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China’s Cleansing Campaign

I want to begin this post by congratulating the Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize, for once, to a person who has actually made sacrifices to improve the lives of others in a way that is likely to frustrate a belligerent state and prevent war. More precisely, by selecting someone who is not a terrorist, an unaccomplished politician, or a proven failure at making peace, Nobel may have extended its residual relevance a while longer. Better, it has returned some attention away from the malice of the Chinese government toward foreign nations, and back to its malice toward its own people. But then, these topics are more interrelated than many of us tend to acknowledge. One of the topics where they intersect seamlessly is the subject of North Korean refugees in China.

Ethan Epstein, who is now also blogging at The New Ledger, incidentally, has just returned from a visit to Seoul the Chinese border with North Korea. He writes (this time, at Slate) that a joint Chinese-North Korean crackdown on refugees has been a grim success at closing off the flow of refugees. So thanks to our friends the ChiComs, North Koreans must now die in place. There is a special zone in hell for these people, but justice would be better served if they were sent to Camp 12, where so many of their victims have perished. It bears repeating that those victims are guilty of no greater crime than wanting to live.

In spite of the success of China’s cleansing campaign, the number of North Korean refugees in South Korea is about to hit the 20,000 mark. What’s not mentioned in CNN’s report is how many of those people are recent defectors from North Korea, and how many are fleeing China after hiding out there for years.

China, realizing that it has revealed too much of its arrogance and malice since the Cheonan attack, now wants us (and the South Koreans) to think that its sponsorship of North Korea’s terrorizing of its neighbors is simply misunderstood. It doesn’t bother trying to explain its sponsorship of, and active participation in, North Korea’s terrorizing of its own people. How could it? You simply can’t defend sending women and kids to die in gulags and before firing squads. Those things are evil — crimes against humanity — in any honest person’s lexicon.

How can the behavior of the thugs who run China be reconciled with the natural aspirations of people not to be slaves? What evidence suggests that it’s amenable to moral suasion? That it’s amenable anything but coercion of variable subtlety? One more subtle form of coercion would be to make it clear to China that its commercial access to post-unification Korea will depend of the amount of hostility it earns from the Korean people now (strictly for the safety of Chinese investors and for the preservation of public order, mind you). Another would be to raise the idea of “odious debt,” suggesting that China’s investments in North Korea will not be honored by any post-Kim government.

But if you were a North Korean refugee in China now, all of this would probably sound much too subtle. When would you finally decide that fighting back was your only real option? And would such an eventuality be a greater tragedy than the status quo?

18 Responses

  1. Great post, Joshua. We have similar sentiments on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.

    For North Korea, plugging up the border can have negative consequences. Those who are snared in Beijing’s catch-and-release (to Pyongyang) program may not be in much of a position to challenge the regime while in the North’s gulag, those who end up unable to escape to China will be free and disgruntled, which can lead to problems if the regime’s authority — or paralyzing fear of the regime — starts to erode.

  2. Agreed. Perhaps in the future we’ll look back at this moment as a watershed for Chinese human rights and democracy. The announcement last week sent many of my Chinese friends and acquaintances scrambling for their proxy servers to find out who the heck China’s first Nobel prize winner is. In one fell swoop, the Norwegian parliament brought a lot of attention to Liu’s cause and ideals.

    We have similar sentiments on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.

    Is that the “royal we” or is there more than one Kushibo?

  3. U.S. and China Soften Tone Over Disputed Seas
    by Thom Shanker in the New York Times
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/world/asia/13gates.html?_r=1&ref=world
    US SecDef Gates and Chinese DefMin Liang are having a nice visit to Hanoi.
    But the last two paragraphs are interesting:
    “China has sought … to extend its … claims beyond the 12-nautical-mile limt … codified by the … Law of the Sea … ratified by about 160 nations, but frozen in the United Congress, despite the support of the Defense Department and the Department of the Navy. Pentagon officials are never eager for a comparison of the United States to the other nations that also have not ratified the sea pact — a group that includes North Korea and Iran.”
    The axis shmaxis strikes again.

  5. Glans, the same edition of the NYT noted that the US is alarmed by an increasingly harsh tone by China’s younger military members. I wrote something about it in my earlier link, but here’s a relevant excerpt:

    The Pentagon is worried that its increasingly tense relationship with the Chinese military owes itself in part to the rising leaders of Commander Cao’s generation, who, much more than the country’s military elders, view the United States as the enemy. Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union.

    The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China’s rise.

    Not encouraging.

  7. If youse want to laugh until youse cry in horror, check-out one British blogger’s view on it. Even many of those in disagreement made themselves look even more demented – not me it goes without saying: I comment as ‘Kehaar’ – than the author.

    It was like The Charge of the Light Brigade, except it was directed at their own lines as they fought amongst themselves.

    Also, can anyone recommend a method of ‘befriending’ NK refugees or known political prisoners for a church group?

