The number of North Korean refugees arriving in South Korea has risen by a whopping 42 percent from the number arriving this time last year:
The ministry estimated the number of North Korean defectors coming to the South in the first six months of this year to be 1,744, up 41.7 percent from 1,230 during the same period last year. The figure represented a growth of 101 percent from 869 in the corresponding period in 2006.
A ministry official said the government is swiftly processing entries for defectors waiting in third countries to come to South Korea. The number of North Koreans who have defected to the South since 1998 has reached about 14,000, including 2,544 in 2007 alone. [Yonhap]
Recall that just as Lee’s government was taking office, it came under strong criticism for allowing refugees to pile up in overcrowded Thai detention centers. The government promised to expand the capacity of its Hanawon in-processing center, and they’ve apparently stayed true to their word. Good for them.
If Lee has any success at persuading the Chinese to stop repatriating North Koreans back to Kim Jong Il’s gulags and firing squads, it could result in a quickening of the refugee exodus from the North.
On the other hand, the South Korean government has just announced that it will prosecute North Koreans who defect to third countries after obtaining South Korean citizenship. The apparent purpose is to prevent refugees from collecting South Korean subsidies, and then moving on. I wonder how this can be harmonized with the Refugee Convention, although I suppose that’s never really bothered previous South Korean administrations.
To a degree, I sympathize with the South Korean decision. No doubt, they’re also thinking that this is a Korean problem that Korea needs to solve if there’s going to be any hope for a successful reunification.
~~~~
SOME ANJU LINKS
I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS STILL AMAZES ANYONE:
North Korea has either poorly used or diverted 9.3 billion won (US$8.6 million) worth of asphalt pitch given by South Korea to pave the landing strip at the Samjiyon Airport near Mount Baekdu, according to a report released August 25 by the Board of Audit and Inspection.
The pavement work that was done at Samjiyon was done haphazardly, and 2 billion won worth of asphalt was used elsewhere, and not for the Samjiyon Airport runway.
“While giving aid from the North-South Cooperation Fund, the Ministry of Unification failed to put in place devices that would prevent budget waste from poor construction and unauthorized appropriation by giving the aid gradually, based on progress in paving the runway,” said the report. [The Hankyoreh]
Either this is a matter of high-level theft, or low-level corruption (or a little of both). If it’s mostly the former, I supposed a few of North Korea’s military airfields have just been repaved (some of it went here, apparently). If the latter, you have to wonder how a country this corrupt manages to supply it military at all.
HOW THE A.Q. KHAN NETWORK WAS UNRAVELED is a very interesting story, but I’m not sure that it’s a good thing that I could read it in the New York Times.
THE FULL TEXT OF KCNA’S PENULTIMATE TANTRUM is at the link after this money quote:
The U.S., however, raised all of a sudden an issue of applying an “international standard” to the verification of the nuclear declaration, abusing this agreed point. It pressurized the DPRK to accept such inspection as scouring any place of the DPRK as it pleases to collect samples and measure them.
The “international standard” touted by the U.S. is nothing but “special inspection” which the IAEA called for in the 1990s to infringe upon the sovereignty of the DPRK and caused it to pull out of the NPT in the end.
The U.S. is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in the DPRK as it pleases just as it did in Iraq.
The U.S. insistence on the unilateral inspection of the DPRK is a brigandish demand for unilaterally disarming the DPRK …
Everyone take a drink!
… the other belligerent party, by discarding its commitment to the denuclearization of the whole Korean Peninsula the core of which is to remove the U.S. nuclear threat according to the September 19 joint statement.
The DPRK’s intention to denuclearize the peninsula is to remove the nuclear threat from the Korean nation, not to have a bargaining over the DPRK’s nuclear deterrent. [KCNA]
I don’t doubt that something Chris Hill told the North Koreans took them by surprise; after all, his negotiating strategy seems to have been based entirely on avoiding disagreements — not only with the North Koreans, but in Washington — through intentional vagueness.
“NORTH KOREA RENEGES ON NUKES - AGAIN,” says Time’s Bill Powell, who thinks the Bush administration will cave again, this time on verification:
The Chinese have offered a compromise plan on verification that is now under scrutiny in Washington. Though anti-nuclear deal hawks remain in the Bush administration, and are adamantly opposed to meeting in the middle, Pyongyang has a vote, too, and it votes to stop complying. With his time running out, and his desire for a deal with North Korea obvious, most analysts expect another compromise from President Bush. And then - bet on it - watch Kim Jong Il angle for a better deal with whomever the next President is. [link]
I’ve had a pretty good track record predicting what the North Koreans would do – ok, uncannily good, leaving aside the Al Gore thing – but not so much predicting that our own government would finally grow a pair and stick to principles it had annunciated for years. The administration may well take advantage of several upcoming opportunities to cave on verification while all eyes are on the election. But does anyone suppose we’ll ever pry gram one of fissile plutonium from Kim Jong Il’s greasy little digits?
ONE THING THE STATE DEPARTMENT HASN’T ADMITTED since February 2007, though it’s often been true before: “This certainly is in violation of their commitments to the six-party framework.” But not to worry:
“We can’t be overly excited by the down in the situation right now because this process does have ups and downs, as you know, so we’re going to continue to work with the parties and take the process forward,” he said. “This is not the first time we have this type of issue come up.”
The spokesman called for the North to do its part under the nuclear deal by “coming up with a verification package as soon as possible,” adding, “We are certainly living up to ours” by having provided the North with 150,000 tons of heavy fuel oil worth about US$92 million. [Yonhap]
The overwhelming consensus is that Bush won’t denuclearize North Korea and that the North Koreans are waiting Bush out. As a stalling tactic, the February 2007 agreement was another North Korean diplomatic masterpiece, one that saved them from bankruptcy and likely collapse, and one that also reveals the stubbornness of our collective diplomatic incompetence. We failed because we squandered our chance to negotiate from strength and extract real concessions, real change, and real transparency from the North.
Later in the Yonhap piece, Don Oberdorfer is quoted actually suggesting that the U.S. should settle for stopping North Korea’s plutonium production. Again, the left wing of Washington’s Korea-watching circle implies that we should accept North Korea as a nuclear power, notwithstanding its long track record of crimes against humanity on a scale rivaled only by Pol Pot since the deaths of Stalin and Hitler.
