Archive for July, 2005
Posted by Joshua on July 31, 2005 at 5:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
South Korean President Roh Moo0-Hyun is offering his “conservative” archenemies key roles in his proposed coalition. This, you must see:
In a letter to his political supporters, President Roh Moo-hyun wrote yesterday that if the opposition Grand National Party would agree to form a coalition government with the Uri Party, he would allow his opponents to make key appointments, including that of prime minister.
“If the Grand National Party takes the initiative to form a coalition government where the Uri Party participates, I’ll transfer my power to that coalition government,” Mr. Roh wrote.
The president said, “Such a coalition is possible with a cabinet that takes power in what would be tantamount to a parliamentary system of government, not a presidential system.” Mr. Roh then defined his suggestion as an “actual offer to change the regime.” But he did not go so far as to suggest amending to the Constitution to create a parliamentary system.
I’m sure Kim Jong Il has fissionable isotopes that are more stable that this coalition would be. Predictably, virtually no one likes this idea. Someone help me make sense of this. I’m almost too stunned to compute it. Imagine Bill Clinton offering to give Newt Gingrich Al Gore’s job after the Republicans swept the 1994 elections. Is there are rational reason for Roh to do this? Or is expecting a rational reason from Roh like expecting consistency from John Kerry, or eloquence from George W. Bush?
Update: The Flying Yangban has you covered.
Posted by Joshua on July 31, 2005 at 5:10 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
No good idea ever contains the word “education camps.” This bit of social engineering doesn’t seem likely to break that well-grounded historical trend.
Posted by Joshua on July 31, 2005 at 4:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Absolutely nothing new to report, as far as progress toward agreement between the U.S. and North Korea, according to the BBC. In fact, things are starting to get downright acrimonious:
Negotiators are reported to have had heated exchanges on the sixth day of six-party talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. One delegate said fierce clashes occurred as the negotiating teams tried to hammer out an agreement on a statement of basic principles.
The parties failed to agree on a final statement during three previous rounds of talks in Beijing. The two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan are represented at the talks.
The BBC’s Charles Scanlon says there is a new sense of urgency at these latest talks following North Korea’s declaration earlier this year that it had a nuclear arsenal. [emphasis mine]
Aside from what could be initial signs of a breakdown, the interesting dynamic is that the bilateral talks on the side appear to be marginalizing the other nations in attendance, to the extent that they lack influence over the U.S. and North Korea. South Korea is clearly the nation that loses the most under this arrangment.
The Chosun Ilbo is still riding the same old nag by which it’s the “new” U.S. demands about human rights that are the problem:
U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill said participants were discussing a short but vital document that would take some time of tough negotiations to hammer into shape. A U.S. official said this would be impossible to achieve by Monday, hinting that a gulf between Washington and Pyongyang remains deep.
Japan was more blunt, with an official saying it was “impossible to evaluate the Chinese draft positively” and calling it “insufficient.” The Japanese press reported last-minute U.S. demands to include North Korea’s human rights and conventional missiles were kept out of the draft.
The Chosun Ilbo evidently didn’t take note of Pyongyang’s latest demand: a resumption of work on the KEDO reactors, something that even the most moderate diplomats in the administration consider a dead issue (via the Joongang Ilbo).
Let’s just hope we’ve told Pyongyang and Beijing what the consequences of a breakdown will be. That brings us to a good place to revisit Nicholas Eberstadt’s recent advice:
Define “success” and “failure” for North Korea negotiations. . . . The administration must not be shy about declaring the process a failure if in fact it is. Rewarding Pyongyang for merely showing up at the talks should not count as a good result.
________________
Work around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government. . . . The core of this new [Roh/Uri] government has proven implacably anti-American and reflexively in favor of appeasing Pyongyang.
