A few months ago, the Korean press reported that State had submitted the name of Kathleen Stephens to be the next U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, to replace the competent and affable Alexander Vershbow. At the time, I did not have strong opinions about Ms. Stephens’s fitness for that position. Further research has convinced me that Ms. Stephens, though well qualified for the job and apparently a perfectly fine person, is the wrong person to be our next Ambassador to Seoul.
B.A. in East Asian studies, Prescott College; Master’s degree, Harvard University; studied at Oxford University and at the University of Hong Kong.
1975-1977, Peace Corps volunteer, Buyeo and Yesan, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. Reportedly adopted the Korean name Sim Eungyeong. [Photograph, circa 1970’s; see also Korea Times]
Exchange student, University of Hong Kong.
1978: Joined the foreign service.
1978-1980: U.S. Mission, Trinidad and Tobago.
1980-1982: U.S. Mission, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China. Served as a consular and public affairs officer.
1984-1987: Political officer and internal political unit chief, U.S. Embassy, Seoul.
1987-1989: Principal Officer, U.S. Consulate, Pusan.
1991-1992: Political Officer, U.S. missions in Belgrade and Zagreb.
1992-1994: Senior Desk Officer, UK, Bureau of European Affairs.
1994-1995: Director for European Affairs, National Security Council.
1995-1998: U.S. Consul General, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1998-2001: Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Lisbon.
2001-2003: Director, Office of Ecology and Terrestrial Conservation, Dep’t of State.
Dec. 2003-June 2005: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, European and Eurasian Affairs.
June 2005-present: Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
Languages: Fluent in Korean and Serbo-Croatian; Limited Cantonese and Mandarin.
The Chosun Ilbo reports that as a political officer in Seoul, Stephens “established ties with South Korean political leaders, including former presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung.” It claims that Stephens is “regarded as a pro-Seoul diplomat,” although it’s not clear exactly what that means. While serving as a political officer in Seoul and while working in the Balkans, Stephens became a close acquaintance of Christopher Hill.
At EAP / State Department Politics
Stephens appears to be a close confidant, ally, and protege of Hill to this day. The sometimes-reliable Nelson Report claims that Stephens was one of the people Hill planted in the East Asia Bureau while purging out some of the more starry-eyed Clinton hold-overs:
Even more worrisome is the clear determination of Hill, with Rice’s endorsement, of “cleaning out” the East Asia Bureau. Hill has made private remarks which show this is deliberate, and not coincidental. “Evidence” includes the shabby treatment handed out Principal DAS/Korea expert Evans Revere, and his replacement as Principal DAS/Korea chief by Hill’s fellow European expert, Kathleen Stephens. No one doubts Ms. Stephens’ intelligence or commitment, but her experience in Korea is very limited, and more than 20 years ago. [The Nelson Report, via Nautilus]
Although there is much room for criticism of Stephens’s policy views, Nelson’s criticism here appears misplaced. Ms. Stephens appears to have deep background in Korea and a strong familiarity with its language, culture, and government. She is also one of Christopher Hill’s key lieutanants, placing her at the center of Hill’s failing diplomatic initiative.
That is also the principal reason why she is the wrong person for the job. Despite her obvious qualifications, Ms. Stephens appears to have fundamentally misread the North Korean regime’s intentions, which calls the quality of her judgment into question. And regional expertise isn’t much good if you can’t apply good judgment to the facts you have.
Advocacy of a Peace Treaty with North Korea
At EAP, Stephens’s signature functions were to assist in the creation and implementation of the February 2007 agreement and to take “charge of Korean peace treaty issues” as Hill’s Principal Deputy, beginning in June 2005. Because President Bush has publicly opposed any peace treaty before North Korea fully dismantles its nuclear program — leading to a testy public spat with President Roh (video) – Stephens has had to fly under the Washington radar. Her contacts with the previous South Korean government on this topic, however, were revealed as being extensive.
Initially, according to the Chosun Ilbo, Stephens also had “several rounds of arguments” with the Roh Administration “over North Korean issues and the question of establishing a peace framework on the Korean Peninsula.”
Those differences were less apparent by January 25-28, 2007, when Stephens made what was to have been a low-key visit to Seoul to Seoul to discuss “creating a peace regime on the Korean peninsula and the structure and role of the United Nations Command after dissolving the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command.” Stephens visited several ministries, including Foreign Affairs, Unification, National Defense, and the National Intelligence Service. A government official later confirmed the purpose of the visit to a Donga Ilbo reporter, saying, “We were given an overall review of pending security issues between Korea and the U.S. We talked about a peace treaty as well as the six-party talks.”
Naturally, this alarmed some South Korean conservatives:
The U.S. is putting bait on a hook called peace treaty in addition to an offer to partly unfreeze the Macau accounts. Kathleen Stephens, the principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, visited Seoul in strict secrecy last week for talks with national security and foreign affairs officials on concluding a peace agreement with North Korea. This shows how fast everything is proceeding. [Chosun Ilbo]
Relations with South Korean Government
Overall, Stephens seemed to enjoy good relations with the Roh Administration. When USFK Commander Gen. B.B. Bell spoke in strong opposition to delaying USFK restruction and the move of its Headquarters to Pyongtaek, the Foreign Ministry used Stephens as its messenger to deliver a rebuke to Bell.
Little is known of Stephens’s views on human rights in North Korea. Her mention of those issues is so conspicuously absent as to suggest that she chose not to mention them. However, Stephens did visit the Kaesong Industrial Complex in June 2006, thus becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit to do so. Notwithstanding the concerns of the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, Stephens’s comments were laudatory:
“I think I have a sense of what this means to Koreans, and of how their aspirations are so high for it,” said Ms. Stephens. “Of the scope of the project as they envision it. I don’t think I’d really appreciated that before.”
