My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.
Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?
What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance. UNHCR has appealed for $261 million this year to provide for refugees and internally displaced persons. That is not a small amount of money — but it is less than the U.S. spends each day to fight the war in Iraq. I would like to call on each of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy.
As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.
It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do. [Angelina Jolie in the Washington Post]
Jolie’s opinion wouldn’t have much significance if it weren’t so utterly against the grain of prevailing Hollywood views, and I commend her courage and independence in speaking it. There is nothing humanitarian or compassionate about abandoning a nation to terror and genocide without giving that nation the opportunity to establish basic social order. We did not break Iraq, but we accepted the responsibility to help Iraq fix itself. Critics rightly attacked the Bush Administration’s failure to foresee the immense task of reestablishing that order. Many of those same critics are even more short-sighted for their own failure to consider the consequences of surrender to Al Qaeda.
A related interesting fact is that McCain outpolls Obama by ten points on who would handle the Iraq war best. Even the famously liberal Pew Institute shows growing optimism. Americans wish they had never become involved in Iraq, but by a margin of 53-39, they now believe that our effort there will suceed. Pray that it continues to be justified. Public opinion does tend to lag well behind events on the ground when the news media are so reluctant to report on how those events have changed.
YOU DON’T SAY: Actual North Koreans don’t think the New York Phil’s visit will mean much.
“Most people…are busy trying to make ends meet and put food on the table, and what they truly need is rice and money, so they have little freedom to think about music . . . . Rather than sit around and listen to classical music, people have to spend that time to go out and pluck another bunch of weeds to sell or boil in their pot at home. Only members of the elite have the leisure to think about politics or this kind of cultural event.” [Radio Free Asia]
Still, it’s encouraging that not even the New York Times was fooled by this superficial gesture. That RFA story also has some interesting anecdotes on what North Koreans really think of America and the outside world, which you should take with the obvious caveats.
DEADLINE OR NO DEADLINE? Yesterday, it seemed that Secretary Rice was about to lay out a timetable and demand some structure for North Korea to disclose, disable, and disarm. Today, State is denying it.
JOHN McCAIN GETS NORTH KOREA RIGHT again, when asked about the New York Phil by Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb:
I have concerns, very grave concerns…the facility in Syria, according to published reports, had the earmarks of North Korean involvement. They continue some of the illicit activities around the world, and most offensively the abuse of the human rights of their own people. I wish some of the people who are barely surviving, if they’re surviving, in the largest remaining gulag in the world would have had the chance to see the philharmonic perform, rather than a chosen 1,400 or whatever it was…. [Weekly Standard Blog]
This is the second time I’ve seen someone ask McCain about North Korea, only to have McCain raise the human rights issue spontaneously. I know how unfashionable it is to believe a politician, but I think McCain approaches this issue with much more depth and conviction that Bush ever did, which may explain why Bush eventually caved. Let’s also give due credit to Barack Obama, too, but I’d like to hear more — that word again — substance about what he’d actually do to change conditions in North Korea. Really, I’d like to hear more specifics and substance from all two of the viable candidates.
FOUR WORDS — “SPECIAL ENVOY LARRY CRAIG:”
“I learned that it’s important to establish personal relations with leaders even though you may not agree with them — certain leaders. I’m not going to have a personal relationship with Kim Jong-il, and our relationships are such that that’s impossible.” [Chosun Ilbo]
You know, I’ve attended enough news conferences to know with mathematical certainty that only a South Korean journalist could have asked a question stupid enough to draw that response.
MY KIND of Che poster. Little known fact: in the Lakota language, “che” means “penis.”
I DON’T CLAIM TO BE A MILITARY EXPERT, but every soldier or ex-soldier I’ve ever known who has fired the M-16 / M-4, and who has also fired the AK-47 / AKM / AKR / AK-74 (my personal favorite) has agreed that the Russian weapons are far more reliable. So when I hear that the Pentagon is spending good money to replace the Iraqi Army’s AK’s with M-16’s, my suspicious eye turns toward Colt Armalite’s lobbyists. In skilled hands, the U.S. weapons have negligible advantages in range and accuracy. My experience with both weapons during exercises at the National Training Center is that the M-16 jams in sandy conditions; the Romanian AK’s I usually used never jammed, even low-crawling through the sand with them. Replacing AK’s with M-16’s is such an obvious waste of money that it evokes the words fraud, waste, and abuse. Ultimately, it will make the Iraqi Army less combat effective.
