Enter Australia: Bringing Soft Power to Bear on North Korea

by Alexander James

With recent news that Kim Jong-un had sent Australia a message on its national day, is it now time for Australia to reassess its role with the DPRK?

As part of the Commission that divided Korea in the aftermath of World War Two and fought under the UN flag in 1950, Australia has played an important, if not entirely well-known, role in the history of the Korean peninsula. But whereas Australia’s economic, social and political ties with South Korea have become a mainstay in its regional strategy; bilateral relations between Australia and North Korea have not followed suit. After the initiation of diplomatic ties between the two states in July, 1974, in under a year their relationship had soured, leading Pyongyang to close its embassy in Canberra in October, 1975, and expel all staff from Australia’s Embassy in Pyongyang in the November – they had been based there for just seven months.

It is noteworthy, however, that bilateral relations between the two were initially founded on Pyongyang’s desire for economic assistance, heralded by a senior DPRK trade delegation travelling to Canberra in 1973. Similarly, it was only after an economic carrot in the shape of an A$1 million contribution from the then Prime Minister John Howard to KEDO in April, 2000, that diplomatic ties between the two states were finally revived (the DPRK embassy was once again closed in 2008 due to a lack of funds and replaced by a non-resident accreditation from the DPRK Embassy in Jakarta).

Leonid Petrov rightly notes that there “is no discussion on the future of Australia-DPRK relations in the media”, where “issues related to the prospects of bilateral economic and cultural cooperation are outshone by the saga of North Korean nuclear programs, chilling stories of human rights violations, and alleged criminal activities”. However, this absence of dialogue on the DPRK in Australia misses a crucial point – Australia may be able to play a valuable role in the future of North Korea and, importantly, Asia.

For some time now Australia has set its focus on the political economy of Asia. Emerging from the influences of British and U.S. foreign policies in the 1990s, Australia’s pursuit of an autonomous path blossomed in Asia, allowing it to assume a powerful role in the region. Whilst there remains a lingering perception of Asia as a threat to Australia’s national security – seen most notably in the 1994 White Paper on China – in truth, Asia is increasingly seen as a land of plenty. As of 2010, the value of Australia’s trade in goods and services with Asia stood at $302.9 billion – a staggering 54% of Australia’s total global trade in the sector – with its exports to Asia increasing at an average of 12% per annum.

But with higher rewards came higher risks, and as a result, Australia’s ‘hard-power’ (defined in terms of its military and economic influence) enlarged accordingly. Deployments in East Timor, Afghanistan and other regional peacekeeping operations, alongside its role in regional organisations, such as APEC, enhanced its standing to a solid ‘Middle Power’ status.

Nevertheless, Australia has so far failed to match these increases with softer approaches that also exert its influence. Soft power – seen as the ability to coerce other states through means such as diplomacy or culture – has been missing from its foreign policy toolbox, and it is no secret that this has become one of Australia’s chief stumbling-blocks in its efforts to influence Asia’s course – a point made in a report by the Canberra Government’s own Sea Power Centre in April, 2011, and a point that now resonates in its relations with North Korea.

Often cast in Australia as the tyrannical state du jour with one hand on the nuclear button while the other brainwashes the people, North Korea’s reality is far more complex. In the last century alone North Korea has endured brutal Japanese colonial rule, a devastating civil-war, the collapse of its Communist alliances, plus a relentless series of sanctions. Let there be no mistake, Pyongyang’s own belligerence has been injurious, but regardless of how one views the regime, North Korea’s insecurities are very real.

For its part, like most of the world, Australia has avoided this reality. Describing his North Korean counterpart as “detached from reality” at an ASEAN regional forum last year, foreign minister Kevin Rudd seems to view North Korea as a genuine threat to Australia’s national security, embedding the belief in the primacy of ‘harder’ forms of coercive diplomacy. Yet as a recent report from the Melbourne-based Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability concluded in September 2011, “North Korea’s outrageous nuclear threats against targets outside its borders are not backed up by actual capabilities”.

Perhaps, then, Rudd’s view that Kim Jong-il’s death is “an important opportunity to the new North Korean leadership to engage fully with the international community” should also apply to the Australian government itself, prompting them to follow a different political tact.

Bond University’s Caitlin Byrne and Rebecca Hall’s recent call for Australia to better use its educational resources as a tool for soft power appears more than suited to the North Korean task. Viewing education as an effective “instrument of public diplomacy”, Byrne and Hall argued that Australia’s soft power initiatives have the potential to “facilitate [its] long-term strategic positioning” within Asia.

In addition to boasting top universities, such as ANU and the University of Melbourne, Australia could, for example, promote itself as a less politically sensitive destination for academic exchanges with North Korean students – already a tried and tested formula in the U.S. The advantages of such programmes could be twofold.

Firstly, cross-cultural communications that bypass higher political channels can conform to the current Australian government’s tough stance on the North Korean regime, whilst still providing room for dialogue.

Secondly, whilst future North Korean elites would come to Australia to absorb the latest scientific or technical teachings to take back to Pyongyang, Australia’s democratic values and norms are just as likely to leave their mark. A 2010 study by Carol Atkinson published in Foreign Policy Analysis alludes to this potential. Atkinson found that student exchange programmes between democratic and non-democratic states created a “more positive view of the country in which [exchange students] studied and the people with whom they interacted”, enhancing “the democratic socialization of potential ruling elites of nonliberal states”. Admittedly, exchange programmes are unlikely to act as a core instrument for Australia’s foreign policy, but one must not overlook the ‘Trojan Horse Effect’ that they could grant.

Elevating Australia’s standing through the use of its soft power would appear to be a win-win for all involved. Taking the lead in engaging North Korea and its new leader, Kim Jong-un, may not only be beneficial for the long-term situation on the Korean peninsula, but could also grant Australia a louder voice within Asia itself – a region, lest we forget, that its future increasingly depends upon.