Two Thais have been arrested for allegedly helping 14 North Koreans to illegally enter Thailand’s northern border town Chiang Saen, local police said Monday. Nikom Chaikul, 36, was arrested last Thursday when he was driving a minibus carrying eight North Koreans — four men and four women aged 19 to 66 — heading to Chiang Saen, according to marine police in Chiang Saen. [Kyodo]
[Update: Now that I've read LMB's inaugural, I've posted more detailed comments / ridicule below the fold and the video.]
The 17th presidency of Korea started as Lee Myung-bak formally took over presidential authority from former president Roh Moo-hyun at midnight on Monday, with the Bosingak Bell in downtown Seoul tolling the momentous hour. Lee now embarks on a government of pragmatic conservatism after putting an end to the decade-long leftwing rule. [Chosun Ilbo]
Judging by Lee’s inaugural address and the media reaction to it, Lee’s priorities seem to be (first) the economy, and (second) restoring Korean-U.S. relations, which Roh did so much to destroy. Frankly, Lee has his work cut out for him. Roh did us the great service of breaking the spell of loyalty that prevented many of us from taking a hard look at the growing disunity of U.S. and South Korean interests. Lee’s inauguration reflects some change in how South Korea perceives its interests, but changed facts eventually change policies. China has become South Korea’s largest trading partner, North Korea is no longer capable of invading South Korea, South Korea has never been more economically capable of self defense, and the United States has never had less of an interest in getting involved in a ground war in Korea.
Still, Roh and his people often went out of his way to rile friends and empower enemies near and far. We can at least count on Lee to be there when he needs us.
“We must move from the age of ideology into the age of pragmatism,” Lee told some 60,000 people who gathered for his inauguration, taking a swipe at the past 10 years of liberal rule during which he said “we found ourselves faltering and confused.” [AP]
On North Korea, Lee takes the sensible approach of keeping dialogue open while suggesting that South Korean taxpayer’s largesse will now come with conditions:
Lee said he would launch massive investment and aid projects in the North to increase its per capita income to US$3,000 (€2,000) within a decade “once North Korea abandons its nuclear program and chooses the path to openness.” [AP]
Interestingly, the highest official China appears to have sent was a “foreign policy advisor.” Lee asked for his help in getting North Korea to keep its word and disarm (good luck). More on Roh’s diplomatic approach to the North at GI Korea.
Whereas Roh’s government often seemed to cultivate or tolerate social, economic, and political xenophobia, Lee’s inaugural address suggests that he would oppose those tendencies:
He asked the people to make efforts to create a new myth on the Korean Peninsula through harmony and cooperation, social integration and economic development, upholding the “Global Korea” banner. [Chosun Ilbo]
Lee is even making efforts to improve ties with Japan, the perpetual scapegoat for Korean demagogues. Japan’s Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, attended the inauguration. Later, the two men discussed lowering trade barriers and increasing diplomatic contacts through “shuttle diplomacy.”
The Hankyoreh has published the full text of President Lee’s speech. You can even watch the whole thing on YouTube, below the fold, although the experience will be of limited value unless you understand Korean. Read more
Update: Another call to boycott the Beijing Olympics:
Pro-democracy activists in Myanmar called Monday for the world to boycott this year’s Beijing Olympics over what they said was China’s continuing support of Myanmar’s military dictatorship.
The 88 Generation Students group, which was instrumental in last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar, urged “citizens around the world … to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics in response to China’s bankrolling of the military junta that rules our country of Burma with guns and threats.” Myanmar is also known as Burma. [. . . .]
“Our constructive outreach to China has been met with silence and more weapons shipments,” the group said in a statement. [AP, Mick Elmore]
- End update -
Barbara Demick has returned to the L.A. Times after (so I hear) a long sabbatical. Demick’s work is a welcome exception to the bland and banal work we see from so many of her peers because of her interest in the humanitarian story, particularly the miserable existence of North Korean refugees. The humanitarian story is the submerged part of the North Korean iceberg that too many journalists, such as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, can’t seem to see. Yet it’s the part of the story that gives everything else about North Korea its proper context.
