Politic-Economic-Society-Tech

Tackle or tiptoe: How to handle North Korea 

By Aidan Foster-Carter 

Bravo, the Jangs. The seven-strong North Korean refugee family's bold ploy of seeking sanctuary in the Beijing office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) last week paid off, and faster than many expected. Just three days later they were on a plane to Seoul: via Singapore and Philippines for form's sake, and despite predictable protests from Pyongyang. Beijing could hardly not let them go, with the all-important awarding of the 2008 Summer Olympics imminent. But it only did so "on humanitarian grounds" - as ever, refusing to admit that a category called North Korean refugees exists in China. 

The PRC's perverse and cruel stance will get harder to sustain. This news will have swiftly reached China's northeastern border areas, where as many as 300,000 North Koreans (since they don't exist, no one knows for sure) are hiding out after fleeing famine in their native land. The Jangs' success can only encourage others to emulate them. The UNHCR office and other likely targets, such as Western embassies in Beijing, will henceforth no doubt be well guarded. But where there's a will there's a way. 

An earlier Pyongyang Watch column in March spotlighted the refugee question: much ignored hitherto, yet a potential Achilles' heel both for the inter-Korean peace process and for the North Korean regime. As it happens, two years ago I wrote a study of this subject (available on UNHCR's website at www.unhcr.ch/refworld/country/writenet/wriprk/htm). Now as then, I would stress that this is not a side-issue but crucial to key questions about North Korea's future, and how to handle so recalcitrant a regime. Rather than repeat arguments made earlier, it is those wider aspects that I focus on this time. 

To make the point, let's first take a quite different topic. Last month, not content with punishing Kim Dae-jung for the Bush administration's hard line (like it's his fault?) by suspending all dialogue, North Korea tried a new trick. Its merchant ships started taking short cuts though Southern waters, such as the channel between Cheju island and the peninsula. As doubtless intended, this rattled Seoul. At first the ROK navy let them pass - reluctantly, to judge from leaked reports of radio traffic - prompting cries of appeasement from opposition and the right-wing press. After three weeks of this, public opinion forced the South to fire warning shots at an intruding fishing boat. It fled, and there have been no incidents since. 

Frankly, why didn't they shoot sooner? That hawkish thought doesn't gainsay support for the South's "Sunshine" policy as such. What baffles me is Seoul's timid tendency to tiptoe around Pyongyang at all costs for fear of giving offense. This is an obvious tactical error, on two fronts. At home, it provokes charges of weakness which a government facing elections next year cannot afford. Abroad, it tempts Kim Jong-il to conclude that Mr Nice Guy will turn the other cheek ad nauseam - so keep on poking. 

I agree with Kim Dae-jung that mechanical reciprocity won't work with North Korea. Seoul has to give a lot, up front, if Pyongyang is ever to give at all. But this is different. There's no conceivable excuse for the North's marine maneuvers; just as there wasn't two years ago when Northern fishing boats sailed into Southern waters. In either case, if North Korea wants more blue crab or to save fuel on the Tianjin-Wonsan run, why doesn't it just pick up the phone and ask, like civilized countries do? 

The contrast with two years ago is instructive. Then the ROK rammed the intruders, and when fired on fired back - sinking a DPRK patrol boat, crippling others, and killing up to 80 KPA men. What didn't sink was the "Sunshine" policy - whose first principle, remember, is firm self-defense. Though this was the first North-South naval battle since 1953, war did not break out. On the contrary, a few miles away Southern boats continued to carry fertilizer aid to the North. At the risk of sounding hawkish again, one can only conclude that force, judiciously used, is a language that Pyongyang understands and respects. The quest for peace needn't and mustn't mean tolerating provocation. The North has to learn to behave. 

The same goes for refugees. Here too, Pyongyang's behavior is intolerable - and Seoul's response is indefensible. Sure, you can see the logic in Kim Dae-jung's tactic of starting with easier issues (but are there any?) with the North, and slowly working up to harder ones like refugees. But it won't wash, for the same two reasons. As a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his fight for democracy as well as peace, for Kim to say that now is not the time to raise human rights issues with North Korea just sounds terrible. And as ever more horror stories emerge - like Park Choong-il, featured lately in Newsweek, brutally tortured after being sent back by both Russia and China - this supine see-no-evil stance will win no votes either. 

Finally, here too, reluctance to challenge Pyongyang is misguided. The realpolitik behind the "Sunshine" policy, as with China's tough line on refugees, is to prevent the ultimate nightmare of a North Korean collapse. You'd think Kim Jong-il would appreciate this. Yet by brutalizing people whose sole crime is to be hungry, he turns them into angry enemies of his rule and weakens his state. Great leader, huh? 

source:  atimes.com, July 4, 2001