Asia Times: Refugees: A new McCarthyism


	April 5, 2002	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Refugees: A new McCarthyism
By Aidan Foster-Carter

The last two Pyongyang Watch columns focused - not obsessively, I trust - on the good Dr Norbert Vollertsen. One criticized him for badmouthing those who support engagement with North Korea. The other, while applauding his success in helping a few refugees to freedom, wondered about the price inflicted on the many left behind - and the overall effect of such stunts in helping or hindering progress with Pyongyang.

Someone who shares these worries is Thomas McCarthy, an agricultural development consultant who in that role has traveled frequently to North Korea. In an article titled "China and North Korean 'refugees'" - more on those quote marks later - on the ever-excellent Nautilus website, written before the "Spanish Embassy 25" put refugee issues firmly in the public eye, McCarthy voices concern at some themes of a conference on North Korean human rights held in Tokyo in February. Needless to say, Dr V was much in evidence, even then threatening to "create a flood" of refugees. Patently he means it.

McCarthy wants those who urge what he calls "less than fully thought-out humanitarian initiatives", and in particular efforts "to 'internationalize' migration issues on the China-North Korea border", to "reflect for at least a moment on the almost certain consequences of their actions". He goes on: "China is no more likely to tolerate this sort of international intervention than would the United States in, for example, Texas. At a minimum, China can simply tighten its borders with North Korea and refuse entry to would-be migrants or temporary workers, thereby solving everybody's 'refugee' problems. At worse [sic], it could also decide to ask the foreign NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and church groups that it has allowed to work in Yanbian [the ethnic-Korean district in Jilin province, abutting North Korea] to end their humanitarian and missionary work and leave the country. The clear losers would be the North Koreans living in border areas."

As a political prediction, that now sounds prophetic. McCarthy adds that all states control their borders, and China fears opening the floodgates. True. But he then switches gear from realpolitik, and tries to tell us that Beijing is really Mr Nice Guy. He's right that China is North Korea's main aid donor, but that, too, is surely realpolitik: they'd much rather be paid, but have given up trying. He also praises China for letting United Nations and NGO donors working in North Korea use China as a base - but is that a big deal? Surely Beijing can see that these agencies are helping stave off a collapse of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which is exactly its own aim.

But then McCarthy goes way over the top. He claims China has "allowed - and often actually facilitated" NGO and missionary groups working in its border areas. Grudgingly tolerated would be more like it. The picture I get, from all other sources, is more like what Perry Link of Princeton, writing in the New York Review of Books, in a brilliant metaphor calls "the anaconda in the chandelier". China today is far freer than before, but the limits are deliberately vague. You tread carefully, for fear the big snake might strike.

And strike it does. Outrageously, McCarthy claims China has "extremely tolerant policies" toward those whom (you may have noticed by now) he apes Beijing in refusing even to call refugees - except in those weasely quotation marks. Well, an Amnesty International report aptly named "Persecuting the Starving", and a host of press reports over several years detailing manifold abuses, tell a very different story. At best, China turns a blindish eye. But it reserves the right, and exercises it ever more often, to crack down mercilessly. For McCarthy to add that "China is no less concerned than [NGOs] about human suffering" is the last straw. Next up, he'll be telling us how much Beijing has done for those poor, backward folks in Tibet.

The best way to help North Korea, McCarthy says, is "admitting [it] to the World Bank and IMF" (International Monetary Fund). In fact, a country has to apply to join these bodies, which Pyongyang shows no sign of doing - because it would entail tiresome duties like publishing economic data. This is a red herring, but it reveals McCarthy's true colors - and an important split in the aid community. McCarthy is an insider, electing to work for change within the DPRK and its system. So perforce do UN bodies such as the World Food Program and the Children's Fund (UNICEF), plus the Red Cross and some NGOs. Others, such as Medecins Sans Frontieres and Oxfam, quit after deciding that the North Korean system is itself the problem. Still other NGOs and church groups work outside, along the border. No one has managed to keep working both within and without, although World Vision tried to for a while.

The trouble is that some insiders, who have to be diplomatic, dismiss border NGOs as troublemakers; while the latter riposte that the former are bureaucrats aiding Kim Jong-il, not his people. Yet to me both internal and external aid is valid, indeed complementary. Sure, if North Korea ever gets a sensible farm system, refugee flows would stop. But until then, these people need and deserve help. Above all, basic human rights entitle them to be called refugees. Sociologically, true cross-border migration is complex.

Most North Koreans entering China seek food and/or work, but their desperation deserves better than that other weasel-word, "economic migrant". And once they are caught, repatriated and brutalized, hunger breeds anger and they flee again - this time for keeps. But Thomas McCarthy would rather we didn't make a fuss about all that - whereas Norbert Vollertsen wants to open the floodgates. Can't we find some middle ground here?

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