Archive for August, 2001
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 16, 2001 at 4:32 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
[Update 7/2006: There are signs of a modest improvement — possibly more of a backlash against the violence of the radical left — although these results hardly indicate a groundswell, nor are the questions worded in such a way as to make the data comparable to what is posted below.]
Here is a listing of some of the recent relevant polling data on anti-Americanism in South Korea, with a particular emphasis on the views of younger voters:
June 2003–Pew Global Attitudes Project / Gallup Korea.
719 adults, face-to-face. Margin of error, 3.7%.
- 58% of South Koreans were disappointed that the Iraqi Army did not fight harder outside Baghdad, more than twice the number (26%) who said they were “happy” with the quick Iraqi collapse. This result was within the “moderate” range of opinion in the Muslim world, but far outside results in Europe or North America. In France, for example, the results were very near the opposite.
- The “favorable” view of the United States dropped from 58% in 1999-2000, to 53% in summer 2002, to 46% in summer 2003. Of those with unfavorable views of the United States, more than 80% thought the “problem” was not just Bush, but was at least partly the result of the American people themselves. This latter figure was an outlier among nations surveyed.
- 22% had started boycotting U.S. goods. 29% had considered it. This was the highest number outside the Muslim world.
- Just 24% supported the U.S.-led War on Terror, also a result that fit within the number in the Muslim world.
- However, during the same period, South Korean views of Americans actually increased from 61% to 74% favorable.
South Koreans’ political values:
- Only 43% considered honest and competitive elections a “must,” also in line with views in the Muslim world.
- Only 48% considered it “very important” to live in a country with a free press; fair judicary, 59%; religious freedom, 58%; free speech, 57%. Those were among the lowest survey results in Asia.
- Given two options, which should South Korea rely on? Democratic government, 61%; strong leader, 36%.
- “Our way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.” 82% agree; 16% disagree. Again, the number was more consistent with African and Middle Eastern views than those in Asia, North America, or Europe.
- On the other hand, just 7% of South Koreans want to “restrict the entry of people into our country,” the lowest result of any country.
- 75% of Koreans, the second-highest number (over Turkey at 76%) believed that the nation’s success “is determined by forces outside our control.”
November 2004, Frontier Times / National Policy Research Center.
In the event of war between the U.S. and North Korea, 20% of South Koreans say their country should take the North’s side; another 30% were undecided. Significant differences by both age and region (in Kwangju, as many people would side with the North as with the U.S.).
- Greatest threat to South Korea’s security: 37.1%, Japan; 28.6%, North Korea; 18.5%, United States, 11.9%, China.
- By contrast, the company’s poll in January 2004 found that 39 percent of the respondents said the United States was the most threatening country to Korea and 33% named North Korea. At that time, only 7.6 percent of those surveyed counted Japan as most threatening. Among respondents in their 20s, 58% said the U.S. was the greatest threat; only 20% said North Korea was (for further contrast, a 1993 Gallup Korea survey found the numbers to be North Korea, 44%; Japan, 15%; China, 4%; and the United States, 1%.
- “Of the respondents who said the United States is threatening, 29.2 percent were in their 20s and 26.4 percent were in their 30s. Only 13. 7 percent in their 40s and 8.1 percent in their 50s said the country threatens Korea. ”
- [S]lightly more than half . . . said inter-Korean economic cooperation and South Korean aid to North Korea should continue, regardless of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons.
- Those in favor of this were predominantly governing Uri Party supporters in their 30s and 40s; those against were largely opposition Grand National supporters, aged 50 or over.
April 2005–Frontier Times and 21st Century Research
Telephone poll of over 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1%.
- Greatest threat to South Korea’s security: first, the United States (29.5%); second, Japan (29.2%); third, North Korea (18.4%).
- 44.4% of South Koreans believe North Korea’s nukes are good for Korea.
- 45.7% of people in 20s and 50.1% of students believe the U.S. is the number one threat to Korea.
May 2005, Munhwa Ilbo / KSOI (ht: The Marmot)
- If the U.S. unilaterally attacks North Korea, whose side should the South Korean government take? North Korea, 47.6%; the United States, 31.2%. By a narrow margin, even supporters of South Korea’s “conservative” Grand National Party believed that the South should side with the North against the United States.
August 2005, Gallup Korea / Chosun Ilbo
Survey of 833 individuals born between 1980 and 1989.
- In a war between the United States and North Korea, whose side would you take? North Korea, 65.9%; United States, 21.8%; undecided, 12.3%.
- Ironically, when the same respondents were asked where they’d prefer live if they lived abroad, 17.9% named Australia, 16.8% the U.S., and 15.3% Japan. “Fourteen nations including equally uninviting Iraq and Iran did better than North Korea by attracting one respondent each.”
- The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest-circulation daily, tried to put a bright face on it, calling the results an indicator of “pragmatic patriotism.”
Posted by joshua on August 16, 2001 at 11:32 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Here is a listing of some of the recent relevant polling data on anti-Americanism in South Korea, with a particular emphasis on the views of younger voters:
June 2003–Pew Global Attitudes Project / Gallup Korea.
719 adults, face-to-face. Margin of error, 3.7%.
- 58% of South Koreans were disappointed that the Iraqi Army did not fight harder outside Baghdad, more than twice the number (26%) who said they were “happy” with the quick Iraqi collapse. This result was within the “moderate” range of opinion in the Muslim world, but far outside results in Europe or North America. In France, for example, the results were very near the opposite.
- The “favorable” view of the United States dropped from 58% in 1999-2000, to 53% in summer 2002, to 46% in summer 2003. Of those with unfavorable views of the United States, more than 80% thought the “problem” was not just Bush, but was at least partly the result of the American people themselves. This latter figure was an outlier among nations surveyed.
- 22% had started boycotting U.S. goods. 29% had considered it. This was the highest number outside the Muslim world.
- Just 24% supported the U.S.-led War on Terror, also a result that fit within the number in the Muslim world.
- However, during the same period, South Korean views of Americans actually increased from 61% to 74% favorable.
South Koreans’ political values:
- Only 43% considered honest and competitive elections a “must,” also in line with views in the Muslim world.
- Only 48% considered it “very important” to live in a country with a free press; fair judicary, 59%; religious freedom, 58%; free speech, 57%. Those were among the lowest survey results in Asia.
- Given two options, which should South Korea rely on? Democratic government, 61%; strong leader, 36%.
- “Our way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.” 82% agree; 16% disagree. Again, the number was more consistent with African and Middle Eastern views than those in Asia, North America, or Europe.
- On the other hand, just 7% of South Koreans want to “restrict the entry of people into our country,” the lowest result of any country.
- 75% of Koreans, the second-highest number (over Turkey at 76%) believed that the nation’s success “is determined by forces outside our control.”
November 2004, Frontier Times / National Policy Research Center.
In the event of war between the U.S. and North Korea, 20% of South Koreans say their country should take the North’s side; another 30% were undecided. Significant differences by both age and region (in Kwangju, as many people would side with the North as with the U.S.).
- Greatest threat to South Korea’s security: 37.1%, Japan; 28.6%, North Korea; 18.5%, United States, 11.9%, China.
- By contrast, the company’s poll in January 2004 found that 39 percent of the respondents said the United States was the most threatening country to Korea and 33% named North Korea. At that time, only 7.6 percent of those surveyed counted Japan as most threatening. Among respondents in their 20s, 58% said the U.S. was the greatest threat; only 20% said North Korea was (for further contrast, a 1993 Gallup Korea survey found the numbers to be North Korea, 44%; Japan, 15%; China, 4%; and the United States, 1%.
- “Of the respondents who said the United States is threatening, 29.2 percent were in their 20s and 26.4 percent were in their 30s. Only 13. 7 percent in their 40s and 8.1 percent in their 50s said the country threatens Korea. ”
- [S]lightly more than half . . . said inter-Korean economic cooperation and South Korean aid to North Korea should continue, regardless of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons.
- Those in favor of this were predominantly governing Uri Party supporters in their 30s and 40s; those against were largely opposition Grand National supporters, aged 50 or over.
April 2005–Frontier Times and 21st Century Research
Telephone poll of over 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1%.
- Greatest threat to South Korea’s security: first, the United States (29.5%); second, Japan (29.2%); third, North Korea (18.4%).
- 44.4% of South Koreans believe North Korea’s nukes are good for Korea.
- 45.7% of people in 20s and 50.1% of students believe the U.S. is the number one threat to Korea.
