in many ways perceive it as being adversarial or a threat to their control, right. So civil society, why promote, especially if there is a potential adversarial or detrimental impact. And then, Andrew, Justin and I, the first one. Justin, I can take a stab at that first. That's an excellent question. Part of it is dependent on, you know, what aspect of civil society that you're looking at. But one of the reasons why we, when we, in the report, when we talk about civil society is not just trying to overthrow the regime or, you know, to challenge the government is because if you look at governance issues, I mean, take for instance, natural disaster flooding. I mean, it's always a problem for North Koreans, but they can never seem to really address it adequately. But maybe at the local level, we can get people to organize, and if you can use these market mechanisms, it can actually resolve some of these problems that take place at the community or local level. What that means is, I think sometimes people call it public-private partnership. You know, how would the government perceive this sort of civil society activity? I mean, it's, on that hand, this sort of interaction between society and the state, I think, would not be seen as adversarial. We might call it civil society. The North Korean government may not look at it that way, but the whole idea is to improve the lives of ordinary North Koreans and getting local communities involved as well, too. Now, that's different from, you know, what happens if it requires getting more information inside North Korea? What happens if you have to open up political control a little bit to allow this to happen? That's where I think the regime might be wary, but it depends, I guess, on what the purpose of civil society is being used for. And that's where you get this larger debate. And we didn't talk about the comparisons, but for instance, in China, there is a civil society. It's very restricted, and the government and civil society actors work together. But is that the sort of model that you want? Because if you look at the grand scheme of things, what does China's Chinese society look like today? Is that what you want North Korea to be? But it's in relative terms. I'd say that people in China are much better off than they are in North Korea. So that might be one way of looking at it. Hey, do you want to add, Justin? Yeah, I would say that, you know, so why do you care about promoting civil society? I mean, aside from the general welfare of the North Korean population, you know, if you sort of look at the comparative cases, I mean, one of the issues that sort of befall a lot of these countries is, you know, in a totalizing environment where the state then falls apart, which, you know, may or may not happen in North Korea in the long term. You need something there when the government's not, right? You need something that sort of, well, people can actually talk to each other and build up trust with each other, right? Or else you have a very difficult society that you're dealing with when there's no civil society to sort of pick up the slack, so to speak. And so that's sort of the basic. I mean, in terms of the, you know, why would the North Korea see this as undermining control? I think in a western sort of adversarial style of civil society, yes it would. But, you know, one of the reasons why we were sort of tasked and why we started thinking about markets and civil society is that economic development and to a large extent environmental management are basically only two areas of the North Korean government consistently wants to engage with outside actors, right? If you go to the North Korean government and you say, you know, post COVID, I want to talk to you about economic development, you know, they will talk to you. You say I want to talk to them about civil society, they will not talk to you, right? So, you know, so in that sense, I mean, it's a way in that sort of could at least in theory be mutually beneficial for everyone involved. And I think sort of, so you have another question about sort of one of the policy implications of the trends, you know, the report describes what should the US be doing. You know, so we started off with sort of thinking about what are the implications for NGOs and how they operate with North Korea. So we sort of gave less consideration to what the US government should be doing. But I would say, look, my personal view of having, having studied certain markets and trade with North Korea for a long time now is that, you know, sanctions have basically reached a point of diminishing marginal returns, in terms of what the US is getting out of it, in terms of coercing North Korea's behavior. And, you know, to the extent that sanctions actually work, what they tend to do inside of North Korea is allow the state to monopolize the pathways into and out of North Korea for trade, right? Because it allows them to find ways to get around sanctions that sort of smaller actors don't have access to, right? And so, you know, what that means in some sense is if you want sort of the markets to help promote civil society, one of the ways to do this is to provide some kind of sanctions relief, or some sort of support for North Korea's legal and business infrastructure that allow other actors inside of North Korea to also make money and to also trade with the outside world, right? Because in that sense, that would allow them, there's an alternative pathways for money getting into and out of North Korea and that starts providing the basis for alternative views that we've been talking about reporting and the discussions. I mean, that's really for the Biden administration to decide what they want to do, and that may be something that may come up in the policy review. Thank you. Any quick responses to anything that the discussants offer? Otherwise, I can jump into the next question. Yeah, we can jump into the next question. Okay, so these next