Asia Times: The Koreas


	May 31, 2002	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
A menace at home and abroad
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Our last column A rogue by any other name began a lengthy task: to enumerate all the manifold ways that North Korea gives cause for concern. Starting with the scary stuff - nuclear, chemical and biological weapons (CBW), lumped collectively as weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - we went on to terrorism (not very guilty, lately) and conventional force issues, plus the lack of any formal peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

That just about wraps up the military side, bar one. At sea, North Korea is a persistent provocateur. In 1996 and again in 1998, mini-submarines ran aground off South Korea. In 1999 and again in 2001, Japan chased suspected DPRK spyboats - and sank one. In a brief 1999 battle, South Korea, too, sank an intruding KPA patrol boat; but in summer 2001 the South Korean navy were ordered to hold fire while Northern merchant ships cheekily took illicit shortcuts through Southern waters. What are they playing at?

But if security threats are the main worry about North Korea, they are far from the only one. A whole range of behaviors, of which any self-respecting state would be ashamed, make the contentious term "rogue state" fully justified in this instance. The DPRK has long been a law unto itself and a menace both at home and abroad. We'll start with the latter, in an alphabetical litany of offenses.

A is for abductions. North Korea kidnaps people, or used to. Mainly South Koreans: fishermen by the hundreds down the years, plus thousands of POWs who didn't come home in 1953. Seoul makes oddly little fuss about this abuse of its citizens, for fear it may cloud President Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine" policy. Japan, by contrast, puts the much murkier abduction of a dozen or so Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s at the top of its agenda with Pyongyang - which guarantees that talks always fail. A recent case has revealed the first hard evidence of guilt, so Tokyo is not about to let go. Can Pyongyang own up, or a face-saver be found?

B is for borrowing - and not paying back. North Korea pretty much invented the Third World debt crisis back in the 1970s, when it reneged on a pile of loans to Western states and banks. First in, and last out. Others renegotiated, but since 1984 Pyongyang hasn't paid a penny. Result: no more credit. The banks are clear that this is a unique case. Others couldn't pay; but the DPRK just wouldn't - and now it can't.

C is for crime. North Korea makes money any way it can. For 30 years DPRK diplomats have been caught all over the world smuggling anything from duty-free booze and cigarettes to gold, ivory, whatever. They even literally make money: US money, that is. From Mongolia to Macau to Thailand, Pyongyang operatives have been caught passing "super 100" fake $100 bills, which it's assumed they manufacture. As part of all this, D is for drugs. A US Congressional report lists 41 seizures during 1976-99. Here, too, North Korea is thought to make, as well as sell, narcotics ranging from amphetamines to heroin. On the basis of hauls from DPRK ships, Tokyo regards its neighbor as the main source of drugs entering Japan.

A, B, C, D: On this score sheet, how can you not call North Korea a rogue state? By its actions in many spheres over many years, this is a regime that exhibits only contempt for international law and civilized norms. (This, by the way, is the real meaning of juche - not self-reliance, just sheer yobbish egotism.)

If Kim Jong-il despises the rest of us, does he treat his own people any better? Let the alphabet continue. E is for emigres: thousands of refugees driven by hunger into China, some of whom are now bolting into Western embassies in bids for freedom. Maltreated by most governments, but backed by tenacious NGOs, these North Koreans are a standing - and a growing - reproach to Kim Jong-il. As to why they flee: F is for famine. Leave aside nukes and CBW: North Korea's deadliest WMD so far is its criminally stupid farm policies, which needlessly killed up to 2 million people in an apocalypse that never should have happened. Bar a few small concessions, Pyongyang is still resisting sensible agrarian and wider reforms.

G is for gulag, H is for human rights. If Kim Jong-il coldly lets even his loyal subjects starve to death, you can imagine how "enemies of the people" fare. No need to imagine: we have North Korean gulag memoirs, telling a tale just as horrible as under Stalin or Mao - but going on right now. And how does the fatherly leader look after children? I is for infants - which is what North Korean 7-year-olds look like. They're 20 centimeters shorter than in South Korea and weigh an average 16 kilograms as against 26 kilograms in the South.

J for justice, anyone? Let's close with K for Korea: a once beautiful land, defiled and destroyed by Kims Sr and Jr as never before. Bombastic slogans, carved deep into mountains, will last forever. Flattening hillocks and corners, so landlords can never find their old homes, rapes ancient and cherished landscapes - not to speak of feng shui - out of sheer spite. More serious is killing the soil with chemicals, deforesting hills and polluting rivers and seas. North Korea is an ecological disaster - as well as every other kind.

That's about it. No wonder Newsweek magazine last year named North Korea as the worst state in the world. It's unique, and intolerable, for a regime to foul up quite so dangerously and comprehensively. But what's to be done about it? And by whom? And how? I see no easy answers. We'll try to crack that nut another time.

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