May 2005, Munhwa Ilbo / KSOI (ht: The Marmot)
- If the U.S. unilaterally attacks North Korea, whose side should the South Korean government take? North Korea, 47.6%; the United States, 31.2%. By a narrow margin, even supporters of South Korea’s “conservative” Grand National Party believed that the South should side with the North against the United States.
August 2005, Gallup Korea / Chosun Ilbo
Survey of 833 individuals born between 1980 and 1989.
- In a war between the United States and North Korea, whose side would you take? North Korea, 65.9%; United States, 21.8%; undecided, 12.3%.
- Ironically, when the same respondents were asked where they’d prefer live if they lived abroad, 17.9% named Australia, 16.8% the U.S., and 15.3% Japan. “Fourteen nations including equally uninviting Iraq and Iran did better than North Korea by attracting one respondent each.”
- The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest-circulation daily, tried to put a bright face on it, calling the results an indicator of “pragmatic patriotism.”
Posted by joshua on August 16, 2001 at 11:32 am · Filed under Uncategorized
[Update 7/2006: There are signs of a modest improvement — possibly more of a backlash against the violence of the radical left — although these results hardly indicate a groundswell, nor are the questions worded in such a way as to make the data comparable to what is posted below.]
Here is a listing of some of the recent relevant polling data on anti-Americanism in South Korea, with a particular emphasis on the views of younger voters:
June 2003–Pew Global Attitudes Project / Gallup Korea.
719 adults, face-to-face. Margin of error, 3.7%.
- 58% of South Koreans were disappointed that the Iraqi Army did not fight harder outside Baghdad, more than twice the number (26%) who said they were “happy” with the quick Iraqi collapse. This result was within the “moderate” range of opinion in the Muslim world, but far outside results in Europe or North America. In France, for example, the results were very near the opposite.
- The “favorable” view of the United States dropped from 58% in 1999-2000, to 53% in summer 2002, to 46% in summer 2003. Of those with unfavorable views of the United States, more than 80% thought the “problem” was not just Bush, but was at least partly the result of the American people themselves. This latter figure was an outlier among nations surveyed.
- 22% had started boycotting U.S. goods. 29% had considered it. This was the highest number outside the Muslim world.
- Just 24% supported the U.S.-led War on Terror, also a result that fit within the number in the Muslim world.
- However, during the same period, South Korean views of Americans actually increased from 61% to 74% favorable.
South Koreans’ political values:
- Only 43% considered honest and competitive elections a “must,” also in line with views in the Muslim world.
- Only 48% considered it “very important” to live in a country with a free press; fair judicary, 59%; religious freedom, 58%; free speech, 57%. Those were among the lowest survey results in Asia.
- Given two options, which should South Korea rely on? Democratic government, 61%; strong leader, 36%.
- “Our way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.” 82% agree; 16% disagree. Again, the number was more consistent with African and Middle Eastern views than those in Asia, North America, or Europe.
- On the other hand, just 7% of South Koreans want to “restrict the entry of people into our country,” the lowest result of any country.
- 75% of Koreans, the second-highest number (over Turkey at 76%) believed that the nation’s success “is determined by forces outside our control.”
November 2004, Frontier Times / National Policy Research Center.
In the event of war between the U.S. and North Korea, 20% of South Koreans say their country should take the North’s side; another 30% were undecided. Significant differences by both age and region (in Kwangju, as many people would side with the North as with the U.S.).
- Greatest threat to South Korea’s security: 37.1%, Japan; 28.6%, North Korea; 18.5%, United States, 11.9%, China.
- By contrast, the company’s poll in January 2004 found that 39 percent of the respondents said the United States was the most threatening country to Korea and 33% named North Korea. At that time, only 7.6 percent of those surveyed counted Japan as most threatening. Among respondents in their 20s, 58% said the U.S. was the greatest threat; only 20% said North Korea was (for further contrast, a 1993 Gallup Korea survey found the numbers to be North Korea, 44%; Japan, 15%; China, 4%; and the United States, 1%.
- “Of the respondents who said the United States is threatening, 29.2 percent were in their 20s and 26.4 percent were in their 30s. Only 13. 7 percent in their 40s and 8.1 percent in their 50s said the country threatens Korea. ”
- [S]lightly more than half . . . said inter-Korean economic cooperation and South Korean aid to North Korea should continue, regardless of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons.
- Those in favor of this were predominantly governing Uri Party supporters in their 30s and 40s; those against were largely opposition Grand National supporters, aged 50 or over.
April 2005–Frontier Times and 21st Century Research
Telephone poll of over 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1%.
- Greatest threat to South Korea’s security: first, the United States (29.5%); second, Japan (29.2%); third, North Korea (18.4%).
- 44.4% of South Koreans believe North Korea’s nukes are good for Korea.
- 45.7% of people in 20s and 50.1% of students believe the U.S. is the number one threat to Korea.
May 2005, Munhwa Ilbo / KSOI (ht: The Marmot)
- If the U.S. unilaterally attacks North Korea, whose side should the South Korean government take? North Korea, 47.6%; the United States, 31.2%. By a narrow margin, even supporters of South Korea’s “conservative” Grand National Party believed that the South should side with the North against the United States.
August 2005, Gallup Korea / Chosun Ilbo
Survey of 833 individuals born between 1980 and 1989.
- In a war between the United States and North Korea, whose side would you take? North Korea, 65.9%; United States, 21.8%; undecided, 12.3%.
- Ironically, when the same respondents were asked where they’d prefer live if they lived abroad, 17.9% named Australia, 16.8% the U.S., and 15.3% Japan. “Fourteen nations including equally uninviting Iraq and Iran did better than North Korea by attracting one respondent each.”
- The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest-circulation daily, tried to put a bright face on it, calling the results an indicator of “pragmatic patriotism.”
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 15, 2001 at 6:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
My deepest thanks to Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute for agreeing to a telephone interview. Eberstadt is one of Washington’s most highly regarded Korea experts. The interview ended up lasting a full hour. Nothing has been edited out, although I missed a word here and there because I’m not a stenographer. Still, this is pretty close to a verbatim transcript; Nick Eberstadt is one of those rare individuals who speaks in complete sentences.
All comments in brackets and hyperlinks are my own. My questions focused on what may well be the terminal phase of the six-party talks, clarifying questions Eberstadt raised in his latest piece for The American Enterprise, and discussing the question that everyone’s assiduously avoided thus far: just exactly what are we to do if the talks demonstrably fail?
I let Mr. Eberstadt see some of the questions in advance (those not truncated by yahoo e-mail), and allowed him to see the completed transcript before publication. This was to afford him the chance to clarify any misquotes or errors, or to add clarifications. On the other hand, I did my best to ask tough questions. Questions are in normal typeface. Mr. Eberstadt’s responses are in blue italics.
_______________
[First question] I have a wager going that North Korea will not even show up for the talks scheduled for August 29th, give or take a day. Care to join the pool? There’s a $20 house minimum.
I always lose at bets, so I’ll decline. But the DPRK has a good reason to return if it chooses to do so. Its posture has already opened, still further, the wound in the ROK-US alliance. The ROK Foreign Minister declared last week that his government in principle had no problem with a peaceful nuclear program in North Korea. I suppose that program would proceed in tandem with [North Korea’s] peaceful chemical weapons program, and its peaceful biological weapons program. If I were a North Korean diplomat, I’d come back to the table just to see the U.S. and ROK diplomats eat each other alive over that difference. I can’t predict if the North Koreans will return, but if they do, they will have fun watching us squirm.
Say I lose. We all know you have a stock ticker in your office that tells you what the Administration is thinking. So just how patient is this Administration willing to be?
[Laughs] I would have guessed that the Administration’s patience would have limits. Here’s my reasoning: a lot of the Administration’s patience since January, during the second Bush term, has revolved around trying to get the [American] North Korea diplomatic team all in place. The obvious missing piece through most of 2005 was the appointment of a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. That appointment would be indispensable for any recommendation of sanctions to the U.N. Security Council. With the recess appointment of John Bolton, the entire U.S. roster is now in place.
With latest talks, I would have thought that the Administration is not only probing the North Koreans’ intentions, but laying the groundwork for alternatives—demonstrating that further talks would be fruitless, and pulling together allies and interlocutors for a further pressure campaign. But [implicitly denying the presence of the stock ticker] that would just be my guess.
You’ve suggested that we should declare the talks a failure now. But given the importance of making this someone else’s fault in the eyes of as many people as possible, what’s the harm in waiting another week or two, since this has become a charade anyway?
