N. Korea: The Desperate Move Is Necessary? [Robert Park]

Before Robert Park entered North Korea this Christmas Day he was in Seoul, working as an energetic activist in the North Korean human rights field. Just a few days before he left for China en route for the North, Robert gave an interview to Reuters on the proviso that it not be released until after he crossed the Tumen River. Now Robert is inside North Korea, and Reuters released the full text of the interview on December 30th.

In the interview Robert speaks in damning terms of those he feels are wronging the North Korean people by denying, or failing to advocate for, their human rights, from Kim Jong Il himself to the Obama government and more.

It is fair to say that desperate moves are sometimes effective tools. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the youths of South Korea were fighting for democracy, there were many incidents of great desperation and bravery: the self-immolation of two young Seoul National University students at a busy crossroads, for example.

When those who led these demonstrations felt the situation to be so desperate that they could not avoid sacrificing themselves, they made the ultimate choice. It was undeniably brave. At that time, students, socialists and democratization activists believed that their sacrifices could and would ignite a struggle among the people and bring their goals to fruition. Of course, there was horrific damage, not to mention the loss of passionate young lives. How much influence these specific sacrifices had on that goal, nobody can truly judge.

Regardless, although Robert certainly did not experience the South Korean students’ democratization movement nor even know much of its history, he surely did feel the current degree of public awareness of and concern for North Korean human rights issues in the world to be desperately low, and action of some kind to be imperative.

He expresses his frustration in the interview, speaking of the gulf in passion between people demonstrating for North Korean human rights and the many who took the streets to campaign against American imports of beef earlier this year: “There were hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea demonstrating for this ridiculous thing about the kind of beef… We can be mobilized to demonstrate about the kind of beef we are getting and we cannot demonstrate for people who are our own kin who are dying by the thousands every day for no reason at all.”

But there is more to this than bravery and admirable sacrifice. What Robert does not do in the interview is come close to accounting for the potential damage his actions could bring about.

Robert has some knowledge of the activities of religious groups in the North Korea-China border region, and every one of the people he knows could now be in danger, just as they were when Laura Ling and Euna Lee were captured and their recordings confiscated, while China, facing another diplomatic problem related to its border security, will probably strengthen its guard along the frontier. At the very least, this will cause those NGOs working along the border under great pressure a considerable extra, unnecessary headache.

Furthermore, giving Kim Jong Il another pawn to ransom for aid should he so choose is unhelpful at a time when international financial pressure on the North is being given some credit for bringing Pyongyang back somewhere near the negotiating table of late.

Additionally, it is clear that what Kim Jong Il used this year’s visit of Bill Clinton for was shoring up his domestic legitimacy by putting on a display of a powerful man coming to shake his hand. These are propaganda victories that we would be much better off not handing Kim so cheaply; we can only hope that it doesn’t come to something similar this time.

It does not appear from the interview that Robert gave these very real concerns anything close to adequate thought but, to conclude, what is indisputable is that Robert’s fundamental motivations for doing what he did are shared and understood by many in the North Korean human rights community. For better or worse, nobody put that better than Robert himself;

“What is happening in North Korea is genocide. We know there are legitimate fears about what could happen through nuclear weapons. But a nation that runs concentration camps, a nation that kills men, women and children without any kind of restraint can never be trusted.

The United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea have a huge responsibility to speak out about this, because all these nations played a role in the arbitrary division of the Koreas, where not a single Korean was consulted. Yet the lives of these people are of no issue to these governments. That is a crime. It is a huge crime.”

“I am going in for the sake of the lives of the North Korean people,” he concludes, “And if he (Kim Jong-il) kills me, in a sense, I realize this is better. Then the governments of the world will become more prone to say something, and more embarrassed and more forced to make a statement.”

In many ways, Robert is right. While the U.S. uses its leverage to pursue denuclearization, while Japan appears only interested in the abductees’ issue, while South Korea works on the possibility of another summit meeting, and while the majority of people simply don’t do anything, there are people dying in North Korea every day. Perhaps not thousands, as Robert suggests, but far, far too many for whom far, far too little is being done.

There is much to learn from the single-minded determination and loyalty to a cause that Robert has displayed in the process of making his choice.

Thankfully, in reality, the chances of Kim Jong Il killing him are vanishingly small, indeed his deportation seems by far the most likely outcome, and for that everyone ought to be grateful. Were the chances of the average North Korean being killed by his or her own tyrannical government equally slim, Robert might not have felt compelled to cross the Tumen River at all.

Let us all hope, then, that by this time in 2010, Robert has turned out to be the very last person who felt the need to act in this courageous but dangerous manner, because there is no longer a North Korean human rights problem at all.

(1) Severe indoctrination from birth in the country.

(2) Brutal punishment for crime against state: your whole family would have slow painful death in NK gulags

(3) Pervasive spy infrastructure: people spy on each other.

The situation in NK is worse than Stalin's Soviet Union. N. Korean regime took Stalin's model and ‘improved’ upon it for several decades: in the direction of more totalitarian.

In the end, regime survival has become all that counts. Hence, personality cult has become a lot bigger share of their total ideology. It has become full blown cult whose mind-control regime reached new height. So-called Juche ideology is just another way of closing down the country from outside: We are the best and self-reliant. Shouldn't be corrupted by outside ideas. Even ideas from fellow communist countries.

