Hill: Gas Chambers, Concentration Camps, and Refugee Massacres No Impediment to Full Diplomatic Relations After All

Last February, just after Chris Hill rolled out that  landmark achievement called Agreed Framework 2.0 — how is that working out, by the way? —  he went to Congress to defend  his amorphous  cloud of ether  against some obvious questions about how the North Koreans might interpret it and  what laws the agreement might actually break in its application. 

You mentioned certain laws of ours that reflect human rights issues and humanitarian law. I can assure you that any agreement we reach, any agreement we finally reach, any interim agreement, will be done entirely consistent with our laws and obligations. I can promise you that, Mr. Congressman.  [Amb. Christopher Hill, House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, Feb. 28, 2007]  

Wow.  He’s really good at that.  Still, some members questioned Hill about whether North Korea’s human rights atrocities, arguably the worst occurring anywhere on earth since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, would be sidelined as an issue.  At the time, Hill said that those issues would be dealt with in a “normalization working group,” but stated that  progress on ameliorating  those atrocities would be a prerequisite to the establishment of full diplomatic relations:

We must also recognize that the Beijing deal is not comprehensive.  The critically-important issues of destabilizing missiles, human rights, democracy and refugees have yet to be tackled. As I have made crystal clear in all my discussions with the North Koreans, the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea can never have a fully normal relationship absent progress on these important fronts. [Amb. Christopher Hill, House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, Feb. 28, 2007]  

Maybe it all depends on how you define “progress.”  Not that I believed a word of it.  At the time, it was obvious to me that Hill meant to sideline the issue.  In any event, that was then and this is now:

“There are people who won’t want to recognize North Korea . . . there are people who don’t want to recognize any number of countries,” he said. “But in the context of denuclearization, I think there would be strong support.”  [….]  Hill said that diplomatic recognition would not imply acquiescence to North Korea’s human rights record. “Obviously we have continued differences with them, but we can do that in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations,” he said.  [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]  

In retrospect, you can see Hill’s position starting to evolve last October, when he told  a House subcommittee, “We have also made clear to the DPRK that discussion of outstanding issues of concern, including the DPRK’s human rights record, would be part of the normalization process.”

So we officially have no standards whatsoever, then.  If Hitler and Pol Pot were alive today, would we have diplomatic relations with them, too?  Kim Jong Il can  run his entire prison-nation like Tuol Sleng or Mauthausen  and presidents of either party will send  emissaries to quaff champagne with the commandants and sign contracts for new industrial parks (no doubt,  they’ll  make lovely  lamp shades).   By extension,  President Bush’s integrity on this issue is indefensible unless you really believe he’s as detached, addled, and out-of-the-loop  as his crudest detractors suggest.  And I don’t. 

If your name happens to be Diogenes —  or if  you’re just  looking for anyone who isn’t completely full of shit here —  remember how recently the North Korean Human Rights Act  was  the will of a unanimous Congress.  It was  quietly rendered a quaint historical anachronism by a conspiracy of faceless State Department bureaucrats (see, for example, this, this,  and this, explaining that State will continue to insist on “host government,” that is, Chinese concurrence before admitting any of the asylum-seeking North Korean refugees rushing our consulates there).   Congress let this mixture of passive defiance  and aggressive obfuscation slide with  hardly a whimper  of protest. 

Then there are the liberals who’ve decried past U.S. support for, or trade with,  far more benign regimes in Chile, El Salvador, or South  Africa, but who fall silent or offer only token protest at  far worse atrocities by anti-American or “Communist” regimes.   What about conservatives who hammered President Clinton for his own flawed and morally compromised deal with North  Korea?  We seldom hear from them now that it’s a Republican President  screwing things up just as  badly,  and far more hypcritically.  Their silence today will haunt them  during the  Obama Administration. 

Finally, let’s not forget  the people’s watchdog, our news  media.  Barack Obama must envy the kind of uncritical media fawning that Chris Hill has  received.   Who will be the  first  to call Christopher Hill out for his mendacity?