questions coming up, I don't have the names or the affiliations that people ask, I'll just ask it blindly. First one is, how involved is in market activity is the North Korean military? Does it have its own independent economic interests that it pursues autonomously? Or does the worker party have control and oversight over it? I mean, I guess the question is what does autonomous mean in North Korea? But the answer is yes, the military has its own economic interests, has its own sort of market activities. I mean, in some sense, you can see sort of these really sort of interesting examples of North Korean military activity where some of the state-owned companies run their own Apple orchards, for example. So, you know, the same company that sells weapons also sells apples, right? And so, you know, the way to characterize this broadly is every state organization in North Korea is trying to make money. They're tasked with making money for themselves and also making enough money to give to ultimately to Kim Jong-un. The military just as much as the party, just as much as the cabinet, right? And so in that sense, yes, they have their own interests. Those interests are sometimes the odds with the interests of the other parts of the North Korean state. And I think you can say that in general Kim Jong-un's sort of trend and how he thinks about power is to centralize power in the party, right, in the military. So the military has sort of lost certain amount of autonomy and power under Kim Jong-un. But when it comes to the market activities, I think the same assumption is that all sort of high-level state organizations are engaged in the market in some way, whether it's through trade or through production or something else as a way of making money. The military would be sort of no exception to that. All right, next question. This gets to the fear of North Korean citizens about the government's surveillance, state surveillance. And this is probably a question that anyone on this panel can answer. But has that changed North Korean fear about state surveillance over the last couple of decades? I can jump in there. Interestingly, Kim Jong-un has rolled with a tighter fist, I think then. Kim Jong-un has rolled with a tighter fist than his father Kim Jong-un. And we've seen places like in the border areas where we see less defectors coming across. So there have been more restrictions. But in terms of the fear, I mean, when we look at defectors' surveys, and so I use one in particular from the Institute for Peace Unification Studies out of Seoul National University, we see a fair number of defectors saying that things like mass organization meetings, what's attendance like. And it's maybe, you know, they'll say that not people attend every day. When it comes to criticism against the regime, you'll still see signs of criticism taking place. Now, they go up and down and the sample size is very small. But the fact that defectors are saying that there isn't 100% compliance or there isn't 100% support for the regime suggests that, you know, people can still make these expressions. So it's interesting, visible signs to that there have been more clamped down than restrictions under Kim Jong-un. But at the same time, you still see people making comments are there. We talked about these jokes are hidden transcripts. And so this is where we get in. So I talked about this in the comments, but this is where we talk about behavior and measuring whether we see some kind of growth in civil society. So I would say that in terms of fear, no, I don't think the fear has necessarily increased just because the regime has clamped down more tightly. I'm sure Xi'an has some insights as well, too. I hope we have time for others to weigh in. So the only thing I'll add is for anyone who has the report open, I feel like we're in like church or class here on page 26. There's footnote number 12, and there are two links to videos, YouTube videos from Indian gun press. And it's very, it's greeny, but it's, you know, footage that's been smuggled out and it shows of authorities cracking down with local street vendors and they're just fighting back. It's just, you know, it's not a brawl, but they're fighting back there arguing the citizens are. And so again, anecdotal, but I think it's an observable sign of perhaps the trend that's that is changing. And so I wanted to point to that footnote number 12 on page 26. And so last I think you raised your finger as well. Yeah, I just wanted to add very briefly, there's a report from open media, I think called compromising connectivity and one of the sort of double edged aspects of more cell phones in North Korea is that there's more technology for the state to engage in surveillance that is not necessarily immediately visible to the individuals and so it's a different type of fear and may allow the state to exert more control over communication in the public sphere. Thank you. The next question. I actually think she and kind of addressed already but I'll ask it anyways. It gets to instances of nonviolent civil resistance from North Korean civil society so of course the videos we've seen, you know, market vendors are just citizens for pushing back against North Korean officials. We've seen that and also the report and some of the discussions I've talked about the pushback against the currency devaluation 2009 that's another example but are there other instances of nonviolent civil resistance. Nonviolent civil resistance from North Korean civil society related question. How are the movements in Burma and other countries being portrayed in North Korea if at all I'm guessing probably not but that was the question. I'll defer to the authors on this. The big one, of course, we've already mentioned is a 2009 currency reform where there are, I mean, there are these reports that their actual protests that were taking place and the reaction was so visceral that regime, I mean they walked back this currency