I’m not privy to the U.S. government’s playbook on dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis. If the U.S. government’s playbook runs along lines you’ve just laid out, that seems entirely unobjectionable. The important point is that U.S. diplomats and policy-makers be under no illusions that failure can be turned to triumph by describing black as white such a sufficient number of times.
In your June piece for The American Enterprise, you urged the administration to define failure for the talks and be prepared to declare failure when we get there. So this is going to be a multi-parter. . . . First, help us with your definition of failure.
I would define failure as a refusal by the DPRK government to agree to the objective of complete denuclearization, and/or refusal to engage in forthcoming and cooperative disclosure on the entire past history of the DPRK nuclear effort.
Ambassador Chris Hill has talked about North Korea having to make a fundamental decision about giving up its nuclear programs. Does that, or anything else, suggest that the Administration finally gets it?
I don’t know Ambassador Hill well, I’ve only met him. People talk highly of his skills and acumen. That’s promising language. It’s necessary but not sufficient to show that people in U.S. government get the problem, but it doesn’t reveal his innermost thoughts about the U.S. government’s game plan.
How does Chung Dong-Young’s latest affect the odds of any success at the talks?
It does affect the success. It affects the North Korean chance for success. He’s helped those out quite considerably. Almost every time he’s opened his mouth, he’s strengthened the North Korean position [pauses to think]. I can’t think of one exception off-hand.
How has the State Department’s outlook changed since Secretary Rice replaced Secretary Powell?
This is a little bit of Kremlinology–looking at an organization from afar. My distant observer’s perception is that an untrusted team has been replaced by a trusted team, from the White House perspective. The Powell team was kept on a two-foot leash, mainly because of a lack of White House confidence, I would guess. We now have a transmission belt of Bush loyalists on North Korea policy. Secretary Rice, John Bolton, Robert Zoellick, and Ambassador Hill are all people who enjoy the trust of the White House, and the President personally. I surmise that a second-term Bush Administration diplomatic team will have more lee-way on making initiatives in [of?] consequence.
Did The Korea Times ever clarify its misstatements about your position on the alliance to your satisfaction?
[Laughs] Oh, you read that, did you? Well, they published my letter, which was very gracious, and also I got a very gracious and sincere apology from the author. It was an honest mistake. I think that the author simply confused my position with that of one of the other authors from the June TAE issue.
You oppose a complete USFK withdrawal, but then, just what level of alliance do you think North Korea serves long-term US interests? What mix, for example, of air, naval, and ground assets should we be aiming for?
That’s a very important, deep, and complicated question. I am in principle in favor of a long-term U.S.-ROK alliance, because I’m convinced it can serve interests of both nations and those of peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia. That said, both sides must be in favor of the underlying principles and objectives of the alliance. It is possible to imagine circumstances under which the alliance would no longer be viable. I think Northeast Asia would be a much more dangerous place if we get to that juncture. I hope we don’t get there, but the momentum right now is not favorable.
That said, I’m not a military specialist, and I should emphasize that I’m a newspaper reader when it comes to military operations and requirements. My general impression is that we have an immediate task of deterring a North Korea threat. Over the long term, we have the challenge of maintaining peace in Northeast Asia. At the very least, that will require U.S. air and naval power in the region.
Chris Nelson [author of the now-infamous Nelson Report] said that in addition to being funny and well-liked, you’re “rigid, didactic, and unwilling to admit that [your] frequent predictions about very specific actions or motives of Kim Jong-il turn out to be totally wrong.” Several questions based on this. First, has anyone spotted Chris Nelson recently? Second, what does didactic mean? Care to touch anything else in there?
[A slightly longer-than-expected pause before the awkward laughter I was anticipating] I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met Chris Nelson. Didactic, by the way, means pedantic [OFK: well, that was no help, but click here and here.] and schoolmasterish [ohhhhh]. As for the rest of what he says, it’s certainly true that North Korea has not collapsed. I would have been one of the people laying odds on North Korea not being here today. There are reasons North Korea has managed to survive that I could not have even fantasized about ten years ago, such as the international rescue program that happened under Sunshine. I’d also note that I was one of the few people in the U.S. who argued that Roh Moo Hyun was electable, and that Sunshine was driving at the heart of the U.S.-ROK alliance. I haven’t heard many people disputing those arguments lately.
I want to move to the “what next” question, in the event the six-nation talks fail. In your latest piece, you said, “Washington should impose real-time penalties on Pyongyang.” Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
What we have to begin to do is penalize North Korea economically. The United States can increase North Korea’s economic penalties more or less unilaterially thru the Proliferation Security Initiative—working, of course, with those nations that have joined the PSI, and leading that coalition. We should be doing that anyhow. That’s just police work.
We should also insist on a more humanitarian food aid program, which is to say a more intrusive and accountable food program, versus the one the World Food Program and others are kicking in for now. The current program feeds the North Korea government better than it feeds North Korea people. We should change that immediately.
One other issue here is the need to confer more effectively with our European allies on international aid flows to the DPRK. Europe professes great concern for human rights in principle. North Korea is the worst human rights disaster on earth.
The most important and difficult areas in aid flow are with South Korea and China. The U.S. needs to be much more effective in making its case to the South Korean public that aiding the North Korean state means endangering the South Korean state. The South Korean government is almost unconditionally supporting North Korea through its aid programs. That unconditional aid does not reflect the actual state of public opinion in South Korea; in fact, the South Korean public is deeply divided on the question of unconditional aid to the North. Making the case against unconditional aid to the North in various venues would be very helpful changing South Korean policies in this regard.
China is another source of unconditional aid to the North. As long as Seoul is completely off the reservation on supporting North Korea through aid, China has much less reason to make hard choices on North Korea. The road to a stricter Chinese aid policy leads through Seoul. If we can convince South Korea to have a more rational, less emotional and ideological policy about aid to North Korea, we are more likely to succeed with China as well.
Did you see the story in this morning’s Chosun Ilbo on the survey of Korean youth?
Yes.
What’s your reaction to that?
Depending on how you phrase a question, you can get really imbalanced responses in one direction or other, particularly in South Korean polls. I think this is one of those cases, where the results have been exaggerated by the way the question was posed. That said, the point that many people in South Korea now look at the U.S. as a security problem and North Korea as a partner cannot be denied, and that’s a big problem for the alliance.
In your last piece in TAE, you said that “[t]he country [North Korea] is highly vulnerable to economic pressure . . . .” Others would argue that a country as poor as North Korea is actually less vulnerable to economic pressure.
I think that is empirically incorrect. I think it was last fall, I published an article called “The Persistence of North Korea.” What I tried to show in that study is that North Korea’s unidentified foreign sources of funding had increased very substantially since 1998, since the Sunshine era commenced. In the mid-1990s, the DPRK was in famine, the regime was describing its situation as an “arduous march.” That period ended precisely when this upswing in foreign funding commenced. North Korean economy is a bizarre, distorted, jack-assed contraption. I agree that if you study history, coercive economic diplomacy seldom achieves its objectives. But North Korea is so economically vulnerable that North Korea is an unusually promising candidate for economic pressure.
Why would China help us in the U.N.?
We can’t know until we try, but my hunch is that Chinese leadership, in the final analysis, will have to be rational about its own interests in Northeast Asia, and an aggressive nuclear North Korea is even more subversive of Beijing’s interests than a pressure campaign against the DPRK that may involve Chinese risks.
The reason I say this is that China’s exposure to North Korean brinksmanship entails the possibility of very real costs in China’s strategic situation and China’s domestic stability. If the DPRK emerges as an aggressive nuclear power, the nuclear disposition of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan cannot be presumed to remain constant. Our ambassador in Japan has made this point. An aggressive nuclear North Korea will also invite responses in missile defense in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. None of these results is in china’s interest.
I also mention that there’s a domestic concern for China. An aggressive nuclear North Korea could cause a business crisis in Northeast Asia—I don’t think it’s difficult to imagine how–leading to a downturn in trade, investment, and economic growth in region. It would only take a matter of months for this to lead to higher urban unemployment rates in china. If I read the newspapers correctly, China’s leaders are very concerned about stability these days. Rising unemployment is not the way to improve stability and reduce social tensions. The U.S. government can encourage the Chinese leadership to think about its own interests in North Korea more clearly. If we encourage the Chinese leadership to think about its own interests in North Korea more clearly, we will find that our interests overlap is larger than we’ve thought to date.
Do you think the United States is seriously considering a blockade?
I think there are circumstances under which US would have to consider a blockade. We’re not there yet, and I hope we never get there. The idea that military action is inconceivable is wrong. It would be an awful set of circumstances that would bring us to that point, but we would have to consider it.
