Royce goes to Seoul, calls for cutting off Kim Jong Un’s cash

So Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was in Seoul last week, and sat down for an interview with Yonhap to talk North Korea:

“It seems that the strategy that slows down North Korea the most is not allowing them access to the hard currency which they use in order to create their offensive nuclear weapons capabilities,” said Royce in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul. 

Royce is now in Seoul along with a delegation from his foreign affairs committee. He met with President Park Geun-hye and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se earlier in the day. 

“We have tried various strategies and at this point, one of the problems is that if we give any additional support to the regime of North Korea, for example, we were to give them inducement in the form of currency, they would use that hard currency to further expand their nuclear weapons capabilities,” the lawmaker said. [….]

Royce also said the new United Nations report on the North Korean regime’s brutal human rights violations may help add pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program and may possibly make North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stand trial on crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court (ICC). [….]

“Perhaps there will be new opportunities (following the publication of the U.N. report) to have fresh pressure brought from governments such as Beijing on North Korea in order to try to slow its development of nuclear capabilities,” the U.S. politician said.

“I think it will galvanize international public opinion with respect to the conditions inside North Korea and hopefully can push to put North Korea on a different track.”

When the final report is submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council on March 17, the international community could take actions to refer the North Korean leadership to the ICC, he said, adding, “I know there’s much discussion of that at the U.N.”

If you’re one of those who wonders why people worry so much about North Korea’s nukes when other countries also have nukes, read the COI report. It isn’t the proliferation of nuclear weapons that scares me. It’s the proliferation of nuclear weapons to people who don’t value human life and who have no compunction about killing large numbers of people that scares me.

And lest we think that South Korea has completely recovered from the Sunshine fad, its interviewer hasn’t quite shaken it off.

“An issue for the Obama Administration and Congress is to what extent they will support – or, not oppose – Park’s possible inter-Korean initiatives,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in a report posted on its Web site Thursday.

For instance, it pointed out, the Park government has indicated a desire to someday internationalize and expand the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a historic joint venture between the two Koreas located just north of their land border.

“These moves could clash with legislative efforts in Congress to expand U.S. sanctions against North Korea, such as H.R. 1771, the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act,” it added. [Yonhap]

As much as it cramps my fingers to write this, I actually believe there are ways that South Korea could make Kaesong into something most Americans would accept. As it is, Kaesong “wages” are not only paid directly to the regime itself, but they’re paid at a ludicrous, confiscatory exchange rate. Then, there are also various “taxes” the regime charges the tenant companies, which requires the South Korean government to subsidize those companies to keep them afloat. In effect, it’s a scam to launder money from the South Korean government to the North Korean government, with slave labor as the medium of exchange.

The other problem with these arrangements is that they’re increasingly at odds with U.N. Security Council resolutions that require transparency in financial dealings with North Korea. That’s particularly true of UNSCR 2094, which passed with a “yes” vote from South Korea, as a non-permanent UNSC member. Need I remind everyone that those resolutions were passed, in large part, to protect South Korea’s own security? If you doubt me here, read Paragraph 11 and tell me how you square a big, fat, no-questions-asked cash pipe with that. Korea isn’t in a very good position to complain that China is violating UNSC sanctions when it’s arguably guilty itself. 

As it was advertised, Kaesong was going to be an engine of reform. But if we don’t know there all that money goes — and we don’t — then it could be used, for all we know, for nukes, yachts, and ski resorts. But Kaesong could become palatable to Americans if Park Geun Hye extracts enough financial transparency from the North Koreans, and ensures that those workers really are getting the $70-or-so a month, and to ensure that the money isn’t being used to build centrifuges. If that happens, Kaesong might diminish as a potential irritant in U.S.-ROK relations. It might even become an engine of change — this time, of North Korea.