In Defense of Norbert Vollertsen
The Marmot has a post that’s quite critical of Norbert Vollertsen and some of his fiery calls to action against Roh Moo-Hyun. Since it’s been a long time since I had to defend a difficult client, I will instead take on the difficult task of defending a man who is trying to do good in a world where apathy enables evil to operate unmolested. You may disagree with Norbert’s methods, but you can’t deny that he’s such a man. The key to his soul, aside from some Teutonic stubbornness and (let’s face it) less restraint than the average man, is a deeply rooted sense that as a German, he owes a debt to history.
It’s hard to deny that Norbert often goes over the top to make the payments on that debt. Weigh this, however, against the fact that he is the only person bringing media attention to this issue”“-attention that most media and human rights organizations would prefer not to give it at all. Given the fact that only Darfur rivals the scale of the humanitarian tragedy in North Korea today, who’s really more out of whack here? I concede that Norbert may have let the madness of North Korea’s reality infect him. Are our heads so cool as to chill our hearts, too?
Those who are doing something to improve the lives of North Koreans have a right to criticize some of Norbert’s goofier statements. I have on occasion done so privately. I’d be the first to agree that no person should call for the violent overthrow of an elected government. On the other hand, I respectfully submit that none of the Marmot’s quotes quite persuades me that Norbert is calling for that. Perhaps I’m missing something here; it seems equally plausible that he’s calling for Roh to be brought down by protest marches and votes, albeit with some language that fits South Korea’s heated rhetorical sensibilties better than our own.
Or maybe not. Having just lived through an American election, I had to put up with John Kerry calling for “regime change” in the United States, Al Gore calling the entire Pentagon a bunch of war criminals, Howard Dean and Michael Moore suggesting that Bush and the Saudis cooked up 9/11, and plenty of calls to “export” and “re-defeat” Bush. Kerry’s opponents have done everything but call him a traitor, saying he’s “unfit for command” (I admit it, I bought into that last one myself). Those statements were criticized for hurting our discourse”“as they should have been”“but not one of them was interpreted as a call to violence. And of course, the Canadians aren’t testing Sarin on political prisoners, either.
Sadly, many of Norbert’s critics, such as the Pressian gang, would rather not discuss Kim Jong-Il’s atrocities at all. They have no alternative to help the North Koreans except to sew Samsung badges onto their prison garb and put them to work soldering microchips for $58 a month.
It’s unfortunate that it takes the kind of fulmination Norbert is shouting to overcome South Korea’s conspiracy of silence, but you can’t argue that he’s not getting results. This week, he and his cohorts are holding a “Holocaust Exhibition” at the National Assembly. It obviously took some political pull and savvy somewhere to make that happen. The media will come for Norbert, but when they get there, they will meet calmer voices like Tim Peters (below, left) of Helping Hands Korea, Suzanne Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation, and North Korean defectors like Hwang Jang-Yop (below, center) Kang Chol-Hwan of the Chosun Ilbo.
If those voices are more persuasive than Norbert’s, it will only be thanks to Norbert and his intemperate words that the persuasive words were heard in the first place. For that alone, history owes him a debt of its own, for arousing our conscience from a shameful slumber.