PICTURES OF HOME: I’ve always been disappointed by how few good pictures of western South Dakota there are on the internet, but this morning, it occurred to me to look up the Web site of Johnny Sundby, whom I knew in several classes in junior high school. I never pegged him as the artistic kind then, but just look at his work. His site design isn’t half bad, either.
You know it’s time for Plan B when even the New York Times deems Plan A comatose.
The concert would have had even more significance if it could have celebrated continuing progress toward shuttering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
That effort unfortunately has stalled, and the fault — at least this time — is undeniably Pyongyang’s. [….]
North Korea has said it would produce the accounting, but first it wants Washington to remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and lift certain sanctions. Washington says the sequencing can be worked out if Pyongyang is prepared for full disclosure.
The Bush administration has a long history of using any excuse to scuttle any diplomatic deal, but in this case it is right. Pyongyang clearly agreed to full disclosure and the deadline. Since then serious questions have also arisen about Pyongyang’s nuclear cooperation with Syria. That must also be disclosed. [New York Times Editorial, January 28, 2008]
… and the lions shall lie down with the lambs, and the neocons shall speak in French.
I would like to think that on defending human rights, the U.N. may soon become a little less worthless, but we might have said so when Mary Robinson stepped down, too. Recent history isn’t encouraging. You can’t defend something you can’t define. Still, Rep. Ileana-Ros Lehtinen is pleased:
(WASHINGTON) – The announcement that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour would not be seeking a second term is “the first step toward saving the broken UN human rights infrastructure from itself,” U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said today.
In a recent letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was joined by Acting Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) in expressing deep concern over Ms. Arbour’s recent endorsement of an Arab League Charter that contained blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements.
Ms. Arbour has earned notoriety for a number of questionable decisions during her tenure as High Commissioner. On her watch, the UN has ended human rights monitoring in Cuba and Belarus and has failed to hold the Chinese regime accountable for its gross human rights violations. In fact, in January of this year, Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted her as lauding Beijing’s commitment to human rights.
Ms. Arbour drew criticism again this month when, in the wake of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s resignation, she chose to praise the regime for demonstrating “unprecedented positive engagement with the U.N. human rights system,” rather than using the occasion to blast the communist regime for its violations of fundamental freedoms and liberties and its cruel, inhumane treatment of prisoners of conscience.
“Ms. Arbour has achieved the remarkable feat of bringing further disgrace to a UN human rights community of already great ill-repute,” said Ros-Lehtinen. “While genocide rages in Darfur and political dissidents are tortured in Iran, she chooses to spend her time condemning democracies and defending tyrants. Her decision not to seek a second term is a positive development for human rights and brings hope to victims of oppression worldwide, including those who languish in Cuban prisons and North Korean gulags. I hope Secretary-General Ban will carefully consider who will next ascend to the position. The quest for human rights cannot endure another Louise Arbour.”
SUSTAINING THE CHARADE: She can’t pretend that the six-party scheme is working, so Condi Rice wants a timetable for North Korea to comply with its agreements. Had Secretary Rice insisted on and gotten a well-structured deal back in 2005, there would have been some chance to accomplish something, though we should remember that unless non-performance has harsh consequences, deadlines mean little to the North Koreans. Too late, she realizes that the original deal was too amorphous to accomplish much of anything, and if she really thinks she will have China’s full cooperation in defenestrating its own quasi-puppet, I wonder who she thinks she’s kidding. Surely someone as smart as Condi Rice knows this can’t possibly work in ten months if North Korea and China don’t really want it to.
BACK TO EARTH: The Bush Administration, realizing that concerts alone do not a legacy make, attempts to subordinate the superficial to the substantive. These are boon times for superficial ideas. Now that Kim Jong Il has discovered the Clapton Gambit, Condi has her work cut out for her taming the monster she created.