As the 2008 Olympic games approach, international pressure is rightly rising against China over its behavior in the Sudan. Demick reports on how that pressure is also rising over China’s reprehensible treatment of North Korean refugees:
“These Olympics are just about the most important international event in Chinese history. If they want to brag to the world about what a safe and stable place China is, they have to do something for the refugees,” said Do Hee-youn, who runs a fund for North Korean defectors in Seoul.
As many as 100,000 North Koreans are thought to be hiding in China, including dozens in foreign embassies and at the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Beijing.
The North Koreans have won sympathy in foreign capitals, from Tokyo to Washington, especially among Christian groups. Activists held nearly simultaneous demonstrations Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 in front of all the Chinese consular offices in the U.S., calling for a boycott of the Olympics over the North Korean issue. [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]
Strictly speaking, those demonstrations weren’t about the Olympics, but looking at this YouTube video, you could easily conclude otherwise:
Demick’s story continues:
There are some indications that the Chinese are paying heed. In December, they unexpectedly released Yu Sang-jun, a defector who had become an activist. Caught guiding refugees to the border, he was held for less than four months, a short stay compared with the years-long sentences doled out to others who did the same.
In Seoul, activists say that 40 North Koreans who have sought asylum in embassies in Beijing might soon be given safe passage by the Chinese government to leave for South Korea. The South Korean Constitution gives all North Koreans the right of citizenship.
Some commenters here have questioned the sincerity of Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal from participation in the Beijing Olympics. I agree that Spielberg’s criticism of China is irreconcilable with some of his other views, as described in my comments section. But I also think it’s possible to agree that Spielberg is right about Darfur without acknowledging him as a supreme moral authority. That’s how alliances are made and votes are cast. There are plenty of good reasons to stay away from Beijing. In the end, what matters is that China’s rulers see the financial price of their odious behavior. They will see that clearly if the Beijing Olympics are an expensive flop.
At the same time, the humiliation of China through the exposure of its brutality didn’t begin with the Olympics, and won’t end there, either:
“At best, they’ll put on a public relations show for the Olympics,” activist Tim Peters said. “But it won’t be anything more than smoke and mirrors.”
A Russian cargo ship has been detained and boarded by armed coastguard agents in North Korean waters, Russian maritime officials say. The Lida Demesh, carrying a consignment of cars from Japan, was heading for the Russian port of Vladivostok when it was stopped by patrol near Cape Musudan. [BBC]
Musudan-ri is absolutely the wrong section of North Korea’s coastline to approach. The area is infamous for such attractions as a missile test site, a nuclear test site, and a large concentration camp. North Korea has previously claimed an “exclusion zone” in those waters. The Russian ship, apparently blown off-course by strong winds, came well within the standard 12.5 mile limit recognized by most countries:
On Saturday, an official at Vladivostok’s maritime rescue centre, Vladimir Yeroshkin, said the Lida Demesh had been detained and boarded by the North Korean coastguard about 3-5 nautical miles (5.5km) from Cape Musudan.
“An armed group boarded the ship and ordered the captain to change course and go to a North Korean port [Chongjin],” he told the Russian NTV network. Mr Yeroshkin said the centre had been told the ship’s 25 crew-members were fine and that there had been no threat to their lives.
There are probably several good reasons I’ve never really enjoyed a musical except while looking at the lovely France Nuyen, who does not sing.
If legacy was its object, Agreed Framework 2.0 won’t be a positive contribution to one. President Bush must know this, or he would have mentioned it in his State of the Union speech. Events turned against the agreement during the last quarter of 2007: specifically Syria, uranium, North Korea’s false declaration, and its failure to give a complete one. One rumor circulated, briefly, that the Administration might relent and accept an incomplete declaration after all. More recent reports say otherwise:
The United States, alarmed by mounting evidence that North Korea gave nuclear assistance to Syria, has rejected pressure from some of its partners in six-nation talks to compromise on an overdue declaration of Pyongyang’s nuclear activities, U.S. officials said yesterday. [....]
The Syrian connection has become a major problem for the United States since an Israeli air strike in Syria in September. The target was widely reported to be a nuclear facility under construction with help from North Korea. Current and former U.S. officials said yesterday that intelligence points to a plutonium-related facility.
Yesterday, Mr. Hill said the North’s declaration must account for the Syrian connection. “We discussed all of the elements that we believe need to be included, including the Syrian matter and uranium enrichment,” he said of his talks with Mr. Kim.
