WASHINGTON - United States President George W Bush has resurrected the issue of
North Korea's record on human rights at a time when he had appeared to have
completely reversed the hard line of his first term toward Pyongyang.
Bush, stopping off in Seoul en route to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing
Summer Olympic Games on Friday, unexpectedly introduced the human rights factor
into the equation of bargaining with North Korea after years of avoidance of
the issue in six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
US negotiators have always shied away from a hint of concern about the North's
human rights record, knowing full well that North
Korea not only denies abuses but might well walk out of talks if the issue
arose.
North Korea's record on human rights may not be a deal-breaker when it comes to
removing North Korea from the US list of terrorist nations. It is easy to
argue, as American diplomats have done, that such abuses are "an internal
problem", not a reason to label North Korea as a nation that spreads terror
elsewhere.
Nonetheless, Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia
and the Pacific and the lead US negotiator on North Korea's nukes, signaled a
change in the US approach toward human rights in North Korea when he told a
congressional hearing in Washington on July 31 that the US was now going to
raise human rights in talks with the North. With uncharacteristic bluntness,
Hill told the US Senate armed services committee that North Korea's human
rights record had been "abysmal" and the daily suffering of the North Korean
people was "an unacceptable continuation of oppression".
It was against this background that Bush, after meeting South Korea's President
Lee Myung-bak, observed that "human rights abuses inside the country still
exist and persist".
This kind of talk will surely upset the North Koreans. The topic is especially
sensitive in the aftermath of the wanton shooting by North Korean guards of a
South Korean female tourist who had wandered outside the area to which tourists
are confined in the Mount Kumkang tourist zone above the line between the two
Koreas. Bush made the link by expressing condolences over the woman's death and
calling for renewed dialogue between the two Koreas.
North Korea is sure to view such remarks as interference in its internal
affairs. The North has attacked South Korea for questioning its version of
events and demanding a joint investigation. Well before the woman's death, the
North had cut off inter-Korean dialogue. US sympathy and support for South
Korea in this case will deepen North-South divisions and outrage the North's
Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.
Bush, in Beijing, is likely to press for China's cooperation in demanding full
verification of whatever North Korea says it is doing to comply with agreements
reached in six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. He may also not miss a
chance to pursue the human rights issue. Human rights advocates have long
demanded that China stop labeling North Korean defectors as "economic
migrants", sending them back to North Korea whenever they catch them, and treat
them instead as refugees from a harsh regime.
North Korea, however, has reason to hesitate before going into another round of
recriminations. Hunger is worsening and disease is spreading again, according
to the latest reports from the World Food Program and others attempting to
alleviate North Korea's suffering.
North Korea, while Bush was in Seoul, announced the arrival of a US vessel
carrying 23,000 tons of corn - a small portion of the 500,000 tons of emergency
food aid promised by the US.
It would doubtless be too optimistic to say that North Korea is so deeply in
need of relief for its starving people as to want to give in to demands for
verification as a guarantee of removal from the US list of terrorist nations
and lifting of US trade sanctions.
Until that happens, however, North Korea remains a charter member of Bush's
"axis of evil" - a reminder of a crisis that never seems to end. The allusion
to the North's human rights record reinforced what appears to have been a
conscious US decision to raise the stakes in the great bargaining game over
North Korea.
How else to explain Bush's remark that he still sees North Korea as a member of
the "axis of evil" - the infamous phrase that he used in his state of the union
speech in January 2002, linking North Korea with Iran and Iraq? But he left no
doubt he is going to view North Korea that way until or unless the North caves
in on rules for verifying that it is getting rid of its nuclear weapons.
True, Bush refrained from using the negative terms that he'd tossed out early
in his presidency when he remarked how little he trusted North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il - and characterized him as "evil". Nonetheless, standing beside
South Korea's conservative President Lee, avoiding the use of the Dear Leader's
name, Bush said "the North Korean leader is going to have to make certain
decisions" if he hoped "to get off the list, the axis of evil list".
Considering that the US and North Korea had overcome some of their differences,
with Pyongyang making a show of having disabled the main components at its
nuclear complex at Yongbyon, one can only view these remarks as a startling
step backward.
The question is whether Bush was engaging in brinksmanship, if not rhetoric, in
his remarks or whether he is prepared finally to have North Korea removed from
the State Department's list of nations sponsoring terrorism. The message is
that if North Korea fails to come through with a coherent and credible deal for
verifying all that it has said it is doing to abandon its nukes, then North
Korea stays on the list.
It's not just that US officials are skeptical as to whether North Korea has
done away with the facilities at Yongbyon while hiding its program for
fabricating nuclear weapons with plutonium at their core.
Severe doubts arise as to whether North Korea has fully declared the amount of
weapons-grade plutonium it has produced since the breakdown six years ago of
the 1994 Geneva agreement, and North Korea still refuses to acknowledge an
entirely separate program for developing nukes with enriched uranium.
Bush spoke about uranium and human rights almost in the same breath - something
he has never done previously. He was "concerned about North Korea's human
rights record" and "concerned about the uranium enrichment".
Ever so politely, Bush got around to what South Korea might do for the US in
the Middle East in exchange for US support against the North. Might South Korea
return some troops to Afghanistan, from which it withdrew a small medical
contingent last year after the abduction of 23 members of a Korean church
group, two of whom were killed?
He was asking, he said, for "as much non-combat help as possible".
The language suggested that Bush's show of bluntness may have had a secondary
purpose, in addition to bringing the North to terms on the nuclear issue. Bush
also hoped to mollify South Korean fears about the US cozying up to the North
in recent diplomatic talks, just as North-South confrontation deepens in a time
of vitriolic exchanges and intimidation.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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