THAT RUSSIAN CARGO SHIP the North Koreans seized off the shores of its missile testing range has been released. In unrelated news, Western diplomats report a unusually large number of shiny Lexus sedans with “2-16″ license plates on the streets of Pyongyang.
NO SECOND CHANCE FOR THE FTA: Not that anyone should be surprised, but it looks increasingly unlikely that a Democratic Congress will allow it to advance this year. Here’s why we should celebrate that.
I WAS WONDERING WHEN CHINA would realize that its one-child policy spells demographic disaster and scrap it.
Somewhere in Washington, Joshua is no longer smiling. Nam Joo-Hong, the nominee to be Unification Minister whom I had called “my kind of guy,” has withdrawn from consideration after becoming a lightning rod for those on the left who lost the election by a landslide.
Nam Joo-hong, the unification minister-designate, and Park Eun-kyung, the environment minister-designate, stepped down as they were grilled by opposition parties over their accumulation of wealth and alleged misconduct. Nam does not qualify for the unification portfolio because of his hard-line stance toward North Korea, United Democratic Party lawmakers charged. Lawmakers also noted that Nam’s daughter is a U.S. citizen and his son has U.S. permanent residency and can be exempted from the military draft. His wife renounced her American residency last month. [Joongang Ilbo]
The opposition also tagged Nam as a real estate speculator, but Nam’s ideological beliefs appear to have been the main factor in doing in his nomination. I can imagine no better illustration that Lee’s election won’t solve the unbridgeable differences between South Korea’s values and our own than the fact that wishing for liberation — for an end to atrocities, famine, plague, and democide — have been excluded from polite society. Are American soldiers in South Korea to hold up the KOSPI, then?
This is especially disappointing because whoever runs Unification will be a subordinate of the Foreign Minister. Organizationally, that makes sense, but the nominee for Foreign Minister, who comes from the inner circle of the Roh Administration, is a dreary choice. That means that Nam may well have ended up being a Korean Jay Lefkowitz anyway — someone who said a lot of great things that bore little relationship to his government’s policies. No doubt, President Lee wants to project a moderate image in advance of next April’s parliamentary elections, where Lee already has enough trouble within his own party.
I’m not completely giving up on Lee yet, but I’m anxiously awaiting some clarification on just what Park Jin’s role will be.
Say you’re the beleagured tyrant of a certain Northeast Asian country. In a moment of financial duress, you signed an agreement in which you agreed to disclose and eventually give up a nuclear arsenal in which you’ve invested a great deal of money, pride, and prestige. You know that in a year, there’s an even chance that you might be dealing with the most naive and pliable U.S. President since Jimmy Carter. You also know that if too many people start getting the idea that you’re stalling on that declaration, momentum will shift in favor of turning the economic screws on you again, which you know could be the end of you. You can’t survive without money from your enemies, and one of your best sources might soon dry up. Even the foreign diplomat who had been the main proponent of going easy on seems to be turning sour.
Can you last this year without performing on that accursed nuclear deal? Yes, you can!
Fortunately for you, your enemies have an inexhausible apetite for superficial displays. They desperately want to believe that the gas chambers, nuclear tests, concentration camps, abductions, famines, and global crime syndication are merely a misguided artist’s cry for attention. Some of them, though not all, even have the self-important delusion that they can change your nature by playing music for you. Not that you showed up to listen, yet still, they seize on this stuff. They breathe it. They inhale. Then they lurk behind bus stations at night so they can afford more.
So what are you to do? You put them to sleep by feeding their habit:
North Korea has invited Eric Clapton to perform in Pyongyang in a highly unusual move that could see the English guitarist playing in the world’s most isolated state next year. The invitation will boost hopes that North Korea is growing more interested in building cultural bridges to the outside world, even as diplomatic negotiations over its nuclear programme hit an impasse. [….]
“These cultural exchanges are a way of promoting understanding between countries,” a North Korean official told the Financial Times. “We want our music to be understood by the western world and we want our people to understand western music.” [Financial Times, Anna Fifield]
This is where that young Claptomanic Dauphin you sired has his moment of usefulness. He’s hardly a suitable heir — too corrupted and too effeminate for the job — but it’s not as if you haven’t tried to let him grow into daddy’s shoes.