About 6,000 North Koreans, handpicked by Pyongyang, work in the zone for more than 10 South Korean companies. South Korean authorities say they hope to expand the zone to give more than half a million North Koreans employment in the global economy. South Korea says the North Korean workers receive about $50 a month, paid through North Korean authorities. However, U.S. North Korea Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz drew fire from South Korean officials earlier this year when he cautioned that “little is known” about actual working conditions there. Other critics of North Korea have said it is not clear how much of the salary actually goes to the workers.
Stephens says South Korean guides assured her that efforts are underway to make Kaesong operations conform to global labor standards. “I get the impression that there are still parts of this that are going to be worked out, to be more transparent both to the workers and to the outside world,” she added.
Stephens cautions, however, that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs pose a serious obstacle to the Kaesong zone’s plans for growth. “We’re still waiting to see if that strategic decision has been made by the DPRK, that they really do want to engage in this process, and which would only underpin and galvanize, if you like, the vision of what Kaesong could be that I heard today,” She noted. [Voice of America]
By contrast, Lefkowitz later referred to Kaesong as “material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.”
Stephens’s support for Kaesong and her opposition to financial sanctions may not be offensive to some elements of President Lee Myung-Bak’s new administration. We’ll get a better idea of this after the upcoming parliamentary elections, and after the unfolding freeze in North-South relations hits its nadir.
As for the exact contours of their support for a full peace agreement with North Korea, President Lee and D A/S Stephens have both withheld the details; however, Stephens may find that Lee’s own views on the subject are much less ambitious than Roh’s. Nominally, Lee supports the establishment of a “peace regime” on the peninsula, but Lee will harbor few illusions that he can negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea bilaterally, or without some reciprocal improvements on denuclearization, human rights, and North Korea’s conventional threat. Hill and Stephens have fought to abandon those and engage in bilateral talks with North Korea.
Role in Dismantling Treasury Sanctions
Stephens has been a key player in dismantling the Treasury Department’s sanctions against North Korea’s illicit activities. On March 7, 2007, State sent her as its minder in talks between Treasury and the North Koreans. Leading the U.S. delegation is Treasury Undersecretary Daniel Glaser, a vocal defender of the sanctions, who was then forced to explain to the North Koreans how they could regain the benefits of access to international finance.
Stephens said the meeting had been an opportunity to discuss issues related to sanctions Washington has imposed on Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank it accuses of being the North’s main money laundering channel. She added the meeting was unrelated to the nuclear issue but she hoped the six-party talks would resume soon.
The Treasury said it explained the sanctions were imposed because North Korea’s money laundering through the bank exposed the U.S. banking system to an intolerable risk, according to a statement. It added the U.S. “will continue to take action as necessary to protect ourselves against threats to our financial system and our institutions.” [Chosun Ilbo]
Glaser has no doubt noted that North Korea has neither admitted nor agreed to end the illicit activities that drew those sanctions in the first place. Although the issue of North Korea’s illegal activities has never been a subject of negotiation, much less resolved, Stephens later said:
“I don’t think there is any doubt that the [BDA] accounts are open and available,” said Stephens. She admitted that the bank account issue had been “more complicated and more technical than expected”. But she said any remaining problems on Pyongyang accessing the money were between the bank in Macau, part of China, and the account holders. [Space War]
Role in February 2007 Agreement
At the time, she seemed to place considerable faith in the current diplomatic process, and in the usefulness of the U.N.’s role in it.
Stephens said the US was encouraged by a visit by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to Pyongyang last month and by the creation of a series of international working groups. “We are seeing a pretty intensive and hopefully intensifying schedule of bilateral consultations as well as multi-lateral consultations,” she said. She hoped it would help move towards the wider goals of a de-nuclearised Korean peninsula and a peace treaty between the two Koreas, she added. [Space War; emphasis mine]
The following month, when the North Koreans failed to meet an April 2007 deadline to shut down their 5-MWe nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, it was Kathleen Stephens who gently but publicly prodded the North Koreans to comply.
There isn’t much doubt that North Korea’s very predictable noncompliance with Agreed Framework 2.0 will require a U.S. policy shift, either during this Administration (probably a shift of tone) or the next (probably a shift of substance). It will also mean a harder line by the South Koreans, followed by North Korean threats that someone will have to take seriously and react to accordingly. With North Korea again threatening Seoul with nuclear attack, an advocate of removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism is the wrong person to play a key role in that response.
A U.S. Ambassador somewhat to the left of Chris Hill might have made sense if Chris Hill’s policy were succeeding, but multiple revelations during the last year show how badly Hill misjudged the North Koreans. If Chris Hill’s own future role ought to be called into question — he should resign – it’s also appropriate that one of his key cronies should not advance now.
[Update: LiNK reports that they’ve extended the deadline to sign up for Project Real Sunshine through April 7th.]
[Correction: A reader points out that I’ve confused two LiNK projects, “Project Real Sunshine” and the “Chollima Leadership Program.” My apologies. The Chollima Leadership Program is actually the one I described in the post below; Project True Sunshine is an advocacy project, which I should have remembered. Fortunately, Andy Jackson didn’t get confused and put up a perfectly fine post.]
One of the points that I’ve often stressed is how unprepared North Koreans will be for self-governance when what we’ve long expected to happen ”eventually” actually happens. Clearly, the existing regime isn’t governing effectively or providing essential services for the population, and given that so much of North Korea’s educational curriculum is about ideology and loyalty, it’s no wonder. What that will eventually mean it that North Korea will be governed by (at best) South Korean carpetbaggers or (at worst) a Chinese governor-general. No government that the governed see as unrepresentative of themselves will succeed for long, and both South Korean and American governments should be preparing North Koreans to establish their own transitional government.
