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Ms. Hye-ran Oh is the Director of the Peace and Disarmament Team of Solidarity for Peace and Reunification in Korea (SPARK). Formed in 1994 SPARK, a non-governmental organization based in South Korea, works towards national self-determination, peace and disarmament, establishment of a peace structure on the Korean peninsula, and the reunification of Korea. While attending the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in New York this month, SPARK also presented in several educational forums including “North Korea’s Bomb and the Road to Peace” on May 12th, with representatives of the American Friends Service Committee and the National Campaign to End the Korean War. The recent sinking of the South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, is clear evidence of the fragility of the Korean War truce and the urgent need for the parties to diffuse the rapidly escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula. Ms. Oh traveled to the U.S. this month to share SPARK’s view that peaceful engagement with North Korea, including direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea to end the Korean War, is the most appropriate means of resolving continuing hostilities on the peninsula. [Takagi]: Please talk about why SPARK came all the way to New York for the NPT conference. [Oh]: Over the past 20 years, North Korea’s nuclear weapons have become a hot issue internationally but no one has really talked about why — what are the reasons that prompted North Korea to develop nuclear weapons. Governmental organizations are definitely not discussing this, but even among non-governmental organizations there’s little talk or understanding of the historical reasons for this. Many people talk and criticize the fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons, and there hasn’t been a real effort to examine the reasons that led to this situation. But in order for us to find a realistic solution to this crisis, we need to get to the reasons that led to it. So SPARK has come to New York to increase public awareness about what led to North Korea’s developing nuclear weapons, by participating in a range of different programs while we’re here. In that way, we hope to contribute to Korea’s denuclearization and the establishment of peace on the peninsula. [Thomas Kim]: What are your impressions coming out of U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth’s visit to Pyongyang? [Takagi]: So what are these reasons? [Oh]: After the Korean war ended, an armistice was signed, which was a temporary truce, so legally we are still in a state of war in Korea. And shortly after the armistice was signed, South Korea and the U.S. signed a mutual defense treaty and entered into a military alliance. A military alliance is collaboration between countries in preparation for war – and in the case of Korea, this is an offensive posture that both countries have taken against North Korea. As such, South Korea and the U.S. have militarized the peninsula and they have developed high tech weapons, a military strategy against North Korea, and every year, they carry out massive war exercises. And for the past 60 years, North Korea has felt a security threat because of this R.O.K.-U.S. alliance, and as North Korea’s conventional weapons are so inferior, they are not able to defend themselves. So as a self defense measure, North Korea was led to develop its nuclear weapons. [Takagi]: Would North Korea really denuclearize? The U.S. media has portrayed North Korea as failing to abide by its agreements to do so. How do you respond to that? [Oh]: North Korea has been very consistent. They have always said that their position is this: they are willing to give up their nuclear weapons if the U.S. abandons its hostile policies and aggressive posture against them. This is consistent with North Korea’s stated reason for developing nuclear weapons — that it feels threatened by the U.S. This means that denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is quite simple. All the U.S. has to do is abandon its hostile policies towards North Korea and stop threatening to undermine the sovereignty of North Korea. Under the Clinton administration, the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework was signed. However, because the U.S. believed that North Korea’s regime was on the verge of collapse, it didn’t follow through on what it agreed upon in the Geneva Framework (provision of light water reactors, and making timely shipments of heavy fuel oil). North Korea followed through on 90% of what it agreed to in the Framework, whereas the U.S. only followed through on 10% of its agreements. Then the Bush Administration publicly violated the Geneva framework – labeling North Korea as part of the “axis of evil” and including North Korea as one of 7 targets for potential preemptive nuclear strikes in its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. Today, in regards to North Korea, there are no fundamental differences between the Bush administration and the Obama administration. Obama continues to carry out war exercises on the Korean peninsula and continues to isolate North Korea through economic sanctions. In Obama’s recent Nuclear Posture Review both Iran and North Korea were exempted from its negative security assurance, meaning that while the U.S. agreed not to attack non-nuclear states with nuclear weapons — this does not apply to Iran and North Korea. And in the recently signed START treaty between the U.S. and Russia, where they agreed to decrease their strategic nuclear warheads to fewer than 1550, the U.S. still reserved the right to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent measure. However, there is a slight difference, in that the Bush administration always kept a military option on the table in terms of dealing with North Korea, whereas current Secretary of Defense Gates has publicly stated that the military option has been ruled out. So in that sense, there is a difference. North Korea has clearly stated three conditions for giving up its nuclear weapons. It has said that (1), the U.S. must abolish the extension of its nuclear umbrella to South Korea, which is a very offensive posture towards North Korea, and (2) the U.S. and South Korea must abolish their military alliance, which again was formed in preparation for war against North Korea, and threatens the latter’s national sovereignty. And (3) the U.S. must end its hostile policies towards North Korea. It seems as though the Obama administration wants to achieve denuclearization by forcing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons – without meeting those 3 conditions. It seems that the Obama administration wants to try to take care of this problem, giving as little as possible from the U.S. side in negotiations. But in my opinion, if that’s Obama’s stance, it will be difficult for him to resolve the Korean peninsula question and the nuclear crisis. It’s my belief that the longer it takes the U.S. to resolve this crisis, the more that the U.S. will have to do in the future to resolve it. The U.S. has two choices — to enter into sincere negotiations and dialogue with North Korea or to try to contain and isolate North Korea through sanctions and other policies. It’s SPARK’s opinion that the longer the U.S. takes to resolve this crisis, the more that North Korea will continue to develop its nuclear weapons and increase its arsenal. Moreover, the surrounding countries in Northeast Asia, such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, have all expressed interest in developing their own nuclear weapon programs. So it’s actually in the strategic interests of the U.S. to diffuse nuclear tensions in that region and to resolve the crisis with North Korea as soon as possible. [Takagi]: How would you describe how people in South Korea feel about this issue? [Oh]: Back in 2002, 53% of the people in South Korea believed that once a peace treaty was signed, the U.S. forces in South Korea should leave. In 2006, the South Korean government’s Reunification Research Institute did another survey and 67% of South Koreans believed that U.S. forces should leave. So this is proof that more and more people in the south believe that the military alliance with the U.S. is outdated and no longer benefits our national interest. Many people in South Korea believe that it’s time we began to collaborate and enter into agreements with other countries in the Northeast Asian region, and that to be so dependent on the U.S. through this military alliance is contradictory to this effort. So many people believe that the military alliance should end. [Takagi]: When you say the U.S. should “end hostile policies”, what do you mean exactly? [Oh]: Yes, I am talking about a peace treaty. What I mean by abandoning hostile policies is that in the content of the peace treaty, we have to talk about disarmament. Right now, South Korea and the U.S. have the capacity, the military capacity to invade and occupy North Korea. And in addition, South Korea continues to grow its military budget every year. According to SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), North Korea’s military budget does not increase every year; they don’t have the capacity to increase their conventional weapons systems — and that’s why they have developed nuclear weapons instead. So what we need to do through a peace treaty is to actually abolish this kind of system. The peace treaty thus needs to include the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea and the abandonment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Then North and South Korea must mutually disarm, so their military capacities are only for self-defense and not for invading and occupying each other. *JT Takagi, KPI Board member, interviewed Hye-ran Oh on May 2, 2010.