Balbina Hwang has estimated that Kim Jong Il controls up to $5 billion in overseas deposits. Has there been talk of freezing those assets? [Slight correction here: it would be more accurate to say that Ms. Hwang quoted estimates North Korea’s overseas deposits “as high as” $5 billion in this August 2003 piece. Ms. Hwang does not actually claim this estimate as her own own–my apologies.].
I don’t know if that estimate is correct or not. Of course, it would be a smart and a good thing to search for and identify overseas DPRK assets. I wonder, though, whether DPRK assets are as large as some analysts have guessed. North Korea was in such a delicate economic situation in mid-90s that it would seem puzzling for the regime not to have used some of those “rainy-day” funds to relieve possible tensions that arose from that situation.
In The End of North Korea, [published in 2000] you made the point that North Korean trade with the U.S. would not likely expand much, for reasons that are internal to North Korean policy. The mirror image of this is that re-imposing sanctions would not do much, either. And of course, but for the lack of MFN trade status and sanctions on dual-use components, we really don’t have many sanctions on North Korea today.
That’s right, but the real impact of our economic policy is often overlooked. It’s not the trade sanctions per se. The real financial bite from the U.S. sanctions is that the U.S. is obligated vote against North Korean membership in the International Monetary fund, which prevents it from getting access to international loans or grants. But North Korea is perfectly capable of failing as international exporter without our help.
Recently, you’ve been much more outspoken about humanitarian issues in relation to North Korea. I want to address the intersection of the humanitarian and economic issues, specifically the famine. Some NGOs have discussed the link between hunger and songbun, which is a measure of political classification and oppression. Some have raised comparisons to Stalin’s selective mass starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s—I’ve raised them myself. Do you think that there’s evidence to support such a comparison?
Well, the evidence comes from the escapees, who’ve described the starvation in North Korea in the 1990s.
Do you think that this starvation was deliberate, at least to some extent?
There’s very little arguing that the regime made decisions about who should get food, and who should not. The suspect or disfavored strata were certainly not preferentially treated in allocation of food through the Public Distribution System. Since death toll and suffering from the famine in some measure seems regionally specific, it’s clear that the regime made some choices. I don’t think this was so much a pan opticon decree that some elements should be sentenced to death. I suspect it was more like the process that the Nazis called selektion [selecting who would live and who wouldn’t]. Another way to put it is that being in a disfavored status near Pyongyang, or being in a favored status, was better than being in a disfavored status near the Russian border.
Assume China and South Korea block our every efforts to relieve the human rights and famine problems in the North. What could America do to make a tangible difference in either situation?
As things stand now, both South Korea and China are disposed to ignore the humanitarian disaster in North Korea. That’s why need to have a diplomatic strategy for dealing with human rights. The [Chinese and South Korean policies] are not fixed or immutable positions.
The road to changing South Korea’s regrettable policy for dealing with human rights leads through Europe. The South Korean government, so heavily composed of former human rights activists, can be shamed into a more humane policy toward refugees from the DPRK. The way to shame the South Korean government is to form an international coalition to persuade people worldwide that the current situation cannot be tolerated. To do so will involve a lot of spadework with governments and NGOs in Europe, especially among the new, formerly communist, democracies. I don’t think South Korea wants to try to make the case that North Korea should be an exception to worldwide human rights principles.
Obviously, we have plenty of work to do in developing that coalition, but it’s there for the building. If such a coalition were developed, there are so many promising reasons to expect that groups and people in South Korea will support a more humanitarian policy toward North Korea refugees, and that we can expect a change from the see-no-evil Sunshine approach toward North Korea.
Just as the road to South Korea leads through Europe, the road to China leads through South Korea. Without the cover that South Korea’s current position provides, china will be exposed to more important choices. That importance rises as we approach 2008. China is not isolated from the calculus of costs and benefits [here, Eberstadt stopped for a pregnant consideration of his choice of words]. China wants the Beijing Olympics to be success, not an embarrassing failure.
You’re an advocate of assisting North Korean refugees, but some of those who opposed the North Korean Human Rights Act or confrontation with North Korea over human rights have accused the United States of hypocrisy in offering asylum to North Korean refugees. After all, not one North Korean refugee has been given asylum in the USA, and the NKHRA did not include a provision for Temporary Protected Status. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites for offering something we appear to have been unprepared to actually give?
The confusion about accepting North Korea refugees into the United States is the tiniest corner of our INS mess. I don’t think that anyone who is familiar with it thinks our INS works like a normal and healthy operation. There is an even bigger problem than what we see through this small aperture: a badly broken INS.
But those few North Koreans who arrived in the United States had already taken first refuge elsewhere, meaning that they were ineligible for asylum anyway.
The U.S. gesture of offering asylum to North Korean refugees follows a tradition of 200 years of acting on the principles later recorded in the language on the placard on the Statue of Liberty. We have to be very clear that the South Korean Constitution recognizes North Koreans as South Korean citizens if they so much as raise hands and say, “Take us home.” Given how much emphasis today’s South Korea places on constitutional rights and the rule of law, we should encourage the government to take another look at Article III.
I noticed that North Korea’s negotiating posture seemed to become temporarily more flexible after Kang Chol-Hwan’s visit. That flexibility didn’t last, of course, but do you think North Korea takes the threat of US support for a political alternative to the regime seriously?
The North Korea government will take the threat of U.S. support for an alternative DPRK more seriously in proportion to the extent that the U.S. government itself takes that proposition seriously. The DPRK leadership is purportedly isolated and removed from events, but they don’t do a bad job of reading the papers. They may even surf the Internet from time to time. North Korea is capable of doing those calculations on its own.
Now for a wacky question. There is exactly one way I can think of to seriously challenge the North Korean regime’s hold on power without Chinese or South Korean cooperation: to support an anti-government resistance movement inside North Korea, supplying it clandestinely, perhaps from off the coast. In your wildest dreams, can you envision the United States providing clandestine support for an anti-Kim Jong-Il resistance movement?
It certainly shouldn’t be ruled out. My impression as a newspaper reader is that the history of covert operations in North Korea over the last half century is not one of ringing successes. That said, all options should remain on the table when dealing with a government opposed to basic principles of international peace and cooperation.
Mr. Eberstadt, thank you for being so considerate of your time.
Thank you. I enjoy your Web site very much. [End of interview]
________________
One final point I’d add, in addition to thanking Mr. Eberstadt for kind plug for my site–he’s such a mensch that he never even mentioned his new book. So I just did.
Posted by joshua on August 15, 2001 at 1:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
My deepest thanks to Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute for agreeing to a telephone interview. Eberstadt is one of Washington’s most highly regarded Korea experts. The interview ended up lasting a full hour. Nothing has been edited out, although I missed a word here and there because I’m not a stenographer. Still, this is pretty close to a verbatim transcript; Nick Eberstadt is one of those rare individuals who speaks in complete sentences.
All comments in brackets and hyperlinks are my own. My questions focused on what may well be the terminal phase of the six-party talks, clarifying questions Eberstadt raised in his latest piece for The American Enterprise, and discussing the question that everyone’s assiduously avoided thus far: just exactly what are we to do if the talks demonstrably fail?
I let Mr. Eberstadt see some of the questions in advance (those not truncated by yahoo e-mail), and allowed him to see the completed transcript before publication. This was to afford him the chance to clarify any misquotes or errors, or to add clarifications. On the other hand, I did my best to ask tough questions. Questions are in normal typeface. Mr. Eberstadt’s responses are in blue italics.
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[First question] I have a wager going that North Korea will not even show up for the talks scheduled for August 29th, give or take a day. Care to join the pool? There’s a $20 house minimum.
I always lose at bets, so I’ll decline. But the DPRK has a good reason to return if it chooses to do so. Its posture has already opened, still further, the wound in the ROK-US alliance. The ROK Foreign Minister declared last week that his government in principle had no problem with a peaceful nuclear program in North Korea. I suppose that program would proceed in tandem with [North Korea’s] peaceful chemical weapons program, and its peaceful biological weapons program. If I were a North Korean diplomat, I’d come back to the table just to see the U.S. and ROK diplomats eat each other alive over that difference. I can’t predict if the North Koreans will return, but if they do, they will have fun watching us squirm.
Say I lose. We all know you have a stock ticker in your office that tells you what the Administration is thinking. So just how patient is this Administration willing to be?
[Laughs] I would have guessed that the Administration’s patience would have limits. Here’s my reasoning: a lot of the Administration’s patience since January, during the second Bush term, has revolved around trying to get the [American] North Korea diplomatic team all in place. The obvious missing piece through most of 2005 was the appointment of a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. That appointment would be indispensable for any recommendation of sanctions to the U.N. Security Council. With the recess appointment of John Bolton, the entire U.S. roster is now in place.