Finally, someone is doing something about this — LiNK. If you have one week to devote full-time, two weeks to devote part-time, and some useful skills to pass along to North Korean refugees with the potential to lead North Korea out of its current bleak condition, follow this link and sign up today (I didn’t find the time to post this last week when I first received it, sorry). Some of the subjects Project Real Sunshine the Chollima Leadership Program will teach include:
· Democracy and governance
· Rule of law
· International human rights
· Comparative movements
· Comparative politics
· Business protocol and etiquette
· Leadership development
The time will come when suddenly, the state can’t frighten people into dying in place, and that will place some unpleasant sights before the eyes of the world. There will be mass migrations that will spread disease, further destabilize the food situation, and place some stark choices before the leaders of South Korea. Social ills that had stayed hidden will become the new route to riches for people who were taught that all morality served the state.
It may not be possible to completely prevent those consequences; after all, there are only about 10,000 North Korean defectors in all of South Korea, and only a small percentage of any population could do what we’re talking about here. There may also be less time for this task than many people think. Still, the sooner the job is started, the more people that can be trained for the day they’re needed … whenever that day comes.
Now, when we were savage, fierce and wild (Whack fol the diddle o dee die do day)
She came as a mother to her child (Whack fol the diddle o the dee do day)
She gently raised us from the slime
And kept our hands from hellish crime
And she sent us to heaven in our own good time (Whack fol the diddle o dee die do day) [“Whack Fol the Diddle,” an Irish protest song]
The Tibetan uprising is on again in Lhasa, and worst of all for the Chinese, it broke out just as it brought in a group of foreign diplomats to show them that China’s idea of order had been restored:
Witnesses in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, say fresh protests erupted there Saturday afternoon despite a massive Chinese police and paramilitary presence.
Witnesses told RFA’s Tibetan service that several hundred Tibetans rallied around 2 p.m. on March 29, beginning in the area near Center Beijing Road. Shops near the central post office on Lhasa Youth Road were closed, as security forces surrounded the Tibetan residential areas in Barkhor, Kama Kunsang, Ramoche, and the Jokhang temple. “People were running in every direction,” one witness said. “It was a huge protest, and people were shouting.” [Radio Free Asia]
The only violence reported this time were “fistfights,” reported by an unidentified source, and which could well have involved Tibetans resisting arrests by security forces. The incident follows a similar embarrassment for China just the day before:
Earlier this week, the government took select foreign media to Lhasa to highlight the wreckage and give the impression that the city was returning to normal, but the plan backfired when about 30 monks at Jokhang stormed an official news briefing.
The monks complained about a lack of religious freedom and voiced support for the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism who lives in exile and who China accuses of masterminding the unrest. [Reuters, Lindsay Beck and John Ruwitch]
The Washington Post describes the highly scripted, scheduled, and controlled visits and the protest that broke out just as the diplomats were being escorted out of Lhasa. Chinese residents apparently panicked and began closing their shops and began trying, in vain to catch taxis and buses home. The authorities cut off cell phone service, which amplified the sense of panic.
China has tried to characterize all Tibetan protest as violent, and to that end, we’ve seen nonviolent protests crushed with ruthlessness and without video, but in the case of the violent protests, we saw a sequence unprecedented in the history of the Peoples’ Republic of China — the China Central Television arrived before the armored personnel carriers.
I’m certainly not suggesting that all these events were staged; these events have been a PR disaster for China and shattered its fake image of order and harmony. The Tibetans’ violence against ordinary Han Chinese and their shops seems to have been a very real (and very wrong) part of their challenge to Chinese rule, but because of China’s news blackout over protests that it hasn’t been replaying for a global audience, it’s reasonable to draw some inferences about what China won’t let us see. The majority of reports I’ve read speak either of nonviolent protest or of justified violence — violence against buildings and personnel of a foreign occupation that Tibetans have never been allowed to reject democratically or nonviolently.
And as brutal as China’s response may have been thus far, I’m sure it’s nothing next to what will happen after the Olympics are over. By rejecting any calls for dialogue or even limited autonomy, China has blocked every nonviolent means of opposition. It’s also self-evident that appeals to world sympathy mean little in practice. Just read the silence from the U.N. and the International Olympic Committee, or the muted responses from President Bush and the European Union. As a commenter pointed out recently, the Dalai Lama doesn’t command any divisions, either. If Tibetans are going to have any degree of independence or force China to negotiate in good faith, they’ll have to take up arms.
A group of six human rights activists from Europe, Asia, and Oceania was in Vientiane, Laos, recently to coordinate efforts on behalf of North Korean refugees when they decided to move beyond mere words. Here is an excerpt from the letter one of them e-mailed me recently:
It has come to our attention that twelve North Korean defectors have recently arrived in Laos after traveling through China. They were on their way to freedom in South Korea, but have since been stranded in Vientiane.
We have interviewed them and are convinced that they are eligible for refugee status and international protection under the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, accredited by 140 countries. There is no doubt that, if they are repatriated, these refugees will face heavy prison terms, or even the death penalty.
Also, let it be noted that North Korean defectors are officially recognized as refugees, under the above convention and by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
For this reason, we have helped this group of refugees enter the Embassy of South Korea in Vientiane, Laos, 11:55 hours, Thursday, 27 March 2008.
They have entered the embassy with the hope of protection.
In the name of humanity and humanitarianism, we wish to respectfully appeal to the Government of Laos to provide them with a safe exit to South Korea. [e-mail message from Human Rights Without Frontiers]
The signatories to the letter are Willy Fautre, Director, Human Rights Without Frontiers International, of Brussels; Pierre Rigoulot, of the International Society for Human Rights in Paris; Steve Buttell from HRWF South-East Asia, of New Zealand; Phromlak Sakphichaimongkhon, a lawyer from Bangkok; Peter Chung, the Director of Justice for NK, from Seoul; Hiroshi Kato, Representative of Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, from Tokyo.
Yonhap’s report of the incident claims the twelve “forced” their way into the embassy, which doesn’t appear to be true based on the above (Yonhap’s slant in KCNA’s direction didn’t end with President Lee’s inauguration). Nonetheless, it is good to see a South Korean embassy react appropriately to such an event:
“We’re going to respect what they want based on humanitarianism and international customs,” the South Korean Ambassador to Vientiane Park Jae-hyun told Yonhap News Agency by phone.