Poor kid. Some day he’ll have a helicopter accident.
Does this have risks? A few, perhaps, but that’s why you have people who will make sure no one gets the wrong idea. You don’t have to let just anyone will go to go to this, and gambits like this have worked out just fine before. For that matter, you can cancel the whole thing the second week of November. No one would even notice.
As the North Korean regime struggles to sustain an already marginal economy that actually shrank in 2006, it is accelerating its sell-off of its mineral resources. Again, China appears to be the main buyer, again, corruption is throttling the state’s earning potential.
As mineral prices soar on world markets, foreign access to mines in the North is accelerating at a rate unseen in the more than five decades since the division of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korean government officials, Chinese mining experts and scholars who study North Korea. They say that Kim’s government is increasingly willing to lease mines to outside companies and to negotiate joint ventures with foreign governments. [….]
At the same time, mining operations have been delayed and derailed by erratic, maddening and corrupt behavior on the part of North Korean officials, according to businessmen in South Korea and China. “North Korea — they are a country of scoundrels,” said Sun Demao, a manager at Zhaoyuan Gold, a Chinese company that has canceled all its contracts with mines in the North because of chronic delivery troubles.
Still, exports of North Korean coal and zinc to China have jumped sharply in the past three years, as have zinc exports to South Korea and gold exports to Thailand. [Washington Post, Blaine Harden and Ariana Eunjung Cha]
This raises difficult questions for Kim Jong Il, for potential investors, and for the rest of the world. For Kim Jong Il, the question is whether to make the choice to maximize profits by allowing more efficient foreign management and control, or retaining local control, which comes with the parasitic drag of corruption. And guess what?
More important are Kim’s conflicted feelings about mining, said [Andrei] Lankov, a Russian who studied in the North and is a periodic visitor there. “He sees the money now,” Lankov said. “But he believes that by reforming, he would be committing suicide. So he wants mining done under strict control of North Korean managers.”
The choice for potential investors then becomes whether they’re willing to gamble their fortunes on North Korean business ethics, and that must be as good an example of Economic Darwinism as I’ve ever seen.
Interestingly, the article reports that although Chinese investment has soared and North Korean coal and zinc exports have risen sharply in recent years, the North’s overall mineral exports have not increased significantly. This shouldn’t come as too much of a shock. Writing about China’s lease of the Rajin Port in 2005, I predicted that corruption and poor infrastructure would hamper the development of North Korea’s mining industry. Yet North Korea can barely manage to keep its own mines working without foreign help. A case in point would be the somewhat humorous story of how North Korea accidentally flooded its largest copper mine.
The WaPo does not bother to impress some other significant points on its readers. The first of these has to do with the conditions under which North Korea’s mines are worked. For example, I’ve previously noted that at least three of North Korea’s gold mines, which are increasingly important to sustaining Kim Jong Il’s regime financially, also happen to be concentration camps. We have another recent example of this problem at a coal mine:
An accident at a mine near Jeongeu-ri in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province left 22 people dead and more than 20 critically injured. Among the injured is the mine supervisor. The mine where the incident occurred is part of the “No. 12 Reeducation Camp.”
According to a North Korean source, a mineshaft caved in after a blasting operation, crushing all those inside. Signs of danger were evident once the explosives were detonated as fissures appeared in the rock foundation. Despite this, prisoners were sent back into the mine. Fifty prisoners were helplessly buried under a mound of rocks and dirt as a result of this negligence. [Daily NK]
It’s also likely that a number of prisoners weren’t accounted for, and that rudimentary medical care will fail to save the lives of many of those injured. Camp 12 is located somewhere in the same vicinity as Camp 22, which also contains a large coal mine.
The No. 12 Reeducation Camp was built at the end of the 1970s with the name “No. 22 Youth Educational Center (제22호 청년교양소)” and simple criminals or economic offenders were incarcerated. But in the mid 1980s, the name was changed to “No. 12 Reeducation Camp.” The camp currently houses a variety of inmates who have committed crimes like illegal border-crossing, viewing of foreign films, murder, theft, and violence. Sentences range from a minimum of one year to imprisonment for life.