Can we assume that this will become accepted U.S. foreign policy doctrine if Obama wins? (It’s less clear what McCain would do differently, since he probably doesn’t read this blog.) Candidates tend not to admit as much when they’re trying to sound like tough-minded statesmen, but you could do an Amish barn-raising with all of the broken goal-posts our foreign policy elite has tried to set around North Korea. I can still remember when taking away North Korea’s plutonium was The Goal on which we were supposed to stay focused, to the exclusion of all else. I can even remember when, before that, it was getting them to give up their nuclear weapons. I can even remember a time when there were Red Lines.
I’ve concluded that all of those goals were not so much designed to limit the North Koreans, but to give their proponents the temporary credibility of seeming so have some … until events proved otherwise.
One the most effective grassroots organizations fighting to help North Korean refugees — through political action and direct humanitarian aid — is Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK.
LiNK has the potential to win $1.5 million but we can’t do it without your vote! It will take YOU 5 minutes at the most and we only have 9 days to get 2000 votes! If we are among the top 25 projects with the most votes, we will then be taken to a panel for them to decide who deserves the money! Our story is compelling, but they won’t look at it unless you tell them to! 100% of the money is guaranteed to go towards refugee resettlement…that’s a lot of refugees we can help! So, below is how to nominate our project!
2) You have to log-in to nominate our project. So go to the top right corner of the page and click “log-in”
3) If you are a card-member of American Express, enter your online ID and password. You will then be prompt to enter your e-mail and password (you may have to create this).
4) If you are not a card-member, click on “guest sign up” located on the third column. Fill out the information and log-in!
5) You are almost done! There are over 1,200 projects to vote for…so, enter “liberty house” in the search field and our project will come up as “Liberty House-Assistance for North Korean refugees.” Click on it and then it will take you to our page where you will see a “nominate this project” button. Once you click on that button, we will receive your vote!
6) Lastly, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “facebook” or “myspace” icon so that you can post it to your profile.
Imagine the impact of that kind of money on a small organization, and what that organization could do with it: save kids, change minds and votes, even shame State Department bureaucrats.
Maybe all that hand-wringing about a Lee Myung Bak dictatorship isn’t so exaggerated after all:
Oh Se-cheol, a professor emeritus of Yonsei University and prominent leftwing academic, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of breaching the National Security Law. Oh’s arrest is seen as a start of a government crackdown on leftwing organizations which grew and expanded their realm of activities under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations.
Seoul Metropolitan Police said they received an arrest warrant and a search and seizure warrant for eight members of the Socialist Workers League of Korea, including Oh, and arrested seven of them on Tuesday. Police seized CDs, computers and diaries in their homes and offices. The SWLK was founded in February this year, and publicly proclaims its aim of building a revolutionary socialist labor party. It also aims for nationalization of business and financial groups and abolition of police and standing army. [Chosun Ilbo]
You’re shitting me. That’s it? The guy was arrested for attempting to build a political party? Wasn’t he at least a part of one of those North Korean spy cells, or some sort of violent fifth column agitator? Not exactly:
However, this does not mean the SWLK is pro-North Korea: on its homepage it calls the North “a hierarchical anti-worker society that is exploitative and repressive” and “a reactionary regime that must be overthrown by the workers.”
The SWLK’s web site (google warns you that if you click, it will spam you) is full of stilted Marxist rhetoric; it might remind you of “Dennis,” the anarcho-syndicalist in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” It does advocate a “workers’ revolution” — whatever that means in practice – and sends greetings and “solidarity to fellow “revolutionary socialists [sic] militants” worldwide, but doesn’t directly advocate violence, not on its English language page anyway. On any given day, I can read things almost as dumb as this on the government-subsidized Hankyoreh. Will all purveyors of dumb ideas soon be dissidents, or just the ones who don’t have enough followers to start a significant backlash on the streets and press rooms?
Consistency matters. If you’re going to censor free speech, at least have the decency to give the people fair warning of the difference between what speech is legal and what speech isn’t. More to the point, why bother? The SWLK seems to be small and mostly harmless Marxist splinter sect. With the recent revelation that several powerful groups in South Korea were under direct North Korean influence, you have to wonder what Oh said that makes him a target. It sure as hell isn’t worse that what the leaders of South Korea’s largest labor organization, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions say, or what its thugs do on the streets (notwithstanding its receipt of government subsidies). It’s not more pernicious than what its subsidiary, the Korean Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union, is teaching the kiddies. It’s not more subversive than the Il Shim Hue spy ring – which was reported to have infiltrated government offices and had links to a Blue House advisor – before leftist former President Roh Moo Hyun suddenly fired the head of the National Intelligence Service and truncated its investigation. It’s not a greater threat to democracy than North Korea using the Democratic Labor Party as a puppet to manipulate elections. It’s not a greater threat to social order than this or this, or for that matter, than all those Chinese exchange students Lee decided not to prosecute.
Or perhaps the prosecution is using Oh as a test case. Yet going after what appears to be a fringe crank doesn’t exactly lend much credibility to what would follow.
Surely there’s much more to the story than this. What exactly makes this guy a threat to South Korea’s democracy or social order requiring the government to arrest him and prosecute him for the peaceful expression of his views? This is the sort of thing that really can and should backfire on Lee, absent some legitimate explanation of why this guy is dangerous. South Korea’s National Security Law ought to be about checking violence and preventing subversion by totalitarian powers, not suppressing unpopular or stupid ideas.
~~~~~
POSSIBLY RELATED IN SOME REMOTE WAY: I’ve occasionally wondered why a country so riven by ideology and region hasn’t had more sectarian strife. But now, Buddhists are accusing Lee of favoring fellow Christians:
Police estimated that 60,000 people, including 7,000 monks clad in gray Buddhist garb, gathered Wednesday in front of Seoul’s City Hall.
“Oppose religious discrimination,” the crowd chanted on the grassy plaza as they urged Lee to offer a public apology and fire the head of the national police agency for what they claim is religious discrimination.
They warned they would intensify their protests unless the government takes “sincere steps.” [IHT]
Gee. I wonder what ever gave them that idea? The term I’ve coined is “confucio-evangelical.” It’s things like this that cause me to wonder if Lee, having been set up for a comeback, is just determined to blow it. Still, in fairness, the things that have the monks pissed off seem more like examples of petty vendettas and heavy-handed police work than nascent theocracy.
Anyway, we can be thankful that no self-immolations were reported.
In South Korea, where North Korean agents still infiltrate into the South to kidnap and occasionally even kill people, commie conspiracy theories aren’t always just for John Birchers. The prosecution has just announced the arrest of a 35 year-old female North Korean “defector,” Won Jeong-Hwa, for spying for the North Korean regime.