With latest talks, I would have thought that the Administration is not only probing the North Koreans’ intentions, but laying the groundwork for alternatives—demonstrating that further talks would be fruitless, and pulling together allies and interlocutors for a further pressure campaign. But [implicitly denying the presence of the stock ticker] that would just be my guess.
You’ve suggested that we should declare the talks a failure now. But given the importance of making this someone else’s fault in the eyes of as many people as possible, what’s the harm in waiting another week or two, since this has become a charade anyway?
I’m not privy to the U.S. government’s playbook on dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis. If the U.S. government’s playbook runs along lines you’ve just laid out, that seems entirely unobjectionable. The important point is that U.S. diplomats and policy-makers be under no illusions that failure can be turned to triumph by describing black as white such a sufficient number of times.
In your June piece for The American Enterprise, you urged the administration to define failure for the talks and be prepared to declare failure when we get there. So this is going to be a multi-parter. . . . First, help us with your definition of failure.
I would define failure as a refusal by the DPRK government to agree to the objective of complete denuclearization, and/or refusal to engage in forthcoming and cooperative disclosure on the entire past history of the DPRK nuclear effort.
Ambassador Chris Hill has talked about North Korea having to make a fundamental decision about giving up its nuclear programs. Does that, or anything else, suggest that the Administration finally gets it?
I don’t know Ambassador Hill well, I’ve only met him. People talk highly of his skills and acumen. That’s promising language. It’s necessary but not sufficient to show that people in U.S. government get the problem, but it doesn’t reveal his innermost thoughts about the U.S. government’s game plan.
How does Chung Dong-Young’s latest affect the odds of any success at the talks?
It does affect the success. It affects the North Korean chance for success. He’s helped those out quite considerably. Almost every time he’s opened his mouth, he’s strengthened the North Korean position [pauses to think]. I can’t think of one exception off-hand.
How has the State Department’s outlook changed since Secretary Rice replaced Secretary Powell?
This is a little bit of Kremlinology–looking at an organization from afar. My distant observer’s perception is that an untrusted team has been replaced by a trusted team, from the White House perspective. The Powell team was kept on a two-foot leash, mainly because of a lack of White House confidence, I would guess. We now have a transmission belt of Bush loyalists on North Korea policy. Secretary Rice, John Bolton, Robert Zoellick, and Ambassador Hill are all people who enjoy the trust of the White House, and the President personally. I surmise that a second-term Bush Administration diplomatic team will have more lee-way on making initiatives in [of?] consequence.
Did The Korea Times ever clarify its misstatements about your position on the alliance to your satisfaction?
[Laughs] Oh, you read that, did you? Well, they published my letter, which was very gracious, and also I got a very gracious and sincere apology from the author. It was an honest mistake. I think that the author simply confused my position with that of one of the other authors from the June TAE issue.
You oppose a complete USFK withdrawal, but then, just what level of alliance do you think North Korea serves long-term US interests? What mix, for example, of air, naval, and ground assets should we be aiming for?
That’s a very important, deep, and complicated question. I am in principle in favor of a long-term U.S.-ROK alliance, because I’m convinced it can serve interests of both nations and those of peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia. That said, both sides must be in favor of the underlying principles and objectives of the alliance. It is possible to imagine circumstances under which the alliance would no longer be viable. I think Northeast Asia would be a much more dangerous place if we get to that juncture. I hope we don’t get there, but the momentum right now is not favorable.
That said, I’m not a military specialist, and I should emphasize that I’m a newspaper reader when it comes to military operations and requirements. My general impression is that we have an immediate task of deterring a North Korea threat. Over the long term, we have the challenge of maintaining peace in Northeast Asia. At the very least, that will require U.S. air and naval power in the region.
Chris Nelson [author of the now-infamous Nelson Report] said that in addition to being funny and well-liked, you’re “rigid, didactic, and unwilling to admit that [your] frequent predictions about very specific actions or motives of Kim Jong-il turn out to be totally wrong.” Several questions based on this. First, has anyone spotted Chris Nelson recently? Second, what does didactic mean? Care to touch anything else in there?
[A slightly longer-than-expected pause before the awkward laughter I was anticipating] I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met Chris Nelson. Didactic, by the way, means pedantic [OFK: well, that was no help, but click here and here.] and schoolmasterish [ohhhhh]. As for the rest of what he says, it’s certainly true that North Korea has not collapsed. I would have been one of the people laying odds on North Korea not being here today. There are reasons North Korea has managed to survive that I could not have even fantasized about ten years ago, such as the international rescue program that happened under Sunshine. I’d also note that I was one of the few people in the U.S. who argued that Roh Moo Hyun was electable, and that Sunshine was driving at the heart of the U.S.-ROK alliance. I haven’t heard many people disputing those arguments lately.
I want to move to the “what next” question, in the event the six-nation talks fail. In your latest piece, you said, “Washington should impose real-time penalties on Pyongyang.” Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
What we have to begin to do is penalize North Korea economically. The United States can increase North Korea’s economic penalties more or less unilaterially thru the Proliferation Security Initiative—working, of course, with those nations that have joined the PSI, and leading that coalition. We should be doing that anyhow. That’s just police work.
We should also insist on a more humanitarian food aid program, which is to say a more intrusive and accountable food program, versus the one the World Food Program and others are kicking in for now. The current program feeds the North Korea government better than it feeds North Korea people. We should change that immediately.
One other issue here is the need to confer more effectively with our European allies on international aid flows to the DPRK. Europe professes great concern for human rights in principle. North Korea is the worst human rights disaster on earth.
The most important and difficult areas in aid flow are with South Korea and China. The U.S. needs to be much more effective in making its case to the South Korean public that aiding the North Korean state means endangering the South Korean state. The South Korean government is almost unconditionally supporting North Korea through its aid programs. That unconditional aid does not reflect the actual state of public opinion in South Korea; in fact, the South Korean public is deeply divided on the question of unconditional aid to the North. Making the case against unconditional aid to the North in various venues would be very helpful changing South Korean policies in this regard.
China is another source of unconditional aid to the North. As long as Seoul is completely off the reservation on supporting North Korea through aid, China has much less reason to make hard choices on North Korea. The road to a stricter Chinese aid policy leads through Seoul. If we can convince South Korea to have a more rational, less emotional and ideological policy about aid to North Korea, we are more likely to succeed with China as well.
Did you see the story in this morning’s Chosun Ilbo on the survey of Korean youth?
Yes.
What’s your reaction to that?
Depending on how you phrase a question, you can get really imbalanced responses in one direction or other, particularly in South Korean polls. I think this is one of those cases, where the results have been exaggerated by the way the question was posed. That said, the point that many people in South Korea now look at the U.S. as a security problem and North Korea as a partner cannot be denied, and that’s a big problem for the alliance.
In your last piece in TAE, you said that “[t]he country [North Korea] is highly vulnerable to economic pressure . . . .” Others would argue that a country as poor as North Korea is actually less vulnerable to economic pressure.
I think that is empirically incorrect. I think it was last fall, I published an article called “The Persistence of North Korea.” What I tried to show in that study is that North Korea’s unidentified foreign sources of funding had increased very substantially since 1998, since the Sunshine era commenced. In the mid-1990s, the DPRK was in famine, the regime was describing its situation as an “arduous march.” That period ended precisely when this upswing in foreign funding commenced. North Korean economy is a bizarre, distorted, jack-assed contraption. I agree that if you study history, coercive economic diplomacy seldom achieves its objectives. But North Korea is so economically vulnerable that North Korea is an unusually promising candidate for economic pressure.
Why would China help us in the U.N.?
We can’t know until we try, but my hunch is that Chinese leadership, in the final analysis, will have to be rational about its own interests in Northeast Asia, and an aggressive nuclear North Korea is even more subversive of Beijing’s interests than a pressure campaign against the DPRK that may involve Chinese risks.
The reason I say this is that China’s exposure to North Korean brinksmanship entails the possibility of very real costs in China’s strategic situation and China’s domestic stability. If the DPRK emerges as an aggressive nuclear power, the nuclear disposition of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan cannot be presumed to remain constant. Our ambassador in Japan has made this point. An aggressive nuclear North Korea will also invite responses in missile defense in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. None of these results is in china’s interest.