The Daily NK also reports that Camp 12’s products are used to generate export revenue through the international crime syndicate known as Bureau 39. Satellite imagery and survivor accounts also reveal that there are plenty of other mines of various sizes in other North Korean concentration camps. Mining is probably the largest single industry that’s evident in the camps. Mining is an inherently dangerous business under the best of circumstances, but a work assignment in a mine in one of these camps is a death sentence.
This being Washington, I’m sure someone out there can try to make the argument that letting Kim Jong Il ply these wares somehow leads to openness and reform. As they said in the original German, arbeit macht frei.
Then there is the sacred, yet oddly untended, flame of multilateralism. Not that anyone still cares, but U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, now just over a year old, requires all member states and their entities to “ensure” that the funds they use to pay for North Korea’s minerals are not used for WMD programs. That makes these mines arguably the most socially irresponsible industry since I.G. Farben. And yet, the Washington Post saw no cause to breathe a word about any of this.
The 22 North Koreans found drifting in South Korean waters in the West Sea on Feb. 8 were interrogated by South Korean intelligence agents in groups of five or six, rather than one at a time as regulations require, it was learned on Tuesday. [Chosun Ilbo]
This was a violation of National Intelligence Service rules. Richardson, who has debriefed North Korean defectors, nailed it days ago when he explained why North Koreans must only be questioned individually:
If they were asked as a group, the interrogators basically ensured they’d answer no; if any answered yes for the rest to hear and somehow they were all sent back to North Korea, that person would have been guaranteed being sent to a concentration camp or executed. This is - or should be - absolute basic knowledge to anyone dealing with potential North Korean defectors. [DPRK Studies]
After just four or five hours of that and a North Korean government request, 22 people who thought they’d made it to freedom were on their way back to face a firing squad.
DO NOT MISS NK Econ Watch’s recent postings (here and here) analyzing whether a recent North Korean anti-corruption drive is just another purge or a signal of a policy change.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY? As the regime’s economic power fades, the regime’s once-treasured Kim Jong Il birthday gifts can no longer compete with the items available in the markets.
The source relayed the public sentiment as “Goods more valuable than his gifts are all over the place in the jangmadang. A portion of the people has said, ‘Special provisions are not necessary. Just do not regulate the markets.’” [….]
[Another source] also expressed discontent, saying, “It is pitiful to have to wait in line in front of the stores through which provisions are handed out for a mere bottle of liquor and soap.” [Daily NK, via NK Econ Watch]
THE PEOPLES’ MOJAHEDDIN OF IRAN is an armed opposition group that opposes the theocracy that rules that country. Once a client and guest of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the PMOI has since come to an tense accommodation with the Americans at its base of operations, near Basra. The PMOI is also listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, so it seeks influence within Congress and the executive branch. It does this by occasionally taking out full-page ads in the Washington Times, and by trying to make itself valuable as an intelligence source. GI Korea has posted about PMOI allegations that North Koreans are present at an Iranian nuclear warhead factory. Although I don’t have high confidence in the PMOI as an intel source, GI Korea’s post is well worth reading for the Google Earth images alone.
THE PRESSURE BUILDS: The International Olympic Committee is forced to step in and defend the ChiComs on human rights. The defense — the the Olympics will be good for human rights — is not just self-serving, it’s contrary to the evidence. In fact, China isn’t preparing for the Olympics by cleaning up its act; it’s cleansing China of dissent and North Korean refugees. The irony is that the IOC’s defense will only reflect reality if pressure, such as that applied by Steven Spielberg, attaches a financial cost to the atrocities China commits and supports.
Two Thais have been arrested for allegedly helping 14 North Koreans to illegally enter Thailand’s northern border town Chiang Saen, local police said Monday. Nikom Chaikul, 36, was arrested last Thursday when he was driving a minibus carrying eight North Koreans — four men and four women aged 19 to 66 — heading to Chiang Saen, according to marine police in Chiang Saen. [Kyodo]
[Update: Now that I’ve read LMB’s inaugural, I’ve posted more detailed comments / ridicule below the fold and the video.]