Before coming to the South in 2001, Won served jail time for theft and feared possible execution for committing another crime — stealing tons of zink, which is punishable by death in the resource-strapped North. Years after hiding in northeastern China, she returned home with relatives’ help and, in 1998, became a spy for North Korea’s National Security Agency.
The North first commissioned her to kidnap North Korean defectors in China for repatriation. In 2001, she entered South Korea by marrying a South Korean man. Posing as a defector, she turned herself in to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. [Yonhap]
Won’s modus operandi involved exchanging — no, don’t say it! – sexual favors for “classified information, including photographs and the exact locations of the country’s key military installations,” which anyone can get from Google Earth anyway, and information about weapons systems, which is another matter. After marrying and divorcing one South Korean to get into the South, she formed relationships with a series of military officers, including a 26 year-old captain. Won also gave the regime the names of North Koreans who spoke out publicly and revealed sensitive information about the North’s security. She delivered these goods to North Korean agents in China.
The AP reports that Won confessed, which should be taken in the context of the rather “robust” methods South Korean police sometimes use when interrogating suspects. Of course, Won has been through North Korean interrogations, too, after she was repatriated back the North, but it’s not as if she stood up especially well that time, either. That was when Won agreed to become a spy for the North.
The AP, incidentally, also reports that Won had also “plotted” to murder some of her paramours with poisoned needles, but buried that rather sensational point in the middle of its story. Rupert Murdoch would not be pleased.
The question the government is asking now is how many more officers were involved in these “transactions” with Won, and how many more spies there might be among the 14,000 defectors now living in the South. I’m going to go out on a short limb here and say “plenty.” Defectors are currently screened by the National Intelligence Service. Obviously, there are some holes in the screen. And with the number of defectors having increased by 42 since last year, it’s safe to assume that the North Korean intelligence services will keep trying.
Update: The Times of London has a more Murdoch-friendly report, with a partially pixelated picture of Ms. Won. It also adds that Ms. Won cooperated with the North Korean intelligence services in ratting out other defectors hiding in China.
Consider just who Ms. Won helped Kim Jong Il’s minions kill and those who will grieve for them, and any sympathy you might have for her ought to vanish. She will be tried for espionage, but she ought to be tried as an accessory to murder. Yet I have a sense of dread that she’ll do light time, get out, write her memoirs, and live the rest of her life as a minor celebrity.
MEETING WITH HU JINTAO IN BEIJING, “[South Korean President] Lee [Myung Bak] requested Hu’s cooperation to ensure ‘North Korean defectors won’t be forcefully sent back to the North against their will,’ Lee’s spokesman Lee Dong-kwan told reporters.” [IHT]
WORTHY OF ITS NAME: South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission is calling on the Unification Ministry to come up with some answers about those 22 North Korean boat people who arrived in South Korea earlier this year, only to be returned to a North Korean firing squad:
The National Intelligence Service and the Unification Ministry at the time said the 22 crossed the border and drifted into the South Korean waters. In individual interview with each person, the authorities said all 22 had expressed their wish to return to the North, so they were repatriated to the North through Panmunjeom truce village. The government tried to bury the incident, but it was made public by the Chosun Ilbo in February.” [Chosun Ilbo]
YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME ….
Police said some 250 protesters, most of them members of Agora web forum on portal Daum, rallied from 6 p.m. on Saturday until 6 a.m. the following morning, disobeying police order to disperse and shouting slogans such as “Down with Lee Myung-bak!”
Separately, another group of about 200 protesters staged guerrilla-style rallies by swiftly moving from one location to another in the Gangnam Subway Station area and Apgujeong-dong from around 7:10 p.m. on Saturday until 2 a.m. on Sunday. [Chosun Ilbo]
Several sources from North Korea report that “Irrespective of rank, the trend of listening to foreign radio broadcasts is expanding among officials of the Party, the administration or the National Security Agency, even the rank-and-file servants.” A source from South Pyungan said that “Everybody knows that those who listen to foreign radio broadcasts the most are the cadres. They have been listening to foreign radio because they were wondering in which situation Chosun (North Korea) is placed in international society.”
“Although the cadres can purchase radios easily, because there are many confiscated radios from the residents in the National Security Agency and the People’s Safety Agency, many high officials are increasingly asking workers involved in foreign currency earning enterprises to get better radios.” [Daily NK]
You had to know that verification was where this thing was destined to fall apart. And that certainly looks like what’s happening today.
North Korea said Tuesday it has suspended work to disable its nuclear reactor in anger over Washington’s failure to remove it from the U.S. list of terror sponsors. The North said it will soon consider a step to restore the plutonium-producing facility.
The announcement poses the biggest hurdle yet to the communist nation’s denuclearization process under a landmark deal last year.
“The U.S. postponed the process of delisting the (North) as a ’state sponsor of terrorism,’” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. “Now that the U.S. breached the agreed points, the (North) is compelled to take” countermeasures, it said.
The Foreign Ministry also said the government will “consider soon a step to restore” the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, but it did not elaborate. The disablement was suspended as of Aug. 14, it added. [AP, Jae-Soon Chang]
Contrary to the consensus of the grand viziers of Brookings, CFR, and the State Department, endless flexibility didn’t disarm the North Koreans after all, in much the same way that endless aid did not fundamentally alter the character of North Korean society or trigger economic reforms. But of course, our flexibility can’t really be endless when politicians have to be able to explain themselves to Congress and the voters. Taking Kim Jong Il’s word for it and dispensing with verification proved to be the thing the Bush Administration couldn’t explain:
The United States and North Korea have failed to break an impasse over measures to verify Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program in special talks held in New York, U.S. officials said Monday. [AFP]
“This idea that we would ignore the most contentious items and take them up later is ridiculous. I don’t believe in ‘carve outs’ and even if I did (which I don’t) how in the world would this work in practical terms? Do you really think we could make concessions on the basis of an incomplete declaration, then somehow we would be able to return to the contentious issues AFTER – AFTER!!!??? — giving away all our leverage? Why? I can tell you this stupidity has never been under consideration by anyone who is part of the process or truly close to the process. [James Rosen of Fox News, quoting Chris Hill, at National Review]
Whether Hill was angry that he was outed or simply being disingenuous, what actually happened in June was that — despite the absence of meaningful North Korean disarmament – Trading With the Enemy Sanctions were lifted, and President Bush notified Congress of his intent to de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terror. He did not, however, actually de-list North Korea when the 45-day notice period expired, and that appears to be because of opposition in Congress and skeptical statements from both presidential candidates, both of whom conditioned their support for the move on verification.