  8. Change Seen as Unlikely as China’s Ruling Elite Gather
    News Analysis by Michael Wines
    “For China’s small band of liberal intellectuals, this is the springtime of hope.”
    “But as the party’s elite gather in Beijing for the opening of their annual plenum on Friday, there is little suggestion that the climate for political change is anything but wintry.”
    The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is in prison, and most Chinese don’t know or care. The party maintains its grip on power.
    This analysis does have one funny statement. Mr. Wines seems to think that socialism is the founding ideology of the Chinese nation, not just of the current state, the “People’s Republic” of China.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15china.html?ref=world

  10. China’s Elite Feel Winds of Change, but Endure
    news analysis by Michael Wines
    The Communist Party will have its annual plenum in Beijing Friday. They intend to hold on to power. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiabo is still in prison, and few Chinese know or care.
    But this analysis has one funny line: “Not that China is incapable of change. This is the nation that traded its founding ideology of socialism for state-driven capitalism without so much as a goodbye wave, and reaped immense success as a result.”
    Mr. Wines is conusing the Chinese nation with its current government, the “People’s Republic” of China.

  11. Glans, my previous comment was pre-moderated as well. I assume this is a random safe-guard on the blog-machinery… don’t be so paranoid.

    Thanks to Joshua’s heads-up, I’ve blogged on this.

  12. Wow. If any of this is true, we are headed for some intriguing drama!

    (Internal) Eldest Son ‘Told Kim Jong-il to Rein in Jong-un’
    The eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il met his father in Beijing in late August this year and protested against his younger brother Kim Jong-un’s orchestration of an attack against the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, KBS reported Thursday. The broadcaster cited a close associate of Kim Jong-nam’s in China as saying when Kim Jong-il visited China, Kim Jong-nam went to his hotel room and told him Jong-un was behind the Cheonan incident to make up for a botched currency reform late last year he had also pushed. “Why are you condoning this when nobody even knows who Jong-un is?” the associate quoted Kim Jong-nam as saying. He said Kim Jong-nam told his father to stop condoning Jong-un’s behavior and warned if the 27-year-old heir apparent keeps misbehaving, then Jong-nam would go his own way too. He added the mysterious delay of an extraordinary Workers Party congress in September was due to Kim Jong-nam’s protest. “There are many supporters of Kim Jong-nam in China and North Korea,” the associate said. The associate also claimed that Kim Jong-il worries about a brewing feud between the two sons. Kim Jong-un tried to assassinate Kim Jong-nam in Macau but failed when Chinese authorities found out. “Later, Kim Jong-il personally asked Chinese President Hu Jintao to ensure Jong-nam’s safety and got the promise,” he said. (Chosun Ilbo)

    Has the ring of plausibility, but could the deity ruthless dictator of the Hermit Kingdom really be this sloppy in concealing their kremlinology?

  14. kushibo, or anyone else who understands Korean culture, if Kim Jong-nam is talking to Kim Jong-il about Kim Jong-Un, does he say “Jong-Un” or something more like “Third Brother”?

  15. Glans, are you, if they were normal kids in a normal family, I believe Jong-un would mostly address or refer to Jongnam as some form of hyŏng (형, older brother, spoken by a male) and Jongnam would address or refer to Jong-un as tongsaeng (동생, younger sibling) or Jong-un.

    Maybe now, though, Jongnam would refer to Jong-un as taejang (대장, general), perhaps with some degree of sarcasm or disdain (I know that’s what I’d do with my punky-ass little brother). And if he has cojones the size of beach balls, he calls him chŏlmÅ­n taejang (젊은 대장, young general).

    (Actually, I’m not so sure the “young general” is supposed to be a snide insult or not; it seems to me it’s something the Pyongyang regime is trying to avoid drawing attention to, and what little they actually say about Kim Jong-un lists only his name and his official title.)

  16. I wrote:

    Glans, are you,

    I think I got distracted by a phone call or something while I was writing this. I meant to ask, based on your question, if you (Glans) are also planning to write a fanfic? 😉

  17. kushibo, I don’t know what a fanfic is. I was just wondering, if Kim Jong-nam supposedly referred to Kim Jong-Un by name when talking to Kim Jong-il, that might show that the quote is inauthentic. But I don’t know Korean language or social customs.

  18. Glans, a fanfic is an unauthorized story written by a fan or aficionado of some creative work (e.g., the Star Wars franchise, The Simpsons, the Twilight books, Harry Potter, etc.). I’m being a bit liberal when I apply it to the the political intrigue up in Pyongyang, but KCJ’s quoted material really does sound like something that someone down South or in the US would have written based on supposition about what they think would be a good story about what’s going on.

    In other words, in the absence of data and details, many have been filling in those blank spaces with the assumption that a KBS- or Univision-produced soap opera (or possibly a Jack Ryan-esque plot) is going on up there.