As we watched the Berlin Wall tumble down, “we wept from the heartbreak of sorrow mixed with joy,” recalls Jungran Shin, a financial advisor in Los Angeles. Separated from relatives in North Korea, Shin felt a longing to “break down into pieces…the barbed-wire fences that block the 38th parallel.” Rev. Syngman Rhee, co-chair of the National Committee for Peace in Korea, says the fall of the Berlin Wall ignited among Koreans new hope for peace and reconciliation, “even though we fully realized that the German situation was quite different from the Korean situation.” The division of Germany came about partly as a penalty for Nazi aggression. Korea, however, had been a colony of Japan since 1910 and Korean guerilla units in Manchuria fought against the Japanese during World War II. “I don’t know why Korea was punished,” laments Ik Kil Shin, an activist. Shin (no relation to Jungran Shin), was 10 years old when the war in Korea broke out. “Korea was not the aggressor, but the U.S. treated Korea and Korean people as enemies, and carved up the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel,” he says. “It resulted in war. I survived by running away from machine-gun bullets from the war airplanes.” Though an armistice was signed in 1953 to pause the fighting, no peace treaty was ever signed. Millions of family members remain separated by the division. “I lost my father due to the war,” explains Ann Rhee Menzie, executive director of the Korean Community Center of the East Bay in Oakland, Calif. “He apparently left my mom and children to go north, thinking that he would return shortly, but he never returned. He never even knew that he had left my mom pregnant with a third child. The pain still hurts my mother, now 85.” Unlike those interviewed for this article, I was born in the United States as the war raged on in 1952. But at age 37, as I watched pieces of the Berlin Wall lie in rubble on television, the “wall” in Korea remained impenetrable. I wondered if my parents, both born in the North, would live to see Korea reunified. As time would tell, they did not, and on the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the division of Korea appears steadfast as ever. Still, the reunification of Germany was extremely important not only for Germans, but for Koreans everywhere. “It encouraged me to think that there is always a possibility of change in human history,” the Rev. Rhee says. “There had been some courageous people, in East and West Germany, who worked hard for a vision of one united Germany; their conviction mattered.” Koreans have taken giant strides toward reunifying their country. The minjok (popular) movements of the 1980s put an end to dictatorship in South Korea, making possible widespread public advocacy for intra-Korean reconciliation. Summit meetings held between the leaders of North and South Korea, in 2000 and 2007, charted out concrete steps toward healing the Cold War wounds that divide the country. But the Cold War in Korea is also an international conflict. The United States and North Korea, as well as North and South Korea, are still technically at war. As long as the standoff remains, so will the division. To those of the Korean diaspora, Mrs. Shin urges more vocal participation in demanding that the United States changes the Korean War armistice into a peace treaty, normalizes relations, and resolves the nuclear issue with North Korea. “We have to support our brothers in the North who are struggling with cold and hunger and pain, and we have to help them play a role in international society by offering our hands,” she says. “Now is the time for us to change our fate with our will.”

(The Korean language version of this interview will be published in Minjog 21.) Mike Chinoy is currently a senior fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. A foreign correspondent for CNN for 24 years, in April of 1994 he became the first broadcaster to file live TV reports from North Korea. Chinoy has visited the D.P.R.K. 14 times and is the author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, which Foreign Affairs magazine described as “the definitive account” of the North Korean nuclear crisis. An updated paperback edition current to former President Bill Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang has just been published and a Korean language version is forthcoming. [Thomas Kim]: What are your impressions coming out of U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth’s visit to Pyongyang? [Mike Chinoy]: As [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton said, it was a pretty positive trip. Obviously there is a lot of skepticism on the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese side, and there are still a lot of question marks, but my sense is that this was a potentially important step forward. If you parse the statements made on both sides, it seems clear that while they weren’t negotiating, they covered a whole range of issues that would be the subject of negotiations. If you look at the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) statement, they said that the discussion covered “a peace agreement, normalization of bilateral relations, economic and energy assistance, and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” My sense is that Bosworth was saying to them that if you come back to the six-party talks, these are the issues that will be on the agenda. From the North’s perspective, they were looking to see if the U.S. was serious about a range of issues beyond the nuclear one. If you look back at how we got to where we are now, there are lots of factors that went into it, but the North Koreans in 2008 became very skeptical about how serious the U.S. was about trying to move forward and were also very skeptical about what South Korea and Japan were going to do. Part of what the North Koreans were indicating in recent months was that if they were getting back into the diplomatic process, they wanted to see a commitment to addressing their concerns, rather than the U.S. insisting that “you denuclearize first and then we’ll get on to these other things.” It does seem that Bosworth indicated to the North Koreans that Washington was open to addressing these other issues in the context of getting back to the six-party talks and working on the nuclear issues. The question is whether or not another meeting or two is going to be required. The North Koreans did not make any kind of commitment as to when they might come back the six-party talks, but the bottom line is that Bosworth came in and said that he was speaking on behalf of President Obama, and talked with them in a serious way. Both sides used the term “common ground,” which was very significant. Skepticism is always in order with this process as it’s had so many ups and downs, but a year that began very badly is ending on a cautiously encouraging note that diplomacy might get going again. [Thomas Kim]: Bosworth appears to understand North Korea’s stated grievances with the U.S., and has previously expressed an understanding as to why a peace treaty is important to the North Koreans. What role do you see Bosworth playing in shaping U.S. policy? Will he be someone who shapes policy on the ground, will he play a role similar to [former Chief Envoy to North Korea] Christopher Hill in the Bush administration, or will Bosworth be restricted by his superiors? [Mike Chinoy]: One of the problems that Chris Hill had was that he was representing a U.S. government that was bitterly divided about what to do with North Korea. This is one of the central themes in my book, Meltdown. Inconsistency crippled the U.S. approach. At particular points, particular in 2008, Hill was saying things to the North Koreans and reaching understandings with them, and then back in Washington couldn’t get support for it. (I cover this in great detail in the updated paperback edition.) Hill reached an understanding with North Korean negotiator Kim Gye Gwan in spring of 2008 under which North Korea agreed to submit a declaration dealing with its plutonium program, along with a side letter indicating a willingness to address the uranium program issue and their nuclear dealings with Syria, and in return, the North was to be taken off the U.S. State Department list of countries involved in state-sponsored terrorism. When Hill went back to Washington, there was so much pushback from hard-line critics that he was forced to go back to the North Koreans and demand that they submit to a very intrusive inspection regime as a precondition of delisting. That was the catalyst of the crisis that torpedoed the process in 2008. The North Koreans felt that the U.S. was moving the goalposts in the middle of the game. Bosworth is responding to this, telling them that he’s speaking for the