He said the people are now in good condition and under the embassy’s custody. However, he did not specify whether the presumed defectors expressed hope to settle in South Korea. [Yonhap]
Recall that the South Koreans recently agreed to fly up to 75 refugees a week – just under 4,000 a year – from Bangkok to Seoul. Amid a worsening food situation in the North and a more welcoming approach from the South, that number will soon prove to be grossly insufficient. We will soon start to see much larger numbers of North Koreans arriving in Southeast Asia to seek asylum.
The South Korean government has decided to vote for a resolution on human rights in North Korea to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council this week, it emerged on Tuesday. South Korea has so far boycotted or abstained from all UN votes on North Korea including the General Assembly, except for 2006, when the North conducted a nuclear test. [….]
A government official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said, “Previous administrations treated the human rights issue of North Korea from a nationalist standpoint. But the new government’s basic policy is to regard human rights as a universal value. The government will show the first example of concrete action in the upcoming UNHRC vote.” [Chosun Ilbo]
You know, I’m starting to think that Lee Myung Bak fails to recognize the divinity and supremacy of the Great General and Lodestar of the Korean Race, and judging by their reaction — a missile test – so are the North Koreans.
As much of a change as this represents from the obsequious policies we’ve come to expect — and which North Korea has come to expect — from the Roh Administration, let’s not lose all perspective over this: we are still talking about the toothless oxymoron known as the United Nations. The U.N. has done its worst to North Korea, to little actual effect. The only things Kim Jong Il fears almost as much as his own people are a precipitous end to South Korean tribute (which China could offset) and, of course, the United States Treasury Department (which China could not offset).
Lee seems serious about making North Korea’s disarmament a condition for more aid, and what’s more, he’s drawing a link between inter-Korean aid and inter-Korean agreements. Not many people noticed that a few days ago, Lee suggested that he would revive and enforce a 1992 inter-Korean denuclearization agreement (”The South and the North shall not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons”). The agreement was renounced by the North Koreans at a subsequent moment of convenience and had been regarded as a dead letter during the administration of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun. No longer, says Lee:
“In the early 1990s, North Korea already signed an inter-Korean accord to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. I hope the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved through the six-party talks in line with the denuclearization accord that took effect in 1992,” said Lee at a policy briefing session of the Unification Ministry.
“North Korea’s leadership has to realize that the settlement of its nuclear problem would be truly helpful to inter-Korean economic cooperation and unification. The North will only be able to stabilize its regime, maintain peace and achieve economic prosperity when it gives up its nuclear program,” said the president. [Yonhap, via the Hanky]
Expecting other nations to keep their agreements with your nation is a sign of national self-respect. That’s a concept that Roh and his supporters talked up while alienating South Korea’s allies, but always set aside for the sake of an obseqious and unconditional policy toward North Korea. Roh and Kim never asked Kim Jong Il to make any commitments to change his behavior, much less keep them. The point being: if South Korea is ever going to be viewed by other nations as something other than a satellite to be managed, an irritant to be marginalized, or a cow to be milked, it has to be willing to use its own influence to serve its own interests, nearly all of which are affected by North Korea’s intractible nuclear belligerence. Lee is the first one in years to have done that.
South Korea has even extended the new reciprocity policy to the most sacred of cows, the very symbol of the unifiction, the Kaesong Industrial Park, which Lee recently said he would not expand until North Korea keeps it word and gives up its nukes. The North Koreans reacted by doing what they do best: cutting off their own noses. I don’t need to add much more here to what Robert Koehler has already said, but I will note that Kaesong had already started to have unintended social consequences that the North Korean regime probably would not have tolerated for much longer anyway.
And it’s not just aid policy where strength translates to independence:
“Strengthening defense capability and becoming a strong army means we should win a war in the event it breaks out,” Lee Myung-bak told top military leaders Wednesday at an army headquarters south of Seoul, according to South Korean pool reports. “Our greater role is to prevent a war,” he added. Lee […] also said the South Korea-U.S. alliance is “very important” to deter aggression from the communist country. [AP, via IHT]
Roh paid (that word again) tribute to the concept of an independent defense. In fact, this was a reaction to America pulling away from its alliance with South Korea, and in practice, it meant deep defense cuts. That met with the unsurprising approval of the ChiCom regime, but in the event of a real crisis, it would have meant that South Korea would be even more dependent on the Americans. Behind the noise about independence and a more “equal” alliance, the South Koreans were begging the Americans to slow down their plans to withdraw troops and turn over wartime operational command to the Koreans. Had Korea proceeded with its defense cuts, and had the U.S.-Korea alliance continued to degrade, the South would have been unable to respond to a crisis in the North. That would have meant, and could still mean, that the Chinese would have stepped in to fill the void.
Acting like a mature nation will come with costs of its own. A credible military deterrent costs money, independent statesmanship requires thought and gravitas, and a willingness to use your influence with the North Koreans may mean you’ll have to listen to a lot of empty threats, bluster, and rhetoric from KCNA. No doubt the North Koreans hope this will influence next month’s parliamentary elections, after which we’ll get a much better idea of how dramatically Lee will change his policies toward the North.
Hello? Room service? There’s a hissing sound coming from my chandelier!
North Korea is converting part of its embassy in Berlin into a hostel to earn foreign currency for Kim Jong Il’s cash-strapped regime, Japan’s Sankei newspaper reported, citing diplomats it didn’t identify. The Cityhostel Berlin will initially have 37 rooms at a charge of 20 Euros ($31) per head a night, Sankei reported. A reception with a grand piano is being built and a Korean restaurant is due to open in May, the newspaper said. [Bloomberg, Hideo Takayama]
The North Koreans built their 88,000 square foot embassy in East Berlin in the 1970’s, back when they needed all that square footage to write five year plans for embracing the world in gray vinalon, concertina music, and concertina wire. See if you can spot any North Koreans among the fedoras, fatigues, khaffiyas, and trenchcoats of the rogues’ gallery on this reviewing stand (at around 1:50):
Or here, between Ceaucescu and Arafat. (On a side note, that video, circa October 1989, leaves no room for any rational person to question the unassailable stability of East Germany, where health care and education are universal and free. Let us accept reality and abandon our neocon collapsist fantasies. Perhaps we’ll find some way to reach an accommodation with Honecker after a few decades of aid and cultural exchanges.)
