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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| South Korea: Dancing with the Dictator |
| 2005-06-09 |
| THERE are hopes that President Bush's meeting tomorrow with President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, coming on the heels of the latest North Korean overture on restarting nuclear-weapons negotiations, may lead to a breakthrough. However, anyone who expects the South to help us put pressure on the North hasn't been paying much attention to what has happened between the two countries over the last five years. Since South Korea's president at the time, Kim Dae Jung, met with North Korea's Kim Jong Il in 2000 (and pocketed a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts), Seoul has gone to remarkable lengths to gain the North's trust. Unsurprisingly, the only real changes under this Sunshine Policy have occurred in South Korea. And efforts by President Roh, who was elected in 2002, to engage Kim Jong Il have led him to plunge his own nation into North Korea's world of lies. For example, Seoul no longer sees any evidence of North Korea's crimes: the government tries to keep South Korean newscasts from showing a smuggled tape of the public execution of "criminals" by the North that has been broadcast in Japan and elsewhere; reports that China is shipping refugees back to North Korea are denied by the Roh government; the North's testing of chemical weapons on live prisoners goes largely unmentioned; and even Pyongyang's apparent preparations for nuclear weapons tests are played down. South Korea, a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, has abstained for the last three years from voting to condemn the North for its abuses. The South's latest national defense white paper even indicates that Seoul no longer considers the North to be its "main enemy" - which implies that the presence of American forces on the peninsula is no longer necessary. okay, we can go home now. NOW. Enjoy speaking Mandarin. or would it be Japanese in a decade? Because Seoul chooses to regard the North as a friendly neighbor, it no longer wants to help North Koreans fleeing the regime - even though its Constitution declares that these refugees have the legal right to become citizens of South Korea. There have been press reports that Seoul has been pressuring China to prevent North Korean escapees from seeking asylum in South Korea's embassy and consulates in China (there are at least 100,000 North Koreans hiding in China). Last year, when 468 North Korean refugees who had taken refuge in Vietnam were flown into South Korea, Seoul's minister in charge of reunification declared that "we disapprove of mass defections" and promised there would not be another large-scale movement of refugees. In December, the ministry cut the "resettlement" grant program for escaped Northerners by two-thirds and announced that henceforth there would be far greater scrutiny of asylum-seekers (on the questionable grounds that these refugees might be spies). President Roh has defended this approach by more or less throwing up his hands. He refuses to give even moral support to dissidents in the North, claiming that Kim Jong Il would ruthlessly crush any protests. For Mr. Roh, there is no chance his "partner for peace" will fall from power; in fact, he makes clear that he would not wish the regime to crumble any time soon. So, what has President Roh received for all this appeasement? The South still has to keep paying in hard cash for any political or economic contacts to take place - it even has to bribe the North to take part in tae kwon do competitions. No reunions among families who have been divided since the armistice of 1953 have taken place in the last year; the previous rounds of reunions received a lot of positive news media coverage around the world but consisted of only brief encounters involving a small number of elderly people wanting to meet loved ones before they die. And, of course, the entire world has to put up with Pyongyang's nuclear shell game. Many of those pushing the Sunshine Policy came of age while trying to force South Korea's postwar dictators to step down; they believe that the North can follow their model, in which economic gains paved the way for democracy. But forcing North Koreans to remain under Kim Jong Il's rule and hoping that he will make gradual reforms is unlikely to bear fruit. North Korea undertook some economic changes in 2002, but they actually left the people worse off. A United Nations World Food Program report last month noted that the market price of rice in North Korea has nearly tripled and that of maize has quadrupled in the last year. And of course it is the government, with its monopoly on commodities, that reaps the profits from high prices. Kim Jong Il has conned the South's big businesses as well as its government, luring them in with offers of exclusive concessions. For example, in 2000 the automaker Hyundai gave the North $500 million in exchange for a promise that it would be awarded all the major civil engineering projects Pyongyang would undertake after it received an influx of foreign aid. Hyundai has yet to realize any profit from the deal and its chairman, who faced criminal charges stemming from his dealings with the North, killed himself in 2003. WHY does Seoul pay so dearly to prop up the criminal regime? It has claimed that if North Korea were to collapse, it would cost $1.7 trillion to rebuild it, a sum that would cripple the South's treasury. But this figure seems preposterous. Given its population of about 23 million people, the North would need an emergency influx of only about $1 billion a year to pay for food, medicines and fuel until it got back on its feet. South Korea, with its trillion-dollar gross domestic product, could easily afford this. Nor is Seoul necessarily correct to assume that the collapse of the North would lead to an exodus of desperate people to the South. After ridding themselves of the criminal regime, wouldn't those in the North be just as likely to stay in their homes than to flee south as paupers? The huge need for capital investment in the North would probably create an economic boom, just as it has done in China over the last 25 years. With Mr. Kim gone, South Korean conglomerates and international agencies like the World Bank would be eager to invest in new power stations and factories. Unification is more likely to provide a boost to the South Korean economy than to damage it. But beyond the economic factors, we must consider the moral ones. South Korea is seeking to keep a tyrant in power against the wishes of his own people. At 63, Kim Jong Il has spent a lifetime in a paranoid and claustrophobic dictatorship. If he were going to become a reformer, we would surely know it by now. And even if against all odds he undertook reforms, he is still personally responsible for a manmade famine that has killed 3 million people over the last decade. Would Pol Pot have been given a second chance if he had vowed to open Cambodia's markets? Rather than coddling Kim Jong Il and paying him nuclear blackmail, we should be working to arraign him before an international criminal tribunal, just as we did with the murdering leaders of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Yes, it is highly unlikely we would ever get him before such a court, but simply making the symbolic effort might get leaders in China, Japan, South Korea and the West to envision just how attractive a post-Kim era would be for everyone. |
| Posted by:too true |
| #4 Roh is, as his opponents long suspected, a crypto-commie. May he rot. |
| Posted by: someone 2005-06-09 22:31 |
| #3 Alaska Paul, if you think the political aspect is bad, you've never seen the South Korean movie where Kim Jong-il's daughter dates a South Korean rock star ... |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2005-06-09 21:03 |
| #2 The answer: Yes. They're "all" Koreans, and all that "racial solidarity." What was the saying? "Chinese are casually racist, Japanese are bluntly racist, Koreans are violently racist"? |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2005-06-09 21:02 |
| #1 The money quote: President Roh has defended this approach by more or less throwing up his hands. He refuses to give even moral support to dissidents in the North, claiming that Kim Jong Il would ruthlessly crush any protests. For Mr. Roh, there is no chance his "partner for peace" will fall from power; in fact, he makes clear that he would not wish the regime to crumble any time soon. There are a number of areas I have in disagreement with President Bush. But the President has made it absolutely clear that the United States supports human freedom throughout the world. President Roh has sold out his people, both north and south of Lat. 38 deg N, and sold out his principles. It is now up to the people of South Korea whether or not they will go along with his despicable actions. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-06-09 19:23 |