I also mention that there’s a domestic concern for China. An aggressive nuclear North Korea could cause a business crisis in Northeast Asia—I don’t think it’s difficult to imagine how–leading to a downturn in trade, investment, and economic growth in region. It would only take a matter of months for this to lead to higher urban unemployment rates in china. If I read the newspapers correctly, China’s leaders are very concerned about stability these days. Rising unemployment is not the way to improve stability and reduce social tensions. The U.S. government can encourage the Chinese leadership to think about its own interests in North Korea more clearly. If we encourage the Chinese leadership to think about its own interests in North Korea more clearly, we will find that our interests overlap is larger than we’ve thought to date.
Do you think the United States is seriously considering a blockade?
I think there are circumstances under which US would have to consider a blockade. We’re not there yet, and I hope we never get there. The idea that military action is inconceivable is wrong. It would be an awful set of circumstances that would bring us to that point, but we would have to consider it.
Balbina Hwang has estimated that Kim Jong Il controls up to $5 billion in overseas deposits. Has there been talk of freezing those assets? [Slight correction here: it would be more accurate to say that Ms. Hwang quoted estimates North Korea’s overseas deposits “as high as” $5 billion in this August 2003 piece. Ms. Hwang does not actually claim this estimate as her own own–my apologies.].
I don’t know if that estimate is correct or not. Of course, it would be a smart and a good thing to search for and identify overseas DPRK assets. I wonder, though, whether DPRK assets are as large as some analysts have guessed. North Korea was in such a delicate economic situation in mid-90s that it would seem puzzling for the regime not to have used some of those “rainy-day” funds to relieve possible tensions that arose from that situation.
In The End of North Korea, [published in 2000] you made the point that North Korean trade with the U.S. would not likely expand much, for reasons that are internal to North Korean policy. The mirror image of this is that re-imposing sanctions would not do much, either. And of course, but for the lack of MFN trade status and sanctions on dual-use components, we really don’t have many sanctions on North Korea today.
That’s right, but the real impact of our economic policy is often overlooked. It’s not the trade sanctions per se. The real financial bite from the U.S. sanctions is that the U.S. is obligated vote against North Korean membership in the International Monetary fund, which prevents it from getting access to international loans or grants. But North Korea is perfectly capable of failing as international exporter without our help.
Recently, you’ve been much more outspoken about humanitarian issues in relation to North Korea. I want to address the intersection of the humanitarian and economic issues, specifically the famine. Some NGOs have discussed the link between hunger and songbun, which is a measure of political classification and oppression. Some have raised comparisons to Stalin’s selective mass starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s—I’ve raised them myself. Do you think that there’s evidence to support such a comparison?
Well, the evidence comes from the escapees, who’ve described the starvation in North Korea in the 1990s.
Do you think that this starvation was deliberate, at least to some extent?
There’s very little arguing that the regime made decisions about who should get food, and who should not. The suspect or disfavored strata were certainly not preferentially treated in allocation of food through the Public Distribution System. Since death toll and suffering from the famine in some measure seems regionally specific, it’s clear that the regime made some choices. I don’t think this was so much a pan opticon decree that some elements should be sentenced to death. I suspect it was more like the process that the Nazis called selektion [selecting who would live and who wouldn’t]. Another way to put it is that being in a disfavored status near Pyongyang, or being in a favored status, was better than being in a disfavored status near the Russian border.
Assume China and South Korea block our every efforts to relieve the human rights and famine problems in the North. What could America do to make a tangible difference in either situation?
As things stand now, both South Korea and China are disposed to ignore the humanitarian disaster in North Korea. That’s why need to have a diplomatic strategy for dealing with human rights. The [Chinese and South Korean policies] are not fixed or immutable positions.
The road to changing South Korea’s regrettable policy for dealing with human rights leads through Europe. The South Korean government, so heavily composed of former human rights activists, can be shamed into a more humane policy toward refugees from the DPRK. The way to shame the South Korean government is to form an international coalition to persuade people worldwide that the current situation cannot be tolerated. To do so will involve a lot of spadework with governments and NGOs in Europe, especially among the new, formerly communist, democracies. I don’t think South Korea wants to try to make the case that North Korea should be an exception to worldwide human rights principles.
Obviously, we have plenty of work to do in developing that coalition, but it’s there for the building. If such a coalition were developed, there are so many promising reasons to expect that groups and people in South Korea will support a more humanitarian policy toward North Korea refugees, and that we can expect a change from the see-no-evil Sunshine approach toward North Korea.
Just as the road to South Korea leads through Europe, the road to China leads through South Korea. Without the cover that South Korea’s current position provides, china will be exposed to more important choices. That importance rises as we approach 2008. China is not isolated from the calculus of costs and benefits [here, Eberstadt stopped for a pregnant consideration of his choice of words]. China wants the Beijing Olympics to be success, not an embarrassing failure.
You’re an advocate of assisting North Korean refugees, but some of those who opposed the North Korean Human Rights Act or confrontation with North Korea over human rights have accused the United States of hypocrisy in offering asylum to North Korean refugees. After all, not one North Korean refugee has been given asylum in the USA, and the NKHRA did not include a provision for Temporary Protected Status. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites for offering something we appear to have been unprepared to actually give?
The confusion about accepting North Korea refugees into the United States is the tiniest corner of our INS mess. I don’t think that anyone who is familiar with it thinks our INS works like a normal and healthy operation. There is an even bigger problem than what we see through this small aperture: a badly broken INS.
But those few North Koreans who arrived in the United States had already taken first refuge elsewhere, meaning that they were ineligible for asylum anyway.
The U.S. gesture of offering asylum to North Korean refugees follows a tradition of 200 years of acting on the principles later recorded in the language on the placard on the Statue of Liberty. We have to be very clear that the South Korean Constitution recognizes North Koreans as South Korean citizens if they so much as raise hands and say, “Take us home.” Given how much emphasis today’s South Korea places on constitutional rights and the rule of law, we should encourage the government to take another look at Article III.
I noticed that North Korea’s negotiating posture seemed to become temporarily more flexible after Kang Chol-Hwan’s visit. That flexibility didn’t last, of course, but do you think North Korea takes the threat of US support for a political alternative to the regime seriously?
The North Korea government will take the threat of U.S. support for an alternative DPRK more seriously in proportion to the extent that the U.S. government itself takes that proposition seriously. The DPRK leadership is purportedly isolated and removed from events, but they don’t do a bad job of reading the papers. They may even surf the Internet from time to time. North Korea is capable of doing those calculations on its own.
Now for a wacky question. There is exactly one way I can think of to seriously challenge the North Korean regime’s hold on power without Chinese or South Korean cooperation: to support an anti-government resistance movement inside North Korea, supplying it clandestinely, perhaps from off the coast. In your wildest dreams, can you envision the United States providing clandestine support for an anti-Kim Jong-Il resistance movement?
It certainly shouldn’t be ruled out. My impression as a newspaper reader is that the history of covert operations in North Korea over the last half century is not one of ringing successes. That said, all options should remain on the table when dealing with a government opposed to basic principles of international peace and cooperation.
Mr. Eberstadt, thank you for being so considerate of your time.
Thank you. I enjoy your Web site very much. [End of interview]
________________
One final point I’d add, in addition to thanking Mr. Eberstadt for kind plug for my site–he’s such a mensch that he never even mentioned his new book. So I just did.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 2, 2001 at 3:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
WASHINGTON, D.C. - - On Monday, U.S. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA-40) participated in a general meeting of the International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for the North Korea Refugees and Human Rights. The event was held in Tokyo and was attended by parliamentarians from the United States, South Korea, Japan and Mongolia. As a co-chairman of the group, Royce issued the following opening statement at the event:
“I would like to thank our Japanese hosts, Representative Shu Watanabe, Representative Yoshihide Suga, Representative Akihisa Nagashima and Senator Kazuya Shimba. I would also like to thank Mr. Woo Yea Hwang for his hard work and dedication in organizing the International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for North Korean Refugees and Human Rights [IPCNKR]. Two years ago, I led a congressional delegation to Seoul, where we participated in the inaugural IPCNKR event, on April 16 of 2003. Today - as we were then - we are joined by Parliamentarians from many countries who share the IPCNKR’s commitment of improving the dismal human rights conditions of the North Korean people. I am particularly proud that later on we will be joined by a distinguished delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives, led by the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.
“My brief message to you today is that the IPCNKR, and the North Korean human rights agenda in general, has made very significant progress in the last several years. As those of us in this room know, the human rights catastrophe in North Korea - virtually ignored five years ago - is gaining greater and greater attention. For example, it is now U.S. policy to put it on the Six-party talks’ agenda. This attention, I believe, over time, will make a difference for the suffering North Korean people.