More recently, however, the volume of brotherly comradeship with the Stasi has dropped off, and the North Koreans found that procuring sensitive technology and — of course – espionage still didn’t take up 88,000 square feet. Suddenly, 70% of the embassy’s space became redundant, so the North Koreans leased out the rest to corporate tenants, including a design company and a “psychology association,” thus proving that 40 years of dour Teutonic Leninism didn’t do lasting harm to the German sense of irony. (Can you imagine a work environment so grim that even the sort of people who call this light entertainment find it depressing?)
Plans for the new North Korean hotel call for “a reception with a grand piano” and a Korean restaurant, which should open in May, just in time for the famine back home. The North Koreans are said to be just two diplomatic pouches away from having all those renovations paid for.
It has long been rumored that North Korean embassies are expected to finance themselves, and North Korean diplomats have found some creative ways of doing that (file opens in pdf). This may be the first time I’ve seen it done legally, at least as far as we know.
NoKo: OPPOSING VIOLENT PROTESTS IS ‘TERRORISM:’ I think they’re referring to this. For the record, here is how North Korea deals with violent protests, and here’s how it deals with peaceful ones.
PROTESTORS from Reporters Without Borders disrupted the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Athens and interrupted a ChiCom party hack’s speech. The Washington Post has video. Tibetan protestors blocked a nearby road, and several were arrested. In Tibet, the protests continue:
In the Chabcha area of Amdo [Hainan/Tsolho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture], there is a small monastery called Atso. I am from this monastery. On March 22, at around 11:15 a.m., the monks there began to protest. They put up Tibetan flags and gathered on the hilltop just behind the monastery, where they burned incense. They raised slogans like ‘Freedom for Tibet!,’ ‘Long Live the Dalai Lama!,’ and ‘Release the Panchen Lama!’ There are about 100 monks in the monastery. After these protests in the surroundings of the monastery, the monks all walked to the township center, not very far away. There, they pulled down the Chinese flag at the local government school and burned it. Then they returned to the monastery and continued their protest. Three trucks full of police then arrived, and the head of the police threatened the monks with ’serious consequences’ if they continued their protest. He told them that ‘with just one phone call, we can finish you.’ [Radio Free Asia]
China continues round up large numbers of people for interrogation:
Many ordinary Tibetans are being detained. On average, one member of each Tibetan family is being taken away for interrogation and detention. The Chinese officials are displaying photographs and asking people to identify the persons shown in them.
As inexcusable as violence against ordinary ethnic Chinese may be, it’s no defense to China engaging in what is almost certainly violence on a far larger scale, albeit violence committed in the privacy of the state’s dungeons. And China, which is represses against peaceful dissenters and violent rioters alike, while attempting to mischaracterize all Tibetan dissent as violent, hardly speaks as a moral authority when some Tibetans choose the wrong way to react to Chinese oppression.
SOMEONE IN CHINA IS RECORDING NORTH KOREAN RADIO broadcasts in English and posting the audio online. If you’re interested in keeping up with who’s being idolized or purged, or whether songun is in or out, this should be interesting listening.
I listened long enough to hear the North Koreans call on all South Koreans to bow down before the Great General and Lodestar of the Nation, which is funny until you realize that 23 million people have to bear this each day of their lives. It may take some concentration to convince yourself that this isn’t a dramatization, and that it was broadcast just days ago.
Short wave is dying, and that’s probably because much of the information you could only get from short wave then is on the Internet without the static. I, for one, will miss it. Can you imagine being interested in world events and having no sources but the three droll choices of Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings? A superficial five-minute gloss of world-changing events between sports scores, weather, water-skiing squirrels, and Effordent commercials? Meh.
I remember how the networks most of the early signs of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, clinging to the last to the idea that Gorby would give us Stalinism with a Smiley Face or somesuch. I remember hearing the BBC report on an obscure, ethnically-tinged 1986 riot in the Kazakh S.S.R., the unfolding Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, the caustic public reaction to the Leninakan earthquake, and the outbreak of civil war in Nagorno-Karabakh. I realized what those things foretold, and I never would have heard about them anywhere else.
BBC and Voice of America short-wave broadcasts became my main news sources, but my main sources of entertainment were the stations I agreed with the least – Saddam’s Radio Baghdad, apartheid-era Radio South Africa, Radio Havana (”free territory in the Americas!“) and the most entertaining of all, the Orwellian, creepy Radio Berlin International from East Germany. I rememember hearing them days before the Wall fell, and again, days later, when they had become just another European news station without missing a beat … as if they’d never been anything else.
The first time I went overseas, in 1990, I bought a cheap portable Panasonic short wave in the small mining town of Randfontein, where I lived and worked for a few months, not so far from Johannesburg. One day at work, while listening to the BBC, I remember hearing that Iraq had invaded Kuwait and that there would soon be war within easy missile range of a place to which I had just booked and bought a non-refundable airline ticket.
Ten days later, while staying in a Palestinian village in East Jerusalem, I was tuning around with some anxious interest in whether I was about to get slimed with some of those weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein didn’t have, except when he did. In one of those unusual questions we collect during our our lives and never expect to answer, I was only able to pick up two audible English language stations — one from Seoul, and one from Pyongyang.
Admittedly, North Korean radio was interesting to hear and a nice “get,” and not unlike what you can hear at this link today, although it didn’t tell me much about the immediate urgency of finding myself a gas mask. (Thanks to a reader for the tip.)
