WASHINGTON — Writing seven years ago in the South China
Morning Post, reporter Martin Bradley caught a glimpse of hell
along the Yalu River, which separates the Korean peninsula from
China. Mr. Jasper — who recently authored a superb book on North
Korea — described hundreds of emaciated Korean refugees fleeing
into the Chinese forests, where they ate grass and sought refuge
from freezing conditions and Chinese security agents. When prompted
by Mr. Bradley to depict conditions back home, the North Koreans
recounted tales of mass starvation, dead bodies alongside roads and
summary executions of those who dared forage for food.
Bradley’s wraithlike figures were only the small, visible
portion of the North Korean famine, a monumental calamity which is
estimated to have killed two million people — 10 percent of the
country’s population — during the late 1990s. The government of
Kim Jong-Il — unable to provide its population with basic
sustenance — effectively decided to “write off” a large segment of
society, all the while ensuring a steady flow of food found its way
into the hands of the military and ruling elite. Much of the
government’s succor came from the billions of dollars in aid so
innocently provided by the West, with recent UN estimates
suggesting that anywhere between 30 to 50 percent of the donated
foodstuffs was commandeered by the regime’s security services. Some
of the aid may have even found its way onto the dining table of Kim
himself, although the Hennessy-swilling, last fat man in North
Korea is known to eschew proletarian fare in favor of worldly
cuisine prepared especially for his regular all-night binges.
Last week, however, in an announcement that received very little
fanfare, Pyongyang requested food aid be discontinued in favor of
more infrastructure development assistance, while also calling for
the ejection of the World Food Program (WFP). Pyongyang’s request
seems inexplicable; human rights activists point out that a
significant portion of the North’s populace remains on the edge of
starvation, with 37 percent — over 8 million people — classified
as ” chronically malnourished” by the UN humanitarian affairs
organization.
DIVINING THE ULTERIOR MOTIVES of Kim Jong-Il is comparable to
reading tea leaves at midnight, but two theories behind the North’s
exclusionary efforts offer themselves readily. One suggests that
Kim may have grown weary of the attention food-aid entails, namely
inquisitive reporters, photographers, or international observers
who have become far more aggressive of late in their attempts to
account for the distribution of the food. While North Korea has
done an impressive job in warding off these probing eyes thus far,
the suspicious mania that pervades the hermit kingdom may have
finally doomed the international assistance effort.
Another explanation for the North’s recent action involves
diplomatic strategy. After all, food aid is one of the few sources
of leverage that the United States can bring to bear on Pyongyang.
The great leader may have estimated that throwing off the yoke of
foreign assistance — a signal of national self-sufficiency — puts
him in a stronger position as he enters into the next round of the
six-party talks, scheduled to begin in November.
Improving one’s negotiating position at the expense of hundreds
of thousands of death might strike many as astonishingly barbarous;
however, to the Manichean cult that rules in the name of the
departed God-King Kim Il-Sung, such trade offs are monstrously
routine. After all, in their view, peasants are cheap and many,
while nuclear deterrents to American preemptive attacks are
valuable and rare.
The human rights nightmare that exists in North Korea is fairly
well known, although not enough Americans — or South Koreans, for
that matter — are aware of the existence of Kim’s city-size
concentration camps. The moral case for regime change is grossly
evident but, as we have seen throughout history, morality is rarely
sufficient impetus for prompt action by far-removed nations. What
can rouse states to action is the development of a serious threat
to peaceful coexistence.
North Korea under Kim Jong-Il is the embodiment of such a
menace. Its refusal to facilitate even a basic level of
transparency concerning its nuclear program, its development and
export of long-range ballistic missiles, and its cooperation with
proliferation entities — such as the A.Q. Khan network — all
point to a regime ever-willing to flaunt all the rules in order to
maintain its tyrannical status quo. Were his regime to be
threatened in any way, there is little reason to believe that Kim
— who has already knowingly sent thousands to their deaths —
would refrain from drastic measures such as covertly exporting
chemical or even nuclear weapons. This doomsday scenario is often
derided as “alarmist” by dovish critics who recommend that
Americans seek solace in Pyongyang’s supposedly consistent refusal
to export WMD material. The only genuine consistency ever observed
emanating from North Korea, however, is its reliably erratic
behavior, hardly symptomatic of a government you would ever allow
to amass a considerable nuclear arsenal.