“Of course, progress cannot come soon enough. In a society where information is so tightly controlled, as it is under Kim Jong Il, we do not know the full extent of the suffering in North Korea, but we do know that most of the 22 million North Koreans live in nightmarish conditions. We also know that millions have perished from starvation and related diseases, very preventable, while nearly 50 percent of all North Korean children are malnourished to the point that it threatens their physical and mental health. We also know that 200,000 North Koreans are held in detention camps, where they suffer unimaginable abuse. Of course, this dire situation has forced many North Koreans to risk their lives by fleeing into China. If returned to North Korea, they face torture, imprisonment, and even execution. This is the drama so poignantly portrayed by ‘Seoul Train,’ the award-winning documentary that has done so much to catalyze attention on this crisis. [link here –OFK] ‘Seoul Train’ is scheduled for a showing later on today.
“I would like to share with you some of the actions the U.S. Congress has taken regarding North Korean refugees and human rights abuses, and hopefully offer some insight into how we - legislators from around the world - can help.
“I have served on our Committee on International Relations since I entered Congress 12 years ago. Over the last six or so years, our Committee has held many hearings focusing on the abusive human rights conditions in North Korea. We have heard from North Koreans who have escaped this fate, hearing gripping accounts of their suffering, and from NGOs that have tried to address the humanitarian crisis in the North. We have also called on the Clinton and Bush Administrations to come before us and report on their efforts to address this crisis. These hearings have helped to bring attention to the situation, and build momentum for policy changes.
“The Committee’s most recent hearing was in April, when we looked at the implementation of the bipartisan North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. We pressed about when a Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights would be appointed, and brought attention to the weak performance of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Beijing. That organization simply must get energized in recognizing and aiding those North Koreans who reach China.
“Many efforts laid the groundwork for passage of the North Korean Human Right Act. In 2001, I authored a resolution calling on the Chinese government to honor its obligation under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which is part of the Human Rights Act. We passed several other resolutions drawing attention to the North Korean regime’s mistreatment of its citizens, and conducted the oversight hearings, as I mentioned. I should stress that these efforts were supported by both our political parties - Republicans and Democrats. These years of work culminated when President Bush signed the North Korean human rights bill last year.
“We are legislators, and the focus of this conference is on legislative action, but I should say a few words about President Bush. Early on, President Bush was sensitive to the plight of the North Korean people. In 2002, he said this about his North Korea policy to the Washington Post in a very candid interview, ‘Either you believe in freedom, and want to - and worry about the human condition, or you don’t.’ I feel very good that President Bush worries about the human condition in North Korea. Last October, he signed the North Korean Human Rights Act. And of course, in June, President Bush invited to the White House Kang Chol-hwan, who wrote ‘The Aquariums of Pyongyang,’ who was sent to a North Korean prison as a nine-year-old boy.
“The Administration appears days away from appointing a Special Envoy on human rights in North Korea, as required by the North Korean Human Rights Act. Encouraged by the Act, the Administration gave Freedom House funding for what turned out to be a very successful North Korean human rights conference, held in Washington last month. Some in this room attended that, I imagine. Also, the National Endowment for Democracy has been given a grant to help South Korean NGOs monitoring the human rights conditions in North Korea.
“The Act also supports more broadcasting hours by Radio Free Asia. Every time I meet with North Korean refugees and defectors, I am further convinced that it is vitally important to bring news and information to North Korea. It is encouraging to see some similar efforts in South Korea, including FreeNK Radio. Information is power.
“I should add that information about the Act is contained on the U.S. Department of State website. And, I am pleased to learn that the Japanese Diet and the South Korean National Assembly are considering similar legislation. We legislators are doing our part.
“It is regrettable that some are opting for ‘quiet diplomacy.’ The South Korean government this year again skipped a vote on a U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolution condemning Pyongyang’s litany of human rights abuses. Two years ago, during the time of the IPNCKR conference in Seoul, South Korean government officials, in explaining their government’s abstaining from the first such resolution, said ‘North Korea may misjudge our attending the voting.’ Another official added that there was no need to discuss human rights and irritate Pyongyang at this ‘important time.’ I agree it is an important time; it is always an important time - an important time to speak-up about human rights abuses in North Korea.
“It is now U.S. policy to raise human rights concerns at the Six-party talks, making the issue of how North Korea treats its people a central part of any dialogue about normalization of relations. This policy was part of the North Korean Human Right Act. Yes, there are those who say: why focus on, why even mention, human rights abuses. They say that bringing up the North’s human rights record only gets in the way of disarming it of its weapons of mass destruction.
“Do not get me wrong; let’s have a dialogue with North Korea, as we are doing. But, let’s have a dialogue based on a clear understanding of what type of government we are dealing with - ignoring human rights issues gives us a false sense of who we are talking to. I see no evidence that overlooking these abuses will get us any closer to an agreement on nuclear disarmament, or that raising them keeps us any further away. Pyongyang’s screaming about us speaking-up about human rights does not persuade me. Add to that - ignoring this issue, keeping silent, is morally indefensible. I do not think we have a choice. I have been long convinced that a concerted, international focus on the North Korean regime’s human rights violations, in fact, is the best way to bring us closer to peace and stability in this region.
“The IPCNKR has achieved much in a very short time. Motivated by the continued suffering of the North Korean people, we must commit ourselves to even greater efforts. I think we are doing that today, and I look forward to continued work with all of you in the months and years ahead.”
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 2, 2001 at 12:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
They did not reactivate the reactor until George W Bush unwisely terminated the AF in 2002.
The reactor remained intact and fully able to resume reprocessing whenever N. Korea declared itself sufficiently provoked, which it did when North Korea admitted violating the Agreed Framework (which called for North Korea’s complete denuclearization) and Bush refused to simply tolerate it and keep paying up. Meanwhile, N. Korea was perfecting a massive chemical arsenal by testing it on prisoners, lobbing missiles over Japan, buying more artillery to point at South Korea, and enriching uranium, which it later transferred to the A.Q. Khan network and Libya.
Bush’s decision to terminate the AF and his emotional State of the Union speech naming NK as a member of the “axis of evil” though NK does not have any affiliation to the Moslem Middle East . . .
Exhibit A, North Korean technical assistance to the Iranian nuclear program since the 1990s.
Exhibit B, a report that Iran recently sold Russian-made cruise missiles to North Korea.
Exhibit C, North Korean missiles intercepted on the way to Yemen in 2002.
Exhibit D, a New York Times report that North Korea and Pakistan jointly tested a nuclear weapon in Pakistan in 1998.
Exhibit E, consensus that North Korea was the source of Syria’s SCUD-C missiles and a report that North Korea has traded dual-use equipment with Syria that could be used for biological weapons.
Exhibit F, Saddam’s plan to buy North Korean SCUDs with a range exceeding U.N. limits, stopped only when the invasion was imminent and North Korea opted to keep Saddam’s down payment.
Exhibit G, a complete North Korean missile factory intercepted on the way to Libya.
Exhibit F, uranium hexafluoride made in North Korea, found in Libya. Ad nauseum.
Who’s really being emotional here? Is there any amount of evidence that would persuade you that North Korea is a real proliferation threat?
. . . so angered the NK that they then pulled out of the NPT . . . .
Actually, they originally pulled out of the NPT on March 12, 1993. Does that make this Bill Clinton’s fault?
The question of uranium enrichment processing being done at another hidden site has never been proven with any evidence or convicing argument. The NK official who supposedly bragged about it to James Kelly has denied that he made such a categorical statement.
You don’t consider the statement of a U.S. diplomat relating the N. Korean admission to be “any evidence?” What evidence supports the North Korean version? Why do you consider their story be more credible than Kelly’s, particularly given that we’ve actually found some of the uranium, and presumably acquired knowledge about it by exposing the A.Q. Khan network?
Posted by joshua on August 2, 2001 at 10:03 am · Filed under Uncategorized
WASHINGTON, D.C. - - On Monday, U.S. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA-40) participated in a general meeting of the International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for the North Korea Refugees and Human Rights. The event was held in Tokyo and was attended by parliamentarians from the United States, South Korea, Japan and Mongolia. As a co-chairman of the group, Royce issued the following opening statement at the event:
“I would like to thank our Japanese hosts, Representative Shu Watanabe, Representative Yoshihide Suga, Representative Akihisa Nagashima and Senator Kazuya Shimba. I would also like to thank Mr. Woo Yea Hwang for his hard work and dedication in organizing the International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for North Korean Refugees and Human Rights [IPCNKR]. Two years ago, I led a congressional delegation to Seoul, where we participated in the inaugural IPCNKR event, on April 16 of 2003. Today - as we were then - we are joined by Parliamentarians from many countries who share the IPCNKR’s commitment of improving the dismal human rights conditions of the North Korean people. I am particularly proud that later on we will be joined by a distinguished delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives, led by the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.
