Engage!

North Korea in September 2012, said they were going to reorganize their education system. NKEconWatch has a good list to comare the differences:
http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2014/02/10/changes-made-to-north-korean-education-system

Funny enough, BBC One has a documentary on the PyongYang University of Science and Technology (PUST):
http://blogs.piie.com/nk/?p=12859

The post does a good job of questioning the efficacy of the project’s intent of interacting with North Koreans. Not to say that engagement is a failed effort. It’s just that certain engagement methods might need to be improved. In another post, Mr. Noland clarifies why he is for engagement:
http://blogs.piie.com/nk/?p=12874

On the other hand, is Mr. Stanton, who is definately no fan for engagement:
http://freekorea.us/2014/02/11/must-read-myers-again-and-noland-on-the-ethics-of-engagement

To me, all of the justifications for engaging North Korea through its regime sound disingenuous, and not just because of the lack of evidence that engaging the regime has done any good. If engagement is suppose to transform North Korean society, why advocate the most controlled and compromised forms of interaction? After all, engagement that bypasses the regime really is transforming North Korean society and improving the lives of its people. Why not, for example, advocate setting up NGOs and microcredit banks to facilitate and finance cross-border trade in food, consumer goods, DVDs, flash drives loaded with books and newspapers, or escaping refugees?* Or teach those refugees life skills or English? Or help them establish small businesses in South Korea? Or train refugees to return to North Korea as midwives, nurses, doctors, journalists, mechanics, and arbitrators, or help provide them with a steady income and supplies of medicine? Or apply their technological savvy to giving North Koreans an affordable and undetectable way to call each other from city to city, province to province, and country to country?

advocate setting up NGOs and microcredit banks to facilitate and finance cross-border trade…:
Financing anything involving North Korea is pretty hard now, with all the financial sanctions, especially after the Banco Delta incident
help them establish small businesses in South Korea? Or train refugees to return to North Korea as midwives, nurses, doctors, journalists, mechanics, and arbitrators, or help provide them with a steady income and supplies of medicine?
Choson Exchange does a wonderful job of giving North Koreans exactly this type of training. However, sanctions have made things a bit difficult for them.
teach those refugees life skills or English:
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I can’t say much against this. But coming back to the point above, even if such organizations were to be created, financing would be very hard. Allowing North Koreans to take the IETLS or TOEFL, will would be a nice way to let them apply for college at English-speaking countries, and really expose North Koreans to a new world.
Or help them establish small businesses in South Korea?
For North Koreans to establish a business in South would ru afoul of South Korea’s National Security Laws. For refugees however, there really needs to be a service like this. Once again, no argument here.
Or train refugees to return to North Korea as midwives, nurses, doctors, journalists, mechanics, and arbitrators, or help provide them with a steady income and supplies of medicine?
After having escaped near-death, I doubt there will be a lot of people who will want to return before the regime falls, which it won’t. So it’s doubtful they’ll want to go back… Immediately, that is. There are enough refugees with adjustment issues, and it’s not a matter of whether or not it happens, it’s a matter of when. For a small minority, they end up going back to the North. If these people already had a skill like what was mentioned above, that would fall in line with what he intended. However, this would only work for more technically skilled jobs, because nursing, becoming a doctor, or a pharmacologist all require a substantial amount of schooling, which, after spending years trying to escape North Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, before ending up in South Korea, not to mention, their education in North Korea wasn’t all that useful in the first place, they have a long way to go. Not saying they can’t do it, it’s just going to be a much larger investment than even South Koreans are willing to put in. As far as the other skills go, like journalism, mechanics, etc… These skills are much more easy to train. Requires less time and money.
apply their technological savvy to giving North Koreans an affordable and undetectable way to call each other from city to city, province to province, and country to country?
This is a good idea. In certain mountainous areas of the world, where cell phone reception is hard, mobile radio base stations are hooked up to each other, basically creating an alternative to cellular phone networks. Linking them together without being detected by authorities will take a lot of ingenuity. Remember, if you’re creating a network of base stations, and the authorities find out everybody in the network, that’s more people sent to prison camps.

Just to clarify, I’m not saying that any of these suggestions are wrong, and I’m not nitpicking to go after people who don’t agree with engagement. I agree with a lot of what was brought up in fact, because it’s all a part of the engagement process. However, just as the side who hopes to sanction to death North Korea and forego all engagement, some engagement methods are worth examining a bit further. Even the ones we normally think would work, it’s still worth looking at, and fine-tuning.