President. In the Obama administration, there is nothing on the order of the civil war that existed in the Bush administration over North Korea policy. One of the concerns about Bosworth is that his role as special envoy on North Korea is a part time position, and thus lacks the stature that, for instance, Richard Holbrooke has as special envoy for Southwest Asia or George Mitchell has as special envoy for the Middle East. So you can understand why the North Koreans might have had doubts about how serious the U.S. was, given Bosworth’s status as a part-time envoy. That being said, however, Bosworth is a serious player, knows the issues, knows the North Koreans, and was clearly given the authorization to say he was speaking for the President. We’ll have to wait and see what if any pushback there is in Washington, but I think Bosworth was trying to indicate to the North Koreans that unlike Christopher Hill, where you constantly got mixed signals, what you see is what you get. The people in the Obama administration are well aware of what was dysfunctional in the way that the Bush administration handled the North Korea issue. I think they are trying to avoid those mistakes by having fairly consistent policy. There are people who are more skeptical or less skeptical of the North Koreans, but they are much more on the same page than the Bush administration ever was. They are running a far more coherent operation. [Thomas Kim]: The North Koreans have expressed a desire to pick up where they left off with the Clinton administration. How realistic is this? What has changed since then? [Mike Chinoy]: The most important change is that North Korea is a nuclear power. It’s given a great many hints that it intends to remain a nuclear power. In fact one of the really big question marks is whether or not, realistically, the North is prepared to put its nuclear program on the table. Frankly, it was a lot easier to work that issue when the North had only enough weapons-grade plutonium for one or two bombs, which was the situation during the Clinton administration, and seemed to be willing to engage in a constructive diplomatic process. Not only has the North made clear that it has nuclear weapons, but you have also had eight years of up-and-down dealings with Pyongyang, which has fueled an acute level of distrust on both sides that is hard to undo. Neither side trusted each other very much at the end of the Clinton administration, but they trust each other a whole lot less now for a lot of different reasons. So one of the questions is whether or not the nuclear program overall is still on the table. The North has signaled that, “we don’t need nuclear weapons if we don’t feel threatened,” but they’ve also sent hints that what they mean by “not feel threatened” is the end of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance, or the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella that protects South Korea and Japan. For any U.S. government, that is a non-starter, and if this is the North Korean position, then it will be hard to make progress. My own personal feeling is that there are issues short of full denuclearization where negotiations are worth pursuing. I should say that until you get into a serious negotiating process, we won’t know what is real and what is not with regard to North Korean rhetoric. What we’ve seen in North Korean declarations is that when they make one, it doesn’t mean that this will be North Korean policy forever. The six-party talks are a good example. The North Koreans said last spring that they would “never” return to the six-party talks, and now they have signaled, both to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao when he met Kim Jong Il in October, and more recently to Bosworth, that they are willing in principle to return. So when Pyongyang says “never” it doesn’t necessarily mean never. Moreover, even if they aren’t willing to give up their nuclear bombs, there are things that can be negotiated. The North has not restarted the reactor, Yongbyon, which would enable it to make more plutonium, so getting a commitment from them not to restart it would be important. It might be possible to negotiate a moratorium on further nuclear tests, which is very important in terms of the North not improving the quality of its missiles or the sophistication of its nuclear devices. They could promise to stop any nuclear cooperation with other countries. Those kinds of steps would be very important in preventing a difficult situation from getting worse, and in making the North Korean nuclear program seem less threatening. There is plenty to negotiate if you get back to the table. The fundamental question is, if the North Koreans are insisting on keeping their nuclear weapons unless the U.S. meets conditions that they know no American government would accept, then that’s problematic. Will the North Koreans keep their nukes? We don’t really know what their long-term position is. It’s not clear that they know what they will do. Perhaps Kim Jong Il knows. Historically, there is no precedent of a country that tests a nuclear device and declares itself to be a nuclear power then giving up that capability. The nuclear program is a source of national pride for the North, and a device to protect them from what they see as threats to their national security. From the North Korean perspective, having nuclear bombs is a far better guarantee of their security than a U.S. government that has been so inconsistent and shown so many flip-flops in its approach to the North. Until we get into a negotiating process with them, we really don’t know, and so far none of the negotiations have been sufficient to really know what will happen. And these negotiations have to be at a high enough level. We can’t be sure of the outcome, obviously, but there is considerable logic in testing the North Koreans on this. We won’t know what the North Koreans will do unless we get involved in a serious diplomatic effort to find out. [Thomas Kim]: How do you think Seoul is seeing these recent developments? [Mike Chinoy]: My sense is that South Koreans are divided in three ways. The government of President Lee Myung-bak is, I would say, conservative, highly skeptical of the process but still interested in engaging with the North, and predictably a little anxious about any U.S.-North Korea bilateral diplomacy for fear of being left out. They are concerned that the U.S. will “go soft.” There are even more conservative elements in South Korea that are really dubious of this whole process, and see North Korea through a traditional cold war lens. They are really dubious about all of this. And you also have the currently out-of-power left that still represents a significant part of the political landscape in South Korea. The Obama administration has made its relationship with regional allies central to its approach toward North Korea. In large part this is a response to a situation they inherited from the Bush administration, where relations with their historical allies Japan and South Korea were strained. It was a response to how Chris Hill operated. Hill, taking into account the poisonous situation in Washington, had to be a “lone ranger” in order to get anything accomplished. When I was researching “Meltdown,” one source described the policy process during Hill’s time as one where “Hill calls [then Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice, and Rice call Bush.” So repairing U.S. relations with Japan and South Korea have been an absolutely crucial part of the Obama administration’s approach, so they have been constantly talking with the Japanese and South Koreans, trying to ensure that there are no nasty surprises. There is some residual concern on the part of the South Korean government. By sending Bosworth to Seoul on the way into Pyongyang and on the way out, the Obama administration is doing everything it can to stay in sync as they move forward. In fairness, moreover, Bosworth made it clear to the North Koreans that he wasn’t there to negotiate, that negotiations had to be done through the six-party talks. As long as Japan and South Korea feel confident that the U.S. will continue to insist on this, there will be less of a problem. [Thomas Kim]: We’ve read in the news that the Obama administration feels like its sanctions strategy is working to put pressure on North Korea. Yet North Korea has had sanctions against it for decades. What is new or different about sanctions now that suggests why sanctions might be influencing North Korea’s political stance? [Mike Chinoy]: The record shows that sanctions in fact, have not been very effective in changing North Korea policy. The attempts to get tough with the North Koreans, even when they inflict pain on north Korea, even when that happens, it has