Having failed to achieve most of their demands up front in exchange for illusory concessions, the North Koreans are naturally reasserting that they’ll build more nukes.
“The DPRK (North Korea) will bolster the war deterrent for self-defence… and resolutely foil any provocation with strong countermeasures,” the communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said. [AFP]
In North Korean, “war deterrent” means nukes, and U.S.-ROK military exercises are a perennial excuse for renouncing any North Korean obligation:
“The army and people of (North Korea) will never remain an onlooker to the U.S. military and the South Korean bellicose forces staging frantic anti-(North Korea) war moves,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted Gen. Kim Jong Gak as saying at a meeting in its capital. “Should the U.S. imperialists and their following forces misjudge (North Korea’s) will and act rashly,” North Korea’s people and army “will mercilessly wipe out the aggressors to the last man,” Kim said. [IHT, via AP]
“A complete declaration of all nuclear programs ….”Not even close.
“[D]isablement of all existing nuclear facilities ….” Note the deal’s failure to specifically mention completed weapons or the uranium enrichment program they once admitted having, then later denied, but which was recently confirmed when they inadvertently provided the CIA with traces of enriched uranium in aluminum samples and “declaration” documents. Leaving those terms vague was supposed to, ahem, lubricate the negotiations, but what it did was build in vagueness that the North Koreans eventually took advantage of. A recent example is their repeated demands that we accept them as a nuclear power, which would seem to moot the whole point.
“[S]hut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility.” The North Koreans disabled one ancient 5-MW reactor that overuse and age had already just about disabled anyway. Now that they’re throwing the tantrum I forecast here, maybe the North Koreans can make good on their word to reverse the disablement, but I’m betting that it would be easier to fire up that nearly completed 50-MW reactor right next door, or even restart construction on that 200-MW reactor 13 miles to the north (note, by the way, that the agreement mentions “graphite-moderated reactors” — plural – but zero progress was made on disabling the larger reactors; I’ve previously posted satellite photos of all of these facilities here). By now, some of you are thinking that the North Koreans can’t afford all this construction. You assume too much.
“[S]tart bilateral talks aimed at resolving pending bilateral issues and moving toward full diplomatic relations.” Our State Department didn’t see the operation of a concentration camp system that would have made Stalin wince as an impediment to full diplomatic relations, but one man with courage did, at least for a moment, make a majority. Full diplomatic relations may be more than America can stomach for the moment.
“The US will begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK.” As the North Koreans themselves love to stress, all of the obligations in this deal are mutual. Simply stated, they haven’t performed, yet we’ve delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel oil and lifted TWEA sanctions. But did anyone really think the North Koreans would perform at all, even if – no, especially if — we gave them everything they wanted up front?
“[T]he Parties agreed to cooperate in economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to the DPRK.” Leaving aside whatever the Chinese are giving, or the South Koreans gave, in economic assistance, the U.S. has delivered both energy and humanitarian assistance. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the end of last month, Hill said, “To date, the DPRK has received approximately 420,000 tons of [heavy fuel oil] and equivalent assistance, including 134,000 tons of HFO provided by the United States.” That’s nearly half of the million tons we’d promised the North Koreans in exchange for their performance.
“The DPRK and Japan will start bilateral talks aimed at taking steps to normalize their relations … on the basis of the settlement of unfortunate past and the outstanding issues of concern.” Which is code-talk for North Korea’s abduction of Japanese right off the shores and streets of their own country. For a moment, it looked as if the North Koreans, having decided that the Bush administration was a dry tit, would try to court Japan. They had even hinted last May that they might just “find” a few more abductees in North Korea. Today, that’s also falling through. North Korea is now refusing to “re-investigate“ the abduction allegations:
Japan has never been satisfied with North Korea’s investigation of the issue, in which Pyongyang determined in 2004 that eight of the 17 alleged abductees on Japan’s list had died. With hopes fading that North Korea can be persuaded to put aside those results and start over, unnamed sources said Japan has agreed only to urge the North to conduct a reinvestigation as swiftly as possible, the Kyodo news agency reported Sunday.
Sources told Kyodo the latest round of negotiations in the Chinese city of Shenyang was seen by Japanese officials as chance to get North Korea to agree to re-investigate the cases from scratch. But Pyongyang’s latest stance suggests it may want to uphold the results of its past investigation, which raises concern little new light would be shed on the abduction issue as a whole, the news agency said. [UPI]
I wonder where all of this leaves the regime’s finances. North Korea appears to have become seriously dependent on the South Koreans over a decade of leftist rule in the South, and the loss of unconditional South Korean aid seems to be having a significant effect. Their access to international finance remains spotty at best. Kim Jong Il was probably counting on a substantial infusion of aid from the Americans, but his own intransigence could jeopardize the continuation of new fuel oil deliveries. Japan probably can’t give significant aid or trade without progress on abductions.
Aside from the possibility of Vladimir Putin looking eastward for new ways to make mischief, that leaves just one major potential contributor, and so Lee Myung Bak is in Beijing chatting with Hu Jintao this week. I wonder if Chinese aid to North Korea will be mentioned.
Just imagine what some real pressure could do right now. With the North Koreans stalling and with America preoccupied with its own election, the political climate is right for it. With the regime on the verge of bankruptcy, the economics would amplify its efffectiveness. And with a presidential transition on the horizon, sanctions imposed today might have a way of lingering for a year or so before all of the new political appointees get moved into their new offices and get around to easing them.
The MBC labor union has fiercely criticized the management’s decision for “surrendering to the Lee Myung-bak administration.” Angry at their employer for having made the apology, union members strongly pressured the management to challenge the court ruling. The MBC labor union said Monday that it would begin a movement to oust the management and refuse to produce programs if an appeal is not filed. [Joongang Ilbo]
Ah. Now I see.