We can’t afford another three years of this charade while Pyongyang continues selling nuclear materials, missiles, and technology to the highest bidder. If Pyongyang is still bringing demands to the table that seem calculated to bog or break the negotiations down, it means that Pyongyang has analyzed the likely consequences and isn’t deterred by them.
Posted by joshua on July 31, 2005 at 12:27 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This looks like good news. In the wake of the deal to keep our air bases in Kirghizstan, I’d suspect that the U.S. felt itself in a better position to unburden itself of a repugnant ally, or to demand that Uzbekistan reform itself meaningfully. I’m only speculating on what the terms of this conversation were, but the fact that it ended in disagreement on the U.S. role in supporting that regime is a very good sign that this administration is prepared to sacrifice realpolitik for principle.
The downsides? First, the Tajik government isn’t much less repressive than the Uzbek government. Second, the shape of the new regime in Kirghizstan is still somewhat indeterminate.
Update: Great minds think alike.
Posted by Joshua on July 30, 2005 at 6:57 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Korean nationalism appears to have taken its toll in Japan, too.
According to the blog rankings, Japanese bloggers are in no mood for reconciliation. And despite the popularity of all things Korean in Japan, the so-called Kan-ryuu, or Korean Wave, many bloggers are taking aim at Korea.
Choose (what you believe) Carefully! Information on Korea is the sixth most popular blog in Japan right now, according to Ninki Blog Ranking, and bills itself as an antidote for the Japanese “mass media’s tendency to beautify Korea.”
Other popular political blogs include Japan’s Outrageous Asian Neighbours (currently the 7th most popular Japanese-language blog), We Don’t Need No Kan-ryuu (ranked at number 11), and The Truth About Asia - what the mass media doesn’t tell you about China and Korea (occupying 12th place).
. . . .
In the case of Ken-Kan-Ryuu, it is indeed possible to judge a book by it’s cover. “This is an extremely dangerous book,” the book jacket warns. “Why did Korea invade Japan’s territory, the Takeshima Islands?” screams another blurb. “There is no need to apologize to Korea or offer reparations,” shouts another.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Contrary to the old adage, the last refuge of a scoundrel is nationalism. Its latest casualty is the historical reexamination that Japan should have had decades ago.
Posted by Joshua on July 29, 2005 at 6:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Let’s begin with the title of its editorial today, “Six-Party Talks Must Stay Focused on Essentials.” We are soon to learn that the non-essential matter to which the editorial refers is not the U.S. “hostile policy,” or the public statement in a congressional hearing or the Rodong Sinmun, or the new canard of U.S. nukes in South Korea, but human rights in North Korea, and more specifically, the U.S. position that it must be made a part of the talks.
How has Korea as a nation come to the point that something which has killed up to 3.5 million of its people is not “essential,” even as an ongoing process within a broader set of talks? Can we contrast this jaw-dropping moral laissez-faire with South Korea’s intransigence in its SOFA negotiations with the United States, following two completely accidental deaths? Why should North Koreans who have lost children, parents, husbands, wives, and siblings ever forgive those who consider their loss an acceptable sacrifice to realpolitik? Isn’t this just a degree less heartless than the North Korean regime itself, which deprived them of food and starved them in the first place?
A senior government official said Thursday it was not North Korea but the United States that was creating obstacles in the initial stages of six-party talks on the nuclear dispute. “The U.S. has proposed including North Korean human rights in a written agreement” that departs from a rough draft already prepared by South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.
This is a lie, and it’s a lie on several levels.
First, as the South Korean government’s own leaker conceded, any “agreement” with the United States was a draft–not final–until approved by higher-ups. If the draft actually said that human rights were off the table– something I doubt–then the higher-ups had no choice but to alter it, because the U.S. team has been required to raise human rights at the bargaining table since President Bush signed the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 into law last November. Section 101 of the Act (codified at 22 U.S.C. sec. 7811) reads as follows:
It is the sense of Congress that the human rights of North Koreans should remain a key element in future negotiations between the United States, North Korea, and other concerned parties in Northeast Asia.
