Sunshine and Cold Water
Historians, take note. South Korea has actually demanded an apology from North Korea for something:
South Korea demanded an apology and further explanation from North Korea on Tuesday over a sudden discharge of dam water that left six people dead or missing, saying the North’s response was not satisfactory.
Some 40 million tons of water from the North’s Hwanggang Dam pushed through the Imjin River, which flows out to South Korea’s west coast, at pre-dawn hours on Sunday, sweeping away the victims who were camping or fishing along the riverbanks. [Yonhap]
I haven’t posted on this story previously, in part because I’m not personally convinced that this was murder with malice aforethought as opposed to plain old ordinary reckless incompetence. The North’s response doesn’t sound at all bellicose by North Korean standards:
The North in a letter sent through an inter-Korean hotline said it looked into the incident and “found that the water was discharged in an emergency as it reached high levels.” Pyongyang also said it will issue alerts in the future to prevent a recurrence of similar floods.
This detail would also seem to suggest recklessness:
Meanwhile, South Korea returned to the North the body of a North Korean boy, which had drifted downriver along with the floodwater, ministry officials said. The boy, aged four or five and discovered by a South Korean army guard, was handed over to the North through the truce village of Panmunjom on “humanitarian grounds,” said Lee Jong-joo, spokeswoman for the ministry.
South Korea has since returned the child’s body to the North, via Panmunjom. With North Korea, it can be hard to tell where callousness ends and malice aforethought begins. I’ve struggled with that very question with regard to the Great Famine since I first started that blog.
The North, taking a whiz on its southern neighbor. Given how they treat their own “citizens”, I wouldn’t put malice beyond them.
Even if the North Korean response is not bellicose, this could still have been a malicious act. Their “Oh, we’re sorry. That was an accident,” is an appropriate response even if the intention was to show 2MB’s ROK government that Pyongyang still has many means to screw with Seoul.
I agree with the above comments that the North does need to apologize whether it was an accident or not. It was unacceptable for them to be so nonchalant about the incident. It was nice of the South to return the body of a North Korean child although I would never expect the South Korean government to withhold the body for any political reasons. I am curious however as to how they were able to identify the body. The Yonhap article says that his clothes were not of South Korean origin and I think that isn’t really proof that the child was North Korean. I just hope they came to that conclusion quite conclusively. Anyways, its nice to see that South Korean government is standing up for itself. They do not realize they have more international influence as they think. China is definitely abusing its foreign influence so lets hope the South Koreans will as well. I just wish they are more active in international politics and not just passively.
Certainly North Korea should apologize — no argument there. The only question in my mind is whether this was intentional, which the evidence really just doesn’t suggest to me.
For once, however, I’m more interest in the South Korean reaction, or lack thereof. And since Sonagi has started us down the fruitful path of comparing this to other recent events in Korea, let me add a few comparisons of my own:
– No apology was enough to pacify the Korean Street after a certain traffic accident in 2002. Hell, the Boxers are still waving the bloody shirt on the anniversary of that day.
– No apology was enough when an American mortuary technician accidentally released some formaldeyde into that open sewer known as the Han River.
– No apology was necessary when the North Koreans, in an obvious effort to disrupt the World Cup, crossed the NLL and killed six South Korean sailors.
– For that matter, Korean protestors can illegally occupy a building and surround themselves with cans of paint thinner, and when a fire breaks out and kills some of them, who is expected to apologize? Why, Lee Myung Bak, of course!
No matter how North Korea handles this, the Korean Street will not care or expect an apology. No matter how contrite the Americans are for every damned thing they do, the Korean Street will not be appeased by any apology. At what point does it become safe to conclude that all of these reactions are carefully orchestrated by someone, or certain groups, that are reflexively unforgiving of America and endlessly forgiving of North Korea?
Of course, there are people like that everywhere. Seattle comes to mind. But at the point when these groups have the power to control public reaction and bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, it’s time to give careful reconsideration to whether our troops would be safe in that country — from the very people they’re supposed to be protecting, I’d add — in the event of a war. Really, I think it’s time for South Korea to confront adult, responsible self-governance and self-defense, and an American security blanket is interfering with that necessary confrontation.
KBS reported that Lee Myung-bak, at a cabinet meeting, ordered a full investigation of the incident (not surprising). But it makes him look awfully impotent if nothing comes out of it, something akin to the Japanese government making demands about abductions which go nowhere.
Still, one wonders what if any further trans-Korean linkages are going to result from this imbroglio. After all, Pyongyang isn’t above using an incident like this to deepen ties with (sources of much-needed largesse in) Seoul.
But today’s 60th anniversary of the DPRK’s founding makes it an additional loss of face for NK if they simply admit their infrastructure is crumbling. So it’s hard to imagine either an apology or some conciliatory step which connects to the “smile diplomacy” that Victor Cha talked about recently.
As for journal articles about DPRK water management policies more generally, we seem to have more data from the Chinese side （as in this example from Jilin province) on account of coordination on Yalu hydro dams in particular.
I also wonder to what extent Pyongyang could be pressured, or is being pressured, to cleave to the international environmental standards to which it has already agreed to adhere (e.g. Climate Change Convention and Biodiversity Convention, as described on p. 403 of Yonhap’s 2003 North Korea Handbook). Along similar lines, the DPRK’s pollution of the Tumen River could morph into a situation where still-muzzled but increasingly vigorous Chinese environmental NGOs would start firing back. Because building the case within Chinese popular opinion for an anti-North Korea platform, unfortunately, can’t be justified on human rights violations alone. Building in multiple pressure points versus Pyongyang, including the use of environmental issues, would seem to require something more nimble than the blunt politics of apology into which East Asia seems to get so easily mired, notwithstanding the obvious North Korean culpability in this incident.
