Dancing With the Dictator (Kim Jong Il)

NY Times ^ | June 9, 2005 | JASPER BECKER

[neverdem]

Beijing

THERE are hopes that President Bush's meeting tomorrow with President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, coming on the heels of the latest North Korean overture on restarting nuclear-weapons negotiations, may lead to a breakthrough. However, anyone who expects the South to help us put pressure on the North hasn't been paying much attention to what has happened between the two countries over the last five years.

Since South Korea's president at the time, Kim Dae Jung, met with North Korea's Kim Jong Il in 2000 (and pocketed a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts), Seoul has gone to remarkable lengths to gain the North's trust. Unsurprisingly, the only real changes under this Sunshine Policy have occurred in South Korea. And efforts by President Roh, who was elected in 2002, to engage Kim Jong Il have led him to plunge his own nation into North Korea's world of lies.

For example, Seoul no longer sees any evidence of North Korea's crimes: the government tries to keep South Korean newscasts from showing a smuggled tape of the public execution of "criminals" by the North that has been broadcast in Japan and elsewhere; reports that China is shipping refugees back to North Korea are denied by the Roh government; the North's testing of chemical weapons on live prisoners goes largely unmentioned; and even Pyongyang's apparent preparations for nuclear weapons tests are played down.

South Korea, a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, has abstained for the last three years from voting to condemn the North for its abuses. The South's latest national defense white paper even indicates that Seoul no longer considers the North to be its "main enemy" - which implies that the presence of American forces on the peninsula is no longer necessary.

[neverdem]

[claudiustg]

Yesterday my wife, who is Korean, met some wealthy Koreans now living in this country. They said that the main reason they had emigrated was that they were afraid of what might happen with the North Koreans. Many Koreans nowadays minimize the threat presented by the North and South Korean policy is beginning to reflect that frame of mind. Many believe that the US actually causes the tensions for its own benefit.

[68skylark]

Kim Jong Il ... is still personally responsible for a manmade famine that has killed 3 million people over the last decade.

I'm surprised this article appeared in the NY Times. They usually try to put a smiling, happy face on an tyrannical government that's opposed to the United States.

[neverdem]

You are not familiar with who can be an OpEd Contributor at the NY Times. Check it out. They are guests who can have any political perspective, from Victor Davis Hanson to Arlen Specter.

[68skylark]

Thanks. I know the say they're open to all ideas. But in my experience, the ones who win the approval of their editors are usually hostile to American, not hostile to tyranny.