reform where they basically dominated the value of the one. So North Koreans have lost their savings, the cash that they've been holding up suddenly became worthless, but they even executed the economic officials that was in charge of this currency reform. So you've seen protests taking place that lead to some sort of change there have been cases of other. I don't think caught civil resistance because I don't really know what a protest look like in in North Korea maybe that she ends the video that she pointed out maybe a good illustration but in 2008 and 2005 their appearance where the regime would try to walk back. They're trying to make restrictions on on the markets for instance, women of a certain age if you're older women, the 40s and their 50s weren't allowed to participate in markets and I heard that there are some grumblings there that there have been some pushback. You know we don't really have lots of documentation of organized civil resistance taking place but it does happen it has happened from time to time. On the Burma issue I honestly can't I actually want to pass it back into and following this. I haven't looked at North Korea media, if they've been covering the protest and Myanmar. But I do know that they do obviously news is all censored in North Korea and they only show what they want the public reveal what they want the public to reveal. So when there are protests abroad it might get a mention in it but it's not like they have analysis of what's happening so I don't know if there's a media blackout about what's happening in Myanmar but have you seen or heard anything. Not on the Burma protests or as you know due to the military coup earlier this month and it's something I am following. But to my knowledge what I've seen North Korea media covering riots in the United States race riots, especially those are things that are portrayed this kind of clips of videos that there's fire and there's destruction and people are just at each other. And they'll take these kind of clips and say this is what democracy looks like in the United States. This is what protests can lead to death and destruction and fire in your city. So there's been a lot of coverage very select coverage in the in the North Korean media for its civilians but in terms of the mass civil disobedience protest taking place in Burma I haven't come across anything in the North Korean state media. It's 515 now but I'm going to try to squeeze in two questions very quickly and see if I can get to very quick responses. One is how is the North Korean sort of defect or refugee diaspora supporting the growth of these building blocks. If at all whether it's through sort of transmissions back into the country. Second question, how do the presenters view the North Korean governance claims about NGOs or civil society for example the Korean Federation for the protection of the disabled. So I would say in response to the first question I mean the, I mean in some sense the North Korean diaspora sort of moving information into North Korea, sending remittances into North Korea. You know, sort of communicating. These things are facilitated by markets in North Korea, right. These are what the communications brokers and the social network brokers are doing. In that sense, the very act of doing this is itself being supported by markets in North Korea. So, so, you know, sort of the North Korean diaspora outside is actually providing the stuff that goes into and out of North Korea that is facilitated by this. So, so I think it's can be quite important. And, you know, one thing I wanted to add is that we're happy to talk offline. If you want to sort of talk more about this in terms of implications for NGOs, in terms of the groups that the DPR claims are NGOs or civil society. I mean, obviously from the North Korean government's point of view, these are just state organizations that are service transmission belts of information and sort of to to the population. What you see in other countries that have these, however, is that occasionally people within these groups can serve as, you know, reverse any interest that people actually do, they do serve. I don't call them civil society, but there is some potential for people within these these groups to to these say well I do I represent the disabled then I'm going to make some representation of disabled to the government. That's sort of not going as far as civil society, but it would be one way to say look these are not. It's not to say you should ignore them but and they're not civil society but they may be some way to to provide some feedback to the government about about what they're talking about. And especially if these organizations about the protection of the disabled it's protection of the United Nations if they have some kind of interaction with other similar groups of civil society groups that exist outside of North Korea under the U.N. umbrella. And so they I wouldn't dismiss them entirely but right they're not they're still in a state state organization state entities and on the first question about the defectors I would say yes. If it's specific about the leaflets. There's a question about the efficacy but more generally these defector organizations sending information and that is fruit for this dynamics about spreading information and they do rely on market mechanisms. I could throw in out there also to your index book on hidden revolution is a good place to start to show how it makes some sort of impact on things like the public sphere. Was that our last question friend. Yeah. Yes. We're a little over time so unfortunately I'm going to have to cut it off there. I do want to thank all of our speakers and discuss this for sharing their thoughts on the report. I also want to thank my colleague Lucy Siemens Yang and our US IP events team for helping organize the event. And lastly thank you all for joining us and asking great questions so have a good rest of the day. Thank you.