NOW, LET’S REVERSE THE ROLES. What do we learn? That the word “reciprocity” doesn’t translate well into the North Korean dialect, now that more private South Korean organizations broadcast into North Korea:
The Fatherland Reunification and Democracy Front, North Korea’s organization for dealing with South Korea, criticized “South Korea’s conservatives, in collusion with the right-wing conservatives from the U.S. and Japan, who have strengthened broadcasting against North Korea and have called for a historical and systematic showdown against the same race.” [Daily NK, emphasis mine]
Isn’t it cute when they get all ein-volk-ein-reich on us?
Later, the North hints that it “will not watch indifferently as the South’s conservatives and U.S.-Japanese reactionaries threaten our regime and provoke our dignity by clinging to strategic broadcasting.”
Yes, these are the people our State Department wishes it could de-list as state sponsors of terrorism.
There are two new reports from the Buddhist NGO Good Friends, which has good sources inside North Korea. You will see that I have already blogged about some of the material in these reports when details emerged in press reports, or in the Daily NK. I will just add a few significant details that I gleaned from the reports, which you can find here and here.
There are no rations, even in Pyongyang, except for the city center, where they have been reduced to 40% or less of the normal ration. In the city, there are rumors that there will be famine in the countryside, and what Good Friends describes as “government officials” say this will an “arduous” year, borrowing the word often used to describe the Great Famine of the 1990’s. Morale in Pyongyang sounds very low:
A professor who lives in a central district in Pyongyang mentioned that the food ration for March has dropped down to only 20 per cent of the normal ration. In addition, an official said that a rumor that the rice price is likely to rise from 1,500-1600won to 3,000 has been circulating among residents. The official continued to say that “when I asked people what made them believe the rice price increase is going to take place, they said it is because the food supply for government officials has been cut and the local trade has been banned. Overall, things are getting worse. People expressed their concerns about survival.” Residents seemed to be in fear of how much the rice price is going to soar; he described the gloomy mood of the public these days. [Good Friends blog]
Similarly, there are no rations in the “core” city of Pyongsong, just north of Pyongyang, and the reported home of North Korea’s currency-counterfeiting operations. Market prices for rice have begun to climb sharply in other regions, too:
As of 3/13, the average rice price across the nation was 1,400-1,600 won per kg. But the prices are higher in certain counties located in areas outside the provincial seats. The rice price in Jongju County in North Pyongan Province hit 1,700 won per kg, which is 100 won higher than in Sinuiju. The prices for rice currently rival those back in September and October of last year when they peaked. The price of rice in Sinuiju last October 5th was 1,600 won, which is the same price as today. The price of rice in Pyongyang last October 5th was 1,500 won, the same price today. The price for corn oil also jumped noticeably. What used to be traded at 4,000-5,000 won last October is now sold at 6,000-7,000 won. [Good Friends blog]
Rumors that prices will climb much higher are likely to lead to hoarding. So the bidding war has begun, and contrary to the Washington Post’s projection, it seems possible that large numbers of underprivileged North Koreans will soon be priced out of the market. Some North Koreans will probably be able to buy rice cookers and plastic surgery this year, even as that the less fortunate ones could weaken, or even die, in large numbers.
There is also more detail about those protests in Chongjin and Haeju over market restrictions.
Some counties that reported they had met their production goals turned over substantially smaller amounts of grain to state stores. This could indicate that the statistics themselves were falsified, or that production estimates were based on what was growing in the fields, and that much of the production was diverted since then. This is consistent with longstanding reports of widespread corruption and diversion.
Finally, this year’s food crisis is already threatening next year’s food supply. North Korean farmers in several areas of the country are now so weak that they can’t plant crops, so at best, this spring’s crisis will affect this fall’s harvest.
The task of planning for the farming season has been negatively impacted since the workers who had not been given food have stopped reporting to work. The managers of each farm collective have recognized the seriousness of the situation and reported to their superiors. The issue was taken up and discussed in the Provincial Party Meeting for South Hwanghae Province this past February. The Party Secretary has ordered the city and country party secretaries to strengthen ideological training for the farm workers while instructing the police to determine the farm workers who are not coming to work and compel them using all legal tools to return to work. They emphasized that everyone will really starve to death next year if the farm workers don’t do work during the crucial seeding season, so get them back to work using all necessary means. [Good Friends blog]
Shortages of salt will affect the ability of North Koreans to preserve food, especially kimchee, which they would otherwise survive on during the winter and spring. Other potential effects (not reported by Good Friends, but watch for them) include pre-harvesting of crops before they mature and the slaughtering of draft animals. We will know that a region’s situation has become disastrous if large numbers of people begin leaving their homes in search of food.
South Korea’s human rights agency said yesterday it would launch a probe into abuses in North Korea by interviewing defectors from the communist state. The National Human Rights Commission has included investigating its neighbor¡¯s record as one of its major tasks this year.
“We will conduct a survey on the overall human rights conditions in North Korea this year by hearing from defectors, said commission spokesman Lee Myung-jae. The number of defectors to be interviewed could be in the hundreds or thousands,” he said. [Joongang Ilbo]
The investigation, to be completed in the next few weeks, will question defectors and refugees in both South Korea and China, according to the Chosun Ilbo.
An NHRC official said the survey will focus on North Korean defectors who were caught by North Korean authorities while attempting to escape and will ask how they were treated after they were caught. Those in South Korea will be questioned first, but the commission will fly to China and interview North Korean refugees there if necessary. The NHRC official said that the method and date of the survey has not been finalized, but it will be “part of the commission’s efforts to improve human rights conditions in the North.” [Chosun Ilbo]
I should note that the Chosun Ilbo’s report is contradicted by both the Joongang Ilbo (on the number of defectors to be questioned) and the Daily NK (on whether it will send investigators to China border region).
It’s not the first time the HRC has said it would finally talk about, you know, actual grave human rights violations against Koreans, only to change its mind later. What makes this time different, we hope, is the change of presidential administration. And although the HRC is nominally independent, no serious person can believe that.
