If Jay Lefkowitz Falls in the Forest ….

A week after we learned that the North Koreans  disinvited him from  visiting Kaesong — something about which our State Department offered no adverse reaction — Lefkowitz has canceled a scheduled visit to Seoul as well.  These events belie the sincerity of President Bush  and even Chris Hill sporadically talking the talk on human rights again:

They “shared the view that in the process of normalizing relations, meaningful progress should be made on improving North Korea’s human rights record.”

This was the first time that a Korea-U.S. summit statement mentioned North Korean human rights conditions. In a joint press conference, Bush said, “The human rights abuses inside the country still exist and persist.”   [Chosun Ilbo; emphasis mine]

So he actually remembers.  Slightly off topic, by the way, was this interesting criticism by the South Korean left’s main mouthpiece:

This is likely to have an additional negative influence on inter-Korean relations as North Korea is expected to slam it as interference in its internal affairs. This is because, while the North Korean human rights issue has been raised during previous South Korea-U.S. summits, this is the first time it has been put into writing.  [The Hankyoreh]

The Hanky’s  “news” piece  quickly descends into  an editorial attacking Lee for being Bush’s lapdog, and the Hanky’s accompanying photo of Bush and Lee  certainly has a  creepy homoerotic look about it.  That doesn’t make the criticism a logical one.  Apparently, to the  writers at the Hanky,  the principle of “non-interference”  is yet another of those principles that applies to everyone but North Korea:

The Human Rights Committee of the south Korean Buddhist Order Council called a press conference in Seoul on August 4 in denunciation of the security authorities’ human rights abuses.   Speakers at the conference said: A large number of people have been detained and wanted by the police in less than six months since Lee Myung Bak took office and even an investigation and search racket is conducted in front of the Jogye Temple. The facts tell about the human rights record of the present “government.”  [KCNA, 7 Aug. 2008]  

You’ll never hear anyone suggesting that such “inference” will damage inter-Korean relations, or provoke  South Korea to stop funding Kim Jong Il’s luxurious lifestyle.  But remember, the Hanky’s writers  read KCNA for guidance, not for consistency.  But if they really knew how to read and analyze the news, they’d  recognize this as empty  talk and just ignore it.  So far, that seems to be North Korea’s reaction: 

North Korea’s record on human rights may not be a deal-breaker when it comes to removing North Korea from the U.S. list of terrorist nations. It is easy to argue, as American diplomats have done, that such abuses are “an internal problem”, not a reason to label North Korea as a nation that spreads terror elsewhere.   [Don Kirk, World Tribune; worth reading in its entirety, btw]

Further down, Kirk predicts that the North would lash out, but that hasn’t happened yet.  It almost seems as if they’ve been given private reassurances that Bush and Hill had to say those things to get Kathleen Stephens confirmed as Ambassador to Seoul.  The cancellation of Lefkowitz’s visit and State’s obvious failure to back him or the importance of his post also  calls Bush’s sincerity into question.  And Bush’s careful wording — wording that does not condition normalization on  human rights improvements, regardless of how the Hanky translates it  — takes most of the  relevance out of the Special Envoy’s portfolio.

At a moment when the administration’s North Korea policy  is under rising criticism from Republicans, and being viewed with passive skepticism by some Democrats,  a  vocal resignation speech from Lefkowitz would do more for the cause he is charged to advance than anything he’d be allowed to do during the remainder of his term in office.  Really, absent some very sincere, tangible, and improbable  linkage by Bush  between specific North Korean goals  and specific improvements in human rights, advocates for human rights in North Korea would be fools to  assess the Bush administration’s  record as consisting of much more  than cheap talk and ultimately, betrayal.  Bush has never made human rights improvements a strict precondition for any of the things he’s willing to  give the North Koreans on terror de-listing, trade, sanctions, or diplomatic relations.  He has never spoken in detail, or with any depth, about the gravity of the abuses in North Korea’s concentration camps. 

The other day, I was chatting with  an activist friend with substantial influence among Korean-American voters.  My friend was  half-jokiingly criticized by a conservative friend  for approaching Democrats to enlist their support on North Korean human rights issues.  It is true that almost no Democrats in Congress  have shown any interest in this issue.  It is true that the interest Democrats have shown has been shallow, superficial, and subject to easy reversal.  It is true that those in Congress who have really expended energy on this issue and taken risks for it have been a handful of Republicans — Brownback, Hyde, Royce, and Ros-Lehtinen.  Those individuals have earned the support of those who are concerned about what is probably the world’s worst human rights crisis on earth today.  But the same is not true of their party.  The most influential  Republicans — Lugar, Warner, and most significantly, George W. Bush — have taken for granted that  this movement has no one to go to but to them.  And as a direct result, all of them felt free to betray it. 

That is how the perception that this movement  belongs to the  Republicans has harmed it.  A smart  response would be an expanded outreach to Democrats, to educate them on the depth of the abuses and the  moral significance of this issue, and what it means for any broader efforts toward “a more normal relationship” or “engagement” with the North.  Just ask Park Wang-Ja.  This issue should not inherently have  more appeal for either party.  But if there were more reason for Republicans to worry about the loss of Korean-American support in districts where their votes count, Republicans would have more reason to think twice before betraying them, as Bush did.