You will note that this is non-binding language, which is nonetheless of no practical significance here. Congress, which passed that law without a single dissenting vote, controls funding of any agreement, ratification of any treaty, and the State Department’s own budget. The President is solidly behind it. Congress made the language non-binding to avoid a fuss over separation of powers and to allow itself wriggle room to ratify or fund an agreement if circumstances changed, or if a favorable agreement was reached. Neither event has taken place. If anything, Congress’s attitude on this issue has solidified.
Second, the South Koreans have no reason to suggest that a U.S. statute that has been on the books for nine months came as a surprise to them. Or is the ROK government’s position that the U.S. team should simply have ignored the statute in the name of appeasing North Korea, just as it has ignored Articles 2 and 3 of its own Constitution? (As to the South Korean assertion that the U.S. is making fresh demands to include North Korean missiles in the talks, the same defense would not apply. The demand is eminently reasonable and should be a part of the long-term process, with the setting of milestones for progress. There’s no reason for it to be a deal-breaker in this round, when so many fundamentals would break the deal so much more cleanly.)
Third, the South Koreans flatly misstate the reason why the talks are going nowhere–North Korea’s growing list of unreasonable demands (more here):
- North Korea’s newest canard is that the U.S. still has nukes in South Korea, and that it must withdraw its security guarantees from South Korea (more tempting every day, I know).
- At the very core of talks is North Korea’s reactors, which it says are partially for power generation. Yet North Korea still insists on keeping its “peaceful” nuclear programs.
- North Korea demands that the U.S. establish full diplomatic relations as a precondition for its disarmament, something the administration has publicly said it wouldn’t do.
- For several years now, it has denied its once-confessed uranium program, despite the fact that we’ve found some of the uranium in Libya. North Korea still appears to be denying.
- North Korea’s demand that the U.S. guarantee the security of its regime is beyond ridiculous–no competent U.S. diplomat would even send it to the Congress.
- Isn’t it reasonable, as a sign of good faith, to start by returning hostages you’ve kidnapped from another nation you’re negotiating with? Is it reasonable to react with open hostility to this most reasonable of demands?
And of course, the United States put an offer on the table last June, only to see the North Koreans disappear for thirteen months without a response. Today, the talks are on again, and the North has finally gotten around to rejecting it. Yet not one of the accounts I have read suggests that the subject of human rights has even come up, which makes sense. Basic negotiation principles would suggest leaving thornier issues until later so that both sides can generate some “momentum” on easier issues.
And the Chosun Ilbo’s suggestion? That the human rights issue be relegated to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Yes, the same United Nations that gave out seventeen stern resolutions to Saddam Hussein, declared Srebrenica a “safe area,” and wrung its hands while 800,000 Rwandans were hacked to death. The Chosun also fails to mention that this has been tried before, and just who stood in the way.
_______________
I’m utterly unsurprised that South Korea would so easily betray the United States to align itself with the North Korean regime’s demands, despite billions of American dollars and thousands of American lives expended in South Korea’s defense. South Korea all but unilaterally abrogated its own obligations in its alliance with the U.S. when it declared itself a “regional balancer.” Its betrayal of the North Korean people to align itself with the North Korean regime–and the Chosun Ilbo’s assent to this–will be more difficult to explain.
Meanwhile, the people of North Korea continue their stubborn refusal to die quietly:
At 11:30 am on Wednesday, 27 July, 2005, a group of five North Korean refugees entered a Japanese residential quarter in Tentien, China, where a Japanese international school is located. According to reports, the five climbed the fence surrounding the compound but were arrested by Chinese Security police 50 meters from the school. The five refugees are now in the custody of Chinese Security Police and are being investigated.
They are three North Korean women, ages 52, 48 and early 30s. Accompanying one of the women were her son, age 22 and daughter age 14. The family of three had defected from North Korea only a week earlier.
