Jasper Becker: Seoul's Dangerous Dance with Kim Jong Il
Jasper Becker, in the NYT (6-9-05)
[Mr. Becker is the Beijing Bureau Chief for the South China Morning Post. His book, Hungry Ghosts was the winner of the Dutch PIOOM award for human rights.]
THERE are hopes that President Bush's meeting tomorrow with President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, coming on the heels of the latest North Korean overture on restarting nuclear-weapons negotiations, may lead to a breakthrough. However, anyone who expects the South to help us put pressure on the North hasn't been paying much attention to what has happened between the two countries over the last five years.
Since South Korea's president at the time, Kim Dae Jung, met with North Korea's Kim Jong Il in 2000 (and pocketed a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts), Seoul has gone to remarkable lengths to gain the North's trust. Unsurprisingly, the only real changes under this Sunshine Policy have occurred in South Korea. And efforts by President Roh, who was elected in 2002, to engage Kim Jong Il have led him to plunge his own nation into North Korea's world of lies.
For example, Seoul no longer sees any evidence of North Korea's crimes: the government tries to keep South Korean newscasts from showing a smuggled tape of the public execution of ''criminals'' by the North that has been broadcast in Japan and elsewhere; reports that China is shipping refugees back to North Korea are denied by the Roh government; the North's testing of chemical weapons on live prisoners goes largely unmentioned; and even Pyongyang's apparent preparations for nuclear weapons tests are played down.
South Korea, a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, has abstained for the last three years from voting to condemn the North for its abuses. The South's latest national defense white paper even indicates that Seoul no longer considers the North to be its ''main enemy'' -- which implies that the presence of American forces on the peninsula is no longer necessary.
Because Seoul chooses to regard the North as a friendly neighbor, it no longer wants to help North Koreans fleeing the regime -- even though its Constitution declares that these refugees have the legal right to become citizens of South Korea. There have been press reports that Seoul has been pressuring China to prevent North Korean escapees from seeking asylum in South Korea's embassy and consulates in China (there are at least 100,000 North Koreans hiding in China).
Last year, when 468 North Korean refugees who had taken refuge in Vietnam were flown into South Korea, Seoul's minister in charge of reunification declared that ''we disapprove of mass defections'' and promised there would not be another large-scale movement of refugees. In December, the ministry cut the ''resettlement'' grant program for escaped Northerners by two-thirds and announced that henceforth there would be far greater scrutiny of asylum-seekers (on the questionable grounds that these refugees might be spies).
President Roh has defended this approach by more or less throwing up his hands. He refuses to give even moral support to dissidents in the North, claiming that Kim Jong Il would ruthlessly crush any protests. For Mr. Roh, there is no chance his ''partner for peace'' will fall from power; in fact, he makes clear that he would not wish the regime to crumble any time soon.
So, what has President Roh received for all this appeasement? The South still has to keep paying in hard cash for any political or economic contacts to take place -- it even has to bribe the North to take part in tae kwon do competitions. No reunions among families who have been divided since the armistice of 1953 have taken place in the last year; the previous rounds of reunions received a lot of positive news media coverage around the world but consisted of only brief encounters involving a small number of elderly people wanting to meet loved ones before they die. And, of course, the entire world has to put up with Pyongyang's nuclear shell game.
Many of those pushing the Sunshine Policy came of age while trying to force South Korea's postwar dictators to step down; they believe that the North can follow their model, in which economic gains paved the way for democracy. But forcing North Koreans to remain under Kim Jong Il's rule and hoping that he will make gradual reforms is unlikely to bear fruit.