PYONGYANG WATCH
A diss-service by self-righteous know-alls
By Aidan Foster-Carter

For some people, North Korea's very existence is an abomination. They simply find it insufferable that a state so antithetical to their values can exist on this Earth - or worse, make demands on the rest of us.

True, the "evil" part of George W Bush's infamous "axis of evil" tag is a no-brainer (though the "axis" bit is a non-starter). When Newsweek gave Pyongyang the palm as world's worst regime, I had no complaint. North Korea's horrors are hardly news - but still worth remembering as new data come in, and in case anyone (in Seoul, for instance) is tempted to play them down, misguidedly, in the quest for detente.

Yet I also support that quest for detente. I certainly don't see how any non-Korean has a right to try to stop Koreans from seeking reconciliation. And we can surely agree that North Korea is one tough nut to crack. As many an analyst has noted, in dealing with Pyongyang there simply are no good options.

The abominators beg to differ. No shades of gray for them: North Korea is vile, and they're apoplectic. True, behind all the growling they have no more clue than the rest of us on how actually to de-fang the beast. But they know whom they hate, and it isn't just Pyongyang. Those lily-livered deluded types who believe you can appease Kim Jong-il - buy him off, even - why, they're almost as bad as he is.

Take, for example, a sour little item in January 27's Asian Wall Street Journal, headed "The not so intelligent Kim". This bridled at any suggestion that Kim Jong-il might be in possession of a brain. No matter that the Dear Leader's brinkmanship looks to be running rings around Dubya currently. For the AWSJ, the fact that North Korea is "tottering on the brink of collapse" (can they be so sure?) suffices. Kim is a "nasty dictator ... brutal tyrant ... brutal [again], evil and duplicitous". Ergo, not intelligent.

All those epithets apply, but where does this shrill name-calling get us? Nautilus Institute's Peter Hayes neatly resolves this one: North Korea is tactically smart, but strategically dumb. That is smart analysis.

But the AWSJ is less concerned with analyzing than with anathematizing: "Praising the nasty dictator's mental faculties [is] in vogue among the appeasement camp at present." One such is Wendy Sherman, an ex-advisor to Bill Clinton. Cue for a sneer: "We're prepared to concede Kim may be somewhat smarter than the likes of Ms Sherman and all the other Clintonites he managed to string along for so long."

Ouch. It gets worse. AWSJ's other target is South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, no less, who called Kim Jong-il North Korea's "most intelligent" leader ever. Which, if you think about it, only means he's smarter than his dad. Cue a lofty little lecture: "Perhaps Kim Dae-jung has forgotten how Pyongyang's dictator almost managed to assassinate one of his predecessors" in the 1983 Yangon bomb incident.

Enough already. The non sequitur aside (what has murder to do with intelligence?), before some callow preppie in Hong Kong starts hectoring a Nobel Prize-winning statesman, he should know his history. Kim Dae-jung is no stranger to death. In 1950 the invading Korean People's Army arrested him, and he narrowly escaped execution. In 1973 his own government kidnapped him from Tokyo, and was about to kill him when the US got wind. In 1980 Chun Doo-hwan, himself the target in Yangon, would have hanged Kim had not the US again intervened. Forgiving as he is, DJ later invited Chun to his inauguration as president.

Ignorant or blinded by spite, the AWSJ just doesn't get what Kim Dae-jung is about. His whole aim is to end this vicious zero-sum idea that rivals have to be eliminated. Thanks to his and others' courage, South Korea is no longer like that. Kim's dream was to extend this to the whole of Korea: to reconcile.

A noble dream, but flawed in execution. Charges that the June 2000 North-South summit was preceded by a secret US$200 million payment to Pyongyang, made via Hyundai, must be a matter for dismay. But not for the AWSJ, which positively crowed at the news. More cocksure than ever, an editorial this Wednesday damned Kim Dae-jung as "a false prophet of peace", called his Nobel peace prize "wholly undeserved" and dismissed the entire Sunshine Policy as appeasement: nay, a "security-destroying peace charade".

That ugly phrase, barely English, could come straight from the North Korean news agency KCNA. Our next column will refute the substantive charges, and defend the Sunshine Policy. For now, let's focus on the tone. In Asia, need I say, tone counts. This isn't Texas or New York. In yer face is just not the Asian way. If you want to persuade, you go about it subtly, showing your adversary a modicum of respect.

Do the self-righteous hacks who pen this stuff really not hear how arrogant they sound? - and how this tone is liable to backfire? Two years ago, when George Bush (more subtly than this) dissed Kim Dae-jung in Washington, even Kim's enemies in Korea bristled. At a time when similar insensitivities have brought US-ROK relations to perhaps their lowest point ever, you'd think that sheer self-interest would prompt a tad more thought before rolling out the insults. Really, you wonder why they bother putting "Asian" in the title of the paper at all. The ugly American is alive and well: a preachy know-all, lecturing the lesser breeds for their failings - and as ever, doing his country's interests in Asia no good at all.

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