In developing a strategy toward North Korea, many human rights activists and members of U.S. Congress have mistakenly applied experiences drawn from East-West relations during the Cold War. The recent culmination of this strategy, the congressional passage of the North Korea Human Rights Act, has only compounded this mistaken interpretation. Unlike Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s, North Korea possesses no civil society, critical intelligentsia, or significant variant of "reform communism." There are no opportunities for civil society actors to connect with indigenous democratic movements. Furthermore, attempts to "link" any security or arms control deals with North Korea to improvements in the human rights realm -- as the recent legislation tries to do -- will likely result in neither greater security nor improved human rights conditions.

John Feffer is a Pantech Fellow at the Korea Studies Program at Stanford University and the author of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories Press, 2003) and Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions (South End Press, 1992).