The Death of an Alliance, Part 28
How low a point have U.S.-South Korean relations reached? First, we have compelling evidence that North Korea is counterfeiting U.S. currency, a warlike and patently criminal act, at a time when there is supposedly a cease-fire in effect. Then, the ruling party of our supposed ally chooses to disregard the evidence of the criminal act. When our ambassador, the person charged to protect U.S. interests, points out that couterfeiting is, you know, criminal, we get this sort of infantile braying from a member of the Korean President’s own party.
Uri Party lawmaker Kim Won-ung on Tuesday threatened U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow with expulsion for calling North Korea a “criminal regime” at a critical time for six-party talks on the North’s nuclear program, and said given a choice between peace and the Korea-U.S. alliance, he would choose the former.
Given a choice between an alliance with a nation that expects us to tolerate having our currency counterfeited and effective law enforcement against counterfeiting, I’d choose the latter. I suspect the U.S. government would make the same choice.
The ruling-party lawmaker was speaking on a PBC Radio talk show. “If I were told to choose between peace on the peninsula and our allies, I would say that we need to give up our alliances,” Kim said. “It seems to me the neocons in the U.S. are not aware of what is going on.”
That’s funny. Since when did law enforcement become a neocon issue? It is Kim himself who has nothing to offer to refute the evidence that North Korea is doing this.
“I am saying this clearly to Ambassador Vershbow: no country that becomes an obstacle on the path to reunification of the peninsula can ever be a friend of Korea, and this is something that Vershbow needs to bear in mind,” Kim said.
Kim clearly hasn’t taken Chung Dong-Young’s own words to heart, because Kim’s own party is the declared obstacle to unification. Chung wants the North Korean regime to stay in business indefinitely, and he knows exactly what that means for the people of North Korea. If there is any truth recorded in the writing of history, it’s clear enough whom history won’t forgive. If there’s enough evidence to convict Kim Jong Il of mass murder–and I belive there is–there’s enough evidence to convict the South Korean leaders of being accessories to mass murder, earning them a place in history reserved for the lowest and greediest of betrayals, one that will make Lee Yong-Won look like Kim Ku.
Kim warned the envoy faces being called in “for a talk” by the Foreign Ministry, “or, in the worst case, we can ask the U.S. government to recall him. He said given the character of relations with the U.S., “the Korean government is likely to be submissive on this issue. But if Vershbow persists with the same attitude, we will present a resolution or a proposal calling for his recall to the National Assembly.
It bears repeating: he Uri expectation is that U.S. taxpayers should absorb the millions North Korea’s counterfeiting crime syndicate costs us. We are asked to do this to mollify a fair-weather ally and a dangerous enemy. What upsets the fair-weather ally is the suggestion that we may be entering disarmament talks with expectations of good faith by our opposites. Good faith is a hard thing to presume when your interlocutor can’t abide by the most basic standards of international law, transparency, or truthfulness.
An alliance on those terms has more costs than benefits, and as I’ve suggested, it’s not one South Korea would or should accept if North Korea were counterfeiting the won. Such an alliance is unworthy of preservation. Roh Moo-Hyun needs to clarify if this is what’s really being asked of us.
Update: The Yangban would have predicted this. The Foreign Ministry is already “clarifying” that it believes that the North Koreans are counterfeiting our currency. So the apparent expectation is that we should quietly tolerate it.