U.S. and Israeli officials have refused to talk about the September strike, but diplomats and analysts said even the administration’s strongest advocates of engagement with Pyongyang are worried by what they have learned from intelligence sources. [Washington Times, Nicholas Kralev]
Which advocates? I’ll just say that this surprised me:
The United States has presented to South Korea a video of a Syrian nuclear reactor believed to have been built with North Korea’s help, a Seoul daily reported Friday.
Top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill showed the video to Kim Byung Kook, senior secretary for foreign and security affairs for President-elect Lee Myung Bak on Wednesday, the Munhwa Ilbo said, quoting an unidentified South Korean government official. [Kyodo News]
You will also recall my post about a recent event where NPR’s Robert Siegel, the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler, and the NYT’s Mark Mazzetti discussed the implications of Syria. Despite the suspiciously extraordinary secrecy surrounding the events of last September, the emerging consensus is that it was something nuclear: possibly a reactor, or according to other sources, nuclear material.
Which leaves us where we’ve been since the beginning of the year — firmly stalled. That condition can’t last forever. I believe that within the next 30 days, we will start to see the first signs of the Bush Administration recognizing the realities that (a) the current policy will not disarm North Korea, (b) North Korea is stalling, (c) a rare consensus of the aforementioned is forming in Washington, and (d) because Bush’s policy looks ineffective, Bush’s legacy will not benefit from helping North Korea stall. I also predict that this recognition will amount to little in practice.
The other factor is blame, and the avoidance thereof. The leftward fringes, of course, will always find reasons to excuse each North Korean transgression and support every North Korean demand, now matter how contrived. Others take refuge in superficial matters or meaningless promises. But serious thinkers understand by now that North Korea isn’t willing to disclose the extent of its nuclear programs and has probably crossed The Red Line with Syria. It seems difficult to blame Bush for not having made his best effort toward the kind of diplomacy his critics have spent the last seven years demanding.
The question now is what Bush can still do in the time he has left. Certainly military action is off the table, but it hasn’t been on the table since 1993 anyway. Bush lacks the time and the political capital for any major legislative, political, diplomatic, or logistical effort. He could try yet more concessions, such as watering down requirements for a North Korean declaration or removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Politically, however, those options seem to be foreclosed, Chinese pressure notwithstanding:
Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said there has been “a mood shift in Washington” since the air attack in Syria. “The administration has taken a firmer line with North Korea,” he said.
At times over the past year, Mr. Klingner said, Mr. Hill has given the impression that he was “lowering the bar” on the requirements from the North, particularly on verification of Pyongyang’s claims in the declaration. But since the Israeli strike, which was followed by criticism of the administration’s policy by some Republicans, there has been no room for trusting the North Koreans blindly, Mr. Klingner said. [Washington Times, Nicholas Kralev]
After a fractious internal debate within the Administration, the option of watering down the declaration has been eliminated. Most Republicans in Congress would probably oppose removing North Korea from the terror list, and it’s hard to imagine Democrats expending much effort to support one of Bush’s foreign policy initiatives this year.
Which brings me to economic pressure, such as Plan B. This would require only a series of executive branch actions the President could order unilaterally. The question is whether the Administration’s foreign policy team possesses the legal savvy, creativity, or determination to do it. Still, America’s foremost experts on the North Korean economy will tell anyone who asks that pressure works.
Can President Bush get away with muddling along for 11 more months? Probably, because everyone’s already forgotten him. Everyone — Kim Jong Il most of all — is already thinking about McCain and Obama. My guess is that the Bush Administration’s language will probably have to change soon. It will have to start acknowledging North Korea’s bad faith and implicitly, the failure of last year’s policy shift. It will probably be prevented from offering substantial new concessions. It may even have to make some pretense that it has an alternative plan. But if the Administration has been gridlocked and out of ideas for the last seven years, it’s difficult to imagine it adopting a more effective appoach now.
Update:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged North Korea on Friday to come clean on its suspected highly enriched uranium program when it gives a full account of its nuclear intentions under a six-party deal.
