Colder Weather Gathers Over Washington

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The event, held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, was modestly attended by about fifty people, mostly NGO representatives, activists, and Korean media types. It began with a screening of Seoul Train, which documents the efforts of North Korean refugees to escape to South Korea through China, despite the constant risk of being caught and sent back to the North Korean gulags, where they could face starvation, torture, forced abortion, infanticide, or even summary execution.

Seoul Train is a powerful and unashamed work of propaganda, all the more so because it presents the Chinese side of the story in all of its anti-persuasive, cold-hearted contempt for both the refugees and China’s own treaty obligations toward them. The real emotional power of the film, however, comes from its interviews with the refugees themselves, when it shows us the faces, aspirations, and humanity of a people we so seldom see in images other than scowling DMZ guards or controlled interviews with hand-picked citizens. Accented by a dark and moving score, the camera follows them from their hideouts to the moment they make their final dash for freedom, often without success. One cannot help but be moved by the teenage girl who calls a relative in South Korea, telling her not to worry, or the refugee woman who smiles as she admits that she’s “eating for two,” not yet knowing what the audience already senses–that it is their fate to be caught and sent back to North Korea. By then, the film has already told us what has probably happened to her child.More debatable are the tactics of Norbert Vollertsen, Chun Ki-Won, and other conductors in the Chinese “underground railroad,” and the film doesn’t gloss over the price many of the refugees (and not a few of the activists) pay for their controversial tactics. It’s hard to deny that the activists have put these refugees in the greatest possible danger–and done so partially for the sake of media attention–a fact that clearly weighs heavily on the souls of some of the activists. It’s equally hard to deny that without that media attention, there would be far less impetus to hold North Korea and China accountable for their suffering. The refugees themselves convey to the audience that they knowingly confronted the risks, but it’s not much comfort to the viewer. If there is anything that can justify the price so many of them paid, it will be the effect watching this film has on its audience (in this case, some influential people). It’s also difficult to see how the debate about tactics advances beyond the question of what other alternatives exist to help these refugees. Not all of them have time to wait for conditions in their homeland to improve. So should they take their chances hiding out? Steal a boat? It’s at least fair to ask critics to suggest a better idea.

Seoul Train also hit the U.N. High Commission for Refugees hard enough to leave a mark, although this part of the message was obscured when the film took its only unfair shot. One activist interviewed on camera suggested that UNHCR officials might be criminally liable for failing to assist North Korean refugees. I was persuaded that the UNHCR has fecklessly sacrificed principle for accomodation and consensus. The U.N. isn’t doing its job and wasting our money. Why not stop there? Unworthy of employment? Yes. Corrupted? Possibly. Criminal? Even to me, an avowed believer that the U.N. should stick to vaccination programs, that charge seemed excessive, even reminiscent of Michael Moore’s recent work.

Panel Discussion

With the film over and the audience primed for the taste of red meat, former South Korean President Kim Young Sam addressed the group to denounce North Korea’s cruelty and South Korea’s appeasement of the regime. President Kim gave a perfectly fine speech, even after the obvious decimation of his words in translation. From everything I have heard, he was as fine and honest a man as one finds in South Korean politics, and I suspect his legacy deserves a better label than as Korea’s Herbert Hoover. Still, one couldn’t help but think to one’s self that his South Korean constituency is losing what little power it has with each passing year. That doesn’t reflect badly on President Kim, but it does make you wish that his generation had built a stronger political and social foundation for today.

Anderson related how much this picture had incensed a State Department offical–not because of what the Chinese did, but because of what the official described as the political and financial motives of the underground railroad workers. By that moral calculus, Raoul Wallenberg should have stood aside and trusted in the good offices of the Hungarian Red Cross. Foggy Bottom, indeed.The most powerful speaker was Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, and I couldn’t help thinking that in another incarnation, he would have made a superb trial lawyer in spite of his apparent contempt for my chosen profession. Before an audience, Horowitz is as riveting as the best of them; privately, well, he sometimes seems so full of himself that you expect his skin to grow crinkly and translucent before he emerges, cicada-like, from his exoskeleton (granted, it’s an epidemic condition in Washington). Yet there’s no denying the forcefulness of his advocacy on this issue, particularly as a drafter, tweaker, and coalition builder for the North Korean Human Rights Act, and I already feel just terrible for kidding him this way, so please forgive me, k? His most interesting statement was his claim that the mood in Congress and the Administration had reached the point that there is now “no chance whatsoever” of the North Korean nuclear crisis being resolved through another 1994-style agreed framework. Horowitz wears the neoconservative label proudly (and for that matter, so do I for the most part), so presuming he speaks for that movement, you then turn to the questions of whether either the neocon faction’s domination of Washington or the rigidity of its doctrine are as absolute as Le Monde declares, or as Horowitz implies. I suspect both may have their own reasons to overstate the case, and that a new agreement, though unlikely, is much more likely to fail over the pragmatic issue of North Korean intransigence on verification than on ideological principle.

Still, it’s probably fair to call Washington’s shift away from dialogue and accomodation with North Korea decisive, and the dog that did not bark at this event was the disclaimer, so often repeated by congressional speakers at the North Korea Freedom Day rally last April, that Washington’s goal for North Korea is not regime change. This time, there was open discussion before the media of encouraging a coup d’etat (Chosun guy: “Hasn’t Roh ruined relations with America?”). On the issue of regime change, the election and the growing divisions between Washington and Seoul have removed the burden of that necessary pretense. The mood in Washington has visibly changed. Today, smart people all over town are, or should be, phoning their brokers to buy shares in companies that make solar-powered radios, GPS chips, and UAVs.

The real star? Again, and by universal acclaim, it was the twentysomething kids from LiNK, ably and modestly led by the unseemingly effective Adrian Hong. Adrian seems to be eternally traveling and organizing, although his apparent exhaustion only made him seem even more sympathetic–the kind of martyr you can still like–as he bravely battled through it. The straightforward, daring, not-for-hire compassion of all of the LiNK activists stands out in Washington like a clean set of teeth in a British union hall.

If America’s North Korea policy hints at having found its direction at last, proponents of changes to our China policy have at least begun tracing their fingers over the map. Republican congressman Ed Royce, who looks like he will become an important player in Korea issues, went so far as to suggest that Congress was considering imposing a 25% tarriff on Chinese products, under the combined pressure of human rights activists and labor unions. Royce didn’t exactly say that he would vote for that provision or predict its passage, but the signal certainly wasn’t subtle. Hopefully, someone in Beijing will hear it (Hey! Look over here!) even if such a measure would be iffy in the face of a WTO challenge.At the end of the day, it was China that came out wearing the horns and tail. There’s no question that China has made very determined enemies among constituencies that are feeling their power, and it was interesting to note that this group of Chinese religious freedom activists had a full-page ad in the Washington Times (yes, yes . . . I know) today, sponsored by a collection of conservative, religious, and human rights groups, and by what looks like just about every church in Midland, Texas. The print ad isn’t available online, which is unfortunate because it’s far better than anything on the China Aid Web site, and because one of the imprisoned activists pictured is Choi Yong-Hun, caught and jailed a year and a half ago while trying to help North Koreans escape. This may be the worst news of all for China. Her enemies are plotting against her. As they are known to say in Foggy Bottom–damn neocons!