not created a change in North Korea. If anything, the pattern has been opposite. When the North Koreans get pushed, they push back harder. In Meltdown, I describe how sanctions and coercion repeatedly produced the exact opposite effect of what was intended. One glaring example was the case of the Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, where the U.S. targeted North Korea’s access to international financial transactions, hoping to discourage the international financial community from dealing with North Korea. This led to North Korea boycotting the six-party talks. Then, in the spring of 2006, North Korean Foreign Ministry official Li Gun went to the U.S. and proposed the two countries set up a “bilateral mechanism” to resolve the issue. He even said if Washington wanted to monitor the North’s financial transactions, it should let Pyongyang open an account at Citibank. This was rejected by the U.S. Then the North asked for a bilateral meeting with Chris Hill. This too was rejected. This led to the North Korean missile tests in July 2006, which in turn led to the U.N. sanctions resolution. Instead of backing off at this point, however, the North Koreans then tested a nuclear bomb on October 9. Only when Hill violated his instructions from Rice and held a bilateral meeting with North Korea’s lead negotiator with the U.S. Kim Kye Gwan, during which the two sides agreed to create the “bilateral mechanism” to address the BDA issue, did the North came back to the six-party talks. And within 4 months you had the Feb 13 2007 agreement. I think this is “Exhibit A” about what happens when you try to pressure the North Koreans. The other thing is that, however upset the Chinese were about the North’s nuclear test last spring, they have made clear that they are not on board with pressuring Pyongyang with sanctions. There is no other way to interpret Wen Jiabao’s visit to North Korea in October, followed by a senior Chinese general visiting Pyongyang and talking about the traditional friendship between the two countries. The Chinese are absolutely not on board with sanctions, and without the Chinese, sanctions aren’t going to work. There is a counterargument that one of the reasons the North is being accommodating now and abandoning its bellicose approach is that it’s been chastened by sanctions. I don’t buy that. The North, for a variety of reasons, took a very muscular approach in the winter and spring. Then, having sent a message of, “don’t mess with us,” they signaled in the summer that they were ready to engage. Their behavior recently is not because they have been chastened by sanctions. Their behavior has their own internal logic. Given the Chinese position, sanctions are unlikely to be effective. I do think that if American attempts to engage now through Bosworth don’t go anywhere because the North Koreans are so intransigent that diplomacy runs out of steam, then Washington can go to Beijing and say, “we went the extra mile, they are still being unreasonable. Having said that, a) it doesn’t look like this is happening; and b) even then the Chinese may still not be on board with sanctions. [Thomas Kim]: We know from past experience that when the U.S and North Korea engage in “talks” with each other, that there may not be a sincere desire to work toward diplomatic progress. What do you think is driving the Obama administration’s recent, outwardly diplomatic steps? Do you feel like there a genuine desire to make progress toward formal diplomatic relations? [Mike Chinoy]: I don’t really know. The first 9 or 10 months of the Obama administration the policy was reactive. Whatever reason the North Koreans had, they were pretty stupid to slap in the face a president who came in having campaigned on a policy of engaging with American adversaries. You can’t discount the anger and disgust felt by many in Washington toward the North Koreans for staging the missile test and the nuclear test. Whatever the North Koreans say about having abided international law with regard to the missile tests, they knew, and had been told by American interlocutors, that this was a really bad way to start things off with the new U.S. president The Obama administration saw this as a slap in the face, and you can’t discount how this further eroded whatever goodwill the U.S. had toward North Korea, and heightened the skepticism about doing anything with the North Koreans. There is still the overriding sense of zero trust, total skepticism, and considerable dislike of the North Korean system. But that being said, if they can get back to the six-party talks, they have made clear progress. During the Bush administration, you had ideologues talking about not being in the same room with the North Koreans for fear of being “contaminated” by them. There is none of this ideological nonsense in the Obama administration. I don’t think this administration is going to give much to the North Koreans absent major moves on the nuclear front. The jury is still out on precisely how far the Obama people are willing to go. It’s a chicken and egg thing on who is going to go first. It depends partly on the North Koreans. We won’t know what will happen until we get into diplomacy, and the North is not going to get into diplomacy until it knows that the U.S. is serious about doing more than berating them about nuclear weapons. What the KCNA report about Bosworth’s visit signaled is that Washington is prepared to look at a whole range of issues if they can somehow get back to the bargaining table. [Thomas Kim]: Do you have any plans to visit North Korea as part of this upcoming episode of potential U.S.-North Korea engagement? Do you see yourself playing a role in the negotiations? [Mike Chinoy]: I see myself as reporter and an analyst, and not playing any role in Track II [diplomacy]. I would like to get back to North Korea. I haven’t been since 2005. The climate has improved enough and North Korea is more receptive to visits by American academics and scholars. I would love to get back and see what’s going on. [Thomas Kim]: If you had to identify more immediate, short-term steps that we should be looking for, steps that might lead to prospects for formal U.S.-North Korea relations, what would they be? [Mike Chinoy]: One big question now is whether what Bosworth said to North Korea and what North Korea said in response is enough for the North will come back to the six-party talks, or whether another meeting is going to be required. Will it be necessary for some kind of practical steps to be taken by the U.S. to indicate to the North Koreans that by doing something, there is some sort of basic good will? I don’t really know. One of the interesting questions that will come up at some point is that the U.S. wants North Korea to reaffirm the September 19 2005 declaration made at the six-party talks concerning the goal of a denuclearized peninsula. Privately, the North Koreans have complained that they are being singled out, and have argued that the other parties also made commitments at that time. The U.S. side seems to have recognized this. The North Koreans could say that the 2005 declaration underpinned the two subsequent agreements [in February and October of 2007] under which the North Koreans were supposed to get heavy fuel oil and other aid in return for disabling the Yongbyon reactor. The fact is that South Koreans never provided the full tranche of fuel oil they promised, and the Japanese never provided any fuel oil at all. As part of the renewal of the commitment of September 19 2005, the North may insist on seeing the fulfilling of these commitments from the 2007 deals that are underpinned by the 2005 agreement. That could mean the North demanding to be given the fuel supplies pledged under the 2007 deals. That’s something to watch, because the Obama administration has repeatedly said it would not reward North Korea for doing something that the North Koreans have already promised to do. You hear over and over again in Washington the phrase that “we’re not going to buy that horse again.” The North Koreans can respond, “you never paid for the first horse in full.” We could see a linking of American calls to the North to reaffirm its commitments to the North’s insistence that Americans and other parties reaffirm the commitments that they made, and perhaps carry them out. The tone now is such that Washington isn’t going to be hung up on a second bilateral meeting if they feel that this would do the trick. Clearly with both sides using the language of “common ground,” it would not be a stretch to see if both sides couldn’t sharpen that definition further before the six-party talks. My bottom line here is to return to the point I began with, that the end of the year is looking a lot less bleak than the beginning of the year did.