Korea’s news media unions have a history of leaning hard to the left, and they’re not above expanding beyond collective bargaining to pressuring the content of programming. In 2004, for example, MBC’s union joined the National Union of Media Workers, which represents KBS workers, in attempting to prevent broadcasters from airing a debate between conservative opposition candidates. I believe this was the NUMW’s low point; as you read it, bear in mind that at the time, the opposition Grand National Party was out of power in the executive branch and a minority in the National Assembly:
But at the conclusion of the meeting, about 10 members of the KBS labor union lined up in front of the meeting room and asked the GNP to stop ‘the suppression of the press.’ “The huge opposition stop oppressing the press!” they shouted. Some members broke into the meeting room and yelled at GNP lawmakers, “Our meeting with the management has been delayed for more than one hour because you came without a prior appointment. Finish your conversation quickly and come back!”
Angered by them, Rep. Kim Moon-soo, a former labor activist, [OFK links here and here] protested, “We did not invade here nor are we making a disturbance. We were just talking quietly with your vice president. I myself was a labor union member but I was not like you now.” Then, a labor unionist said, “The party that impeached the president came here. How can you say it isn’t oppression?” Leaving the KBS building with bitter emotions, Rep. Lee murmured to himself, “I feel so pathetic to be an opposition lawmaker. I bet a dog would get better treatment than I received.” [Chosun Ilbo]
Predictably enough, the NUMW is vocally opposing Lee MB’s efforts to replace the left-leaning leaders of the government broadcast networks appointed by Lee’s left-wing predecessor, Roh Moo Hyun. In other words, they wish to sack those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked.
Meanwhile, a government slander action against MBC continues.
If you value freedom of speech and the press, you can’t like the idea of any government institution mandating or regulating the content of the news, or even making the news media subject to a political spoils system. It’s the same reason the “fairness doctrine” is such a danger to free speech here.
The problem with the unions’ argument is that Lee isn’t the one who started this. The fact that they happen to be right on principle does little to disguise their disingenuousness. And once you see just how invested the North Koreans are in keeping the mad cow issue alive — even when the factual basis for that issue is demonstrably false — you can’t deny that such rank, and perhaps even anti-democratic, manipulation might be an even greater threat to democracy.
The question begged is why democracies should be in the business of owning the media or controlling their content at all.
NEXT SURRENDER, VERIFICATION? Sung Kim has been in talks with the North Koreans in New York to break the latest impasse, which could only mean one thing. I hope he brought enough lubricant.
IN 1997, NORTH KOREAN AGENTS MURDERED LEE HAN YOUNG, Kim Jong Il’s nephew, after Lee exposed the extravigance of his uncle’s lifestyle at the height of North Korea’s Great Famine. South Korean agents should have been protecting him. Lee’s widow has now won a judgment against the South Korean government for its failure to protect her husband.
I’M SEEING A PATTERN HERE: “Kim Hyun-sik [Kim Jong Il’s former tutor] says he was told that after he fled North Korea, his family in North Korea were sent to a labor camp and executed afterwards. He confesses to such great pain when he thinks of what Kim Jong-il did to his family that he frequently imagines killing him and then committing suicide.“
LEE MYUNG BAK CALLS FOR A STRONGER DEFENSE: I take it this will reverse Roh Moo Hyun’s plans to reduce the ROK military well below the levels that would be needed to deal with a North Korean collapse, or to defend South Korea without massive inputs from U.S. taxpayers.
IF YOU’RE ONE WHO BELIEVES THAT SPORTS have a significant role in diplomatic and defense policy, you’re probably astonished at how little the N.Y. Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang solved. If you’re skeptical of the entire idea, you’ll appreciate seeing the South Korean government showing a little gravitas for a change:
FIFA have moved next month’s World Cup qualifier between the two Koreas to Shanghai because the North had refused to play the anthem or fly the flag of its Cold War rival, South Korean football officials said on Thursday.
Experts have said North Korea will not allow patriotic displays from the South because they could undermine the messages from the communist state’s propaganda machine. [IHT]
THE FAMILIES OF AMERICAN MIA’S from the Korean War still cling to hope of seeing their loved ones again, and with the continuing escapes of South Korean POW’s, I can understand why.
BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS: In China, you’re never too old to be reeducated or too peaceful to be arrested:
Some 77 applications were lodged to hold protests, none went ahead. Rights groups say the zones were just a way for the Chinese government to put on an appearance of complying with international standards. A handful who sought a permit to demonstrate was taken away by security officials, rights groups said. [AP, Audra Ang]
Biden’s main constituency is probably in the foreign policy establishment and the center-left. A subconstituency of the latter is the Hillary Bitter-Enders, whose significance may be overstated by the media, but who sound miffed that Hillary wasn’t even vetted for the job, and moreso for the unfortunate (but probably coincidental) timing of Obama’s text message announcement. It’s hard to see his selection generating much excitement. Biden is intelligent, but a bit too conscious of it, and prone to saying jarringly dumb things.
I can’t picture McCain doing back flips — not without laughing, anyway – but I’m guessing that he’s relishing the television debut of campaign commercials that play this video over and over:
(But what if McCain picks Romney? Yes, sharp objects are flashed, but I’m not seeing any single sound bite that’s quite that devastating).
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg,who admits to having “something of a weak spot for Biden,” had the funniest reaction:
The man loves his voice so much, you’d expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of [a] restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization’s usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don’t understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I’m going to get right to it and besides these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.. [The Corner]
The Smaller Picture
Biden has generally favored a policy of (wait for it) more blackmaileconomic incentives for North Korea to disarm.
The selection of Biden would probably signal the elevation of long-time Biden aide Frank Januzzi should Obama be elected. The fact that Chris Nelson likes Januzzi ought to be a conclusive reason not to like him, although Januzzi is too mild of manner to really despise, either. The record shows Januzzi to be a faithful believer in the idea that North Korea would change if we’d only understand it better.
In 2001, Januzzi tried without success to arrange a visit to Pyongyang by his boss. In 2004, Januzzi joined strident appeaser Siegfried Hecker as part of a congressional delegation to Yongbyon and Pyongyang:
“We visited several facilities at Yongbyon,” said Frank Januzzi, an aide to Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We went to North Korea with the goal of trying to deepen mutual understanding and made some progress toward that goal,” Januzzi said in a telephone interview. [USA Today, Barbara Slavin]
“We had a good visit,” said Frank Januzzi, another member of the delegation and an aide to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Januzzi said they also discussed with the North Koreans issues that included the nuclear facilities, human rights and economic reforms. [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]
On human rights, however, Biden raised objections to some provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act that succeeded in watering the bill down before it went to the full Senate for a vote (none of the reports specify which provisions). Even then, an unnamed Biden staffer had to be subjected to intense lobbying by the National Association of Evangelicals before the bill was able to get a vote.
