北韩

As long as I'm not studying for my 听写 tomorrow, I might as well do something constructive instead of agonizing over how slow Facebook is in China. Before I go on though, I should say that this entry has very little to do with China, and most of it is actually rather depressing, so if you're just looking for more pictures and stories of my adventures in Beijing, it's probably a good idea to stop reading now.

I've been a little out of the loop in terms of US and world news lately, mostly because my internet is usually too slow or too restrictive to access news sites and because I can't read Chinese newspapers. So I was fascinated to read today that North Korea, as part of the six-party talks, has finally produced the nuclear declaration that was due at the end of last year. In exchange, the US has agreed to lift trade sanctions and remove North Korea from its list of countries that endorse terrorism. On the surface, this seems like rather good news; however, after looking into the matter a bit more, I discovered that the document is incredibly lacking, to the extreme that it might be doing more harm than good. As Donald Kirk writes in this Asia Times article, the document says very little about North Korea's uranium enrichment program and nothing at all about the plutonium produced for nuclear warheads at Yongbyon, nor does it mention North Korea's contribution to the proliferation of nuclear technology in the Middle East. Strikingly, the document does not mention the specific laboratories and facilities where nuclear research in North Korea is carried out. A little suspect, I would say.

And then there's the highly symbolic act of blowing up the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor for (almost amusingly) just one news network from each of the five other countries involved in the six-party agreement. I say "highly symbolic" because it really is just that--the cooling tower is just a cooling tower, and if I learned anything during my seminar about radiation and nuclear technology last year, it's that a cooling tower is not particularly difficult to (re)construct, compared to the rest of the reactor. On top of that, it's highly likely that North Korea has already used the plutonium generated at Yongbyon to build at least one, and probably more, nuclear warheads, whose whereabouts are completely unknown as of now. One pretty explosion should not be enough to appease those who are concerned about North Korea's entire nuclear program.

The politics are bad enough, but the cost of North Korean defiance in terms of human lives is a whole different monster. I read this particularly horrifying account of the torture and human experiments carried out at Camp 22, one of North Korea's largest concentration camps. Consider this quote by the former chief of management at Camp 22:

'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing. [...]
'At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.
'It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.'

It's striking to note that his "opinions" weren't originally his; both victims and officials are brainwashed to believe that Kim Jong-Il is a deity, while the poor and homeless are the enemy of the state. This is not to downplay the individual acts of cruelty that occur daily in North Korean concentration camps, but it points to a larger and more widespread source of the problem--namely, the country's travesty of a government. North Korea probably has one of the most repressive regimes in history, and yet the US government is willing to overlook its atrocities for the sake of diplomatic relations. This isn't sustainable--it won't work because it can't work. The right to survive and live freely is not and should not be a political issue. It's good and all that we're trying to rid North Korea of its nuclear program, but if it comes down to that or improving the living conditions of the common people, I think it's obvious which issue is more pressing. (Not that I believe the dichotomy will ever be that clear-cut, of course.)

So, 怎么办？ What to do? It's very hard to say, and if I had a good answer to that, the State Department would probably hire me today. But I have some suggestions, which generally fall under two categories: (1) short and long term relief for those who are suffering, and (2) bringing King Jong-Il's government to a long-awaited and absolute end. NGOs like LiNK, which both provide aid and work with government powers to make a tangible difference in North Korea, are doing an awesome job, but there are not nearly enough to help every starving and homeless person in the country. The governments of free nations should continue to provide food, ideally more than they're providing now, and make absolutely sure that the food goes directly to the people rather than through the government, which has a long history of clandestinely reallocating resources away from the people and to high ranking officials or the military. In addition, other nations, but the US in particular, need to stop being cheated by North Korean lies and funding the government when it is most desperate. Given the country's highly weak and unstable economy, applying even moderate, but firm and long-lasting, economic pressure is sure to topple to regime in the foreseeable future, as Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu and Joshua Stanton suggest in this article. Finally, we need to give the North Korean people a sense of unity and let them know that being discontent with the government is not just acceptable but necessary in their situation. It is, of course, implicit that we would actually have to act on our promises to support them if the time called for it.

As discouraging as things in North Korea may seem now, I believe there is real hope for change in the future. Even the recent nuclear declaration, as much as I feel the need to criticize it, is a small step in the direction of opening the country for intervention. The tiniest step forward is better than retreat. My goal, then, is not to make huge sweeping changes on my own, but to spread awareness and show every person I can that there is a reason to care.

Addendum 1: Thank you Carol for introducing me to OneFreeKorea. It has a host of interesting and well-written articles about the situation in North Korea, including several about the current six-party talks.

Addendum 2: I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post an entry like this on my Light blog, so if I'm not, and someone from the office reads this, please let me know. I'd be glad to move it elsewhere.