Top diplomatic quote of 2008 (Rice): 'You’d have to be an idiot to trust the North Koreans'
Friday, January 2, 2009 Free Headline Alerts
By Donald Kirk
The year is ending with the confrontation of forces on the Korean Peninsula at their bitterest level since the 1990s when one North Korean negotiator talked of turning the South into “a sea of fire”. Although no one is predicting a second Korean war, dialogue is dead. The two Koreas are not talking to each other, and the South has suspended or cancelled virtually all aid to the North. The unsurprising failure of the six-party talks on terms for verifying North Korea’s claims to be disabling its nuclear complex at Yongbyon adds to the hopelessness surrounding the possibility of a permanent peace.
The standoff is heightened by the illness of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il. Official photos have not been convincing; he has not been shown in motion, on video, and isn’t receiving foreign visitors. The primacy given to military top brass, beneficiaries of Kim’s “military first” policy, helps to explain why North Korea seems willing to gamble on economic losses while appearing resolute against pressure from the South.
North Korea is ignoring the pleas of South Korean investors to resume normal access to the Kaesong industrial complex after sharply reducing the number of daily visitors and slashing the delivery service needed to carry products to markets in South Korea. The military people, calling the shots on behalf of Kim and his brother-in-law – who may have taken nominal charge – are believed to have been influential in reversing the trend towards free enterprise.
Pyongyang has also accused Seoul of plotting to assassinate Kim. The basis for this, according to North Korea, was the arrest of a man surnamed Ri after he crossed into the North carrying sensing devices.
Ri may have been trying to aid people escaping from North Korea, say South Korean activists, but it’s absurd to believe that he was trying to kill the “Dear Leader”, as claimed.
His arrest dramatises increasing efforts by South Koreans to rescue their North Korean brethren and to publicise human rights abuses.
South Korean President Lee Myungbak, in a sharp departure from the policy of his predecessors, has ordered his government to help sponsor a UN resolution decrying human rights abuses in the North.
The fact North Korea chose to make an issue of Ri’s arrest suggests a scheme to blame South Korean skullduggery whenever Kim finally dies. If the North could pin his death on a plot by the South, it would have the perfect pretext for building up its own power in the hope of inflicting punishment on the South.
Behind North Korean propaganda lies a need for a vast infusion of funds. Pyongyang has demanded that Lee endorse the joint communiqués that Kim signed with Kim Dae-jung in 2000 and with Roh Moo-hyun in 2007. The latter promises much-needed infrastructure. Lee is in no hurry to come through, however, while the North stonewalls aprotocol for verifying its claims to be getting rid of its nuclear weapons. U.S. envoy Christopher Hill has admitted that the latest talks failed because of North Korea’s refusal to authorise the removal of samples of materiel for independent scientific scrutiny.
As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice remarked recently: “You’d have to be an idiot to trust the North Koreans.” On that note, the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, his secretary of state, will pick up where President George W. Bush and Dr. Rice leave off.
They are expected to come up with a new formula, possibly including the prospect of a peace treaty to replace the Korean war armistice.
Let’s hope they aren’t so idiotic as to believe North Korea will abandon its nuclear programme without some major power shift that appears unlikely as long as Kim remains alive.