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Rights out of focus as science
blinds
By David Scofield
Kim Jong-il leaps from the nuclear closet
and the world reacts with rapt attention. Even
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's
personal envoy to North Korea, former Canadian
diplomat Maurice Strong, has indicated that
Pyongyang's withdrawal from the six-party talks
and declared nuclear arsenal is "a very real bump
in the road" - a departure from last spring when
he optimistically declared that Kim Jong-il wants
"a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula".
As has been repeated by foreign ministers
and editorial writers the world over, this sort of
portentous tactic is not new for Kim and crew.
Before previous meetings, North Korea's
negotiators invariably create or exacerbate an
issue of obvious intractability, making demands
they know are untenable. This is followed by a
flurry of political rhetoric concerning the
nefarious designs of the imperialists (the United
States, Japan and, depending on the mood of the
day, South Korea), often with some reference to
nuclear perdition ("sea of fire" being a perennial
favorite). Then with much hand-wringing the North
Korean side "acquiesces", stepping back from the
demand, lobbing the ball back in its opponent's
court. A concession is offered (South Korea is on
the verge of shipping a record 500,000 tons of
fertilizer to North Korea, despite US objections)
and the talks are back on - a well-worn script.
The parties to the talks are North Korea, South
Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US.
Pyongyang's nuclear acknowledgment last
week was, true to form, followed by a demand by
North Korean Deputy Ambassador Han Sung Ryol for
bilateral negotiations with the United States,
declaring the six-party talks "no more". That has
been softened, the six-party talks again
"possible" if the US agrees to withdraw its troops
from South Korea, a recurrent demand. However,
elevating the nuclear issue serves another,
perhaps more important function for Kim's clique.
It serves as a distraction to shunt issues of
gross human-rights violations, the real threat to
Kim's grip on power, further down the agenda.
The nuclear issue is divisive since there
is nothing close to regional consensus on how best
to tackle it, and Kim knows this. A January 25
editorial in the Taipei Times includes a reference
to a Chinese Communist Party press directive from
last September in which President Hu Jintao
stated, "When managing ideology, we have to learn
from Cuba and North Korea. Although North Korea
has encountered temporary economic problems, its
policies are consistently correct."
During
a talk before an audience at the World Affairs
Council in Los Angeles en route to the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting
last November, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun
stated, "North Korea professes that nuclear
capabilities are a deterrent for defending itself
from external aggression ... It is true and
undeniable that there is a considerable element of
rationality in North Korea's claim," while
"North"-leaning academics in the United States and
elsewhere talk of "narrowing" the nuclear issue,
advocating a more myopic approach addressing only
the most salient elements of the nuclear program:
the Yongbyon nuclear complex and what remains of
8,000 spent fuel rods.
Greater global
attention to myriad human-rights atrocities
comprises the thinnest edge of a wedge that could
pry Kim from the helm of power. But that is
unlikely as long as he keeps the world's attention
focused squarely on his nuclear program. That his
nukes exist is not news; that he's chosen now, in
the immediate "pre-talk" period, to declare them
is true to form. Last week's meeting between
Michael Green, senior director for Asia at the
National Security Council, and Chinese President
Hu in Beijing concerning North Korea's export of
uranium hexafluoride to Libya strongly suggested
North Korea's imminent "willingness" to resume the
six-way talks Pyongyang has refused to attend
since last September.
Fueling the nuclear
crisis will give support to those in the region
and Washington who believe that the nuclear issue
must be the only agenda item in future talks, a
position that guarantees a prolonged series of
discussions, continued and expanded aid packages,
with countless concessions and incentives eagerly
proffered at any hint of progress. It also assures
that the world's worst single violator of human
rights will continue his stranglehold on the
country, as eager appeasers trumpet progress in
disassembling inconsequential facets of Kim
Jong-il's bifurcated nuclear program.
Now
that Kim has shouted what only the most willfully
naive or the grossly uniformed would be surprised
to hear, calls for increased engagement and a
package of inducements, including a non-aggression
pact and fuller diplomatic recognition, will be
sure to follow, as was likely calculated.
Elevating the nuclear issue creates a
convenient distraction from the leadership's
depraved indifference to the suffering and death
and its citizens. Ongoing human atrocities will
likely receive less attention as the world and
region play along with Kim's choreographed nuclear
crisis. Compelling regional and global will to
address Kim's entire nuclear program firmly will
always be a hard sell. In pushing for transparent,
verifiable agreements to end North Korea's nuclear
programs, the United States is largely alone,
which is exactly why Kim has refocused the nuclear
issue so acutely. Nukes can be "negotiated" away,
at least in theory, but the senseless starvation
of as many as 3 million people, the torture and
summary execution of hundreds of thousands, and
other atrocities by this most dysfunctional of
systems are far harder to negotiate away,
presenting a far greater threat to the Kim dynasty
than the nuclear program.
The Seoul-based
Commission to Help North Korean Refugees reported
that according to recent refugee testimony, 70
defectors freshly repatriated by Chinese
authorities were publicly executed as a warning to
others who might seek to flee Kim's "worker's
paradise". Last week, Suzanne Scholte, president
of the Defense Forum Foundation in Washington,
issued an English translation of a hand-written
fax sent to the South Korea's largest daily, the
Chosun Ilbo, by an anonymous North Korean official
in Beijing. The letter details the corruption and
cronyism that are growing within Kim's tortuous
system: "As a hopelessly corrupted country, North
Korea is accelerating toward its final
destruction," the letter states. "Kim Jong-il's
cruelty has worsened in desperation to preserve
his power. Torture and executions became more and
more common ..."
This comes at a time of
more and more stories of nascent opposition within
North Korea, including smuggled video evidence
documenting anti-Kim graffiti in the country's
impoverished northern cities.
Such reports
and other evidence are always impossible to verify
independently. But the sheer volume of reports is
certainly unprecedented, suggesting far greater
underground activity and the potential for
increased instability within the regime.
Of course, these embryonic movements are
unlikely to develop as long as Kim remains firmly
in control of the nation's institutions, most
specifically the military (see Ruling North Korea means ruling
its army). The efficacy of Kim's rule and the
strength of his regime rest on his ability to
secure the resources necessary not only to satisfy
the appetites of the military, but also to ensure
that all channels of trade, legal and otherwise,
remain open, ensuring the nation's highest strata
of elite continue to profit. "Progress" in the
nuclear talks and South Korea's willingness to
reward such advances lavishly, regardless of how
ephemeral, ensures Kim's position and fortifies
his draconian rule; a renewed international focus
on the nation's human-rights situation likely to
have the opposite effect.
North Korea is a
top-down problem. Only when the human impediment
to peace is removed will the peninsula and the
region be able to take the first steps toward
verifiable nuclear disarmament and the
emancipation of the northern half of the Korean
Peninsula.
David Scofield,
former lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace
Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently
conducting post-graduate research at the School of
East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield,
United Kingdom.
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