To the extend that my country is the only one representing their interests at these talks, this is a proud day to be an American.
Posted by Joshua on July 29, 2005 at 6:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Most of this coverage probably relates to Day Three, nonetheless, it doesn’t suggest much progress, as the AP’s Lim Bo-Mi reports:
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill held a one-on-one meeting Friday morning with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, their fourth such encounter this week. Hill said the nations were still divided over the issue of when the North will receive aid in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program.
“Still we have a lot of differences that remain,” Hill told reporters Friday evening. “I don’t want to suggest for a minute that this is going to be easy.”
The delegates are meeting again Saturday, where they hope to start drafting a joint document on what they have agreed to so far, a Japanese official said on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the ongoing talks.
“There is no tentative draft,” the official said. “All delegations will be striving to draft this common document.”
It would be interesting to see what has been agreed; I suspect it would consist of vague terms about a nuclear-free peninsula and eventual progress toward normalized relations, but with few details or specifics. The failure to agree on even this much would probably signal a breakdown. Nevertheless, we must keep up the appearance that we’re trying to make a go of this, although not even the South Korean delegate sounds optimistic:
All six chief delegates met Friday afternoon and agreed to continue the talks Saturday, said Cho Tae-yong, the No. 2 South Korean delegate. The top delegates will “seriously discuss how to push forward this round of talks,” Cho said.
Despite the apparent impasse at the talks, he said Friday’s meetings “were not lower than my expectation.”
“It’s too early to pack or draw conclusions,” said Cho, head of the Foreign Ministry’s task force on the North Korea nuclear issue.
North Korea is demanding U.S. security guarantees for itself. This much is nothing new. What is fascinating in its absurdity, however, is that North Korea is demanding an end to U.S. security guarantees for South Korea. I wonder (no, I really do) whether South Korea would be willing to concede that point in the face of North Korean demands.
Posted by Joshua on July 29, 2005 at 5:39 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Daily NK has now released the inteview of the North Korean soldier I first blogged about here. You can see the video here and an English transcript here.
In some ways, the tape is a bit of a disappointment. The soldier’s voice is inaudible for the understandable reasons of his health and apparent efforts to disguise his voice. But why, then, didn’t they pixelize his face, which is identifiable in two portions of the tape? I also wished for some background shots that might have lent the same some authenticity, since some will no doubt question it. I feel bad saying this, knowing the great risk it took to make this tape. My greater fear is that the tape’s release will endanger the soldier and his sister.
The tape is nonetheless interesting and well worth seeing. What did I take from it? The soldier appears to be hiding his face, which suggests that he knows he’s being filmed. That suggests that dissent in the military may be breaking out into the open, particularly if this soldier is willing to speak to a complete stanger on a train (if that’s indeed the way it happened).
There have, of course, been past reports of mutinies in North Korean units; Jasper Becker has compiled a series of these reports at pages 197-200 of his new book, Rogue Regime. Still, friendships in Korean society tend to be very close, lending themselves to conspiracies. A soldier speaking his thoughtcrimes to a stranger with a camera may suggest that the system’s control continues to slip.
Posted by Joshua on July 28, 2005 at 10:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Korean site DKB news has a must-see photo essay on the dugout shelters used by North Korean refugees in China. Text is Korean only. The comments are interesting as well, even from my somewhat limited Korean.
What else occurs to me from seeing these pictures? That the North Korean regime has taught most of its people to handle and use firearms, and that less intentionally, it has taught them how to build and live in crude earthen shelters; to live on wild plants and untreated water; to survive cold, hunger, and sickness; to infiltrate through heavily guarded borders; to smuggle; to evade and outrun the authorities; and to hate the government. And it has focused the acquisition of this knowledge and hatred of itself along its own increasingly cancerous logistical jugular–the provinces that border China.
The North Korean famine has created a nation of guerrillas. All they lack are sufficient food for survival, weapons, and a cohesive ideology. Consider that when some suggest that we have no options if the six-party talks fail, as is likely.