The 17th presidency of Korea started as Lee Myung-bak formally took over presidential authority from former president Roh Moo-hyun at midnight on Monday, with the Bosingak Bell in downtown Seoul tolling the momentous hour. Lee now embarks on a government of pragmatic conservatism after putting an end to the decade-long leftwing rule. [Chosun Ilbo]
Judging by Lee’s inaugural address and the media reaction to it, Lee’s priorities seem to be (first) the economy, and (second) restoring Korean-U.S. relations, which Roh did so much to destroy. Frankly, Lee has his work cut out for him. Roh did us the great service of breaking the spell of loyalty that prevented many of us from taking a hard look at the growing disunity of U.S. and South Korean interests. Lee’s inauguration reflects some change in how South Korea perceives its interests, but changed facts eventually change policies. China has become South Korea’s largest trading partner, North Korea is no longer capable of invading South Korea, South Korea has never been more economically capable of self defense, and the United States has never had less of an interest in getting involved in a ground war in Korea.
Still, Roh and his people often went out of his way to rile friends and empower enemies near and far. We can at least count on Lee to be there when he needs us.
“We must move from the age of ideology into the age of pragmatism,” Lee told some 60,000 people who gathered for his inauguration, taking a swipe at the past 10 years of liberal rule during which he said “we found ourselves faltering and confused.” [AP]
On North Korea, Lee takes the sensible approach of keeping dialogue open while suggesting that South Korean taxpayer’s largesse will now come with conditions:
Lee said he would launch massive investment and aid projects in the North to increase its per capita income to US$3,000 (€2,000) within a decade “once North Korea abandons its nuclear program and chooses the path to openness.” [AP]
Interestingly, the highest official China appears to have sent was a “foreign policy advisor.” Lee asked for his help in getting North Korea to keep its word and disarm (good luck). More on Roh’s diplomatic approach to the North at GI Korea.
Whereas Roh’s government often seemed to cultivate or tolerate social, economic, and political xenophobia, Lee’s inaugural address suggests that he would oppose those tendencies:
He asked the people to make efforts to create a new myth on the Korean Peninsula through harmony and cooperation, social integration and economic development, upholding the “Global Korea” banner. [Chosun Ilbo]
Lee is even making efforts to improve ties with Japan, the perpetual scapegoat for Korean demagogues. Japan’s Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, attended the inauguration. Later, the two men discussed lowering trade barriers and increasing diplomatic contacts through “shuttle diplomacy.”
Update: Another call to boycott the Beijing Olympics:
Pro-democracy activists in Myanmar called Monday for the world to boycott this year’s Beijing Olympics over what they said was China’s continuing support of Myanmar’s military dictatorship.
The 88 Generation Students group, which was instrumental in last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar, urged “citizens around the world … to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics in response to China’s bankrolling of the military junta that rules our country of Burma with guns and threats.” Myanmar is also known as Burma. [. . . .]
“Our constructive outreach to China has been met with silence and more weapons shipments,” the group said in a statement. [AP, Mick Elmore]
- End update -
Barbara Demick has returned to the L.A. Times after (so I hear) a long sabbatical. Demick’s work is a welcome exception to the bland and banal work we see from so many of her peers because of her interest in the humanitarian story, particularly the miserable existence of North Korean refugees. The humanitarian story is the submerged part of the North Korean iceberg that too many journalists, such as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, can’t seem to see. Yet it’s the part of the story that gives everything else about North Korea its proper context.
As the 2008 Olympic games approach, international pressure is rightly rising against China over its behavior in the Sudan. Demick reports on how that pressure is also rising over China’s reprehensible treatment of North Korean refugees:
“These Olympics are just about the most important international event in Chinese history. If they want to brag to the world about what a safe and stable place China is, they have to do something for the refugees,” said Do Hee-youn, who runs a fund for North Korean defectors in Seoul.
As many as 100,000 North Koreans are thought to be hiding in China, including dozens in foreign embassies and at the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Beijing.
