The Forked Tongue of Lee Jong-Seok, Part 3
“At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death.
““ UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok, May 2, 2006
That was then. South Korea’s UniFiction Minister is now saying no more rice if the little man fires the big rocket. I strongly support feeding the people of North Korea — especially those to whom the government has denied food aid. They are also victims; they bear no responsibility for the actions of those who rule them. Because its unilateral food aid program is almost entirely unmonitored, experts have suggested that South Korean (and Chinese) food aid has exactly the opposite effect: Kim Jong Il can count on unmonitored aid to feed the military and the party elite; therefore, he can afford to reject aid from donors who insist that its distribution be monitored.
South Korea claims that its aid is distributed to those who need it, but, says Lee …
“I believe additional assistance (for the North) would be difficult, except ongoing projects like the Kaesong industrial complex, if the missile is launched,” Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok was quoted as telling the head of the main opposition Grand National Party.
That’s certainly an interesting choice of priorities, especially coming from someone who claims (and falsely) that his government’s food aid ended hunger in the North.
If Lee really believes that his government’s aid is getting to the hungry people who need it, then he’s tacitly admitting that he’s prepared to use food as a weapon against the North Korean people, and at the same time, to drive on with the exploitive enrichment of the government that’s actually launching the missile. If, on the other hand, Lee thinks cutting off food aid will really deter the govenrment, he’s betraying some knowledge of who is really eating most of it.
More on forked tongues…
“‘We are aware of the U.S. concerns about our missile test-launch,’ Han (Han Song Ryol, North Korea’s deputy chief of mission at the United Nations in New York) was quoted as saying by Seoul’s Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday. ‘So our position is that we should resolve the issue through negotiations,’ he said.
but…
“Li Pyong Dok, a senior official at the North’s Foreign Ministry, also told a group of visiting Japanese journalists that Pyongyang did not regard itself as bound by prior agreements to refrain from missile testing.
‘Our actions are not bound by the Pyongyang Declaration, the joint declaration made at the six-party talks in September last year or any other statements,’ Li was quoted as saying by the Kyodo news agency and Asahi Shimbun.”
So the point of talking is…? Either the North Korean diplomats all have a plush, brain-sucking soccer ball hat or they think Americans are idiots–and indeed some are.
Hopefully, the next time anyone says that human rights need take a back seat to disarmament negotiations will take a moment to reflect on the fact that such talks have rarely amounted to little more than the North Koreans making the US feel like it has won a hard fight over “concessions”, which come in the form of insignificant and meaningless statements. NK is staging an illsory sense of progress.
People need to stop ignoring the suffering of millions of North Koreans because we want the NK gov’t to make another statement it doesn’t really mean.
Starvation in worker paradise? FICTION!
There is 1 person I would like to see DEAD even more than dear comrade Kim and his puppet moron NO. It’s this fxcker Lee.
This ahole was head of ex-KCIA and you can bet that he gave away the house plus state as well as US secrets to his daddy comrade. It’s like cat watching over mice.
So what did pupper moron NO do for SOB Lee? Promote him as uniFICTION minister which is the highest honor one can attain as minister and 1 step away as follow-on protege. Remember the ugly confronatation between commy loser Chung and new head clown at Uri whathisface over uniFICTION post few years ago?
Anyway, this commie is sharing more secrets and now in a position to give ever more to his dearest comrade Kim.
Yep this is puppet moron NO administration for ya.