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 Mendacity
in Beijing
Ignoring human rights for the people of North Korea...
[Gordon Cucullu] 8/1/05
In a Freedom
House sponsored conference in Washington, DC two weeks ago,
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Deputy Director of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles, strode to the podium carrying an empty
chair. He placed the chair down firmly and declared that it
was the symbolic seat for the “seventh participant at
the Six Party talks, the voiceless people of North Korea.” At
the first formal meeting of the Six Party talks in more than
a year, held on July 26 in Beijing, the participants not only
ignored the chair, they tipped it over. In a display of cynical
cruelty both American and South Korea diplomats – who
supposedly have the moral foundation and fortitude needed to
stand up for the downtrodden – not only disregarded the
wellbeing of the starving, imprisoned people of North Korea
but had the audacity to behave as if the meeting was a huge
success.
Contributor
Gordon Cucullu
Former
Green Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now
an editorialist, author and a popular speaker. Born
into a military family, he lived and served for more
than thirteen years in East Asia, including eight years
in Korea. For his Special Forces service in Vietnam
he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry,
and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation
from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs
at both the Pentagon and Department of State as well
as an executive for General Electric in Korea. His
first major non-fiction work, Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin,
is based in large part on his extensive experience
in Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and
businessman. [website]
[go to Cucullu index]
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Stunningly,
any reference to human rights was intentionally kept off the
agenda, but even worse, the South
Korean representative,
Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min Soon, had the gall to lay down
the law to Japan. The Japanese people have been especially upset
about North Korean admissions that its agents have kidnapped
scores – perhaps hundreds – of innocent civilians
from Japan over the past few decades. Many of the abductees are
women and children who are used to train North Korean agents.
These agents are either dispatched to conduct espionage within
Japan or are used in active terrorist operations and fall back
on a Japanese “cover” if apprehended. This issue
has raised such a firestorm within Japan that Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi refused to eat with Kim Jong Il at their last
meeting, and instead brought his own food as a protest against
the intransigence of the North Korean regime.
So for a South Korean foreign ministry official
to warn Japan that “it would definitely not be desirable to take up issues
that would disintegrate the focus of the talks,” was an
arrogant statement that reaffirmed what analysts suspected all
along: that strategic weapons issues and economics would once
again overrule human rights in the mendacious atmosphere of the
Six Party talks. Naturally the US representative, Assistant Secretary
of State Christopher Hill, went along with the flow. All of his
comments dealt with delusional “progress.” Tellingly,
Hill abjectly conceded the initiative to the North when he said “we
do not have the option of walking away from this problem [of
North Korean nuclear disarmament].”
Not that America has ever had the initiative
in these talks. For years Kim Jong Il has been yanking the
US chain harder than
a model in a Bow Flex commercial. US representatives to the Six
Party talks make public pronouncements as if they are in control.
But whenever Kim Jong Il is pressured and needs to delay, he
feigns a fit of pique and boycotts the talks. If his hollow economy
squeezes too hard and he needs some material support he grandiosely
announces he will attend “in return for security concessions
by the imperialists.” US officials waffle like a sine wave
in reaction to Kim’s calculated mood swings. They cling
to the delusion that while Kim turns the crank on the organ,
and they beg pennies with a cup, that somehow the monkey is in
control of the operation. What is extraordinarily reprehensible
is the State Department’s inability to do what it is supposed
to do best: control diplomatic negotiations.
Meanwhile, the bureaucracy disregards explicit
policy guidance. Late last year both houses of Congress unanimously
passed the
North Korean Human Rights Act. It was immediately signed into
law by President Bush. The law demands that in all dealings with
the North Koreans that human rights for the long-suffering people
of North Korea be placed on the table for discussion along with
any other issues, nuclear, chemical, or missile. This is not
mere policy or guidance – either of which would demand
obedience from a loyal staff - but is the law of the land, duly
filed and recorded.
The flagrant, offhanded disregard for this law is stunning but
not unusual. Readers know that I am consistently critical of
the State Department (closely followed by the CIA and FBI) as
being the most dysfunctional of all Executive Branch agencies.
Officer selection is anachronistic, training is incestuous, arrogance
is consummate, and the union flies top cover for all FSOs deflecting
criticism and threats of dismissal. Nevertheless, a great deal
of responsibility for the behavior of the middle managers lies
with a leadership failure at the top, at the levels appointed
by the President. This includes, to my acute disappointment,
Secretary Rice and her appointed staff. To be fair it is terribly
difficult to be a cabinet secretary and conduct a top-to-bottom
house cleaning of such a key department. Nevertheless, someone
at must eventually say that enough is enough and take on the
challenge for reform.
Meanwhile, those of us who read reports that
North Korean people have had their meager government food ration
cut to 200 g daily
(520 g is the world standard for survival), while well-fed diplomats
preen around conference tables and pose for grip-and-grin photo
ops, grind our teeth in frustration. As long as the Six Party
talks continue on a flawed policy of separation of strategic
arms discussion from human rights issues – which are catastrophic
in North Korea – then the outcome of the talks is predestined
to failure. Such luminaries as Natan Sharansky, who has through
his own experience seen what happens in such a case, call for
a gathering of nations to produce a policy similar to the Helsinki
Accords that linked human rights to strategic issues and in so
doing finally brought about freedom for Eastern Europe and collapsed
the Soviet Union. Such an accord would be incredibly more productive
that the current failed Six Party talks and would recognize our
moral responsibility to free the people of North Korea.tRO
Curious
about North Korea? Learn more in Gordon’s
best-selling book Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin became
the Evil Twin, Lyons Press available at bookstores now.
copyright
Gordon Cucullu 2005
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