The North Koreans have won sympathy in foreign capitals, from Tokyo to Washington, especially among Christian groups. Activists held nearly simultaneous demonstrations Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 in front of all the Chinese consular offices in the U.S., calling for a boycott of the Olympics over the North Korean issue. [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]
Strictly speaking, those demonstrations weren’t about the Olympics, but looking at this YouTube video, you could easily conclude otherwise:
Demick’s story continues:
There are some indications that the Chinese are paying heed. In December, they unexpectedly released Yu Sang-jun, a defector who had become an activist. Caught guiding refugees to the border, he was held for less than four months, a short stay compared with the years-long sentences doled out to others who did the same.
In Seoul, activists say that 40 North Koreans who have sought asylum in embassies in Beijing might soon be given safe passage by the Chinese government to leave for South Korea. The South Korean Constitution gives all North Koreans the right of citizenship.
Some commenters here have questioned the sincerity of Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal from participation in the Beijing Olympics. I agree that Spielberg’s criticism of China is irreconcilable with some of his other views, as described in my comments section. But I also think it’s possible to agree that Spielberg is right about Darfur without acknowledging him as a supreme moral authority. That’s how alliances are made and votes are cast. There are plenty of good reasons to stay away from Beijing. In the end, what matters is that China’s rulers see the financial price of their odious behavior. They will see that clearly if the Beijing Olympics are an expensive flop.
At the same time, the humiliation of China through the exposure of its brutality didn’t begin with the Olympics, and won’t end there, either:
“At best, they’ll put on a public relations show for the Olympics,” activist Tim Peters said. “But it won’t be anything more than smoke and mirrors.”
A Russian cargo ship has been detained and boarded by armed coastguard agents in North Korean waters, Russian maritime officials say. The Lida Demesh, carrying a consignment of cars from Japan, was heading for the Russian port of Vladivostok when it was stopped by patrol near Cape Musudan. [BBC]
Musudan-ri is absolutely the wrong section of North Korea’s coastline to approach. The area is infamous for such attractions as a missile test site, a nuclear test site, and a large concentration camp. North Korea has previously claimed an “exclusion zone” in those waters. The Russian ship, apparently blown off-course by strong winds, came well within the standard 12.5 mile limit recognized by most countries:
On Saturday, an official at Vladivostok’s maritime rescue centre, Vladimir Yeroshkin, said the Lida Demesh had been detained and boarded by the North Korean coastguard about 3-5 nautical miles (5.5km) from Cape Musudan.
“An armed group boarded the ship and ordered the captain to change course and go to a North Korean port [Chongjin],” he told the Russian NTV network. Mr Yeroshkin said the centre had been told the ship’s 25 crew-members were fine and that there had been no threat to their lives.
There are probably several good reasons I’ve never really enjoyed a musical except while looking at the lovely France Nuyen, who does not sing.
If legacy was its object, Agreed Framework 2.0 won’t be a positive contribution to one. President Bush must know this, or he would have mentioned it in his State of the Union speech. Events turned against the agreement during the last quarter of 2007: specifically Syria, uranium, North Korea’s false declaration, and its failure to give a complete one. One rumor circulated, briefly, that the Administration might relent and accept an incomplete declaration after all. More recent reports say otherwise:
The United States, alarmed by mounting evidence that North Korea gave nuclear assistance to Syria, has rejected pressure from some of its partners in six-nation talks to compromise on an overdue declaration of Pyongyang’s nuclear activities, U.S. officials said yesterday. [….]
The Syrian connection has become a major problem for the United States since an Israeli air strike in Syria in September. The target was widely reported to be a nuclear facility under construction with help from North Korea. Current and former U.S. officials said yesterday that intelligence points to a plutonium-related facility.
Yesterday, Mr. Hill said the North’s declaration must account for the Syrian connection. “We discussed all of the elements that we believe need to be included, including the Syrian matter and uranium enrichment,” he said of his talks with Mr. Kim.