”We need a complete declaration from the North Koreans about both their proliferation activities, their current plutonium program, which they are in the process of disabling, but also the HEU program,” she said. ”They need to make clear what has happened there.” [Kyodo News]
More Chris Hill transcripts below the fold. Read more
“SIX PARTIES, ZERO PROGRESS:” The Weekly Standard aptly describes the current state Bush Administration’s Korea policy:
The real state of play, then, is that North Korea will not fully declare, much less disable or dismantle, its nuclear weapons programs, and it has continued to proliferate. To mask this noncompliance, the State Department will talk optimistically of the next phases of diplomacy, continuing to provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, removing it from the list of state sponsors of terror, even negotiating a peace treaty and full normalization. In short, no amount of evidence of North Korea’s bad intentions will deter the Bush administration from declaring diplomatic victory. [Dan Blumenthal, The Weekly Standard]
Well, I don’t see anyone declaring victory, and I think they’re spinning valiantly to deny failure. Furthermore, I don’t think that denial can go on for long. There’s no legacy to be had in following this course.
The Six Party Talks, supposedly a model of multilateral diplomacy, have thus caused each party to act more unilaterally. Washington is essentially conducting its own negotiations with Pyongyang. Japan, a little less confident of U.S. protection, is showing a keener interest in having its own military capabilities to defend against North Korean missiles. And China is taking military and economic measures of its own to live with or perhaps even control an unstable, nuclear regime on its borders. The situation is, in short, more precarious than when this new round of diplomacy began.
Although TWS does a fair job describing the events of the last year, it misses the real tragedy — how close Treasury’s strategy came to getting some real results, before State decided how it might look that the green eyeshades were actually better executors of foreign policy.
And with apparent pride, too! I call it (insert copyright symbol or brand a large letter “D” onto his forehead, your call). Depending on your actual goal, of course, this evokes the effectiveness of a broadside of kisses blown in the shower at Pelican Bay. You probably already know how the sensitive folk who staff the Peoples’ Internal Security Bureau have spent the last two decades quaking in terror of Evans Revere’s soft power. Soft power has kept Seoul free of T-62′s, denuclearized Korea, and closed Camp 22, right? Well, any day now, I suppose. Probably just needs another chance.
MY, WHAT BIG BRASS COCONUTS YOU HAVE: North Korea fires missiles toward and over Japan, Japan builds a missile shield, and then North Korea has the chutzpah to say –
Their extreme hostile policy toward the DPRK is heightening the hatred of the army and the people of the DPRK toward Japan. Should the Japanese reactionaries persist in their moves for reinvasion, accelerating the building of missile shields targeted against the DPRK, this will entail catastrophic consequences. The Japanese reactionaries would be well advised to bear this in mind and stop their rash actions. [KCNA]
So are we ready to remove these people from the list of state sponsors of terrorism yet?
A LONG RECONSTRUCTION. If you want some idea of just how difficult reconstructing North Korea will be after seven decades of massive atrocities, consider how painful it’s been to reconstruct South Korea, six decades after a spasm of atrocities on a much smaller scale.
BOYCOTTING LONELY PLANET? I’m conflicted about this one. I certainly won’t go to Burma until a better regime is in power, and I hold dim views of people who do travel there, but to say that a book shouldn’t even be published is a step further than I’m prepared to go. The BBC, which owns Lonely Planet, is obviously conflicted, too, citing arguments for and against travel there. Here are the four “for” arguments:
- Tourism one of few areas to which locals have access
- Carefully targeted spending reaches individuals in need
- Locals have told travel guide authors they are in favour
- Abuses less likely in areas frequented by foreigners [BBC]
Maybe you consider those factors persuasive in Burma’s case; I don’t. But not one of those factors applies to North Korea.
[Update: Hey, maybe the Chinese should hire this guy!]
The nerve of the guy — objecting to China’s sovereign right to abet genocide. Why must people sully the Olympic spirit this way? What does hat say about their priorities?
“A certain Western director was very naive and made an unreasonable move toward the issue of the Beijing Olympics. This is perhaps because of his unique Hollywood characteristics,” it said.
Over the weekend, the Guangming Daily, also published by the Communist Party, ran an editorial saying Spielberg “broke his promise to make his contribution to the Beijing Olympics and betrayed the Olympic spirit.”
He “is not qualified to blame China because he knows nothing about the great efforts the Chinese government has made on Darfur,” it said.
An editorial in the China Youth Daily was equally scathing.
