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 Ignoring
the Desperate People
Turning an official blind eye to North Korea’s suffering...
[Gordon Cucullu] 11/30/05
Autumn in
Kyongju, South Korea is just about as gorgeous as any place
on earth. Skies are an endless blue, air is crisp with a hint
of winter yet to come but containing a clarity and lingering
warmth. A hike in the nearby woodlands imparts energy like
a draught from a mountain stream. Located in the mountains
near the city is the 9th century Buddhist temple called Bulguksa,
especially beautiful with its carved stone and hand-hewn wood,
painted lavishly in the Northern Buddhist style, contrasting
to the spectrum of colorful leaves that fall to the worn paths
from trees that began growing when Lewis and Clark were testing
the limits of the new American continent.
Bulguksa
is famously home to a set of wood block plates containing Buddhist
scriptures carved by monks in the 13th century. The wood block
plates, known as the tripitika, were carved in reverse – so
that the intricate Chinese characters then used by Koreans
could be read when impressed upon mulberry paper. Monks were
under siege by the invading Mongols. They carved the plates,
numbering in the tens of thousands, as a work offering to the
Buddha imploring him to rid their land of the terrible invaders.
Ultimately the Mongols did leave Korea, but not until they
had ravaged and exploited the small land.
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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President George Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun
met in Kyongju just prior to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference.
They toured Bulguksa temple and its grounds while discussing
options to deal with another part of Korea overrun by aberrant
ideology: communist North Korea under dictator Kim Jong Il. That
the two leaders seemed to come away from their bilateral meetings
with a common cause was heartening for many observers. There
have been serious issues between the Roh and Bush administrations,
most centered around North Korea.
The rift
between America and South Korea has been growing since 1997
when committed
leftist Kim Dae Jung was elected to the presidency.
Kim actively moved the government of South Korea away from open
conflict with North Korea. Moreover, in a diplomatic maneuver
called “duplicitous” by former National Security
Advisor Richard Allen, Kim positioned South Korea between North
Korea and the US as a supposedly neutral broker between the two.
After decades of standing shoulder to shoulder with South Korea
against hostile forces, Kim betrayed that blood relationship
by cozying up to the North.
It was revealed
after Kim left office and his like-minded successor President
Roh
Moo Hyun took office, that massive corruption and
bribery characterized the Kim presidency. In fact, upwards to
$1.5 billion US dollars were funneled surreptitiously to North
Korea by Kim in order to establish a pretense that his vaunted “Sunshine
Policy” was working. While the move won Kim the Nobel Peace
Prize (joining luminaries like Yassar Arafat and Jimmy Carter)
his real legacy will be his craven approach to South-North relationships
and his disgraceful venality. Kim was willing to sacrifice as
many of his Northern brothers and sisters as necessary in order
to make his own legacy a success. Like many who value legacy
over morality and who lack courage to do the right thing, Kim’s
memory is forever tarnished.
Unfortunately,
Roh Moon Hyun is following in his predecessor’s
footsteps. His administration may not be as crooked, although
cursory contemporary investigations would lead us to think that
corruption is pervasive. Nevertheless, Roh has vigorously pursued
a policy of appeasement toward the North and consistently voiced
veiled hostility and suspicion toward the US. That said, some
of the actions of the Roh government have been supportive of
US regional and international policy. The South Koreans have
fielded a 3,300-man troop contingent that is serving in Iraq
as part of the Coalition forces.
So while
President Bush owed a thank you to Roh for his country’s
support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Iraqi reconstruction,
Bush would have been justified in pushing Roh toward a more moral
position on North Korea. Bush was firm, as had been expected,
about Kim Jong Il’s continued development of nuclear weapons.
Under Bush – and to be fair, Clinton before him, the US
policy has been set against a nuclear North Korea. However, the
two American presidents adopted radically different policies
toward achieving that goal.
As detailed
in my book Separated at Birth, the North Korean nuclear issue
has
dominated regional relationships with North
Korea since the late 1980s. The original dictator of North Korea,
Kim Il Sung, had nuclear ambitions as early as the mid-1960s.
In 1994 when it seemed as if the crisis would reach a flash point,
former President Jimmy Carter, at the urging of then Vice President
Al Gore, was given the green light to cut a desperate deal with
North Korea. (See also Ben Johnson’s recent reviews of
Carter’s new book) For a decade afterwards the world was
able to pretend that North Korea had ceased nuclear ambitions.
However despite promises to the contrary, nuclear and missile
research dominated Kim’s priority list. Meanwhile, food
aid poured into the small country in unprecedented amounts.
While receiving
unimaginable amounts of food aid, fuel oil, medicines, economic
investment,
and hard cash transfers, the
Kim Jong Il regime diverted the aid to military and party pockets.
Using starvation as civilian control measures, Kim cold-bloodedly
allowed upwards to 3 million innocent North Korean citizens to
starve. In a country of mass hunger Kim directed that 25% of
collective farmland be converted to opium poppy growth. Kim liked
to manufacture heroin and sell it for scarce hard currency. He
expanded the concentration camps to clamp down further on a restless
population, and reacted hysterically to any refugees unlucky
enough to be captured and returned to North Korea by China’s
harsh forcible repatriation policy. Summary public executions
became common, and have even made a special program on CNN that
showed smuggled video of refugees being shot at the stake amidst
a public poverty and squalor that defies description.
We know from
credible sources that experimentation with poison gas is common
in Kim’s
prisons along with testing of poisons and biological warfare
agents. We have documented stories of
forcible abortion of pregnant women, persecution of Christians,
and elimination of families down through three generations by
a paranoid, self-absorbed dictatorship. In America last year,
after months of hard work, primarily by members of the North
Korea Freedom Coalition, especially Suzanne Scholte and Mariam
Bell, Congress passed and the president signed the North Korea
Human Rights Act. This is a remarkable act in that it acknowledges
the horrible abuses of the Kim regime and that requires all negotiations
and interactions with North Korea include demands of immediate
reform.
For this
reason it is a continuing disappointment that discussions with
North
Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia – all
Six Party talk members – have failed to abide by both the
spirit and letter of the new law. Even President Bush on this
most recent Asia visit, at least according to preliminary reports,
did not raise human rights issues along with the strategic arms
limitations as is required. While we do not know for a fact that
human rights in North Korea was not discussed, it is apparent
that none of the covering media reported such discussions, nor
were they mentioned in depth in any of the bilateral memoranda
issuing from high level meetings.
While diplomats continue to posture and country leaders continue
to maneuver, the people of North Korea continue to suffer. America
leads the world in moral clarity and expressed values. In order
to be true to that vision we must speak for the people of North
Korea until they are allowed to have their own voice. -one-
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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