American forces should withdraw from South Korea. That country is now strong enough to defend itself.
Joshua, no apology is enough when the chinboistas are involved.
I think your post, which I don’t agree with in all regards, is a thoughtful one and well worth reading. If I seemed to be conflating the chinboistas with all of South Korea, I’m not. I’m merely expressing alarm that these puppetmasters — and I agree that’s what they are — have the ability to mobilize the masses, and they’re the only ones in South Korea who can.
That suggests a certain social and political immaturity and a lack of trustworthiness in an ally that South Koreans care probably as well equipped as they ever will be to sort out without U.S. ground forces.
Note that I didn’t advocate withdrawing all of USFK. I can see a good case for power projection through air and naval forces, but more importantly, by getting a little bit ballsy about influencing events directly inside North Korea. And while we may have significant economic and other interests in South Korea, North Korea is where our vital security interests are. It also happens to be, as you note, the source of our problems in the South. I’d like to see the American taxpayers doing less funding of South Korean deterrence and more of our war effort shifted into the sort of political subversion with which the North Koreans have been attacking us unilaterally, with such success.
My arms are really tired from waving pom-poms at the giant pro-North Korean rally in Seattle’s liberal core , but someone besides the Koreans in Russia had to put together a Juche group to celebrate the 61st anniversary (correction from above) of the DPRK.
My apologies, it’s been a long day.
Not to disrupt the productive direction on this thread as regards effects of U.S. withdrawal from ROK, but I found some more documentation about DPRK water resource management and a muted but present case of Chinese criticism of North Koreans on that front. Via Greater Tumen Initiative,dated July 10 2009:
Major sources of water pollution in the DPRK portion of the Tumen watershed include Musan Iron Mine, Undok Chemical Fertiliser Plant, Kraft Paper Mill and Hoeryong Paper. Recourses’ exploitation within the Tumen region also resulted in serious deforestation, soil erosion and other forms of environment degradation caused the Tumen River water pollution. The pollution threatens the Russian Far East Marine Reserve and Khasan wetlands, worsens life condition of the population of the region and raises costs for the regional industries. Effective protection of the Tumen River and the improvement of its water quality are urgent tasks that require the cooperation of the GTI member countries. Capacity building and information gathering are also needed in all three areas of the Tumen watershed.
Too bad, bucked up by contact with Cuban comrades, Pyongyang is blasting out recently against the forces of globalization, which maybe include environmental standards and political critiques.
If anyone needs a reason to be pissed, there is this atrociously arrogant KCNA dispatch of September 4 (entitled “Giant Edifices Mushroom in DPRK“) in which the regime brags about its ability to, yes, build dams.
I think we should withdraw the entire USFK but give South Korea a nuclear umbrella.
Joshua wrote:
Thank you for the compliment.
One problem with one-line comments like mine is that they don’t always provide adequate information. No, I did not write that because I thought you were conflating the chinboistas with all of South Korea. I was simply trying to point out my belief that a number of the overblown responses you mentioned were, I believe, because of the machinations of the chinboistas. Also, I just like saying that word.
Part of the lack of appropriate response by Kim DJ in June 2002, I believe, a fear that doing so would draw attention to a threat that could put a serious damper on the major global event that was about to unfold, the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup. There were similar fears about the 1988 Seoul Olympics. But Roh’s people with their bend-over-and-take-it misapplication of Sunshine Policy went too far in blocking proper commemoration of the dead sailors. Sunshine Policy should have been a carrot-and-stick approach, which Roh and Chung Dong-young thought meant letting Pyongyang shove said carrots and sticks up Seoul’s nether region.
There are two factors at work behind that. First, corporate, government, and media representatives are deathly afraid of offending those they think represent majority opinion, when in fact they are bowing (as they often do to “netizens”) to “the vocal fringe,” enough that they become self-censoring. My own professional pursuits have brought me in direct contact with such paranoid reactions.
Second, and this may be an even greater factor, the more moderately-minded majority has real world responsibilities like jobs, families, and school work they wish to do well in so that they can get a job, etc.
As for your remarks about the American presence in South Korea, I’ve made no secret of my own feelings that a continued US presence of substance is in everybody’s best interests, including the US. BUT, I think it’s time for South Korea to expand its role by helping the US in areas where it could use a hand, like helping patrol sea lanes and pirate-infested waters, in a way that would be useful and meaningful. Except for the chinboistas, I don’t think most South Koreans would seriously object to such activities.
In fact, some would feel proud to be doing so, some would see it as a way for the ROK military to stay on top of its game, and a few would see it as a way to take pressure off Japan (or China) to do the same.
In Honolulu, I have been meeting a lot of East Timorese students who speak very highly of the South Korean peacekeepers who came in and helped stabilize the country after independence. If South Koreans could hear what they have to say, they’d also see PKO as an excellent chance for good will efforts.
(This was a much longer comment than I’d planned).
I was at the JSA Thursday. A PKA officer was also drowned in the dam opening and his remains washed into ROK waters. The Canadian LNO at the JSA said ROK government officials were trying to contact the Norks to repatriate the remains. No takers as of Thursday.
Also, the highway on the western corridor that runs from Munsan to Kaesong was not only opened but a massive convoy was transporting materiel and personnel to KIC – this was plainly visible from the observation post our tour visited. Proposed tours into the DPRK are being planned and the mountain resort reopened for ROKs where the ROK tourist was shot earlier this year (Kum san?).
In other news, USFK reports that as of 9 SEP 09, 75% of South Koreans have a favorable opinion of the US. Even I don’t believe that.