For years, the HRC has endured withering criticism and charges of hypocrisy for refusing to inquire into the atrocities that may have killed millions of North Koreans. If the HRC decides to bow to its critics, it would mark the end of five years of exquisite blogging material. For example, In the past, when asked why it never mentioned the atrocities in the North, the HRC has denied that its jurisidiction extends beyond the de facto boundaries of the Republic of Korea, regardless of its constitutional boundaries (see Articles 2 and 3):
“It is practically impossible for the South Korean government to exercise jurisdiction in North Korea…. We studied international and domestic laws, and found that North Korean citizens, in reality, can not be recognized as South Koreans.” [Joongang Ilbo, Dec. 12, 2006, quoted here]
In 2003, however, the HRC denounced the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And the basis for the HRC’s jurisdiction this time? It speculated that “the world peace threatened by the U.S. invasion of Iraq could also endanger Korea’s survival,” and that [t]he Iraq war can be connected to the North Korean issue.”
During the Roh Administration, it often seemed as though North Korea could not commit and abuse too grave to ignore, nor could the United States commit a slight too small to ignore. Thus, the HRC spent most of the Roh Administration protecting the sanctity of teenagers’ hairstyles and diaries, interspersed with occasional good acts to oppose civil rights violations that nonetheless paled in comparison to the Holocaust in North Korea.
When the HRC decides to start its work in earnest, there will be plenty to talk about:
A nine year-old boy, Ahn Sung Hoon appeared with his father. He had experienced repatriation from China to North Korea with his mother when he was only 2 years old. This two year old boy who was under detention in National Security Agency charged with escape. In a prison, Ahn was separated with his mother and put in a cell for male prisoners. He was constantly abused ‘for being fretful and looking for his mother’ and suffered from malnutrition and microbial colitis. Ahn is still going through aftereffects like insecurities and developmental disability. [Daily NK]
I might suggest that this incident might be worth a closer look, and so might this. It’s good that the HRC can make itself honest. What remains to be seen is whether it can make itself relevant.
HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU HAVE TO KILL to get noticed by Amnesty International? My theory is that it depends on how much you tell people you hate America, but it looks like North Korea may have exceeded Amnesty’s limit. Let’s hope this turns out to be something sustained.
NAMIBIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST DENOUNCES North Korea’s human rights record on the occasion of Kim Yong Nam’s visit:
Just about a week or two ago about 15 people were executed publicly 13 of whom were women. This is how brutal the regime is. That’s one of the reasons we are totally opposed to give an honor to a person from a country that is so cruel and treats its citizens so cruel in that manner,” Ya-Nangolo noted. [N.Y. Jewish Times]
Amnesty should hire this guy.
BRITAIN WILL FORCE ITS ATHLETES to sign no-criticism contracts, banning them from criticizing China’s human rights record. (ht: Roboseyo)
WHEN THE CRIMINALS RUN THE COURTS: Here’s how the trial of a Chinese land rights activist ended recently:
Family members tried to talk to Yang as he was escorted from the courtroom, but police pushed his son to the ground, his lawyer, Li Fangping, said. When Yang tried to intervene, he was repeatedly shocked with electric batons, the lawyer said. [Anita Chang, AP]
China’s human rights problem is a lot bigger than Tibet, and Chinese who allow themselves to be distracted by the ethnic dispute are missing the larger problem. The same goes for some Tibetans.
ANDREI LANKOV WRITES about the post-Soviet shuttle merchants of Korea. I remember seeing Russians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Mongols buying textiles and wares in Tongdaemun, thinking that I was standing at the terminus of the new Silk Road.
South Korea’s president has asked North Korea to consider sending home prisoners of war and captured civilians in return for receiving humanitarian aid from Seoul.
President Lee Myung-bak said in an interview published Monday that he wouldn’t seek to link food and fertilizer aid to international efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.
“Still, since we are sending humanitarian aid, the North should consider humanitarian measures, without any condition, on the pending issue of South Korean PoWs and 400 kidnapped fishermen,” Lee said in the interview published in the Maeil Business Newspaper. [AP]
I strongly support South Korea’s efforts to get its kidnapped citizens back, and if I were a person of influence in the Korean government, I wouldn’t give the regime a single won until these people all came home.
Lee is not making a direct conditional linkage here, and I’m glad he isn’t. The one exception I would make is humanitarian aid. I’m not comfortable with anything that punishes North Korea’s most powerless people. The only condition on humanitarian aid should be transparency.
What I hope Lee will do is make a direct conditional linkage to things like Kaesong and Kumgang that enrich the regime. Another modest step would be for South Korea to switch from giving rice to giving corn — to save money, and to provide something that’s as palatable to the poor as it is to the privileged.
Amid reports that North Hamgyeong Province (among others) totters on the brink of famine, the North Korean regime is desperately trying to shut down markets and regain state control of the food supply. The regime has long used food to sustain those it trusts and control those it doesn’t. I’ve written about North Korea’s accelerating food crisis in some detail recently.
Map of protest locations (click to enlarge)
This year, food shortages are reported even in elite Pyongyang, a place the regime has long fed at the expense of every other part of the country. Some analysts believe that the markets are the only thing standing between North Korea and a second Great Famine. The last one probably killed millions.
(New readers: the Daily NK is run in large part by North Korean defectors. It relies mostly on clandestine reports and rumors, since that’s about all the reporting that’s possible from inside North Korea. I have written some pieces for them.)
Recently the regime banned women under the age of 49 from trading, but fear of the regime is fading faster than firing squads can restore it. In the city of Haeju, once North Korea’s rice bowl, women literally fought back when the security forces tried to shut down their stalls:
In Haeju, South Hwanghae Province on February 5th, physical fights between young women trying to do business in the corners of markets and the guards regulating the markets erupted. Consequently, nine people, including Lee Chun Hee (38), were detained by the People’s Safety Agency, reported a newsletter disseminated by Good Friends, a nongovernmental aid organization to North Korea, on the 19th.
