It Takes a Potemkin Village

Does the maintenance of a North Korean government building near the DMZ tell us anything about the regime or its plans? A series of photographs of the area near where a troubled American soldier crossed into North Korea from South Korea this week raises interesting questions.

The Journal’s Dasl Yoon and Timothy W. Martin report today:

The U.S. soldier being held in North Korea had faced assault allegations in South Korea last year and spent nearly seven weeks in a detention facility, according to U.S. officials, as new details emerged about the legal issues faced by an American who crossed the Korean border.

The fate of the soldier, identified as Army Private 2nd Class Travis King, has handed Washington a fresh challenge in its relations with Pyongyang as tensions have been rising on the Korean Peninsula.

King, 23, remained in North Korean custody on Wednesday after crossing the border without authorization the previous day while on a tour of the Joint Security Area, which is within the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas.

The U.S. military says that Pvt. King made his unauthorized crossing of the military demarcation line into North Korea willfully. He had previously been involved in two alleged assaults—at least one of which generated headlines in South Korean media. The Journal reporters note:

He was held at a detention facility in South Korea for 47 days, and spent about a week at Camp Humphreys—a large U.S. Army base in South Korea—before being escorted by military officers to Incheon International Airport, U.S. officials said. On Monday, he had been set to board a flight to Texas, where he would face disciplinary actions and a potential discharge, the officials said.

But what happened at the airport is not entirely clear. Tucker Reals, Haley Ott, and Sarah Baldwin report for CBS News that Pvt. King was headed back to the U.S. “to be ‘separated’ from the Army, U.S. officials told CBS News, but after parting ways with his escort at customs, he didn’t board the plane. After going through airport security, he somehow returned and managed to join a civilian tour group heading from Seoul to Panmunjom.”

The story gets even stranger. The CBS report adds:

CBS News’ British partner network BBC News spoke with a man who used to work for a company that ran tours to the JSA for U.S. troops serving in South Korea.

Now the host of the North Korea-themed NK News Podcast, Jacco Zwetsloot told the BBC there was “no way this person could escape from the airport one day and book on to one of these tours the next.”

He said it generally takes three days for someone to be authorized to go on one of the trips, and his former clients would have to submit passport and military ID information to U.N. Command, which operates the JSA, in advance... He said to book a spot on one of the limited tours now running would have required research and planning.

A witness who was in King’s tour group told CBS News on Tuesday that the American abruptly left the others, laughed, and then ran across the Military Demarcation Line before anyone could act to stop him.

Let’s hope that Travis King and any valuable information he may possess are swiftly and safely returned to the United States.

In the meantime, while there remain numerous questions about how this troubled soldier managed to get to the Joint Security Area of the DMZ, a longtime Journal reader raises another question about the area itself.

Paul Stewart, who maintains a keen eye for detail, noticed the photograph that accompanies this column. Taken by Agence France-Presse last October, it has been used by a number of news organizations to illustrate stories about this week’s drama at the DMZ. Mr. Stewart observes:

I couldn’t help but notice the shocking contrast between that photo and the WSJ video of then-President Donald Trump’s 2019 meeting [with North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong Un ] at the same location.

Looking at the October, 2022, photo, which includes the steps of North Korea’s Panmon Hall, Mr. Stewart writes:

It looks like weeds have grown up on the North Korean side, and the green bush about halfway up the stairs in the center doesn’t appear to have been trimmed at all in the meantime! I did note, however, that on the South Korean side, the area is generally clean and no weeds are visible... it did occur to me that when North Korea knows that cameras will be clicking, they do go to the trouble to (at least) pull the weeds!!!

Does the varying condition of the Panmon Hall steps tell us anything about the regime or its expectations?

Some say that in a command economy it takes a Potemkin Village to raise well-trimmed shrubbery. Certainly one could understand if Pyongyang sometimes decides to save a few bucks on landscaping given how its thuggish central planning has impoverished the country. Reliable data on the closed society are hard to come by but it is among the poorest nations on earth. The CIA says that “a large portion of the population suffers from low levels of food consumption” and the Heritage Foundation explains why:

North Korea continues its isolation from much of the rest of the world. Based on limited available information, North Korea’s economic freedom score is 2.9, making its economy the least free in the 2023 Index...

North Korea’s dictatorial leadership remains unwilling to open or restructure its economy. Despite experimenting with a few market reforms, the regime adheres to the system of state command and control that has kept the country and its people near bankruptcy for decades. The Communist Party controls every aspect of economic activity...

The state sets production levels for most products, and state-owned industries account for nearly 100 percent of the country’s GDP... Entrepreneurial activity remains virtually impossible.

But perhaps it’s possible for outsiders to glean information about the regime based on the condition of its landmark along the DMZ—and whether the regime expects much attention from foreign media. Photographs taken this year, such as when U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville visited the southern side of the military demarcation line, appear to show the steps of Panmon Hall in much better condition than in 2022— even if they don’t quite seem to approach the pristine presentation in the images from 2019.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Tony Lima.)

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