“This renowned film director is famous for his science fiction. But now it seems he lives in a world of science fiction and he can’t distinguish a dream from reality,” it said. [AP, via Yahoo! Movies]
Oh, zing. Something (I think it’s the Associated Press) tells me that the ChiComs would have been better off without the hyperbolic reaction, which only draws more attention to what a bunch of complete assholes they’ve been about Darfur and the Olympics. I can just imagine how their Netizens are distinguishing themselves. But the prize for Orwellian apparatspeak goes to this nob:
On Wednesday, the head of marketing for the Beijing Olympics defended China’s stance on Darfur and appealed to activists not to pressure sponsors to pull out of the games.
“China has been doing a lot toward the resolution of the Darfur issue,” said Yuan Bin, director of the Beijing Olympics marketing department. “I want to say the Olympics should be kept nonpolitical.”
The experts agree that North Korea’s economy has changed in the years since it shed a couple of million people, give or take a million. There’s some consensus that the survivors have learned to trade, and that markets have grown. There’s also some consensus that regime officials are participating to a degree. There ends the consensus: some claim that reform is again afoot; others claim that change is driven by necessity, and that official participation is mostly a matter of individual (and widespread) corruption taking over where the command economy has has stopped.
Tonight, Joel Wit, a former State Department official of the Sunshine school of thought, will try to convince an audience at the U.S.-Korea Institute that on a recent visit to North Korea, he saw signs of reform. Don Oberdorfer will also talk about Kaesong, and how it has changed. I’ll have to miss it, since I barely have time to write this blog, but it’s tonight at 6, at the Rome Auditorium, 1619 Massachusetts Avenue. There’s a reception at 5:30, and my good friend Jae Ku will moderate. RSVP to nbaillis@jhu.edu.
Andrei Lankov’s view, articulated in Foreign Affairs, makes a lot more sense to me. I especially liked this argument:
Liberalization would have other challenging side effects as well. Adjusting to the market’s demands would drive the North Koreans to pay less attention to party rituals and focus more on making money. The government would have to tolerate information exchange, travel between different areas of the country, and the growth of horizontal connections beyond its direct control. One cannot run a successful business in a country where it is illegal to leave one’s place of residence without a travel permit issued by the police. [Foreign Affairs]
Lorin Maazel could really use a publicist who understands the concept of “stop digging.” Just when we thought we’d put this flame war behind us, he goes off again, in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page. With time for further reflection and careful editing, here’s how he rephrases his central point:
If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record, toughened by economic clout. Woe to the people we are trying to help if we end up in a glass house. [Wall Street Journal]
Immaculate? By that standard, only Jesus Christ’s mother is qualified to talk about Darfur, and a certain conductor who is now on this third wife clearly lacks the moral credentials to speak of Gitmo.
The other thing about the piece that just strikes you is what a banal, pseudointellectual poseur Maazel is. Having spent so much time surrounded by admirers and sychophants has taken an obvious toll on him. He even feels qualified to pronounce on matters other than music, despite his factual ignorance of those matters. Strip away the Chanel vocabulary in which his thoughts are clothed and those thoughts are stick figures.
We would then be unable to defend our human-rights record with honor, would weaken our position dramatically, and could be of little help to the people who might require our aid in their time of need.
Which, of course, is exactly Maazel’s goal. Maazel, goaded on by the beleagured Christopher Hill and buoyed by self-importance, politicized this visit with breathtaking idiocy. When rightly attacked for it, he then decries those who would politicize music. What Maazel really means is that he does not want to be held responsible, in his own small way, for the actions of a regime he chose to defend. Maazel doesn’t care about Gitmo — to Maazel, Gitmo is just a shiny shield for blinding the eyes of fools.
Maazel will soon miss an opportunity to bring some “succor to the oppressed” when, during his audience with the North Korean elite and their Supremo, he will fail to make one brief, extemporaneous comment: “General Secretary Kim, please release the prisoners in Camp 22.” It would be that simple. I would be the first to forgive his recent stupidities. But I’m betting that the devils on Maazel’s shoulder –vanity, arrogance, and cowardice — will talk him out of it, assuming that the angels even suggest it.
I was originally willing to accept the N.Y. Phil’s visit as mostly harmless. The succor with the baton has talked me out of that. Still, there is a silver lining. A Nexis search turns up page after page of denunciations of Maazel’s moral retardation, and those denunciations necessarily remind readers about the things that are going on in North Korea.
