Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH


	December 22, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Looking forward, looking back
By Aidan Foster-Carter

The turn of a year is conventionally a season for reflection: looking back over the 12 months just past, to draw pointers and make resolutions for the year ahead. I find this a useful exercise - not that I ever keep the resolutions. This year, as ever, top of the list is ridding my house of half a century of paper, the bulk of it on Korea. What hope is there for a guy who can't bear to throw away a single word by Kim Jong-il?

For a columnist, reflection is especially valuable. In the everyday rush of turning out a regular column, inevitably the tendency is to focus on immediate events - with the obvious risk of losing the wood for the trees. So this is a chance to pause for a moment, and look back on some of the earlier events and broader trends in a year of Pyongyang-watching: my first full year of writing this column for Asia Times Online.

It's rather startling to realize that, by my calculations, this is my 61st column this year, and 75th overall since Pyongyang Watch began in September 2000. Though I've written for a living for several years, this is my first weekly column since student journalism long ago. The routine is quite demanding, especially dovetailing it with travel and other commitments. Yet I value it very much. It's especially good to know this column is read in Pyongyang, at least by expatriates. As I write from outside (but watch this space), feedback is always welcome. It would be nice to get some from North Koreans, too. Maybe in 2002?

Contrary to what many think, there's no shortage of material. Each week my problem is rather what topic to choose out of several. North Korea's efforts to remain a hermit kingdom spur on others to fill the gaps; and its silence only ensures their versions go unchallenged. Let us hope 2002 will be the year they ditch this obsessive secrecy as self-defeating. For starters, economic numbers - any numbers - would be nice.

Let's hope also for a year of progress, to make up ground lost in 2001. This year began so well. On top of busy inter-Korean dialogue, we had Kim Jong-il's business-oriented trip to Shanghai and strong hints of change. Surely reform was just around the corner? As the year closes, it still is. On the North-South front, the Northern nuclear delegation that slipped quietly into Seoul last weekend is a hopeful sign. But this is under the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) multilateral consortium, and it remains to be seen when bilateral dialogue will resume. We're not quite back to Square 1, as private and business links continue. But compared with the euphoria after June 2000's summit and all the activity that followed, 2001 was a major and tragic step backward.

Blame Bush? Yes, but not alone. Philosophers distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions. A tougher United States was a handy excuse for Pyongyang to freeze the peace process, but no good reason. Since Washington post-September 11 is not about to get sweeter, in 2002 North Korea should try a more subtle tack. Being nice to Seoul is a better way to lure South Korea away from the US - and to get President George W Bush's attention. Conversely, in the present climate, squaring up to the superpower would be dangerous brinkmanship.

Peace and reform remain the two key issues. On the latter, we looked regularly - and will continue to do so - at North Korea's economy, or what is left of it. There were a few bright spots, such as information-technology (IT) joint ventures with Southern dotcoms. But most was gloom. Refusing reform renders the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) dependent on food aid, which will be less forthcoming in future. On opening for foreign business, sprigs of hope were balanced by a continuing saga of misbehavior. The year ends with the same ambivalence. The current Far Eastern Economic Review finds signs of change, and I hope it's right. But North Korea has just launched yet another old-style economic campaign, called Ranam: yet again hectoring everyone to work miracles, and make something out of nothing except loyalty. This is a con: there is no cure without capital and markets. The Dear Leader's pet fads, such as ostriches and catfish, are equally no substitute for real economic reform.

No doubt all this is hotly debated behind closed doors in smoke-filled Pyongyang rooms. DPRK politics remains the most opaque area of all. We got a rare glimpse in May, in the weird episode of Kim Jong-il's son and heir Kim Jong-nam being caught at Narita with a false passport, en route (he said) to Disneyland with his family. You couldn't make it up, could you? Yet with Dad's 60th and Grandpa's 90th birthdays due for celebration in the next four months with the usual pomp and circumstance, might baby Kim - already running the DPRK's IT program - be forgiven this peccadillo and duly anointed heir apparent? We'll see.

Better, there are hints of a reshuffle in September promoting younger technocrats. Yet how many times have you heard that before? It's far from the first time I've written it. In 2002, we need more than hints - and a decisive break from the old game of one step forward two steps back, where we end up applauding tiny steps that in fact make no real progress, but merely recover ground lost in the last retreat. Might North Korea really change next year? We live in hope - and for the triumph of hope over experience.

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