The Park Jin Dossier

Park Jin is running for mayor of Seoul. Although I tend not to be comforted by national leaders who write fad diet books–and I like my dolphin mixed with my tuna, thanks!–compared to his peers, Park has been a stalwart on North Korean human rights and speaking honestly about the threat the North represents. Here is Park’s Web site (ht: The Yangban, who has shown some interest in Park’s future). Some grafs, and they’re a mix, but more good than bad:

• On Park’s background, courtesy of Bernard Moon (clearly a fan):
  

  Born in Seoul in 1956, Park graduated from Kyonggi High School and Seoul National University with a BA in law. He served as a naval officer after passing a state exam training the country’s diplomats in 1977. He later studied at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in the U.S. and Oxford University in the United Kingdom before serving as a staff member of Chong Wa Dae in 1994.

• On intelligence about NK nuclear weapons:
  

  “The government must not withhold information critical to national security from the public because of fears of hurting ties with North Korea,” said Park Jin of the opposition Grand National Party.” [Park wrongly guessed that North Korea would try to influence the U.S. election with a nuke test.]

• On North Korean refugees, quoted in the Wall Street Journal in October 2003:
  

  In Seoul, a few opposition politicians are finally beginning to turn their attention to human rights in the North. Park Jin, spokesman of the Grand National Party, which holds a majority in the National Assembly, faults the Roh government for “avoiding the issue.” His party urges the government to do two things: press China to let the United Nations have access to the refugees and prepare South Korea for a possible flood of refugees. “We have an obligation to help,” he says.

• On the current state of U.S.-Korean relations:
  

  Grand National Party lawmaker Park Jin, who visited the U.S. as a GNP special envoy, said on Sunday about plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Korea that, “Some U.S. officials said they do not think of Korea as a true ally worthy of trust,” and said that one U.S. official told him that while it conveyed even to China detailed intelligence concerning nuclear technology transfers from Pakistan to North Korea, it did not pass on that intelligence to South Korea. Holding a press conference upon returning to Korea, Park conveyed the expressions of American officials who said, “Korea is going in the wrong direction [in moving closer to China than the U.S.],” and, “Korea seems like the country with the most serious anti-Americanism outside the Arab World. Park said, “According to officials at the Korean Embassy in Washington, they first reported about plans to transfer some USFK forces to Iraq on April 16, but there was no response from Seoul… About the USFK redeployment issue, too, our government said that our side wanted to go public with the plans, but the U.S. opposed this, but U.S. officials explained that the opposite was the case.

• On the diplomatic split between the U.S. and South Korea:
  

  “The biggest problem about the U.S.-South Korean alliance is South Korea’s inability to clarify its position on the nuclear issue,” said Park Jin, a South Korean lawmaker with the opposition Grand National Party. “The U.S. and Japan are on the right hand side, while North Korea and China are on the left. South Korea appears to be in the middle, slowly leaning to the left, which is worrisome.”

• On whether North Korea is serious about its nuclear ambitions, or just bargaining:
  

  “It looks like North Korea is intent on becoming a nuclear power and the time is running out to stop it,” Park Jin, a South Korean legislator and member of the National Assembly’s defense committee, said Friday.

• On the military threat that dare not speak its name (sorry for that reference):
  

  Grand National Party (GNP) lawmaker Park Jin disclosed details of a report by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) to the Ministry of National Defense on Monday during the National Assembly’s audit and inspection of state affairs. According to the report, which was compiled from last January to April, 1,000 long-range artillery out of a total 12,500 North Korean artillery units are currently targeting South Korea’s capital city of Seoul. This means that at full capacity, 25,000 shells could be fired in an hour, laying waste to one-third of Seoul in that time. [OFK: this led to Park ending up on the receiving end of his own leak scandal.]

• More on that:
  

  “In a situation where the nuclear issue in the North and Pyongyang’s conventional weapons capabilities still loom as a threat to our security, the drastic reduction of troops would only harm the security of the Korean Peninsula,” GNP legislator Park Jin told South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.

• On the impeachment of Roh Moo-Hyun, which turned out to be a tactical fiasco (ahem).

  Opposition lawmaker Park Jin said Friday’s decision to impeach Roh was “very much justified,” blaming illegal campaigning, financial scandals and an inability to run the country for the success of the vote. Asked if Roh should now resign, Park said: “We are not forcing him to do so, that is his decision.”

• On Korean politicians going on benders with reporters present (yeah–whose idea was that, anyway?).
  

  “It’s hard to drink moderately once you start mixing beer with whiskey,” Park said. “It’s even more difficult to refuse to drink and most people end up drinking excessively. It’s time to quit that bad drinking habit, which has caused numerous problems.”

• As for this, you make of it what you will; I haven’t seen “Those People, That Time.” I’m not a strong fan of Park Chung-Hee as a model for South Korean government, although I suppose by now Park and I share a suspicion that the lens through which Koreawood films Korean history could use some Windex:
  

  Park Jin, a conservative party leader in the National Assembly, says he still believes that many who see the film “could easily be confused.” And, he says, he could not “exclude the possibility that the message of the film was political.”

Overall, Korea could do much worse. And for the most part, it almost always has.