WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, the six-party talks concerning North
Korea’s nuclear program are scheduled to reconvene in Beijing. If
the conferences of the past are any indication, the United States
will again face an obstinate North Korea that adamantly refuses to
abandon a nuclear program that it views as its sole guarantor of
security. Further complicating the position of the United States is
the fact that it can no longer rely on the vigorous support of
South Korea at the negotiating table. Throughout the recent talks,
Seoul has positioned itself as a consistent opponent of American
and Japan initiatives, more often aligning itself with the
non-interventionist overtures of Beijing than with the more strict
negotiation points of Washington or Tokyo.
To explain the growing gulf between these once close allies, an
observer need only take into account the puzzling dynamics of
public opinion in the South. A recent South Korean opinion poll
asked South Koreans who they would support in the event of an
American attack on North Korean nuclear installations. Nearly 50
percent of South Korean citizens sampled said they would support
the regime of Kim Jong-Il. This troubling response echoed the
results of another poll taken last year, with 39% of respondents
identifying the U.S. as the greatest threat to South Korea’s
security. Only 33% could agree on North Korea, the nation that once
invaded the South and continues to maintain a massive military
apparatus whose all-encompassing goal is the invasion and
subjugation of South Korea.
While cross-border cultural sympathies and anti-Americanism chic
can help explicate these results somewhat, another primary
explanation is rarely mentioned. In its public relations war with
the United States, North Korea has received aid and comfort from an
unlikely quarter: the South Korean government. Over the past eight
years, two subsequent liberal South Korean governments have adhered
to the “sunshine policy,” which advocates appeasement in return for
a “closer” relationship with the North Korean state. The policy has
not only tempered official South Korean criticism of the North, but
has also enabled the state to actively work against the
proliferation of negative images of North Korea.
ONE OF THE MORE REPREHENSIBLE outgrowths of this policy is South
Korea’s staggering level of ignorance regarding the issue of human
rights abuses carried out by the North Korean government. A recent
example of this insufferable lack of popular awareness involved two
North Korean doctors, now living in South Korea, who have taken the
aliases of Dr. Lee Byom-Shik and Chun Ji Suang (the North Korean
intelligence services regularly target high profile defectors for
abduction or assassination). The two men — both trained chemists
— were formerly employed by the North Korean government for
“special tasks.” While working at a top secret chemical weapons
research installation in 1979, Dr. Lee supervised the execution of
“political prisoners” using experimental chemicals, which often
brought death only following hours of agony. For his
accomplishments in exterminating the subjects with various chemical
cocktails, Lee was awarded a commendation for service to the
state.
Mr. Chun was part of a 1994 scientific effort that traveled from
gulag to gulag, attempting to determine the best chemicals for use
in targeted assassinations carried out overseas. Chun’s team, Team
A, utilized animal guinea pigs, while Team B used families of
prisoners for final testing. His testimony is supported by the
accounts of other defectors, including Kwon Hyuk, former commander
of one of North Korea’s largest concentration camps, Camp 22. At
Camp 22, recounted Hyuk during a BBC interview, families were
herded into chambers where they were gassed to death using
weaponized aerosols. Hyuk remembered watching desperate parents
attempt to give their children mouth- to-mouth resuscitation, only
to die minutes later.
These horrific stories — which recall the worse nightmares of
the Holocaust — stirred numerous human rights groups to action.
Many of these organizations, including the U.S.-based Simon
Wiesenthal Center, have since invited Dr. Lee and Mr. Chun to speak
at various events. When informed of these requests, the South
Korean government decided, inexplicably, to cancel the two men’s
travel visas, effectively preventing them from leaving the country.
Seeking an explanation, Wiesenthal Center assistant dean Abraham
Cooper confronted a South Korean foreign ministry official, asking
him why his government was so reticent in allowing the men to
travel overseas to recount their experiences before international
audiences. The official responded by admitting that the South
Korean government was aware of North Korea’s chemical weapons
testing, but did not want to threaten ongoing talks with Pyongyang
by allowing the damaging information to be excessively
publicized.
The cowardly censorship efforts of the South Korean government
have since extended past petty government travel restrictions,
often taking on a chilling Orwellian-tone. In March of 2005, a
grainy video surfaced that offered a rare insight into the
barbarity that defines everyday life in North Korea. The video,
shot secretly by an astonishingly daring anonymous cameraman,
showed a gathered crowd of thousands of North Koreans. The throng
watched expectantly as two men — deemed “enemies of the state” —
were tied to stakes and shot by policemen. Such public killings are
endemic in the North, used by the Kim regime to further terrify the
cowed populace. Recent defectors have described episodes involving
the executions of women and children for minor offenses, such as
stealing 60 kilograms of corn. The government makes a show of their
deaths, hanging them in public squares or forcing groups of North
Koreans to stone them.
