Only Freedom Can Disarm Kim

The Wall Street Journal The summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un seems to be on again, with a flurry of preparatory meetings. Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday: “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this.” But even to have any chance of defanging the North Korean nuclear menace, there’s one huge concession Mr. Trump must demand from the regime: that Mr. Kim abandon his totalitarian control over North Korea. This totalitarianism isn’t solely a problem for human rights. North Korea is both the world’s most repressive tyranny and the only country known to have illicitly tested nuclear weapons in this millennium. These dual distinctions are no coincidence: The regime’s extreme control and strict secrecy enable both. There are no checks on Pyongyang’s official lies. Dissent is simply snuffed out.

The remedy should begin with Mr. Kim releasing the inmates from his political prison camps, in order to shut down the gulag forever. A good place to start would be the hellhole known as Camp 16, with an estimated 20,000 inmates. The camp sits less than 2 miles from the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test site, where, according to reports cited by the State Department, prisoners may have been forced to work as construction crews. North Korea hosted a select group of foreign reporters last Thursday to witness the demolition of access tunnels at that test site. But the event was a Potemkin show: After a half-dozen nuclear explosions from 2006-17, the site was quite likely well past its functional life-span. If Mr. Kim frees the inmates from prisons like Camp 16, they could tell the world what they know about how North Korea’s nuclear sites operate. In place of real news, Mr. Kim’s regime “guides” the North Korean people through state propaganda organs, reinforced by surveillance units. State media wield a monopoly over public discourse, and describe the regime in such terms as “a flower garden for the people full of respect and love.” Political repression is enforced by a massive security apparatus, with layers of surveillance that pervade every level of society—from the military to schools, farms, factories and families. This repression of political discourse shapes North Korea’s approach to nuclear negotiations. When American leaders strike an agreement, they submit themselves to huge domestic pressures to justify and honor their words. Pyongyang faces no such constraint. Operating in secret and free from public pressure, Mr. Kim can promise what he likes, renege whenever he wants, renegotiate terms after the fact, and obliterate any North Koreans who dare to disagree. This is why every previous agreement has failed, including nuclear deals in 1992, 1994, 2005 and 2007, and a missile deal in 2012.

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Because the regime serves only its own interests rather than those of the public, the U.S. gains no leverage by promising to improve North Koreans’ lives. Meanwhile, retaining nuclear weapons allows Mr. Kim outsize importance and leverage in world affairs. As long as Mr. Kim faces no domestic pressure to exchange nuclear weapons for permanent concessions, his incentive will be to milk, manage and cheat the negotiation process rather than strike any genuine long-term deal. North Korea’s longtime nuclear envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, is a veteran deceiver of U.S. diplomats. He responded to President Trump’s scrapping of the June 12 summit with the statement that North Korea is still willing to “sit down face-to-face with the U.S. and resolve issues anytime and in any format.” If the summit goes on, Mr. Trump should open the negotiation with the demand that Mr. Kim renounce his totalitarian advantage. The regime must be compelled to open up the country by dismantling the internal surveillance apparatus verifiably and irreversibly, as well as by normalizing travel. Without those steps, no denuclearization offer Mr. Kim might bring to the bargaining table could be credible. Granting these freedoms to North Koreans would likely lead to Mr. Kim’s eventual downfall. Ending the system of surveillance would effectively amount to regime change, which tyrants tend not to survive. But if Mr. Kim won’t take that risk, it would be folly to gamble with North Korea on another nuclear deal. The only real solution to North Korea’s nuclear threat is an end to Pyongyang’s totalitarian system, which must be the bottom-line mission for the U.S. The only choice worth offering Mr. Kim is whether he will end it himself, or wait for U.S. forces to find a way to do it for him.