There is a cost to such practice: total devastation of economy and human spirit. The country is steadily imploding. It will crash at some point.

N. Korean regime sacrifice everything else for the survival of itself. It went to great length than Stalin or Mao did. They watched it and improved its oppression, lest it should show even a tiny crack. Then, E. Europe and Soviet Union collapsed. Especially, Ceausescu met a catastrophic end. That traumatized Kim Jong-il and he set out to incorporate lessons from the event. Kim Jong-il’s oppression is even worse than his dad's. Still the whole country is buckling under his oppression. As a result, from time to time, he relents a bit out of sheer necessity. Then he reassert his grip again. His improved method is losing its power, too.

This is truly the unique example in the world history so far. Unprecedented in its nature.

The left as usual exploit guilt complex among those (frequently young but not necessarily so) affluent folks who are rather naive.

The left, using its smear campaign and harassment, cowed them into playing within the parameter set by the left. So as a 'conscientious' well-educated individual, they are made to embrace the 'new morals' which condemns 'past evils.' The erstwhile ally, America, becomes a new villain. The more negative they are about anything on America, they are told to be 'more awake' free from establishment's propaganda, and they believe that they got the seal of your goodness, this way.

Still, they are not full-time revolutionary, rather pitiful saps duped by such left-wing operators in the society.

The more affluent and educated they are, the more they are compelled to show that they are not corrupt greedy folks by participating "anti-beef rally."

They cannot accept that they made saps by left-wing operators. When challenged that their views are actually stupid, they dig in and lash out rather than accept the fact. This lefty fad is so hip that they cannot possibly alienate themselves from their peer groups. In S. Korea, people live or die from peer groups and human network. They care dearly about what others think or do. Falling out of line is to be locked out of social advance. So they would rather wallow in the collective stupidity than walk out of it. As usual, this is more pronounced among well-educated people. They are busy following the reigning orthodoxy of the day.

Reigning orthodoxy now is, "Blame U.S. for what goes wrong in Korean Peninsula." N. Korean behavior is just a desperate antics of poor weak fellow Koreans. However, by fellow Koreans, they mean the N. Korean system or its regime, not ordinary N. Korean people.

To actual N. Korean people in N. Korea, they have contempts reserved usually for illegal aliens.

As all intellectual parasites in the capitalist/democratic countries all over the world, they rather value their money and good life deep down. When they think of N. Korea, their subconscious view is that N. Korean regime is holding back horde(N. Korean people) who could ruin their good life, and prevent them from ultimate reckoning that their hip and cool liberal attitude is not just wrong but unconscionable. The little source of their intellectual pride coming from the pathetic belief that confronting N. Korean regime is so reactionary while engagement is so enlightened.

These days, since so many facts have come out of N. Korea, and evil nature of N. Korean regime is no longer in doubt and appeasement has miserably failed because N. Korea used aid money to make nuke and long-range missiles. So they are no longer open apologists for N. Korean regime.

On the other hand, they made a subtle switch of mindset. They now cast everything in terms of economics(money.) N. Korea is wrong because they took S. Korean money and misused it. The relation with U.S. has to improve because of economic benefit. As for N. Korean human right, their view is purely monetary. It costs much, so we won't hear it. Joining demonstration for N. Korean human right? No. Who want to be a pathetic loser, shunned by peers? It is only for rightwing extremists or Christian crazies. Urbane and intelligent people like them should not throw themselves into a mud pit like that.

I see some movement from painless way out of their previous stupidity of wholesale embrace of appeasement. This purely monetary economic view is a convenient way of back-paddling.

Predictably, it comes with a new convenient slogan, "Days of ideology is gone. We have no ideologies of one kind or another." However, their cultural and social views remain to be still liberal. They went the third way in a sense.

They moved S. Korea's 80's to Global 90's. 80's in S. Korea was defined by leftwing extermism, all pervasive Juche ideology reigning in campus. Now those who lived in this 80's mindset redefine themselves by embracing globalism, disappearance of nation state, borderless world economy, complete repudiation of any ethnic or national ethos.

In essence, these new 'enlightened' folks belatedly embracing 90's globalism. They are ten years late, although this may be a step forward of sorts compared with pathetic embrace of 80's. However, the world is moving away from such Utopian vision, due to obvious flaws.

They will be completely unprepared for what is to come globally in coming years. Their cynical ideological adjustment would crash into a brickwall. Lazy minds deserve no less.

N. Korean regime will end when Chimerica ends. This problem festered because America and China's business interest dictated that no troubles should be in E. Asia, even if Kim Jong-il is working on nuke and destabilizing the region. They have been papering over it for more than a decade.

Now that America is mired in long-term economic hardship and China is about to bubble its way to the same fate, Chimerica will be gone. America would have its own internal problem to deal with. So would Chinese. Their attention to N. Korea could slip. Or dramatically escalate if China wants to make a geopolitical issue out of N. Korea in order to divert attention away from domestic crises. Of course, N. Korea is not the only choice. Perennial favorite of Taiwan and India are there, too.

Nobody will have lengthy stable period to implement their long-term plan on N. Korea. Things will be in flux in N. Korea or any other important geopolitical flash points.

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