There isn’t much question that Biden considers human rights issues a severable secondary priority, and sees the scale and gravity of North Korea’s atrocities as no worse than those committed by “other bad guys … around the world [who] sure don’t treat their people real nicely.” In a 2005 hearing, Biden questioned Chris Hill and Joe DiTrani about why human rights should get in a way of a deal that would give the North Koreans security guarantees, and possibly fully normalized relations with the United States in exchange for their plutonium:
BIDEN: …I’m really confused by why it’s not just simple enough to not negotiate but just sit down and say, “Here’s the deal. This is it. These are the outlines of it, for real. And we’re willing to live with you bad guys.”
Unless you’re not. If you’re not, you’re living with other bad guys other places around the world. In China, there’s not all good guys. Other places, you’re living with guys not as bad but sure don’t treat their people real nicely.
And that’s what confuses me and confuses, I think, a lot of other people.
So in the few minutes I have left, let me ask these two questions. Are you willing to live with the bad guys if you have a verifiable agreement that they have given up, not their prison camps, not their maltreatment of their folks, not their legal system, not those — if they’re willing to give up nuclear weapons, nuclear capacity to build weapons and a capacity to throw those weapons on missiles? [link]
My googling revealed no substance of any comments by Januzzi on human rights, although I vaguely recall Januzzi’s comments from an October 2003 panel I attended, at which Januzzi revealed an ambivalence about pressing the issue lest our comments cause regime officials to become defensive about it. That more or less reflects the general ambivalance Biden has shown on this issue. Biden probably has no idea of the actual gravity of the situation or the fundamental linkage between the issues: the worthlessness of dealing with those who refuse all demands for transparency and demonstrate no interest in preserving human life.
Januzzi, who appears surgically affixed to liberal Republican counterpart Keith Luse, reported after a 2003 trip that he saw more signs of market activity in Pyongyang, although we now know that the regime was then reasserting state control over the bottom-up survival capitalism of the Great Famine years.
But as I suggested in the comments below, Biden appears to have brought Obama more sag than bounce: check out Rasmussen and Gallup. No, coincidence isn’t causation, but aside from Biden’s selection, the Democratic convention is the big story, and I can’t see why that would be hurting Obama … unless the common demoninator for both is the defection of pissed-off Hillarites. Biden comes across as pompous, but he’s much less detestable than John Kerry. Frankly, this year, I actually like both presidential candidates, and that’s a first.
Displaying its characteristic talent for attracting universal apathy punctuated by brief moments of global disgust, the North Korean regime claims to have invented noodles that make you feel full … even when you aren’t.
North Korean scientists have developed a new kind of noodle that delays feelings of hunger, a Japan-based pro-Pyongyang newspaper has reported. The noodles were made from corn and soybeans, the Choson Shinbo said. They left people feeling fuller longer and represented a technological breakthrough, the newspaper said.
According to the newspaper, which is seen as closely linked to the Pyongyang leadership, the new noodles have twice as much protein and fives times as much fat as ordinary noodles. “When you consume ordinary noodles (made from wheat or corn), you may soon feel your stomach empty. But this soybean noodle delays such a feeling of hunger,” it said on its website. The noodles would be available soon across North Korea, the newspaper said. [BBC; hat tip]
What the report doesn’t make clear is how exactly this “breakthrough” adds to the available food supply, if at all (for that matter, the same could be said of the Ryugyong Hotel or highly enriched uranium; wouldn’t it make more sense to spend those resources on importing some corn?). Factories to process food aren’t much use if there’s no raw material to process, unless the raw material is the by-products of those crops. Historically, the regime has “solved” hunger by feeding people inedible hulls, cobs, and stalks that are mostly cellulose, which the human digestive system was never designed to process.
The appearance of stories about technological breakthroughs in food production tend to coincide with episodes of famine, and maybe, we can suppose, popular discontent about famine. Recently, the regime has announced the ability to make noodles from such stuff as sweet potatoes, arrowroot, elm (!), and acorns, which have to be leached of their natural tannin content to be edible. Not that those are bad for you, provided of course that agricultural production can deliver raw materials to all of those whizbang new factories.
Approximately as dependable as the harvest itself are perennial reports about new factories that make noodles, crackers, and even rice from potatoes. Observe: 2008, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999. Each report claims a new breakthrough, although the technological substance of each year’s breakthrough is hardly distinguishable from the last. What all of them have in common is that none of them predates a solution to North Korea’s endemic hunger, which occasionally wanes, but never disappears.
In relatively less lean times, the official reports mostly talk about food in the same way they talk about everything else — from a nationalist perspective, speaking of Chosun’s “unique food culture” or celebratory feasts for this-or-that Supremo’s birthday, with frequent stories about the Okryu Noodle Restaurant in Pyongyang. In leaner times, state media try to fend off panic with reports of miracle foods.
There is a close correlation between periods of famine and the appearance of official exhortations about substitute foods. This year’s reports are the first such reports since the spring of 1999, just after the peak of the Great Famine. Curiously, the earliest mention of “substitute” foods occurs in July 1998, although North Korea was probably in famine conditions as early as 1993, and the S.T.A.L.I.N. archives go back to January of 1996. Thereafter, KCNA carries more stories encouraging the production and consumption of “substitute” foods.
In most cases, the regime conceded that the consumption of substitute foods was undesireable, speaking of ”the difficult conditions where they have to eat food substitute due to an acute shortage of food caused by years of natural disasters.” At other times, the consumption of those foods implicitly portrayed as undesireable, but also as an act of patriotic self-sacrifice. In some stories, they were even portrayed as a part of the Brave New Soilent World into which North Korean techology was leading the world:
Every encouragement is given to produce substitute food in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Korean people are still pressed for food because of the continued economic blockade by the enemy and natural disasters. To cope with this, steps have been taken to increase agricultural production as well as to take substitute food. Detailed arrangements have been made to produce substitute food through introducing science. The Ministry of Food Administration delivered several tons of seed of amaranth [OFK: In case you’re wondering] to provinces early this year. [….] Its cultivation has stood the test and it is now in wide use in people’s diets. Amaranth is processed into noodle, bread, pancake, cake, sweets and confectionery, soy and beanpaste. An exhibition of over 120 kinds of food drew public attention in Kangso district, Nampho. These food items were made of 100 tons of amaranth, the first crops this year. [….] Other plants are also in wide use for substitute food. [KCNA, Aug. 22, 1998]
One aspect of alternative of substitute foods state media never mentioned was how they affect those who eat it:
Manufactured “alternative food” consists of cabbage stalks, cornstalks and grasses ground up and mixed with some cereal and an enzyme to make noodles or cakes.