U.S. and Israeli officials have refused to talk about the September strike, but diplomats and analysts said even the administration’s strongest advocates of engagement with Pyongyang are worried by what they have learned from intelligence sources. [Washington Times, Nicholas Kralev]
Which advocates? I’ll just say that this surprised me:
The United States has presented to South Korea a video of a Syrian nuclear reactor believed to have been built with North Korea’s help, a Seoul daily reported Friday.
Top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill showed the video to Kim Byung Kook, senior secretary for foreign and security affairs for President-elect Lee Myung Bak on Wednesday, the Munhwa Ilbo said, quoting an unidentified South Korean government official. [Kyodo News]
You will also recall my post about a recent event where NPR’s Robert Siegel, the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler, and the NYT’s Mark Mazzetti discussed the implications of Syria. Despite the suspiciously extraordinary secrecy surrounding the events of last September, the emerging consensus is that it was something nuclear: possibly a reactor, or according to other sources, nuclear material.
Which leaves us where we’ve been since the beginning of the year — firmly stalled. That condition can’t last forever. I believe that within the next 30 days, we will start to see the first signs of the Bush Administration recognizing the realities that (a) the current policy will not disarm North Korea, (b) North Korea is stalling, (c) a rare consensus of the aforementioned is forming in Washington, and (d) because Bush’s policy looks ineffective, Bush’s legacy will not benefit from helping North Korea stall. I also predict that this recognition will amount to little in practice.
The other factor is blame, and the avoidance thereof. The leftward fringes, of course, will always find reasons to excuse each North Korean transgression and support every North Korean demand, now matter how contrived. Others take refuge in superficial matters or meaningless promises. But serious thinkers understand by now that North Korea isn’t willing to disclose the extent of its nuclear programs and has probably crossed The Red Line with Syria. It seems difficult to blame Bush for not having made his best effort toward the kind of diplomacy his critics have spent the last seven years demanding.
The question now is what Bush can still do in the time he has left. Certainly military action is off the table, but it hasn’t been on the table since 1993 anyway. Bush lacks the time and the political capital for any major legislative, political, diplomatic, or logistical effort. He could try yet more concessions, such as watering down requirements for a North Korean declaration or removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Politically, however, those options seem to be foreclosed, Chinese pressure notwithstanding:
Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said there has been “a mood shift in Washington” since the air attack in Syria. “The administration has taken a firmer line with North Korea,” he said.
At times over the past year, Mr. Klingner said, Mr. Hill has given the impression that he was “lowering the bar” on the requirements from the North, particularly on verification of Pyongyang’s claims in the declaration. But since the Israeli strike, which was followed by criticism of the administration’s policy by some Republicans, there has been no room for trusting the North Koreans blindly, Mr. Klingner said. [Washington Times, Nicholas Kralev]
After a fractious internal debate within the Administration, the option of watering down the declaration has been eliminated. Most Republicans in Congress would probably oppose removing North Korea from the terror list, and it’s hard to imagine Democrats expending much effort to support one of Bush’s foreign policy initiatives this year.
Which brings me to economic pressure, such as Plan B. This would require only a series of executive branch actions the President could order unilaterally. The question is whether the Administration’s foreign policy team possesses the legal savvy, creativity, or determination to do it. Still, America’s foremost experts on the North Korean economy will tell anyone who asks that pressure works.
Can President Bush get away with muddling along for 11 more months? Probably, because everyone’s already forgotten him. Everyone — Kim Jong Il most of all — is already thinking about McCain and Obama. My guess is that the Bush Administration’s language will probably have to change soon. It will have to start acknowledging North Korea’s bad faith and implicitly, the failure of last year’s policy shift. It will probably be prevented from offering substantial new concessions. It may even have to make some pretense that it has an alternative plan. But if the Administration has been gridlocked and out of ideas for the last seven years, it’s difficult to imagine it adopting a more effective appoach now.
Update:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged North Korea on Friday to come clean on its suspected highly enriched uranium program when it gives a full account of its nuclear intentions under a six-party deal.
‘’We need a complete declaration from the North Koreans about both their proliferation activities, their current plutonium program, which they are in the process of disabling, but also the HEU program,'’ she said. ‘’They need to make clear what has happened there.'’ [Kyodo News]