As U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth makes a historic trip to North Korea this December, Koreans and those concerned about the Korean Peninsula await — either for good news — or for more of the same. No high ranking U.S. official has made this trip since former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flew to Pyongyang in 2000, and almost nine years of bilateral bitterness, sanctions and nuclear tests have intervened. Writing on Forbes.com on December 4th, Gordon Chang called for the U.S. Special Envoy to North Korea not to make the trip, asserting that the U.S. is merely placating China. Chang wrote, “Nobody has much hope for Bosworth’s mission” and that Pyongyang hasn’t agreed to what the U.S. stipulated as prior conditions. Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, wants Bosworth and recently confirmed U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Robert King, to pressure Pyongyang to include human rights along with food aid monitoring and the treatment of people who migrate across the border in any subsequent bilateral talks. But what do Koreans and Korean Americans want? As members of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, we know that now is an optimal time for bilateral dialogue with North Korea. Both the U.S. and North Korea have failed earlier agreements, and while the U.S. places sole blame on Pyongyang, much of the time, as Leon Sigal of the Social Science Research Council has stated, “Pyongyang was not alone in failing to keep its agreements. Unfortunately, Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul didn’t manage to keep theirs either.” On the other hand, this summer’s trip by former President Clinton and the release of two American journalists has provided a new opportunity for dialogue that should not be dismissed. And while we would agree that human rights issues need to be addressed, we would assert that one of the most important and basic human right is that of security – to be able to live in peace. As long as North Korea feels under the threat of war — because in fact, we are still technically in a state of war — there is no real incentive for Pyongyang to disarm and denuclearize the country — much less change its internal human rights situation. Concrete steps towards removing that state of war would include security guarantees, diplomatic recognition and regular exchanges in order to reduce tensions and build mutual trust on both sides. This sustainable diplomatic process would pave the way for both the U.S. and North Korea to cross the threshold towards signing a peace treaty. The U.S. and both Korean states have spent over half a century in a militarized standoff. More than 75 million Korean people have suffered the trauma of an unfinished war, the separation of families, and a divided peninsula that used to be one country. Christine Ahn of the Korea Policy Institute has stated in these pages, “Amid the changing political dynamics in Northeast Asia landscape, one thing remains constant: the Korean peoples’ desire for peace and reunification.” In a few weeks, we will welcome in the new year. In 2010, we will also observe the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War. We can only hope that Bosworth’s visit to Pyongyang and the Obama administration’s ensuing actions will help Koreans realize the dream for peace, and a reunified people and homeland. About the National Campaign to End the Korean War The National Campaign to End the Korean War is the collaboration of more than 50 leading Korean-Americans, veterans, and human rights organizations working to promote a U.S.-Korea policy that will bring about a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. Our goal is to finally end the 1950-1953 Korean War through the signing of a peace treaty between the United States and North Korea. For more information, please visit: http://www.endthekoreanwar.org.

As a longtime peace activist and progressive, Christine Ahn was used to being on the ideological fringe. But even she wasn’t prepared to be red-baited and called a supporter of dictatorship. It started in 2004. Ahn, then an activist working for Food First, an Oakland nonprofit that looks at the root causes of hunger around the world, was invited to give a speech about North Korea at the Human Rights Commission in South Korea. In her talk, she criticized the American passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act, arguing that increased sanctions against the communist country were choking its people and exacerbating their human-rights crisis. Ahn advocated peace and engagement. She also pointed out US hypocrisy. “I said some provocative things,” she recalled, calling out American human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, racial biases of the US criminal justice system, and the persistent hunger and poverty of a meaningful segment of the American population. The crowd’s response was overwhelming. “My perspective was obviously very fringe and a bit left, but the Korean people loved it,” Ahn said, recalling her surprise. “I was, like, paparazzi’d. …. But it was just like people opened their eyes for a moment here. Okay, let’s just stop for a moment here, all this propaganda about North Korea, and just like think about it here in a more pragmatic way. And, obviously, it had resonance.” But one month later, she received an e-mail that tempered her excitement. It was a message from a friend, pointing her to a blog called One Free Korea. A post entitled “The Alternative Reality of Christine Ahn” criticized her viewpoint, labeled her a “North Korean apologist,” and detailed facts about her life and her beliefs. Ahn was creeped out. “I mean it was so freaky to have this ten-page article about me,” she said. It was authored by Joshua Stanton, a lawyer with the Department of Homeland Security who currently serves as the department’s deputy chief for tort litigation. In a recent interview via e-mail, Stanton said he blogs as a private citizen, but added, “I think Ms. Ahn is a reprehensible apologist for mass murder, and for the deliberate, discriminatory mass starvation of men, women, and children.” The incident horrified her. “It freaked me out so much that I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll continue doing this peace work,'” said Ahn, who lives in Oakland and is now a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute. But, in fact, she became more vocal, and was interviewed on CNN and talk shows such as the Today Show and KQED’s Forum. Meanwhile, her list of critics grew. The following year, Ahn said one of her colleagues in South Korea received a call from the US embassy demanding to know “Who the hell invited Christine Ahn to speak at the panel?” She’s now listed on DiscoverTheNetworks.org, a web site by conservative author David Horowitz that she describes as an “online database of all these cells, like terror cells of academics, think-tanks, foundations, Hollywood stars.” She’s described as a “Supporter of the Communist dictatorship of North Korea.” For decades, a small group of East Bay-based scholars and activists such as Ahn have advocated a more contextualized view of North Korea that takes into account the United States’ contribution to and complicity in the situation. While Ahn acknowledges that there is a lot of repression in North Korea, she says that the critique of the country’s human rights is highly politicized. Yet for their efforts they’ve been spied on, red-baited, labeled North Korean sympathizers, fired from jobs, and been the targets of smear campaigns. Following a series of North Korean nuclear tests and up until its August release of US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, US relations with the country had grown particularly tense. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called its behavior childish; North Korea countered, saying Clinton “looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.” Hazel Smith of the Korea Policy Institute declared that the United States was effectively “sleepwalking to war.” Yet since former President Clinton — who nearly bombed the country in 1994 — successfully negotiated the journalists’ release, Washington’s tenor has changed markedly. US officials recently held talks with a senior North Korean diplomat, although no formal bilateral talks have been scheduled yet, and sanctions are still in effect. The move also eased the tensions between South and North Korea, which had been strained following the inauguration of the South’s president, Lee Myung Bak, who took a harder-line stance on North Korea than his predecessor. Now, activists who were once marginalized may have a chance to influence policy after all. About a month ago, Ahn and Paul Liem, the Berkeley-based president of the Korea Policy Institute, arranged a meeting to discuss US-North Korean relations between themselves, ten other activists, and members of the State Department and Congress, including Frank Januzzi, John Kerry’s senior Korea advisor, who also works for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They were received much differently than during past visits, Ahn said. “Something about the Bill Clinton trip really changed the dynamics in a very significant way,” she said. “The whole regime-change discourse felt like it was long gone, that was history. It also felt like that they just knew that diplomacy was the way forward and that there had to be some kind of breakthrough with North Korea. It was just a matter of how and when.” When it comes to North Korea — aka the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — there’s a lot the American public doesn’t know. For instance, few may know that the majority of North Korean defectors say they fled their country for economic reasons, not because of political or religious persecution. Or that the United States scorched North Korea during the Korean War, dropping more napalm than during the Vietnam War and 420,000 bombs on Pyongyang, whose population numbered about 400,000. In fact, most people don’t even know that the Korean War technically never ended — a peace treaty was never signed, only an armistice — and that approximately 30,000 US troops are still stationed in South Korea. Every year, the militaries of the United States and the Republic of Korea stage a joint exercise, simulating an invasion of the North. This year, that event happened to coincide with the entry into North Korea of journalists Ling and Lee. Knowing that, the public might view their capture somewhat differently. But lawmakers and the public continue to be uneducated about Korea, due in part to the fact that the mainstream media generally portrays North Korea as a giant gulag run by an evil, unpredictable dictator hell-bent on starving his people, developing nukes, selling arms to hostile states, and obliterating human rights. While there’s undoubtedly a lot of repression and heinous acts committed in North Korea, activists say the situation is far more complex than that. The dominant narrative leaves out historical context that they believe implicates the United States in some of the problems and serves America’s self-interest in maintaining influence in Asia. The ongoing US military occupation of South Korea combined with our punishment of the north via sanctions only stokes the militaristic ambitions of the country and continues to divide families that have been separated for 56 years, they believe. Worst of all, the end result makes life much harder for everyday North Korean citizens and heightens the humanitarian crisis on the Korean peninsula. “If more and more Americans knew about the kind of diversity of people that are really questioning US involvement, US military occupation, 30,000 troops still on the Korean peninsula, all the kind of crimes committed towards the civilians by the US military … I think they would say, ‘Okay, it’s like the Korean War has got to end,'” said Ahn. “Enough is enough. We need a new kind of way, a new way of moving forward on US-Korea policy.” Ahn and her cohorts at the Korea Policy Institute are trying to do just that. Formed in 2006, the Los Angeles-based group aims to provide a unified, coherent, and informed voice on US-Korean policy that it hopes will one day lead to the signing of a peace treaty. A just-released study seems to support the activists’ claim. “North Korea Inside Out: The Case for Economic Engagement,” authored by the Asia Society and the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, advocates for the United States to adopt a long-term policy of economic engagement with North Korea, which would “benefit the North Korean people as a whole and would generate vested interests in continued reform and opening, and a less confrontational foreign policy.” While sanctions have been useful at times, “their long-term effect has been to harden the D.P.R.K.’s resistance to international cooperation.” Yet alternative information that challenges the narrative that the US role in South Korea has been completely positive typically has been suppressed over the years. Ahn points out that journalist I.F. Stone’s book The Hidden History of the Korean War, which provided a radically different version of events, had trouble getting published in 1952. Crimes committed by the US military during the war were concealed for decades, until 1999, when journalists unearthed the story of the US massacre of hundreds of South Korean civilians, which they published in the book The Bridge at No Gun Ri. (The US military has disputed the exact number killed.) Other historical atrocities are now being investigated by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2005. So far, there are more than 200 incidents of US soldiers attacking South Korean refugees in 1950 and 1951, according to petitions filed by citizens; a final report is expected to be released next year. And when it comes to opaque North Korea, there’s even more that we don’t know. “Most people in the United States have no idea how US operations on the Korean peninsula shaped the way North Korea is right now,” said Professor Elaine Kim, coordinator of UC Berkeley’s Asian American Studies Department. Kim noted how the American carpet bombing impacted not only the physical landscape of the North, but also the people’s identity. When she visited North Korea in 1999, she noted that brush paintings sold on the street depicted the one area that had not been bombed. The entire city of Pyongyang looked like it was built in 1955. “So that means that everybody in Pyongyang can be made aware every single day, walking around, that the place was destroyed by somebody aerially,” she said. Many Americans also may be unaware that North Korea’s economy was doing quite well during the 1960s and 1970s, even surpassing that of its southern neighbor. But a reduction in trade with the Soviet Union, and the impact of the American embargo and sanctions, helped freeze North Korea’s development. “The reason they don’t have energy for all their infrastructure is … the US and its allies who embargo them don’t allow them to trade with anybody the US trades with,” said Kim. As a result, for example, there are streetlights, but no electricity in them. Many North Koreans are extremely slight and seemingly malnourished. “This is a crime,” she noted. “Talk about human rights — this is a crime against humanity that was allowed to happen. And they’re trying to say that it’s because Kim Jong Il is a dictator and wants to keep everybody enthralled, that’s why it’s like that?” she asked, incredulously. “Hello! Let’s have some reality here.” Learning the whole story would go a long way in contextualizing why North Koreans loathe Americans, Kim continued. She recalled how North Korean sharpshooters, who won gold medals during the 1972 Olympics, said during an interview that they imagined their targets were US bombers. “I think the US was so horrified by them saying that, what they said was immediately squelched,” she said. “That’s an example of the truth being continually squelched.” If Americans understood the extent of the carpet bombing in North Korea, Kim said, that kind of answer might be more understandable. “People do things because there’s a historical context for them. They don’t just do them because they’re nuts. And the way we’re told now is, ‘It’s irrational. Kim Jong Il is irrational and the Korean people are irrational.'” To understand the activist’s critique of US involvement on the Korean peninsula, it’s important first to understand some history. Although the rabbit-shaped peninsula is rather small (about the size of Utah), it has been coveted because of its natural resources, desirable location (wedged between China and Japan), and the fact that it’s surrounded by water, and thus a strategic port location. For centuries, Korea was ruled by a succession of dynasties that adhered to a policy of isolation (hence its nickname “The Hermit Kingdom”) — despite invasions by Mongols, the Manchus, and others. But by the late 19th century, the country became increasingly susceptible to geopolitics. Major forces were fighting for control in Korea, starting with the First Sino-Japanese War and continuing through the Russo-Japanese War. Those conflicts resulted in Japan, which was emerging as a superpower, making Korea its protectorate in 1905, then annexing it in 1910. The end of World War II in 1945 closed the chapter of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. The United States and the Soviet Union occupied the country as a trusteeship, with the idea that it would be temporary. Control was divided roughly in the middle of the country, along the 38th parallel — a boundary that was hastily established by Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel of the US State-War Navy Coordinating Committee. The Soviet Union would disarm Japanese troops north of the 38th parallel; the United States would be responsible for the south. But the Cold War was in full swing; the two powers were unable to agree on the terms of Korean independence and ended up establishing two separate governments sympathetic to their own ideologies. In the south, the American military gave many government positions to Koreans who were seen as traitors for collaborating with Japanese rulers, and it didn’t recognize the attempts to set up a provisional government because they viewed it as a communist insurgency. The United States helped install Syngman Rhee, an anticommunist who was exiled in the United States for decades. He became South Korea’s first president in 1948. As each side jockeyed for full control of Korea, North Korean forces crossed the parallel and invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, sparking the Korean War. The United States and the UN came to the aid of the South. A counteroffensive pushed North Koreans past the 38th parallel nearly to the Yalu River. Then the People’s Republic of China, which feared US dominance on the peninsula, came to the aid of the North, pushing the United States back down below the 38th parallel. After more pushing by the United States, the fighting ceased