“My brief message to you today is that the IPCNKR, and the North Korean human rights agenda in general, has made very significant progress in the last several years. As those of us in this room know, the human rights catastrophe in North Korea - virtually ignored five years ago - is gaining greater and greater attention. For example, it is now U.S. policy to put it on the Six-party talks’ agenda. This attention, I believe, over time, will make a difference for the suffering North Korean people.
“Of course, progress cannot come soon enough. In a society where information is so tightly controlled, as it is under Kim Jong Il, we do not know the full extent of the suffering in North Korea, but we do know that most of the 22 million North Koreans live in nightmarish conditions. We also know that millions have perished from starvation and related diseases, very preventable, while nearly 50 percent of all North Korean children are malnourished to the point that it threatens their physical and mental health. We also know that 200,000 North Koreans are held in detention camps, where they suffer unimaginable abuse. Of course, this dire situation has forced many North Koreans to risk their lives by fleeing into China. If returned to North Korea, they face torture, imprisonment, and even execution. This is the drama so poignantly portrayed by ‘Seoul Train,’ the award-winning documentary that has done so much to catalyze attention on this crisis. [link here –OFK] ‘Seoul Train’ is scheduled for a showing later on today.
“I would like to share with you some of the actions the U.S. Congress has taken regarding North Korean refugees and human rights abuses, and hopefully offer some insight into how we - legislators from around the world - can help.
“I have served on our Committee on International Relations since I entered Congress 12 years ago. Over the last six or so years, our Committee has held many hearings focusing on the abusive human rights conditions in North Korea. We have heard from North Koreans who have escaped this fate, hearing gripping accounts of their suffering, and from NGOs that have tried to address the humanitarian crisis in the North. We have also called on the Clinton and Bush Administrations to come before us and report on their efforts to address this crisis. These hearings have helped to bring attention to the situation, and build momentum for policy changes.
“The Committee’s most recent hearing was in April, when we looked at the implementation of the bipartisan North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. We pressed about when a Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights would be appointed, and brought attention to the weak performance of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Beijing. That organization simply must get energized in recognizing and aiding those North Koreans who reach China.
“Many efforts laid the groundwork for passage of the North Korean Human Right Act. In 2001, I authored a resolution calling on the Chinese government to honor its obligation under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which is part of the Human Rights Act. We passed several other resolutions drawing attention to the North Korean regime’s mistreatment of its citizens, and conducted the oversight hearings, as I mentioned. I should stress that these efforts were supported by both our political parties - Republicans and Democrats. These years of work culminated when President Bush signed the North Korean human rights bill last year.
“We are legislators, and the focus of this conference is on legislative action, but I should say a few words about President Bush. Early on, President Bush was sensitive to the plight of the North Korean people. In 2002, he said this about his North Korea policy to the Washington Post in a very candid interview, ‘Either you believe in freedom, and want to - and worry about the human condition, or you don’t.’ I feel very good that President Bush worries about the human condition in North Korea. Last October, he signed the North Korean Human Rights Act. And of course, in June, President Bush invited to the White House Kang Chol-hwan, who wrote ‘The Aquariums of Pyongyang,’ who was sent to a North Korean prison as a nine-year-old boy.
“The Administration appears days away from appointing a Special Envoy on human rights in North Korea, as required by the North Korean Human Rights Act. Encouraged by the Act, the Administration gave Freedom House funding for what turned out to be a very successful North Korean human rights conference, held in Washington last month. Some in this room attended that, I imagine. Also, the National Endowment for Democracy has been given a grant to help South Korean NGOs monitoring the human rights conditions in North Korea.
“The Act also supports more broadcasting hours by Radio Free Asia. Every time I meet with North Korean refugees and defectors, I am further convinced that it is vitally important to bring news and information to North Korea. It is encouraging to see some similar efforts in South Korea, including FreeNK Radio. Information is power.
“I should add that information about the Act is contained on the U.S. Department of State website. And, I am pleased to learn that the Japanese Diet and the South Korean National Assembly are considering similar legislation. We legislators are doing our part.
“It is regrettable that some are opting for ‘quiet diplomacy.’ The South Korean government this year again skipped a vote on a U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolution condemning Pyongyang’s litany of human rights abuses. Two years ago, during the time of the IPNCKR conference in Seoul, South Korean government officials, in explaining their government’s abstaining from the first such resolution, said ‘North Korea may misjudge our attending the voting.’ Another official added that there was no need to discuss human rights and irritate Pyongyang at this ‘important time.’ I agree it is an important time; it is always an important time - an important time to speak-up about human rights abuses in North Korea.
“It is now U.S. policy to raise human rights concerns at the Six-party talks, making the issue of how North Korea treats its people a central part of any dialogue about normalization of relations. This policy was part of the North Korean Human Right Act. Yes, there are those who say: why focus on, why even mention, human rights abuses. They say that bringing up the North’s human rights record only gets in the way of disarming it of its weapons of mass destruction.
“Do not get me wrong; let’s have a dialogue with North Korea, as we are doing. But, let’s have a dialogue based on a clear understanding of what type of government we are dealing with - ignoring human rights issues gives us a false sense of who we are talking to. I see no evidence that overlooking these abuses will get us any closer to an agreement on nuclear disarmament, or that raising them keeps us any further away. Pyongyang’s screaming about us speaking-up about human rights does not persuade me. Add to that - ignoring this issue, keeping silent, is morally indefensible. I do not think we have a choice. I have been long convinced that a concerted, international focus on the North Korean regime’s human rights violations, in fact, is the best way to bring us closer to peace and stability in this region.
“The IPCNKR has achieved much in a very short time. Motivated by the continued suffering of the North Korean people, we must commit ourselves to even greater efforts. I think we are doing that today, and I look forward to continued work with all of you in the months and years ahead.”
Posted by joshua on August 2, 2001 at 7:00 am · Filed under Uncategorized
They did not reactivate the reactor until George W Bush unwisely terminated the AF in 2002.
The reactor remained intact and fully able to resume reprocessing whenever N. Korea declared itself sufficiently provoked, which it did when North Korea admitted violating the Agreed Framework (which called for North Korea’s complete denuclearization) and Bush refused to simply tolerate it and keep paying up. Meanwhile, N. Korea was perfecting a massive chemical arsenal by testing it on prisoners, lobbing missiles over Japan, buying more artillery to point at South Korea, and enriching uranium, which it later transferred to the A.Q. Khan network and Libya.
Bush’s decision to terminate the AF and his emotional State of the Union speech naming NK as a member of the “axis of evil” though NK does not have any affiliation to the Moslem Middle East . . .
Exhibit A, North Korean technical assistance to the Iranian nuclear program since the 1990s.
Exhibit B, a report that Iran recently sold Russian-made cruise missiles to North Korea.
Exhibit C, North Korean missiles intercepted on the way to Yemen in 2002.
Exhibit D, a New York Times report that North Korea and Pakistan jointly tested a nuclear weapon in Pakistan in 1998.
Exhibit E, consensus that North Korea was the source of Syria’s SCUD-C missiles and a report that North Korea has traded dual-use equipment with Syria that could be used for biological weapons.
Exhibit F, Saddam’s plan to buy North Korean SCUDs with a range exceeding U.N. limits, stopped only when the invasion was imminent and North Korea opted to keep Saddam’s down payment.
Exhibit G, a complete North Korean missile factory intercepted on the way to Libya.
Exhibit F, uranium hexafluoride made in North Korea, found in Libya. Ad nauseum.
Who’s really being emotional here? Is there any amount of evidence that would persuade you that North Korea is a real proliferation threat?
. . . so angered the NK that they then pulled out of the NPT . . . .
Actually, they originally pulled out of the NPT on March 12, 1993. Does that make this Bill Clinton’s fault?
The question of uranium enrichment processing being done at another hidden site has never been proven with any evidence or convicing argument. The NK official who supposedly bragged about it to James Kelly has denied that he made such a categorical statement.
You don’t consider the statement of a U.S. diplomat relating the N. Korean admission to be “any evidence?” What evidence supports the North Korean version? Why do you consider their story be more credible than Kelly’s, particularly given that we’ve actually found some of the uranium, and presumably acquired knowledge about it by exposing the A.Q. Khan network?