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2005 at 10:53 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Scroll down for updates.
I suppose Day One is a bit hasty to declare a deadlock, but this isn’t very promising:
North Korea took a tough stand Wednesday during talks with the United States, reportedly insisting Washington normalize relations and remove all atomic threats before it would give up nuclear weapons. For its part, the United States stood by an aid-for-disarmament offer the North rejects as unfair.
. . . .
North Korea said the United States must abandon plans to topple its communist regime and instead establish mechanisms for peaceful coexistence, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, citing a source close to the meetings in the Chinese capital.
. . . .
Washington has said it recognizes North Korea’s sovereignty and has no intention of attacking the country. But the North accused Washington of hostility after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in January called North Korea one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny.”
The North also raised the issue of what it claims is an alleged U.S. nuclear arsenal that could be used against the North, a senior American official said. Both Washington and Seoul deny any U.S. nuclear weapons are in the South, and South Korea earlier raised the possibility of opening South Korean and U.S. bases for some form of verification by the North.
Here is a short list of unbridgeable subjects we haven’t even started discussing: uranium, verification, human rights. Thus far, the U.S. position is that it won’t fully normalize relations with North Korea without substantial progress on human rights.
It’s interesting how little we’ve learned from the North Koreans. If we had any sense, we’d move a massive nuclear arsenal to Camp Casey and then demand new concessions in exchange for moving them to Osan.
Update 7/29:
What does “denuclearization” even mean? For North Korea, it means no U.S. nukes in Korea, but holding onto the right to “peaceful” uses of nuclear energy that got us to this point in the first place:
North Korea says it will retain the right to use nuclear energy peacefully, while the United States says that since North might switch its peaceful nuclear facilities into military-use ones at any time, it wants a complete dismantlement of nuclear facilities in North Korea.
The WaPo reports that North Korea has finally gotten around to rejecting the offer we tabled in June ‘04. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the “V” word–verification–appears to be at the heart of it:
As described by U.S. officials, the proposal first made in June 2004 would provide aid and security assurances to North Korea if it agreed to a schedule that would do away with its nuclear weapons program.
North Korean diplomats complained, the senior U.S. official said, that the proposal was front-loaded with demands that the Pyongyang government agree to dismantle its nuclear program and allow inspections by outsiders before receiving the security assurances and economic aid it has demanded in return.
The WaPo shares my concern that we haven’t even reached some of the tougher issues:
Other particularly sensitive points of discord likely left for resolution later include a U.S. assertion that North Korea has a uranium enrichment program in addition to the plutonium-based weapons program it has acknowledged.
. . . although the New York Times says we have, with the expected results.
North Korea’s vice foreign minister and chief negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, said his country would not dismantle its nuclear program unless Washington gave North Korea political recognition and security guarantees, and he proposed a gradual approach to possible disarmament.
“It is necessary that the U.S. should promise to end its hostility and ensure a peaceful coexistence with our country,” Mr. Kim said, according to Yonhap. “Any promises to be agreed upon should be carried out step by step, starting with the easiest one to be implemented first,” Mr. Kim also said.
American negotiators on Wednesday raised the issue of highly enriched uranium, a point of major concern because of their fears that North Korea is developing enough fuel to rapidly build nuclear weapons. “We did not achieve an agreement with them on that,” the American official said, “But we did agree to keep talking.”
The Americans continue to insist that this is a discussion about North Korean nuclear weapons. North Korea, always seeking an advantage in exchange for something it had already agreed to do, wants to expand the discussion to U.S. nuclear weapons. I’m not opposed to expanding the debate to that issue over the long term (say, after the removal of North Korea’s DMZ artillery and progress on human rights), but I sense a premeditated effort to complicate the talks and make the U.S. look like the bad guy, something that’s never hard to do in South Korea in particular. Amateurs that they are, the South Koreans are pretty much staking out the squishy middle ground in public, something that anathema to effective diplomacy but which might be good politics:
South Korea on Wednesday proposed a plan of nearly simultaneous concessions in exchange for North Korean steps to disarm, a South Korean official, later told reporters.