The newsletter revealed, “Women who have been detained underwent severe investigations, being asked ‘Who is your ringleader?” and on the 4th day, Lee, who could not endure the investigations, confessed that she was the mastermind and was retained while the rest of the women were all released.” [Daily NK]
The Daily NK reports that the authorities have since quit enforcing the edict. An even more remarkable event followed an attempt by security forces to enforce the ban in the northeastern city of Chongjin, according the the NGO Good Friends:
[…] “In Chongjin, North Hamkyung Province on March 3rd, a mass occurrence by female merchants took place, so the city authorities have permitted sales by all females without an age restriction.”
The market guards, including in Soonam and Shinam Districts, removed the products sold by females under the permitted age limit to outside of the market. Female merchants who were indignant by this collectively raised objections to the market guards, “If we cannot conduct business, the heads of households cannot go to work either.”
Immediately after the mass protests of the female merchants, the Chongjin authorities reported the incident to the central Party, but it has been known that due to the lack of a clear policy, all women could engage in sales without a restriction in age.
The source relayed the news, “The enforcement units of the Chongjin Party Committee reluctantly permitted sales by female merchants, but this case has not been approved by the Central Party, so there is significant concern regarding punishment at a later time.” [Id.]
This is not the first report we’ve heard of a protest in North Korea over market restrictions. In December 2006, the Daily NK also reported that approximately 100 merchants and family members in the city of Hoeryong protested at a local government office when the regime sold them trading licenses, then refused to let them trade in their local market. The regime later executed one of the “leaders” and arrested 20 others. That was the last we heard of them.
Protests are still very rare in North Korea, but they may be less rare than you think. I’ve compiled a detailed chronology of incidents of dissent, protest, and mutiny in North Korea. You’ve probably never heard of most of these events because Kim Jong Il’s regime is very good at keeping secrets.
Desperate people do brave things. Chongjin was one of the cities that was hardest hit by the Great Famine, and its people have felt hunger and watched it kill their loved ones. They’re willing to risk a firing squad – or worse – to trade, because if there are no rations, trading is the only way to survive.
If we have begun to see public disturbances this early in the spring — traditionally, the leanest time of year in North Korea — it’s likely we’ll see more disturbances and, in all probability, a brutal reaction by the regime to restore its control. North Korea’s population is spread out fairly evenly across its land area, and most towns are isolated from one another by mountainous terrain, poor infrastructure, and no efficient means for people to communicate between cities. The regime can survive a significant amount of localized unrest in the countryside, as long as the security forces remain loyal and united. But with shortages reaching even Pyongyang, even that is called into question this year.
In yesterday’s Washington Post, David Ignatius wrote a column pining for a “breakthrough” in Chris Hill’s failed Agreed Framework 2.0. Ignatius defines that as getting our hands on 30-40 kilograms of North Korean plutonium, which happens to coincide with North Korea’s own low-range estimate. Hill has been eager to accept this lower figure in the interests of declaring victory, although some U.S. estimates have put the actual figure closer to 50 kilograms. The discrepancy is enough for a couple of nuclear weapons … not that we’ll ever get gram one.
Further down, as Ignatius reveals the news I’ve waited for since last September, he exemplifies why any unverifiable deal with North Korea (this one, for example) is illusory:
The mystery centers on Israel’s Sept. 6 bombing of a facility in Syria. This was to be the site of a nuclear reactor, U.S. officials believe. North Korea had made a secret agreement to provide technical know-how and some materials for the reactor, although not fissile material. The Israelis destroyed the reactor site — but neither they nor the United States made any public statement about the attack. [….]
U.S. officials have begun to confirm publicly that they have hard intelligence about North Korean proliferation. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in Feb. 7 testimony to the House intelligence committee: “While Pyongyang denies a program for uranium enrichment and also denies its proliferation activities, we know North Korea continues to engage in both.” In a telephone interview last week, a senior intelligence official confirmed the Syria nuclear connection, saying: “Our suspicions are justified and valid. A lot of due diligence was done on this. People are confident.” [David Ignatius, Washington Post]
In the end, Ignatius is sensible enough to concede that “it doesn’t make sense to continue with a charade.” Our problem is compounded by what we’ve learned about the limitations of intelligence, which has famously overestimated what I’ll call certain WMD threats, and less famously underestimated others. We’re all entitled to be a skeptical consumers of intelligence, and we’d be suicidal if we weren’t skeptical about North Korean assurances (not long ago, they were insisting that their nuclear program was exclusively for generating electricity). Without the kind of transparency and verification that North Korea hasn’t agreed to provide and never will, we’ll never have the kind of security that comes from certainty.
This could be a moment of some real significance because of the very fact we’ve learned it. Someone in the Administration has decided that this isn’t an issue that can be overlooked, and because of this leak, that’s probably impossible now. At best — I use that word intentionally — it could mean that the Administration realizes that this deal is going nowhere, and that there’s no more time for stalling. If so, that would mean that Geneva was North Korea’s last chance.
HARD TIMES FOR BAD PEOPLE: The Washington Post reports from Colombia that the the Marxist, Chavez-backed, coke-dealing FARC guerrillas have suffered serious military setbacks and morale problems. Like Al Qaeda, the FARC has done serious harm to America on its own soil, and also like Al Qaeda, its own brutality turns could be its undoing.
WORDS I THOUGHT I’D NEVER SAY: Hooray for Nancy Pelosi:
“‘Human rights police’ like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth of the case,” it said. “Her views are like so many other politicians and western media. Beneath the double standards lies their intention to serve the interest groups behind them, who want to contain or smear China,” it said. [AP, Cara Anna]
I think they just called her a typical white person.
SOMEONE IN CHINA IS ATTACKING TIBETAN activists with viruses and Trojan horse programs. For the more technically skilled among you, here’s more on how they do it. While I don’t rule out Chinese “netizens” stirred up by nationalist propaganda, some circumstantial evidence suggests that the Chinese government is behind it. Which shouldn’t shock anyone.