“This locally manufactured alternative food has very little nutritional content and is basically a stomach filler,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator David Morton said in a statement. “We have seen that eating it can cause serious problems such as digestive difficulties, particularly among the children and the elderly.” [CNN, May 11, 1999]
Judging by state media reports, the worst of the famine must have passed by December 1999, when the state media suddenly began reporting that the people no long had to survive on substitute foods. The recovery must have been gradual, as those reports continued through 2001.
The new reemergence of “substitute” food stories in the official media likely signals a new desperation in the food situation. That’s especially so when you realize that the North Korea people have already watched their loved ones die from eating grass and cornstalks. Even in North Korea, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The NGO Good Friends tells us that it has been happening again this year:
Furthermore, in regions like Shingye County, and Hwangju County, there is news that there are now cases of people dying from grass poisoning in addition to starvation. The citizens of these areas have been subsisting on grass porridge because of the lack of rations, but because they have not been properly preparing the grass for consumption, they are falling victim to grass poisoning. On farms in North Hwanghae Province, it is understood that on average, 3-4 people are dying daily. Because of this, wails and exhortations can be heard coming from different villages. [Good Friends No. 137, June 2008]
Substitute foods probably never really disappeared from the North Korean diet. Recall this 2005 report in which a North Korean dissident “guerrilla camera” brought back footage of a teenage soldier sent home to die of starvation because substitute foods had destroyed his digestive system. In a society that puts such emphasis on “military first,” and where military service is regarded as an iron rice bowl, it’s reasonable to infer that the civilian population was eating at least as badly as the junior enlisted soldiers.
One More: While searching for the term “substitute food” in the KNCA archives (using the invaluable S.T.A.L.I.N.) I found a recent and rather extraordinary claim by official state media that the Japanese ate Korean comfort women as a “substitute food.” Ick. As brutal as the Japanese were, this seems a bit far-fetched.
The Communist North Korean government has declared Sweden their enemy and a US war puppet. […]
According to information from the Swedish Armed Forces, this brusque message was first conveyed in a North Korean radio broadcast, then printed as an official document and distributed to the United Nations.
The North Koreans’ attack is not directed against the Swedish government as such, but against Sweden’s and other neutral countries’ military observation missions on the border between North and South Korea.
Sweden is active in the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) present in the area. Following the end of the Korean War in 1953, the NNSC’s task is to keep the peace with the help of the Swedes and the Swiss in demilitarized zones. [The Local, Sweden]
If you read enough obscure publications about North Korea and our policies toward it, you’ll eventually run across something by Leon V. Sigal, who is the Director of something called the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security
Project (note the word “hegemony” in its url.) A reader forwards me this piece by Sigal published on Napsnet, a publication of the Nautilus Institute, which was also published in the Japan Focus.
Sigal’s piece is entitled, ”How A Mock Trial Could Turn Victory into Defeat on North Korea’s Nuclear Arms.” Sigal argues that opponents of Agreed Framework 2.0 are delaying North Korea’s imminent (believe!) disarmament for the sake of putting North Korea on “mock trial” by demanding answers about how much help North Korea gave Syria to build the al-Kibar reactor even while it was negotiating its nuclear disarmament with us.
Although Sigal thinks that we can afford to wait for those answers while North Korea disarms — Sigal either hasn’t seen or chooses not to mention this, this, this, or this statement of contrary intent – Sigal does not attempt to deny that clandestine nuclear proliferation is, you know, kind of a big deal:
Washington is right to ask North Korea what nuclear help it gave Syria because of the corrosive mistrust such actions cause. But getting an answer is hardly an urgent security concern. It can wait because whatever help North Korea may have given to Syria’s nascent reactor project went up in smoke in Israel’s September 2007 air strike. [Leon Sigal in Napsnet]
It might be easier to take Sigal and his argument seriously were it not for how he’d reacted to these same revelations last October:
“The Syria story is complete nonsense. No one in a position to know has said anything about nuclear transfer. If you go read carefully what officials have been saying, they have not said that.”
According to Sigal, the person “not in the position to know” who had been spreading rumors of a connection is John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador in UN. “This is another one of those games that the Boltons of the world play when they see the negotiating track getting serious,” Sigal explained, “which is they throw some threat on the table to try to derail talks that turns out not to be quite the threat they made of it. They exaggerated the uranium enrichment program…and tried to use it to block negotiations, and they did so successfully for a while. [Leon Sigal, interviewed by the Daily NK, Oct. 3, 2007]
I wonder which uranium Sigal is so sure the Boltons of the world exaggerated. Would that be this uranium or this uranium?
“From what I have seen, there is simply no evidence what so ever of any North Korean nuclear connection to Syria. My guess is that at the end of the day we will learn the Israelis found something quite different.” [Id.]
You can’t help but be in awe of anyone who can spew such ferociously doctrinaire conclusions unassisted by any factual basis for them whatsoever. I’ll offer Sigal’s very submission of his NAPSNET piece as evidence that he holds himself forth as an expert analyst. So has ”analysis” ceased to be a rational processing of known facts into conclusions, or has some committee in Geneva voted to reverse this sequence? Not that I would deny Sigal his biases any more than he’s entitled to deny me mine, but if all people are biased and some people are objective, then one can still be biased and objective.
If one can — simultaneously – be as oafish, sloppy, and consistently wrong as Sigal, and also be a recognized expert, then we’re going to have to print a lot more diplomas.
If you haven’t read the full KCNA editorial denouncing the United States for not de-listing the North as a state sponsor of terrorism, the quotes the media I showed you here really don’t do it justice:
Explicitly speaking, there is no “human rights issue” much touted by the U.S. in the DPRK. The Korean people fully enjoy genuine freedom and rights under the socialist system where all people form a big family. It is the consistent popular policy of the DPRK government to fully guarantee the rights of the citizens in a responsible manner. In the DPRK based on the man-centered Juche idea all working people do labor according to their abilities and wishes and lead a genuine life, given ample opportunity of learning. It is absolutely illogical for the U.S. to talk about the “human rights issue” while ignoring such reality.
So, if we try to distill some consistency of principle here, does this mean that nations have no right to criticize each others’ internal affairs?
