Are hostages N. Korea's most lucrative export?
Monday, August 17, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON Ñ The return home of Hyundai Asan technician Yoo Seong-jin after 137 days in captivity in North Korea, like that of the two American journalists whom former United States president Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang to bring home to America, raises enormous questions.
What was the real price paid for Yoo's return on Thursday? What kind of deal did the Hyundai Asan chairwoman, Hyun Jeong-eun, make during her visit to Pyongyang? Clearly, North Korea wanted more than an apology for such a display of mercy.
These questions also arose after Clinton picked up the Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, held in Pyongyang for 140 days after North Korean soldiers seized them as they were filming a documentary on North Korea's Tumen River border with China on March 17.
Ling, Lee and Yoo had powerful interests on their side. In the case of Ling and Lee, they had their savior to carry them home after they had been sentenced to 12 years of "hard labor" for "illegal entry" and "hostile acts". The Hyundai Asan technician, detained in the Kaesong Economic Complex inside North Korea about 64 kilometers north of Seoul, had the powerful support of the company responsible for building the complex as well as the Mount Kumkang tourist zone.
The cases were different but had much in common, in terms of the affront to North Korean authority that all three represented as well as the responses of American and South Korean officials.
The Hyundai Asan technician, described as a boiler mechanic in charge of a snack bar for North Korean workers, had evidently been flirting with a North Korean waitress, suggesting she flee North Korea and join him in the South. A North Korean official was quoted by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, as saying that he had "slandered" the North Korean system, meaning he had assured her that life in the South with him would be far nicer than her existence in the North.
Like Bill Clinton's wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, South Korean officials were quick to say that Yoo's release would have no impact on South Korea's policy toward the North. A spokesman for the Blue House, the center of presidential authority in South Korea, said the government would "maintain its policy consistency toward North Korea", and a spokesman for the ruling Grand National Party saw the outcome as the result of the South's "consistent principle-based policy".
The sense is unavoidable, though, that with the releases North Korea is shifting course toward a more conciliatory line, as it has done so often over the years of crisis and near-crisis. Certainly the homecoming of the Hyundai Asan worker suggested that North Korea had no desire to jeopardize the output of some 100 South Korean factories producing light industrial products in the Kaesong complex.
Then again, despite denials, it is always possible that the Hyundai Asan chairwoman, Hyun Jeong-eun, waiting all week in Pyongyang in hopes of a meeting with Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, intimated a willingness to go along with North Korean demands for more rent and higher pay for the 30,000 workers in the complex - money which goes straight into North Korean coffers, not to the workers.
Hyun surely would have liked to come to an understanding that would benefit her interests in North Korea as well as those of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. Aside from concern about the Kaesong complex, she may have also sought resumption of tours to Mount Kumkang, the complex on the eastern side of the peninsula into which her company has invested more than U.S.$1 billion.
Tours were suspended more than a year ago after North Korean soldiers shot and killed a South Korean woman who had wandered outside the tourist area to watch the sunrise.
North Korea's apparent softening of attitudes may have been influenced by another far greater consideration - pressure from China to show signs of reconciliation after months of rising confrontation with both South Korea and the United States.
China may not be fully in line with the U.S. in enforcing the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council two weeks after North Korea exploded its second nuclear "device" on May 25. However, the Chinese have blocked exports to North Korea of strategic materiel needed for its nuclear program and are cooperating on stifling the activities of a tiny bank through which U.S. Treasury officials say North Korean state companies were selling North Korean missiles.
The Korean Kwangson Banking Corporation, with an office in Dandong, the large Chinese city across the Yalu River from the North Korean city of Sinuiju, has been identified as a prime suspect for expediting sales of arms to Myanmar and other countries.
The blacklisting of the bank by the U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday automatically freezes any accounts held by the bank in the U.S. and also bars American firms, or any firm doing business with them, from dealing with the bank. It may also compromise the wheeling and dealing that goes on in Dandong between Chinese and North Korean traders who go back and forth every day.
The U.S. sees action against the bank as part of a continuum of events showing broad adherence to put pressure on North Korea to soften its line and return to the six-party talks on its nuclear program, which it has renounced.
The bait may be a "broad comprehensive package" that Kim Jong-il is believed to have presented to Bill Clinton during a meeting that went on for more than three hours, including a state dinner. Clinton has not said he entered into negotiations during what the U.S. keeps saying was a "private visit", but somehow the North Koreans got the impression he and they had reached what Pyongyang's Korean Central News agency called a "consensus of views".
United States strategy seems to rest on mingling toughness with interest in finding a formula or a setting for the two-way dialogue that North Korea wants with the U.S. and only the U.S.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is delighted to cite evidence of the effectiveness of UN sanctions, such as India's boarding last week of a North Korean vessel in its waters. The vessel was believed to have been laden with something to do with missiles if not the missiles themselves. "These sanctions are tight," said Rice. "They're being enforced."
Some American strategies, though, are not all that realistic. United States diplomats have suggested they and the Chinese get together on what to do if Kim Jong-il, reportedly recovering from a stroke and possibly suffering pancreatic cancer, leaves the scene. China quickly rebuffed anything to do with such a proposal that would thoroughly upset the North Koreans if they got wind of it.
One thing is sure: the State Department is not about to offend North Korea by spreading rumors about his health or his ability to govern. Kim Jong-il is "in full control", a State Department spokesman hastily noted. "They have a leadership in place."
South Korea's President Lee lost no time dusting off his earlier proposal for massive aid for North Korea if it "gives up its nuclear program". On Saturday, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, he would, said a spokesman, "again confirm plans to actively assist North Korea".
North Korea has repeatedly scoffed at Lee's offer. With the release of the Hyundai Asan technician and the presence of the Hyundai Asan boss in Pyongyang, the South Koreans hope this time that North Korea may be inclined to listen - or at least not respond by again branding Lee as a "traitor".