Kang Chol-Hwan Weighs In...

Kang Chol-Hwan is a North Korean refugee who has become a South Korean journalist. His chilling memoir of growing up in the Yodok prison camp, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, is one of the best books I've read on North Korea thus far.

Everything he writes is worth reading, including his new column in The Chosun Ilbo, in which he responds to Clinton's visit to Pyongyang to free Ling and Lee.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea to win the release of two American journalists went according to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's script. The North used the capture of the two reporters to its utmost advantage, the hostages providing it with an ideal opportunity to lure an eminent American onto its soil just when it became subject to tighter sanctions over its nuclear tests and missile launches from the international community and the U.S. in particular. It was a lucky break of the first order.

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In the past half century, the North has essentially consolidated itself by the sole expedient of anti-Americanism, defining the U.S. as a longstanding enemy. According to North Korean propaganda, America is the great imperial power, desperate to destroy the last bastion of socialism. North Korea alone holds out against it now that the Soviet Union has fallen and China has deserted the cause.



Few North Koreans believe the propaganda any longer. Many among the North Korean privileged classes are beginning to think it is not China but North Korea which has deserted socialism, and some of them question the wisdom of dealing with the U.S. alone over the nuclear issue when they feel it could better be resolved with China. Hwang Jang-yeop, a former Secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party who defected to the South, recalls, "I often heard Kim Jong-il slander the Chinese leadership, but never heard him criticize the United States."



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A sort of farce is being played out whereby the Kim regime, whose survival depends on China, is desperate to win recognition from the U.S. Why does North Korea insist on direct negotiations with Washington while distancing itself from its ally China, which holds all the economic and military keys? The answer lies in the threat called reform and opening.


The essence of all North Korean problems including nuclear, missile and human rights issues, is the fixation on maintaining the current dictatorship. Expanding trade between South Korea and China as well as China's rapid economic development represent the biggest threats to Kim Jong-il, who, accordingly, believes that nuclear armament is the only way to defend himself. North Korea's groveling reception of Bill Clinton and the release of detained journalists even as a South Korean remains locked up incommunicado at the joint Kaesong Industrial Complex, can be seen not as a diplomatic victory but as the last desperate effort to maintain the regime through hostage taking.

Full story here.