Posted on 08/22/2003 1:01:28 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Weather permitting, an invasion of North Korea begins today. The objective? Bringing down what Undersecretary of State John Bolton recently called the "hellish nightmare" of Kim Jong Il's regime.
No soldiers will be involved in this invasion. The airlift will be provided by 20 large balloons launched from South Korea. The weapons they'll carry are 600 hand-held AM-FM radios. Their target is ordinary North Koreans who have no access to information about what is happening in their own country or the rest of the world. More balloon drops are planned, along with radios in bottles floated off the coast.
The "Give an Ear to a North Korean" campaign is being organized by Douglas Shin, a Korean-American minister, and Norbert Vollertsen, a German physician. "Silence is killing North Korea," they say in a statement issued from Seoul. In Kim's police state, radios must be registered with the authorities and are permanently tuned to government-run stations. The radios being dropped into the North would allow people to listen to Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and broadcasts from South Korea.
Pastor Shin and Dr. Vollertsen have long been active in the underground railroad that helps North Koreans escape to freedom, mostly through China. Their network of supporters has helped escapees seek amnesty at foreign embassies in China and Southeast Asia. Earlier this year they attempted, but failed, to smuggle two boatloads of refugees from China to South Korea.
The radio project -- which is timed to coincide with next week's six-party talks on the North's nuclear program -- is one of several that activists are working on to encourage North Koreans to flee. Another involves stationing ships in international waters off the coast of North Korea to pick up those escaping by boat. Another calls for approaching high-level North Korean officials visiting Seoul to try to persuade them to defect.
Human rights aside, encouraging refugees is also a political strategy. Word of a safe harbor overseas would surely spread throughout the North, creating more internal pressure on the already troubled Kim regime. That's why Kansas Senator Sam Brownback has written a letter urging President Bush to declare such a safe harbor. He also supports, as do we, a plan under consideration by the Bush Administration to admit 30,000 North Korean refugees currently in China. The U.S. could also put more pressure on China to let the United Nations help the nearly 300,000 North Koreans who may already be hiding there.
Mr. Brownback proposes to expand the S-2 visa for aliens who provide assistance in the wars on terror and drugs. The number of "snitch visas" should be increased to 3,500 from the current 250 a year, he says, with eligibility extended to people offering information about rogue-state WMD programs. The mere chance that this would induce operatives in Pyongyang's WMD programs to defect is worth a try.
Alas, none of these sensible, creative efforts to help North Koreans are welcome in the one place in the world where you'd expect them to be greeted most warmly: South Korea. The government in Seoul -- led, ironically, by a president who was a human-rights lawyer -- seems more worried about the potential costs of resettling refugees in the South than it is about the plight of their brothers and sisters in the North.
No one wants to exercise the military option on North Korea. Every war game shows the West victorious, but at great cost in human life. How much better to adopt policies encouraging an outflow of refugees -- and the internal implosion of Kim's brutal regime.
The number of refugees would have to be huge in order to have this effect.
Also, I don't want potential spies in my country; persons who have been approached to defect. These people should not be rewarded.
It is up to South Korea to absorb their refugee brothers.
Have they completely gone over to the Dark Side?
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