Here is a great article in the Washington Post from Michael Gerson, which emphasizes something that I and others have been advocating for years, fight the information war:

The North Korean regime is part Stalinist political organization, part dynasty and part mafia family. The capos depend on the authority of the don for their survival and Rolexes, but they also seek to control him, especially during a transition of power.

The North Korean criminal enterprise has one main goal: the accumulation of hard currency, used to support its lifestyle and to purchase military hardware. It gains currency through narcotics trafficking, counterfeiting, the sale of arms and nuclear technology, and a successful extortion racket. The mafia muscle, in this case, is 1.5 million soldiers; chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; and some 13,000 artillery tubes aimed at downtown Seoul. From 1998 to 2008, South Korea attempted to buy protection with $2.2 billion in cash. This ATM policy was remarkably transparent on both sides. The Two Koreas Summit in 2000 was delayed for a day because $500 million in cash had not yet been wired to a North Korean account.  (………………)

The most fragile thing about the North Korean regime is the structure of deception that supports it. Its main vulnerability is internal and ideological. Its propaganda appeals to nationalism and racial pride. But the regime has made North Korea a laughingstock while another Korea is the envy of the world. It pretends to socialism. But North Korea is ruled by a privileged class of unimaginable excess.

In addition to a policy of economic isolation, it would be worth trying a policy of ideological exposure — an aggressive, patient, well-funded information assault by South Korea and the United States. Clandestine distribution of radios and cellphones. Video exposure of the gulags. History texts on flash drives for the educated. Information on the decadence of the elite for the common folk.  [Washington Post]

It is good to see that this view is starting to gain more mainstream appeal in the US media, which has been fixated on the false options of China punishing the North Koreans and the opening up of the North Korean economy.

Fighting the information war within North Korea is right now being fought by activist groups to great effect considering the North Korean regime despises despises these activists and has even implied direct violence against them.  The anger from the North Korean regime has been so intense that they even mobilized their communist fifth column within South Korea to stop these activists.  If a bunch of old ajushis with balloons can cause this many problems for the Kim regime imagine what a coordinated effort by the international community to fight the information war within North Korea could do?