North Korea’s escalating threat is barely reflected in the
recent actions of the Bush administration, as highlighted during
the recent six-party conference in Beijing. So desperate to avoid
being blamed for the failure of the talks, the American negotiation
team readily accepted a Chinese draft proposal which failed to set
any deadlines for the dismantlement of Kim’s nuclear program or
clarify the stance of the negotiating partners on the issue of
Pyongyang’s request for a light-water nuclear reactor. With such an
amorphous outline, it came as little surprise that the passage of a
few hours brought heated disagreement between Pyongyang and
Washington over what the statement actually entailed.
THIS SEARCH FOR THE SHORT-TERM, convenient fix seems to confirm the
fear among many observers that the Bush administration, consumed
with Iraq and Iran, is willing to let the North Korean crisis play
itself out in perpetuity. How else are we to explain chief U.S.
negotiator Christopher Hill’s statement that the joint statement
represents a “very important agreement” when it did nothing of the
sort? Indeed, the tentative nature of the Bush approach to North
Korea shares less in common with earlier “axis of evil”
pronunciations than it does with the inaction of the Clinton
administration, which was so fearful of confrontation that it
rewarded Pyongyang’s recidivism with 11 additional years to
secretly expand its nuclear arsenal. Our diplomatic charade also
ignores a basic supposition, accepted by many North Korea watchers,
that Kim Jong-Il will never surrender his nuclear program, viewing
it as the central guarantor of his regime’s survival.
Plainly stated, Kim Jong-Il oversees the most reprehensible and
threatening regime on the face of the Earth. Yet, the policy of
regional powers, including, regrettably, the United States, seems
to be based on a panicked interpretation of “live and let (Kim)
live.” So paralyzed with fear of Kim’s downfall are we that
everything possible is done to extend his reign, betraying our
irresponsible eagerness to push the problem down the road towards
some perennially undefined solution.
Such equivocation is the height of folly, as time and time again
Kim has rebuffed overtures by those seeking regional stability in
order to maintain his own power. His history of non-cooperation
with forces of order underscores the need for a broad international
effort — led energetically by the United States — which can
successfully topple the Kim regime.
Of course, the impediments to this regime change — as we are
reminded of repeatedly by the pundits of perpetual indecision —
are legion. They include, most notably, Chinese fears of a united
or destabilized Korea, South Korean recalcitrance in the face of
massive reconstruction costs, and the regional destruction that
could result from North Korea’s death throes. All of these are
formidable hurdles, but all are surmountable.
The United States should thus be prepared to make broad policy
changes with regard to Asia including, most notably, a broad-based
strategic rapprochement with China. Many Americans will recoil from
such a dramatic shift in foreign policy — especially with regard
to a new alliance with the current threat du jour of China
— but a security-related partnership with China will be worth all
the angst and trepidation in the world if it helps engineer the end
of the Kim regime.
For its part, the Bush administration needs to realize its
leadership role in such an endeavor and cease delegating our policy
vis-a-vis Pyongyang to South Korea — whose polity spends more time
distressing over the purported “war crimes” of Douglas MacArthur
than the fate of their 200,000 fellow Koreans who currently toil
and die in Kim’s concentration camps — and China — whose
leadership currently envisions little profit in cooperating with
the United States in bringing down Kim Jong-Il.
How the civilized world, with our overwhelming monopoly in
economic and military power, can allow a grandiose madman to
simultaneously commit mass murder while glibly threatening the
world with nuclear weapons is unconscionable. When the future
Kim-instigated disaster comes, be it nuclear terrorism, all-out
regional war, or yet another catastrophic famine, Americans will
wonder aloud why something was not done about Kim’s regime in the
first place. In our search for post-catastrophe culpability, we
will need only to point accusatory fingers at ourselves.