Song Min Soon, the chief South Korean negotiator, in a speech at the conference, said, “The concerned parties should act simultaneously or in parallel in implementing word-for-word or action-for-action promises they’d make,” the Yonhap news agency of South Korea reported. Mr. Song also suggested that the participants in the current talks needed to produce a joint declaration that codified their points of agreement, the New China News Agency reported.
OK. So is this a brand-spanking-new proposal the South Koreans are tabling on Day Two of the talks, as the graf suggests? Not exactly. Reading all of the various reports and putting them together, it looks like the South Koreans are proposing the same things they propsed to the Americans, and which the latter rejected. The Marmot, btw, sees things the other way around, which might be a matter of which reporter talked to which official, or might be a question of how you read this:
[A] high-ranking government official expressed dissatisfaction with what he called “changes in the U.S. position.” In negotiations prior to the six-party talks, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan provisionally agreed a more progressive draft proposal, which Seoul feels the U.S. has now reneged on. The official said the draft agreement worked out between the three chief negotiators in Seoul on July 14 lost its luster when U.S. delegation head Christopher Hill fine-tuned it with officials back in Washington.
I simply don’t read that as Robert reads it. It sounds like a lower-level U.S. diplo agreed at the working level but said, “let me talk to my boss,” who was understood as being the final approval authority. The boss didn’t like it, and we conveyed that to the South Koreans before the start of the talks. The disgruntled South Koreans then proceeded to make their disgruntlement public to everyone, including the North Koreans, and may even have tabled a new proposal based on their position anyway.
The South Koreans have two main complaints, one of which is, well, us–namely, the “hard-liners” who are pushing for human rights issues to be made part of the talks. For South Korea to complain about this and suggest that “conservatives got to” the U.S. negotiating team is patently baseless. Since last October, there has been a U.S. statute on the books, the North Korean Human Rights Act, that requires this. There is no reason to feign astonishment that U.S. negotiators are complying with the functionally unanimous will of the U.S. Congress, as expressed through statute. This has been on the books for a long time.
Either way, it hardly suggests coordinated diplomacy, and adds to my confusion about why having six parties at these talks adds to their effectiveness. No wonder the North Koreans keep holding out for better offers. Chung Dong-Young is a bottomless pit of them.
Well, the news isn’t all bad. The New York Times reports:
“There was no yelling at each other,” the Japanese official said, adding that sometimes the delegates even managed to smile.
Then again, if that’s the best news we can take from this, maybe it is that bad.
And they will start to talk about inspections today. This is where we need to be very, very uncompromising.
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2005 at 11:43 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Our focus group has submitted its first entry. Unedited, as promised.
먼저 북한, 한국, 중국에 있는 북한사람들의 복지에 관심을 가져주셔서 감사합니다. 제가 선생님의 웹페이지를 알고 있어서 몇번 방문했는데, 조금 밖에 이해를 못했지만, 여러번 반복해서보았습니다. 지난 화요일 밤에 저와 친구는 “FREEDOM HOUSE”의 “RFA”방송을 들었습니다.
참석자 1000명 중에 인권활동가와 정부입안관계자들이 참석한 것은 매우 인상적이었습니다. 그런분들이 참석한 것은 그 회의에 명예로운 것이었습니다. 그러나 한편으로 미 콘돌리자 라이스 국무장관이 참석하지 않은것은 실망스러운 일이었습니다. 물론 바쁜 일정 때문이었겠지요. 힘이 되는 것은 재미교포로 구성된 비정부단체들이 회의에 참석했다는 것입니다. 재미교포들은 대부분 한국사람들보다 북한문제에 대해 관심을 더 가지고 있습니다.
