Kristoff Supports Kaesong Industrial Project
I’m not really surprised but it appears that Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is slowly building a fan club at the New York Times. It must be one of those, “the enemy of my enemy, is my friend” kind of things since neither Roh or the New York Times cares much for President Bush. The latest NY Times article on North Korea is from Nicholas Kristof who has plenty of interesting things to say about
North Korea.
Send in the Fat Guys
A North Korean visiting
South Korea once sniffed that all the cars must have been brought in from around the country just to make a good impression for his visit. His South Korean host added dryly that it had been even more difficult to bring in all the tall buildings. Such interactions with the outside world are the best hope to chip away at North Korean totalitarianism, but we’ve missed the opportunity because for decades we’ve conspired with Kim Jong-il to isolate his people.Lately Americans have been quarreling over who is more to blame for
North Korea’s nuclear test, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Well, Mr. Clinton inherited a situation that, if it had continued, would have resulted in
North Korea having hundreds of nuclear weapons by now, and producing an additional 50 each year. Instead, Mr. Clinton negotiated a deal with
North Korea that resulted in it producing not a single ounce of new plutonium in his eight years in office.In contrast, President Bush inherited that North Korean nuclear freeze and, if he had just left it alone,
North Korea wouldn’t have produced any new plutonium. But Mr. Bush overruled Colin Powell’s efforts to continue the engagement and so
North Korea has churned out enough plutonium on Mr. Bush’s watch for perhaps eight nuclear weapons.
Of course Kristoff has to bring up the blame game of
Clinton had it right and Bush has it wrong. As I have said before
Clinton tried paying blackmail diplomacy in 1994 and it didn’t work partly because the North Koreans continued a covert nuclear program anyway because they need nuclear weapons for regime survival as well as for nationalistic reasons. The Clinton White House probably knew about it and that is why the two light water reactors they promised to build were never seriously constructed. Later the Bush Administration confronted the North Koreans on their covert program and the North Koreans even admitted to it and of course demanded more blackmail more bi-lateral diplomatic talks over the program.
But in a larger sense, the North Korean nuclear test and the fact that Kim Jong-il is still in power represent a failure not so much of either Mr. Bush or Mr. Clinton, but of decades of bipartisan American policy that aimed to isolate the North. Look around the world at the regimes we despise: North Korea, Cuba, Burma and
Iran. Those are among the world’s most long-lived regimes, and that’s partly because the sanctions and isolation we have imposed on them have actually propped them up by giving those countries leaders an excuse for their economic failures and a chance to cloak themselves in nationalism.
The North Koreans don’t need isolation as an excuse to blame foreigners for economic failures or to create more nationalism. Look at South Korea, the Asian Financial Crisis in the 90’s is called the IMF crisis in South Korea because the South Korean government blamed the IMF for the crisis thus in turn turn blaming the big, bad foreigners for the financial crisis instead of the government’s own backwards financial and banking policies that actually led to the crisis. To this day the people in
South Korea still believe foreigners are to blame for the Asian Financial Crisis in the 90’s. Nationalism is also as high as ever in South Korea when dealing with foreigners especially the Japanese and the
United States. I could write a book on the number of things Koreans blame the Japanese and the
United States for. Heck I could write a book on just the things Koreans blame “Low Quality Canadian English TeachersTM ” for much less the US and
Japan. Whether you engage or isolate the North Koreans it doesn’t matter, foreigners will still be scapedgoated for the North Korean regimes failures.
Kim Jong-il sees that the best way to preserve North Korean totalitarianism is in the formaldehyde of its own isolation. In effect, Mr. Kim has placed sanctions on his own country, and we’re abetting him.In the 1970’s, North Korea poked its head out of its shell, negotiating with
South Korea, seeking foreign investors and sending letters to Jimmy Carter seeking talks. Mr. Carter considered inviting the leaders of North and South Korea to a summit meeting at a place like
Camp David but dropped the idea when his own aides reacted with horror.Yet if we had held such a meeting, and gradually encouraged trade and other contacts,
North Korea’s regime might well have collapsed by now. At least, it would have moderated enough that the country would look like China or
Vietnam. I lived in China in the 1980’s and 1990’s when Communist ideology was collapsing there, and I’m convinced that the best way to undermine North Korea’s government would be to send in business executives overweight ones, if possible. In a country like
North Korea, where the government responded to famine by broadcasting a cautionary documentary about a man who exploded after eating too much rice, nothing would be more subversive than tubby foreigners.
The China example doesn’t work in Kim Jong-il’s case because the economic reforms put forward by Deng Xiaoping that have led to today’s current economic success didn’t happen until Mao was dead. Mao couldn’t completely open the country for fear the population would see his lies for what they were and revolt against him. Once he was dead new leaders could gradually open the country and as the population became more connected to the outside world any failures of the past would be Mao’s failures not the new leadership’s who were working to improve Chinese life. Much like
Mao, North Korea cannot open up to the outside world until Kim Jong-il is dead and a new leader can start with a clean slate and slowly open the country without fear of losing his head. Kim Jong-il will never completely open the country and anyone thinking otherwise is wasting their time trying to form policy around that belief.
Mr. Bush is right that we have to punish North Korea for its brazen nuclear test, and the administration has been sensible and prudent in the last few weeks in devising a series of penalties. But after
North Korea drags itself back to six-party talks, we should begin to move away from our long, failed strategy of trying to isolate the world’s most isolated country. In particular, it’s a mistake for us to reproach the South Koreans who have more of a stake than anybody, and who understand the North Koreans better than we do for operating factories in the Kaesong industrial zone in
North Korea. It’s true that those North Korean workers have no rights, and that
North Korea will use the hard currency to bolster its military. But those South Korean factories are expected to employ 700,000 workers by 2012.While North Korea can survive punitive sanctions, I don’t think the regime can survive the shock of having 700,000 of its citizens working for South Korean capitalists and realizing that the southerners are so rich and spoiled that they refuse to eat rice with gravel in it. The biggest threat to
North Korea’s regime isn’t from American warships, but from the sight of other Koreans dieting, or listening on iPods to love songs, or watching decadent television comedies.So let’s stop helping the Dear Leader isolate his own people.
First of all I find it interesting that people on the left will condemn western companies for operating sweat shops in Latin America for example, but when it comes to
North Korea they are willing to look the other way. Anyway, the majority of the people in South Korea don’t even support the current Uri government and more than likely a more conservative administration will be elected next year which may mean the end of the
Kaesong project all together, though I have my doubts. The Kaesong Industrial Zone was part of the Sunshine Policy that believed that economic engagement would be reawarded with better behavior from
North Korea and most importantly keeping the status quo on the peninsula so the economy could continue to surge. The economic projects with
North Korea was nothing more than a bribe for the North Koreans to behave so South Koreans can continue their own economic success. The North Koreans haven’t behaved and South Koreans feel betrayed some what by the North Koreans but as recent polls have shown more South Koreans blame the big, bad foreigners for the nuclear test than the North Koreans. South Koreans could care less about human rights and reunification with North Korea when their ability to own a Hyundai and take vacations to
Guam are threatened. Thus the current South Korean government believes the bribes need to continue and much like the American left, wishes the US government would just hurry up and pay off Kim Jong-il as well, so this would all just go away. HT: Florida Maschist