There is the most serious human rights issue in the U.S. as it is a rogue state that exterminated tens of millions of native Indians and accumulated wealth through slave trade and flesh traffic and a country where the almighty dollar principle and the fin de sickle lifestyle based on the law of the jungle prevail. The impoverishment of Americans in the mental and cultural lives is actively fostered institutionally, driving them into the abyss of corruption, despair and crimes. This is a true picture of the American society today.
Guess not.
The “human rights” piffle made by the U.S. high-ranking officials indicates that they have no stand to recognize and respect the dialogue partner. The U.S. is persisting in the politically motivated provocations as evidenced by the ruckus kicked up over the non-existent “human rights issue” in the DPRK, an indication of its deep-rooted hostility and inveterate enmity toward the DPRK.
Piffle?
This attitude leaves the DPRK and the countries concerned skeptical about the U.S. intention to implement the points of the October 3 agreement. Such provocative acts of the U.S. as slandering and pulling up its dialogue partner can never help the talks make any progress in the positive direction. [KCNA]
The North Koreans are even objecting to the very idea that the United States is entitled to verify North Korea’s disclosure:
North Korea said on Wednesday it saw as “unjust” calls from global powers such as the United States for Pyongyang to verify claims it made in disarmament talks about producing arms-grade plutonium. The North’s KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed spokesman from its Foreign Ministry as also saying that South Korean-U.S. military exercises, which started on Monday, had spoiled the atmosphere for the disarmament discussions.
“This situation compels the DPRK (North Korea) to heighten vigilance against such unjust demands as the ‘verification in line with the international standard’ recently claimed by the U.S. as regards the nuclear issue,” the spokesman said. [Reuters]
Given the U.S. position of withholding that delisting until the North lets us verify its declaration, it certainly seems as if we’re at an impasse, doesn’t it? The only thing needed to make this complete is for the North Koreans to say, “FOR THE 1,002ND TIME, SECRETARY RICE, WE’RE NOT GIVING UP OUR NUKES”:
North Korea “will increase its war deterrent in every way as long as the U.S. and its followers continue posing military threats to it,” a spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency. The remarks came two days after South Korea and the U.S. launched Ulchi Freedom Guardian, an annual computer-simulated war game and follow daily criticisms of the exercises in North Korean media. The exercises come amid a dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over ways to verify the North’s declared nuclear programs under an aid-for disarmament deal. [AP, Kwang-Tae Kim]
In the North Korean vernacular, “war deterrent” means nukes.
SOME ANJU LINKS:
MAYBE I KNEW THIS ONCE AND FORGOT IT, but in any event, it’s not exactly “new”: apparently, North Korea demanded “economic aid” before it would agree to send a representative to Lee Myung Bak’s inauguration. Lee refused to pay, and no doubt a Hankyoreh editorial was conceived.
While athletes may not be receiving much media coverage at home, they haven’t forgotten their lines. Pak said she owed her weightlifting victory to guess-who. “When I was about to do the third (lift), I kept in my mind that the Dear Leader would be watching,” Pak said after her Aug. 12 win. “That thought was real encouragement to me and that is how I was able to lift the last weight.”
She stopped short of emulating Cha Kum Chol’s celebration at the world weightlifting championships in Thailand in September. Then, the 56-kilogram winner burst into a rendition of “If you didn’t exist, we wouldn’t exist” — a eulogy to Kim Jong Il — at a news conference. “A lot of people give much pleasure to the Dear Leader and I’m happy to be one of them,” Cha said in Chiang Mai. [Bloomberg, Grant Clark and Heejin Koo]
You want to laugh, but it just doesn’t feel right somehow.
CHRNK, taking heart from Ban’s words in a July 4th speech in Seoul, hopes that they will mark the beginning of something more sustained, and perhaps even remotely effective.
You are reported to have called upon the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to “take the necessary steps to improve their human rights situation…,” and said, “There are still many areas where human rights are not properly protected and even abused. This is an unacceptable situation.”We agree, and trust your singling out this situation, which long has merited greater attention by the Secretary-General and the United Nations, will mark the beginning of a sustained effort to hold the government of North Korea accountable for its serious human rights transgressions. [Part 1 - hrnk-ltr-to-ban-ki-moon-08112008.doc] [Part 2 - hrnk-ltr-to-ban-ki-moon-08112008-part-21.doc]
Sometimes, who is in charge tells you everything you need to know about what an organization will accomplish. Ban’s elevation as General Secretary, following a career that had been built on appeasing North Korea and saying as little as possible about human rights where they are the most systematically denied, convinced me to abandon all hope in the U.N. Ban, I believe, is destined to be remembered in much the same way that whatsisname who headed of the League of Nations in the late 30’s isn’t.
A deserving exception to this would be the North Korean people, who are entitled to remember Ban for his role in prolonging their suffering, and in shielding their oppressors from shame. In the context of Korea’s long history, of course, plenty of Koreans have meekly collaborated with the oppression of their countrymen. The best I can say for Ban is that I hope a future Korean government won’t expropriate the property of his great-grandchildren.
Is the CHRNK foolish enough to believe that Ban will defy the Chinese and speak or act decisively? No, because it isn’t foolish at all. CRNK is composed of very smart people of various political persuasions. Its authors are some of the very brightest academics studying North Korea today: Marcus Noland, Stephan Haggard, and David Hawk to name just three outstanding examples. Of course, Lee Myung Bak’s election has the potential to sway Ban to some degree, but it will probably take sustained and forceful public shaming to get Ban Ki Moon to deploy the High Commission for Refugees to the Chinese border.
Another figure to whom sincere concern about human rights does not come naturally is Chris Hill, but CHRNK has also written to him, hoping to sustain the pressure Senator Brownback brought to bear. This letter attempts to add structure to the idea of making human rights improvements an integral part of North Korea, something that both the North Koreans and Hill would probably prefer didn’t exist. The letter makes a series of specific demands for essential improvements, including closing down the gulags, lifting the information blockade, feeding the hungry. Then, there is the matter of linking those goals to the aid without which the North Korean regime couldn’t survive.
Link Assistance to North Korea to tangible improvements in the regime’s human rights record: Assistance to the government of North Korea must be predicated on steps taken by it to protect the rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom of conscience of the people of North Korea. [hrnk-ltr-to-chris-hill-080320081.doc]
Thanks to Chuck Downs, the CHRNK’s new Executive Director, for forwarding both letters. You can read my previous interview with Mr. Downs here.
