Kang Chol-Hwan on the Dangers of Nuke-centric Policy

From The Chosun Ilbo:

The strongest prop of the North Korean regime is concentration camps. These are less like Stalin's Siberian gulags or Mao Zedong's Laogai concentration camps than Hitler's Auschwitz. After World War II, humanity promised never again to permit such camps on earth, and the world community intervenes in crimes against humanity across borders. The collective insanity of the Hitler regime was intricately linked with the concentration camps, which crushed all dissent. 



By running the concentration camps, the North Korean regime has been able to maintain power even after starving 3 million people to death in peacetime. These camps house some 200,000 to 300,000 political prisoners and their families, who are systematically slaughtered. Even party officials are afraid of being sent there. Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the Workers' Party who defected to the South, said, "Even senior party members can't talk freely at homes for fear of being wiretapped, so they always have important conversations outside." 



The silence of the international community on the barbaric massacres in the concentration camps committed by Kim Jong-il borders on the criminal. Some 17,000 North Korean defectors in the South are complaining about the atrocity, but no country pays any attention. Even the South Korean government and people do not realize how serious the problem is.

Full story here.

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.