‘Paying the Clown’
[Corrected, Updated] Harvard Professor Sung Yoon Lee dissects the North Korea sellout in the Daily NK and manages to say in one paragraph, with crisp eloquence, what it’s taken me about four posts to say less clearly.
Energy, food, economic aid, and legitimacy are a necessary condition to the North Korean regime’s long-term survival, for the quintessential criminal regime of Kim Jong Il–despite its claims of juche (self-sufficiency)–is unable to function over the long-term without aid from abroad. At the same time, nuclear blackmail ensures the aid-dependent, economically moribund North Korean regime that it will continue to receive help and pose as a contender for pan-Korean legitimacy as long as it does not give up its nuclear weapons. For the Kim Jong Il regime, dismantling its nuclear arsenal would be tantamount to killing the irreplaceable goose that lays the golden egg and submitting itself before the perpetual good will of its neighbors–it would be exceedingly detrimental national policy.
To paraphrase “Field of Dreams,” “build it and they will pay.”
Professor Lee is not Korean-American. He’s one of the most underrated writers on events in his homeland today, in either English or Korean. Admittedly, the “circus” thing is a little gimmicky, but his reasoning is dead-on. To see Lee in splendid exile while low characters like Kim Won Ung, Lee Jae-Joung and Kim Geun Tae steer the ship of state is an injustice that weeps to the heavens. Like commenter Won Joon Choe, Lee manages to make me feel like an inferior writer in my native language.
Correction and Update: Prof. Lee writes in, and he gave me permission to publish one paragraph of his e-mail, which contains some additional and very interesting information.
As one of your readers notes, I do not hold at Harvard a teaching position. I alerted my editor at The Daily NK of this as soon as I saw the caption and was told that the error will be corrected. The Korea Institute at Harvard established a new program in Fall 2005, the “Kim Koo Forum on U.S.-Korea Relations,” and I am privileged to run it.
Thanks to Prof. Lee, and to Aaron, and just to make sure I get it right this time, here’s Prof. Lee’s online bio:
Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo Research Associate, Korea Institute, Harvard University. As the first holder of the new position at Harvard, Lee will run in the 2005-06 academic year a new seminar series, the “Kim Koo Forum on U.S.-Korea Relations.” Since graduation from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1998, Lee taught for seven years Korean history and international politics at his alma mater. In 2000, Lee taught Korean politics at Bowdoin College, the first-ever course on Korea in the history of the college. In December 2003 Lee was commissioned to translate from Korean into English North Korea’s proposal to the United States for resolving the nuclear issue.
I thought this was also very interesting:
Last week, for instance, we hosted Mme. Park Geun Hye. I spent the entire day shadowing her, serving as interpreter, as she and her large entourage visited the Kennedy Library in the morning and met with students, faculty, and officials in the afternoon. Mme. Park exuded natural quiet glowing charisma–everyone was utterly charmed by her.
That’s consistent with what others say about Ms. Park. I can’t call myself a fan — I sometimes suspect that Ms. Park is mainly running out of ambition, not principle — but I see more calm, gravitas, and intellect in her than I do in Lee Myung-Bak. At the moment, Lee is polling twice as high as Park. Lee gives the impression of being unstable (Doubt me? Read this dossier I wrote up on him in September 2005). Park is eminently stable, as no one can doubt after this incident. I also get a slightly better vibe on Park from an ethical standpoint, although I suppose some of that is her dad’s reputation, and while it’s generally unfair to link Ms. Park to her dad’s goverance, ethics is partially a function of upbringing, and Park Chung-Hee was, after all, one of the people who brought her up.