An elusive new face for North Korea
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - United States think-tankers risk giving the impression of having
stepped from another planet as they meditate on ways to pull the North Korean
economy from the brink of another famine and to bring the North into viable
economic and security relationships with surrounding countries.
With North-South dialogue at a standstill and North Korea demanding immense
payoffs for every agonizing move it makes to disable its nuclear complex at
Yongbyon, they talk earnestly of ways of persuading the North to clean up its
act and generally behave.
"It's becoming apparent that the regime has not made the decision to reform
economically," said David Hawk of the National
Endowment for Democracy, a well-endowed private tank that relies on
appropriations from the US Congress. He added, however, that he believed "human
rights should come up in all talks" - all, that is, except for negotiations on
North Korea's nukes.
An author of studies on North Korean human rights, Hawk spoke of North-South
Korean working groups, of economic and social issues that might come up, of
development "from the bottom up" and funding from ethnic Koreans abroad - as if
any of these ideas had a chance in the current North-South atmosphere.
He and others who inhale the rarefied hot air of Washington think-tanks seemed
oblivious to the North-South standoff that has worsened with the killing on
July 11 of a 53-year-old South Korean housewife as she wandered beyond the
tightly circumscribed limits to which tourists are confined in the Mount
Kumkang tourist zone on the east coast above the North-South line.
"Is there a case for economic cooperation by ethnic Koreans that could be
guaranteed by the governments of the five countries?" Hawk asked, meaning
China, the US, Russia, Japan and South Korea, the other five countries in the
six-party talks.
As Hawk and others considered such notions, South Korean officials expressed
doubts about North Korea's report on the killing of the tourist in the Kumkang
zone and demanded much more information about it. North Korea, standing fast
against appeals for cooperation, has demanded an "apology" from the South for
the tourist's strolling out of bounds.
The killing came after months of North Korean denunciations of the conservative
President Lee Myung-bak's hard-line policies - and refusal of his suggestion
for dialogue until he has agreed to abide by the agreement reached last October
between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Lee's presidential predecessor, Roh
Moo-hyun, in October. The agreement includes pledges to develop a "peace
regime" that South Korean conservatives see as a trap for extending North
Korean control.
Hawk spoke at a forum at the National Democracy Foundation, a conference
focusing on the extent to which North Korea's record on human rights should be
a consideration in providing economic aid.
Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International
Economics, suggested at the forum the desirability of money going into North
Korea "in ways that minimize the state's ability to take a cut". That remark
was presumably a rejoinder to Hawk's suggestion of a steady flow of remittances
from abroad. However, he neglected to explain how to keep the regime out of the
process. Neither Noland nor Hawk thought to note that Koreans living in Japan
have been sending money to North Korea for years, all for the benefit of the
North Korean state, not individual recipients.
" ... Even nominally private exchanges are monopolized by military or state
organizations," said Noland, author of books and papers on the North Korean
economy. According to Noland, ventures that depend on South Korean private
enterprise, such as the Mount Kumkang tourist zone or the Kaesong economic zone
beside the truce village of Panmunjom, "may or may not have broader impact".
Still, Noland insisted it was "important to avoid a top-down approach" and
"emphasize development and engagement by the private sector" in a process that
would encourage market forces.
The only clue Noland gave as to how to reach this goal was for one of the
"working groups" formed under the aegis of the six-party talks to "transfer to
a broader economic agenda" and "not degenerate into a mechanism providing
resources of the socialist state".
Just how North Korea could be persuaded to go along with such a "transfer" was
left unmentioned.
Nicholas Eberstadt, economist at the American Enterprise Institute and also the
author of books and studies on North Korea, introduced a note of realism into
the discussion by apparently ruling out the possibility of aid going into
private coffers or supporting bottom-up development.
"If we are to promote human rights, we need to have muscularly intrusive aid,"
he said, raising a scenario that would require a major overhaul of the North
Korean system.
In view of the existing circumstances, Eberstadt suggested withholding all aid
in the same spirit in which the US stopped providing economic aid for South
Korea after Park Chung-hee seized power in a coup in 1961.
"The US threat of cutting off American assistance led to the rise of South
Korea economically," he said. "Strategic non-lending means withholding of
resources if it seems the outlook is going in the wrong direction."
Eberstadt made the link to human rights, asking, "Will human rights be improved
by providing resources or making resources more difficult to obtain?"
His own answer was perhaps, adding that "We should think about contract
enforcement" conditioned on human rights. This is yet another impossible goal
considering that North Korea refuses to discuss human rights problems at all.
More practically, Eberstadt said one form of technical assistance might focus
on training people outside North Korea in such areas as law and commerce -
albeit, he said, "not nuclear physics".
Probably no Washington think-tanker has been quite so divorced from reality of
late, at least in public utterances, as Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings
Institution.
In a recent commentary he held up Vietnam as an example of "what might a
reformed North Korea look like". North Korea today "is about where Vietnam was
in the late 1970s", he wrote, but "that former US enemy has restructured its
economy and begun to open its society and politics while retaining communism as
official dogma".
O'Hanlon did not find it necessary to mention that Vietnam did not begin this
process until conquering South Vietnam in a protracted war. Nor did he show any
awareness of the immense economic power of capitalist South Korea - or the
fears engendered among South Koreans by the idea that unification might happen
on any terms remotely acceptable to North Korea.
"Vietnam has proved that a more gradual path to reform can work for all
concerned, including the US and its regional allies," O'Hanlon wrote.
But another factor he failed to mention in Vietnam's economic evolution is a
transition of leadership - something no one is forecasting for North Korea.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
