Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH: Shaking hands with an iron fist



	March 7, 2000	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH: Shaking hands with an iron fist
By Bradley Martin

As long-isolated Pyongyang tries to improve relations with old enemies and old friends alike, how will the internal human rights situation be affected?

The quest for new relationships in Europe, in particular, has aroused hopes of an accompanying increase in sensitivity to international concerns over the regime's treatment of its subjects. Encouraging in that regard was a report, during a ''dialogue'' last November with the European Union, that Pyongyang had issued a large-scale amnesty to mark the September 9 founding anniversary of the northern government.

The South's Yonhap news agency in a dispatch from Seoul a few days later quoted an unnamed diplomatic source as having reported the claim. But the source said the North Korean delegates, speaking with EU counterparts in Brussels, had given no details on the contents of the amnesty.

Rather, they had followed up with the assertion that the regime always works to enhance its people's rights. To bolster that claim, they had added that the country intended to join an international covenant banning gender discrimination; that United Nations human rights standards had been translated for domestic publication; and that a national judicial committee on juvenile rights had been established.

Sketchy as those remarks may have been, ''it's a big change for the North to have elaborated on its human rights situation'', said Yonhap's diplomatic source, attributing the change to Pyongyang's mounting concern over international criticism of its human rights record. (To understand part of the reason for such concern, recall North Korea's dismay at Nato's Kosovo intervention, which was justified on the basis of human rights.)

North Korea has continued its quest for better foreign relationships. Recent establishment of diplomatic relations with Italy was viewed as a milestone; previously no members of the Group of Seven industrialized countries had relations with Pyongyang. Australia, the Philippines. France, Taiwan and Japan are on the list of countries joining in the diplomatic dance. Last week Yonhap reported, based on remarks by one of its diplomatic sources, that Britain would be sending a working-level diplomatic mission to Pyongyang in April to talk about improving relations.

Various benefits are adduced. Chinese and Japanese representatives told a Nato security forum last month that improved Nato ties with North Korea would enhance stability in Asia. Choson Shimpo, organ of the Pyongyang-controlled General Association of Koreans in Japan, predicted that ''when the North builds diplomatic ties with more countries, the reunification through the confederal system will begin to take shape''. (The ''confederal'' system is North Korea's proposed one state-two systems solution to Korean division, about which the South is dubious to say the least.)

Meanwhile Pyongyang continues to work on positioning itself with Moscow and Beijing. On Wednesday the newly appointed head of North Korea's brand new Hong Kong Consulate General entertained at a reception at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Chosun Ilbo noted that Consul General Ri Do-sop is a heavy-hitter, having come from the ambassador's job in Thailand, North Korea's top diplomatic post in Southeast Asia. Pyongyang ''must consider Hong Kong extremely important to send such an important diplomat'', the Seoul daily said.

But with all the additional diplomatic activity Pyongyang Watch has seen no further reports of positive results in human rights terms. On the contrary, it appears that having more polite government-to-government relationships may be giving the regime added leverage to do as it pleases with - and to - its own people.

After all, outright enemies and long-time critics or detractors of a country don't hesitate to condemn its human rights violations - but countries that are in the process of improving diplomatic relations think at least twice before speaking their minds in such cases.

John Pomfret of The Washington Post seems to have gotten it right in a February 19 article reporting that the situation of North Korean refugees in China had worsened precisely because of Pyongyang's improved relations with other countries. The article quoted a United Nations official who lamented the ''total silence'' with which the international community greeted the forced repatriation of seven North Koreans who had fled to China and thence to Russia. (Their fate in North Korea is unknown, although reports suggest one or more may have escaped.)

''In most parts of the world the Americans would be outraged,'' the UN official continued. But the article quoted aid officials as saying foreign (read American?) officials' gratitude for progress on weapons issues had made them less eager to put pressure on North Korea regarding refugee issues.

Pyongyang has further plans to use diplomacy in ways that bode ill for starving or otherwise unsatisfied, or dissatisfied, citizens of North Korea who might wish to vote with their feet. These involve the country most interested in improved relations, South Korea, whose President Kim Dae-jung is pursuing a ''sunshine policy'' to try to lure the North into a peaceful relationship.

South Korean press reports quoted a unification policy official in Seoul as saying February 17 that North Korea had offered Seoul some secret reunions of families divided by the Demilitarized Zone - a hot-button issue in South Korea. In exchange, though, Seoul would have to agree to help Pyongyang deter the defection of North Koreans who have relatives in the South. That is a category that accounts for a large percentage of successful defections, since the Southern family members are often willing to pay large sums for agents to undertake daring rescue efforts.

The picture that emerges, then, is of a North Korean regime that's incorrigible in its determination to treat its subjects as it pleases and that will use diplomacy to that end. What to do?

Face the fact that dealing with human rights issues in the North will be a slow process, the South's President Kim advised last Sunday. ''Interest by the international community in North Korea's human rights conditions may have effect to some extent,'' he told an international conference on engagement policy toward the North. ''But it would be difficult to produce great results under any circumstances.''

Kim added that ''solving poverty is most important in terms of North Korean human rights. Dialogue with the West and wider investment must take place before one can expect improvement.''

That's probably a pragmatic and realistic assessment. but it's certainly a bitter pill for anyone in or out of North Korea who was hoping for a flowering of human rights as a result of all the current diplomatic activity.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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