Take the OFK Challenge: Name One Time Selig Harrison Was Right About North Korea

The AP’s Foster Klug interviews North Korean tool Selig Harrison, and catches him in this Kanye West moment:

Harrison, addressing his critics, says: “Everything I’ve ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, and everything I’ve ever advocated has come to pass.” [AP, Foster Klug]

If Harrison means that he consistently called for the U.S. to cave and it always did, Harrison is correct. Never overestimate the U.S. Department of State. But off-hand, I can’t think of anyone with a worse track record of predicting Pyongyang’s next move than its most frequent guest. Moreover, Harrison’s reporting is invariably flavored with official North Korean spin, frequently at the expense of accuracy. Quoted in the June 13, 1994 edition of the Times of London, Harrison described Kim Il Sung as “‘very sharp, very alert,’ if slow on his feet at 82.” Three weeks later, Kim was promoted to the supine position of “eternal president” on the undertaker’s slab.

And so it goes: Harrison was a prolific proponent of the myth of North Korean economic reform (he explained away the absence of clear evidence for this by calling it “reform by stealth” driven by a cabal of latent moderates). He was wrong that North Korea signed Agreed Frameworks I and II with a good faith intent to disarm. He was wrong in his inflexible atheism about North Korea’s HEU program. He consistently ignored North Korea’s horrors and blamed its nuclear provocations on George W. Bush until Kim Jong Il detonated a nuke and launched an ICBM toward Hawaii on Barack Obama’s watch. Now, he blames Barack Obama for driving North Korea away from talks by criticizing it for launching a missile in flagrant violation of two U.N. resolutions.

With a record like that, I’ve long wondered why newspapers continue to quote Harrison. The subtle subtext of Klug’s article is that reporters are starting to wonder the same thing — that journalists are beginning to look at Selig Harrison as less of an elder statesman than an eccentric uncle, the man whose reaction to every North Korean lie, cheat, and crime against humanity can be summed up thusly: “more cowbell.”

By the way, Foster, thanks for stopping by:

Harrison’s comments on the North often infuriate conservatives.

Joshua Stanton, a blogger at One Free Korea, has written: “One can only wonder what about the North Koreans is so believable to Harrison’s more credulous side.”

Harrison also has been criticized for what some see as the North’s habit of using him to try to renegotiate the terms of already settled nuclear agreements with the United States.

Klug, by the way, isn’t a drive-by Korea correspondent. He’s been concentrating on the story for a number of years and providing generally good, balanced coverage, albeit coverage that’s focused on the diplomacy and disarmament angle. You can read what I said in its full context here.