SPEAKING
FREELY 'Dissed' by Kim
Jong-il By Collin Baber
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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In the North Korean
version of Korean chess, the leader of the south
side of the chessboard is not allowed to be king
like on the north side, but is a piece of lesser
rank. Likewise, when South Korean president Roh
Moo-hyun traveled to North Korea to meet with his
counterpart, chairman Kim Jong-il for a bilateral
summit
this
week, he found himself treated as an inferior,
apparently unworthy of mutual respect.
Roh
had been clamoring for a summit with Kim for
years, and after a recent delay, was finally
granted the rare opportunity to go north before
the end of his presidential term. In an effort to
humanize his journey north, Roh walked across the
border, and after driving to Pyongyang, got out
and walked up to meet elder Kim, who stood still,
flanked by his tough-looking honor guard. From the
very beginning, the meeting was one where former
propaganda-writer and experienced film producer
Kim, played not host, but the director of a
special media narrative, using Roh to his maximum
advantage in one highly symbolic message: the son
of "eternal president" Kim Il Sung is the supreme
living Korean, not just to North Korea, but to
both Koreas.
Unlike South Korea, which
carries on the old survival technique of seething
passive-aggression while under the dominion of
more powerful entities, North Korea is brazenly
defiant beyond the point of starvation. Likewise,
where the wealthy South uses large sums of money
to wriggle free of its troubles, impoverished
North Korea relishes turning every meeting with
the outside into a confrontational scene to gain
the upper hand, as evidenced by the cultural clash
in the recent tour of its Potemkin capital,
Pyongyang.
For example, when Kim and Roh
were photographed together, Kim sat in the very
center of the seven-person lineup, which shows Roh
as an inferior off to his side, a technique eerily
reminiscent of how the People's Republic of China
forced a former South Korean president to use the
back entrance to the meeting hall when he went to
Beijing for a summit several years earlier.
As Roh is filmed touring the North's
libraries, computer centers, and cheering the
mass-choreographed, Arirang festival, the footage
will be shown to North Koreans as evidence of the
South's subordinate leader paying tribute and
homage to what they are taught is their superior
ideological system. Whatever financial incentive
was provided for Kim to host the extravagant
summit is playing to North Korea's propaganda
advantage, strengthening the legitimacy of the
militarist Kim cult and the chairman's tight
control over his people. Perhaps the South Korean
delegation will come back with commercial
opportunities, but at what cost to their nation's
reputation?
As the summit wraps up, the
North Koreans have proven once again that they
know how to prey strategically on the tactical
weaknesses of outsiders to achieve their own ends,
the effect of which keeps the brutal horror alive.
Collin Baber has an MA in
international commerce from Seoul National
University and lives in South Korea. He may be
reached at c_baber@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2007 Collin Baber.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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