Verbal accounts of these episodes have existed for decades, but
never before has such brutality been captured on video. The impact
of the footage was tragically minimal, however, due to the
reprehensible actions taken by Seoul. Taking appeasement to a truly
loathsome height, the South Korean government actively sought to
censor all national media outlets, forbidding them from showing the
recording during their news broadcasts. When the footage was
finally shown in Japan, the sunshine-beholden government of
President Roh Moo-hyun played down its significance.
SUCH CRAVEN APATHY IS standard procedure for President Roh’s
administration, as was made apparent when the U.N. Humans Rights
Commission gathered in April of 2005 in order to pass a resolution
condemning North Korea’s human rights record. While thousands of
their brethren were being worked to death less than 100 miles from
the DMZ, South Korea had the gall to abstain from the ballot, a
departure from their previously consistent “yea” votes. A South
Korean government official later justified the action by stating
that it would help “create an environment where North Korea can
change on its own.”
Also disquieting is the indifference displayed by the Roh
government towards those brave and desperate few who manage — at
the risk of their lives and those of their families — to escape
North Korea. Last year, the South Korean foreign ministry, in a
towering illustration of official negligence, denied the very
existence of North Korean refugees in China, disregarding reams of
media reports and articles. Only after conclusive proof was
provided by South Korean human rights groups was the foreign
ministry shamed into abandoning its oblivious stance.
In late 2004, just as conditions in North Korea worsened due to
a harsh winter season, the Roh government announced a reduction in
resettlement benefits by two-thirds for all North Korean escapees
who chose to live in the South. At the same time, in an attempt
covertly aimed at deterring North Koreans from fleeing south,
government screening and interrogation processes were intensified
and lengthened. The Roh government explained their actions by
warning of increased North Korean infiltration and espionage, a
highly dubious claim, considering their pernicious history of
gutting South Korea’s counterintelligence and security program. The
motives behind this alteration in policy were made clear during a
speech by Roh’s Minister of Unification, who declared, “we
disapprove of mass defections.”
The performance of the South Korean private sector is analogous
to the government’s lethargy. Other than some truly heroic
Christian and human rights organizations, South Korean NGO’s have
busied themselves with utopian plans for reunification, ostensibly
avoiding the arduous work of actually aiding Northern refugees.
FILLING THE VOID CREATED BY Seoul’s timidity is the United States.
The Bush administration has led the effort to help North Koreans by
supporting the North Korean Human Rights Act, which was approved by
Congress last year. The bill provides for increased funding of
pro-democracy groups and human rights organizations that actively
aid North Korean refugees. Resources have also been earmarked for
radio stations that transmit freedom-oriented broadcasts into North
Korea, hopefully bypassing government censors.
Ironically, the bill also streamlines the process through which
North Koreans can seek refuge in the United States, effectively
making the U.S. a more attractive haven than neighboring South
Korea. South Korean human rights advocates have regularly expressed
shame regarding their own government’s recalcitrance in aiding
fellow Koreans, especially when compared to the proactive stance of
the United States. While refusing to comment publicly on the bill,
South Korean officials privately displayed their typical
tentativeness to the press, expressing “concern” over what effect
the bill would have on reunification talks.
Further indications of Seoul’s morally reprehensible policy of
accommodation include their recent refusal to include North Korea
by name in their defense planning policy papers, while at the same
time promoting different forms of economic incentives, i.e. bribes,
to the hermit kingdom, while asking for no concessions on the part
of Pyongyang.
In deference to the delicate strategic reality that pervades the
Korean peninsula, no one is arguing for overtly aggressive moves on
the part of South Korea. But is actively aiding refugees who risk
their lives escaping starvation and death asking too much? Is
publicly condemning North Korea’s blatant disregard for human life
too severe a response? In addition, the notion that the sunshine
policy can help improve the situation in North Korea has been
proven categorically false, with Kim Jong-Il’s regime continuing
its practices of mass murder and weapons proliferation, deaf to the
South’s conciliatory tone.
The historical precedent for appeasement is a disastrous one,
and this modern incarnation should prove little different. South
Korea’s sunshine policy has done nothing to moderate the regime of
Kim Jong-Il, quite the opposite. At the same time, it has warped
the perceptions of many South Koreans, who now feel greater
sympathy towards the criminal regime in Pyongyang than towards the
United States. It appears, with regard to North, that the South
Korean left has taken a page from their American brethren,
eschewing strenuous opposition to tyrannical governments in favor
of accommodation and appeasement. When the government of Kim
Jong-Il falls into the dustbin of history, many South Koreans can
look forward to explaining to their northern cousins why they stood
by and did so little to save them from their hellish
predicament.