유태인 대표자들이 참석한 것 또한 큰 힘이 되었습니다. 유태인들은 박해를 받았던 경험이 있기 때문에 북한 사람들의 고통을 이해하기가 수월할 것입니다. 언론의 주목은 북한 주민의 고통과 북한 정부의 범죄를 알리는데 도움이 되고, 어떤 토론자들은 열정적으로 변화의 필요성을 주장했지만 결국 어떤 조치나 변화는 없었습니다. 그러나 회의 조직위원회, 미의회, RFA방송, 그밖에 회의에 참석해 주신 모든 분들께 감사드립니다.
다음회의는 유럽에서 열렸으면 하는 것이 제 바램입니다. 왜냐하면 북한정부는 남한 정부가 서울에서 열리는 그와 같은 회의를 무산시키기 위해 최선을 다할것이라는 것을 알고, 미국과 유럽의 압력을 두려워하기 때문입니다.
Update: So is this history’s first North Korean blog post? I hope it will be just the first of many. For reasons I hope you understand, it will have to remain anonymous.
____________________
First of all, thank you so much for your interest in the welfare of North Koreans who live in North Korea, South Korea, and China. I know of your web site and have visited several times. I couldn’t fully understand it, but I have visited repeatedly. Last Tuesday night, my friend and I listened to RFA’s broadcast of the “FREEDOM HOUSE” [conference].
It was very impressive that human rights activists and government policymakers were there, among the 1,000 who attended. The participation of these people was a great honor for this conference. On the other hand, I was disappointed that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not attend. Of course, that must have been because of her busy schedule. One aspect that encouraged me was that non-governmental organizations consisting of Koreans who live in the U.S. attended that conference. Korean-Americans have more interest in North Korean issues than most [South] Koreans.
It was a great strength to have Jewish representatives there also. The Jewish people must have no difficulty understanding the North Koreans’ suffering because of their own experience of persecution. The media’s interest helped to reveal the North Koreans’ suffering and the North Korean government’s crimes. Some of panelists argued passionately about the necessity of change, but there was no action or change [I take this to mean that some speakers did not suggest concrete measures for change, but the meaning is a bit unclear]. But still, I am thankful to the organizing committee of the conference, the U.S. Congress, RFA, and all of the other attendees.
I hope that the next conference will be held in Europe. This is because I know that if the South Korean government hosts a conference, the North Korean government will do its best to disrupt it. The North Korean government is afraid of the combined pressure of the U.S. and Europe.
__________________
Special thanks to our courageous correspondent, and to Brendan Brown for arranging for this feedback. All North Koreans whose former or current nationality I can somehow authenticate are strongly invited to comment.
Update 2: Many thanks also to Aaron for his translation assistance.
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2005 at 11:30 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Ambassador Hong steps down.
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2005 at 11:27 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Question: How can you effectively monitor the distribution of half a million tons of rice from two locations–particularly if the North Korean government is jointly responsible for the monitoring?
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2005 at 11:25 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Fair and Balanced! The New York Times is hosting a Q&A with Jack Pritchard and Nick Kristoff. That should get them buzzing inside that particular cocoon.
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2005 at 11:20 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Here’s just a cutting from a report on the first day of the six-nation talks:
While Kim Gye-gwan, the North’s top envoy to the talks, paid close attention to the opening remarks of his counterparts, throughout the opening ceremony, he seemed purposely to ignore the Japanese delegation. Mr. Kim deliberately looked the other way when Mr. Sasae made his speech and closed his eyes.
Apparently worried the talks might be derailed by the dispute, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon of South Korea said in a speech, “At this point, it is not appropriate to engage in actions that could take away from the focus of the meeting.” He added, “There is a saying that to a navigator who does not know to which harbor he is heading, a fair wind is of no use.”
What’s so unreasonable about trying to protect your citizens, I wonder? Han Man-Taek could not be reached for comment.
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