with a 1953 armistice that divided the country near the 38th parallel and created the 2.5-mile-wide buffer zone, the so-called Demilitarized Zone. Millions of civilians died during the conflict, and countless families ended up separated. To this day, the war technically continues, with the Demilitarized Zone heavily guarded and watched around the clock by the respective militaries. Korean immigration to the United States officially started in 1903, when a ship of Koreans landed in Hawaii to work as laborers on sugar plantations. Many also were active in the movement to liberate Korea from Japanese colonial rule, which manifested itself in the Christian churches that had spread in Korea due to the presence of missionaries. Koreans were forbidden from immigrating to the United States under the Immigration Act of 1924, so the population remained relatively constant until 1940. More immigrants came during the Korean War, mostly wives of US servicemen. But immigration really spiked after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished the quota system that had limited immigration up to that point. According to Census data, the Korean population in the United States jumped from 69,130 in 1970 to 354,593 in 1980 and 798,849 in 1990. Although many had professional degrees, their lack of English skills relegated them to low-paying jobs and many opened their own businesses, such as dry cleaners, markets, and restaurants. Because of South Korea’s massive campaign to demonize North Koreans after the Korean War and during the 1970s and 1980s, many Koreans who immigrated to the United States subscribed to a pro-US, anticommunist stance. Many are conservative. “There was a kind of effort to instill anticommunism and to instill fear of the authority of the South Korean, pro-US, right-wing military dictatorship and then spread that fear to the US and to the diaspora, I think,” said Kim. But slowly, that attitude began changing in South Korea. Democracy movements in the South erupted in reaction to postwar military dictators — many of whom were supported by the United States. Many questioned the role of the United States in the Kwangju Massacre of 1980, in which pro-democracy students and activists were killed by the South Korean Army. (The United States had authorized the release some South Korean troops to quell the rebellion, and President Reagan endorsed the actions of then-President Chun Doo-hwan, who was sentenced to death for his role in the event, then later pardoned.) In 2002, two American Army sergeants were acquitted after their tanks crushed two South Korean girls to death, causing widespread outrage. In 2006, US military expansion in Pyongtaek, south of Seoul, evicted farmers from their land and spawned protests and clashes with South Korean military soldiers. “That’s one thing that really I think often gets lost on people, is that democracy flourished in South Korea not because of US intervention, but despite it,” said Christine Hong, a Korea Policy Institute fellow and former UC Berkeley post doc, who recently relocated to UC Santa Cruz where she’s now an assistant professor. All of this points to a radically different point of view of the United States among South Koreans today. “I remember a few years ago when the people in South Korea said they thought that US was more dangerous than North Korea,” Kim recalled. “So that means that there are many decades of one-sided love affair had come to an end. … Many people had decided that the US was in Korea because of self interest for the US and that things that happened politically in Korea could often be laid at the door of the US and its self interest.” Activists like Kim, Hong, and Ahn certainly aren’t unique in their advocacy for peace among Korean Americans. The Bay Area doesn’t have a very large population of Koreans, especially compared to Los Angeles and New York, but that fact has perhaps allowed voices here to be particularly strong. “As the community up here is relatively small, it makes for both a certain kind of intimacy and, given the nature of a lot of social activism within the area, it also permits a certain kind of progressive possibility,” said Hong. The area’s proximity to UC Berkeley has also contributed to a more open-minded atmosphere, says Korea Policy Institute’s Paul Liem. In the 1990s, Berkeley students invited peers from North and South Korea to attend forums at the university. Elaine Kim, who was present during those years, said many students traveled to South Korea and were influenced by its politics. “Even if they’re Christian, they don’t tend to adhere to the old demonizations that used to exist,” said Kim about the students. “It doesn’t mean that they’re not susceptible to stuff like the damsel-in-distress story — I think they probably are — but I think it’s kind of easy to point out what’s wrong with that story to them now, whereas before it really wasn’t. If you said anything at all then rumors would fly that you were a spy and stuff like that. It was really bad in the Korean community.” While the community has become more accepting to a degree, these activists say they often found themselves targets of suppression. Even the US government got in on the act. Liem said that in the late 1990s, the FBI called him and claimed that somebody had made a threat against a member of the South Korean consulate in San Francisco. “They wanted to go through a list of names with me to find out who these different people were,” Liem recalled. “I essentially said that if he wanted to talk to me about his political views I was happy to talk to him, but I wasn’t going to go through a list with him. And he ended up just saying a lot of derogatory things about my father, how he was un-American because he was very active in the overseas movement for democracy in South Korea. He wrote a lot of articles about US policy. Which surprised me that he knew all that.” For Kim, it started in the 1960s. Until the 1980s, she said, “if you wanted to express … any interest in North Korea, you were immediately suspected of being a spy for North Korea or something like that; it was very ridiculous.” Kim said she gave a talk in the late 1960s against the normalization of relations with Japan, after which she was approached by some Korean guys who told her, “From now on, you study literature, you talk about literature.” Kim responded by buying a vanity license plate that read “Juche,” the North Korean ideology meaning self-reliance, which spawned a rumor that she was a North Korean spy. She said Korean students at UC Berkeley told her that they were warned by the South Korean consul general in San Francisco to not take her classes “because I was a North Korean spy.” During the Kwangju Uprising in 1980, which was largely not reported on in the United States, Kim said she ran images of bodies in coffins on “Asians Now,” a monthly Korean bilingual program she hosted on KTVU. Kim said the South Korean consul general immediately went to KTVU and demanded equal airtime to rebuke the images, then offered an all-expenses paid trip for the program’s executive producer and a cameraman to “show how wonderful South Korea is.” After Kim informed the San Francisco Chronicle that there had been an attempted bribe at KTVU, she was fired, she says. But among the activists, there is a diversity of voices and opinions. While the Korea Policy Institute has generally been viewed as more leftist, others take a different approach. LiNK, or Liberty in North Korea, is a national nonprofit organization with chapters around the country, including UC Berkeley. Jennie Chang, the Berkeley chapter’s external affairs coordinator, says its primary goal is to raise awareness about the North Korean human-rights crisis and to raise funds for LiNK’s various programs, such as the operation of underground shelters. Last month, it screened the documentary Seoul Train, about the plight of North Koreans trying to escape via a network of underground safe houses operated by South Koreans. “It’s really similar to the Nazi concentration camp,” said Chang, describing the humanitarian situation in the North. “All the rights and liberties that we know about are not existent in North Korea. … Eighty-five percent of North Korean women refugees are sex trafficked. It’s not really in the media as it should be.” However, other activists are critical of LiNK, especially after its former executive director, Adrian Hong, wrote an essay in The New York Times advocating regime change, which they say would require military intervention and thus lead to a massive humanitarian tragedy. “I think he’s kind of a nut,” said Oakland resident John Cha. “He’s sort of hawkish and says stuff like, ‘Oh we have to get rid of Kim Jong Il.’ Well, that’s fine, but how do you do it? He doesn’t have any answers other than, well, ‘I’d love to go in and remove him like we did with Saddam.'” Cha isn’t affiliated with any organization but, like the fellows at the Korea Policy Institute, he’s been trying to shed light on the US government’s misunderstandings about North Korea. “I think they should learn more about the people over there and try to understand them and figure out what they really want,” he said. “Historically, the people of North Korea, they really hate the Americans and policymakers. Obama and Hillary, they should understand why they really hate the Americans. They learn this from the moment they are born. They paint Americans as true evil. And, on the other hand, we are painting the North Koreans as evil, so where do you go from there?” Cha hopes his current project, a book on Kim Jong Il, will help his cause, but he laments that prospective publishers seem primarily interested in salacious details. One publisher wanted to know more about the Dear Leader’s “wine-drinking habit” and “all those Swedish women,” he said. “They’re asking some wrong questions.” That’s not surprising because the general US population largely remains in the dark when it comes to Korean politics and moving beyond the polarized perception of the United States and democratic South Korea as good, and communist North Korea as evil. “It’s weird that the US is so far behind South Korea and Korean Americans in terms of critiquing those ideas and they’re still stuck in some kind of old era,” said Kim. “But maybe South Koreans and Korean Americans can change the terms of that discussion. I think they have been.” Activists and scholars still face attacks and challenges to correct misinformation about North Korea. A few months ago, Christine Hong noticed a statistic cited in several articles in The New York Times and Washington Post, which alleged that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea’s kwan-li-so penal system. Hong was intrigued where the number came from, and discovered the statistic was sourced from the US State Department. So she contacted their Korea desk, which said that the number came from the paper “The Hidden Gulag,” written by human-rights advocate David Hawk. Hong discovered that Hawk derived the number from one man, a former North Korean prison guard named Ahn Myong Chol. “I asked the State Department, when they told me where the statistic had come from, if the State Department had attempted to corroborate Mr. Ahn’s testimony with further evidence because it seemed quite flimsy that this statistic would be based upon the testimony of one defector,” she said. In response to her query, Hong said a State Department representative e-mailed her that “‘the State Department does its best to corroborate information” and that “each report goes through a rigorous vetting and editing process. … As you know, North Korea is a special case given our limited diplomatic ties and the restrictive nature of the government.’ In other words, ‘No.'” Even more problematic was the fact that the same prison guard was later quoted saying that North Korea’s political prisoners totaled 900,000. “Now it’s unclear how the statistic, based upon his knowledge as a former prison guard, and he was at four different prisons or something, went from 150,000 to 200,000 to, several years after being out of the country, to almost a million,” Hong continued. “But I would think that any kind of investigator, be it a reporter or the State Department, would really have to take that kind of figure critically.” She noted that defector testimony is often problematic — especially with North Koreans — because South Korean and Japanese journalists pay defectors for their testimonies, “so it becomes a kind of mode, a sort of livelihood to constantly produce ‘intelligence.'” In some cases, the government is funding the misinformation, according to Ahn. “I feel like maybe even progressives in this country, they don’t really get how much the US government is like spinning propaganda and investing. … They give tons of money,” she said. “If you see that documentary, Kimjongilia, it’s like ‘Thanks to the National Endowment for Democracy’ and these groups, the Citizen Coalition for Human Rights in North Korea. I mean, it’s like there is a lot of, I think, funding that is coming, either from the US government directly or the neocon structures, institutions, that are redirecting money to groups that are part of this spinning this propaganda about North Korea.” Highlighting these facts could go a long way toward changing public perception about the situation. And yet, there is little funding to support such issues. “Even in progressive circles there’s a tremendous amount of concern about whether or not it makes any sense to support North Korea at all,” acknowledged Liem. “From the left to the right, it’s really difficult to convince somebody to pour money into an issue like this.” Still, though perceptions vary, many feel that the situation between North Korea and the United States is now hopeful than it’s ever been. The United States said it’s willing to engage in bilateral talks with North Korea if that leads to resuming six-party talks, which North Korea quit some months ago. This time, Ahn believes things will be different — even though she says that the South Korean embassy also tried to preempt their recent Washington visit. “I do think that he genuinely wants diplomacy as the course of action,” she said about President Obama. “The challenge is will the hawks, even among the Democrats, impede him. But I do think that John Kerry, being the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations [Committee], and Frank Januzzi, very affable, very reasonable pragmatic person. From his perspective, he’s like, ‘Yes, we’ll never know, but unless we try, we’ll never know.'”

Tim Shorrock recounts his June 1985 interview with the late President Kim Dae Jung published by The Progressive, February, 1986. The Korea Policy Institute is pleased to present the original interview, along with Shorrock’s recollections of President Kim. The Kwangju people kept order; paratroopers broke order…You should have criticized the paratroopers’ side, not the Kwangju people’s side. Your attitude was not just, not fair. On August 18, 2009, Kim Dae Jung, the former president of South Korea and that nation’s leading dissident during its long period of military dictatorship, died in Seoul of heart failure. News of Kim’s death came as a shock to millions of Koreans, north and south. For decades, Kim had stood almost alone as a symbol of the deep Korean desire for democracy and independence, and was revered on both sides of the border for his commitment to unification and reconciliation between the two Koreas. As a journalist who has written extensively about Korea for the past 30 years, I too was deeply saddened by Kim’s passing. My feelings were shaped in part by my personal experience with Kim, whom I had met several times during his years of exile in Washington in the early 1980s. During that time, I worked closely with a faith-based coalition that sought to focus public and congressional attention on South Korea and the deep ties between its authoritarian leaders and the U.S. military. Kim spoke to the coalition several times, giving his impressions of US-Korean ties and how they could be improved. KIM’S OPTIMISM Two things struck me about Kim during our meetings. One was his deep Christian faith and his boundless optimism about the possibility of change. Even in the darkest days of the military dictatorship, he expressed a strong belief that democracy would be restored to South Korea. Many supporters found that concept hard to embrace, given the enormous US military presence there and the huge US economic stake in South Korean industry and trade. The other was his love for America and his profound faith that the American people and their leaders would eventually do the right thing in Korea. Sometimes I thought he was incredibly naïve: throughout the Cold War, the US government had supported savagely repressive governments, such as Chile’s after 1973 and Indonesia’s after 1965, in the name of national security, and did it for decades in South Korea. At the same time, Kim for years was the subject of a vicious campaign of slander by US officials who portrayed him as a dangerous and unbalanced leftist. To me, it seemed incredibly unrealistic to think that would ever change. But it did, and Kim turned out to be right on many fronts. My fondest memory of Kim Dae Jung is from 1985, when I met him at his home, shared a traditional (and delicious) Korean meal, and sat down for an extensive interview. I had just spent several weeks in South Korea meeting with student and labor activists, and was there to write about the growing movement against the US-supported dictatorship of Lt. Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, who had seized power in a violent coup in May 1980. During my visit, I had spent several days in Kwangju, Kim’s home town and the site of the infamous Kwangju Massacre, when hundreds of students and workers were gunned down and bayoneted to death for standing up to Chun’s coup (details from my reporting can be found in the PDF of my Progressive article, “Korea: Stirrings of Resistance.”) All of this was very personal for Kim, who was arrested in the wake of the massacre, charged with organizing the uprising, and sentenced to death. In December 1980, Chun spared Kim’s life as part of deal in which his illegitimate government was recognized by the incoming Reagan administration (Chun was Reagan’s first official state visitor to the White House). Kim was released in 1981, and spent the next four years in the United States before returning to Seoul in 1985. My interview with him was thus critical to my work. When I met him in June 1985, his home was surrounded by military police and his freedom of movement greatly restricted. In the days leading up to the interview, I had witnessed several clashes between student activists and riot police, and my clothes still reeked of the vicious pepper fog used by the cops to disperse crowds. MY LUNCHEON WITH KIM The day I met with Kim, he was in a great mood despite the security cordon around his house in central Seoul. To my surprise, he remembered me. During one of his talks in Washington, I had asked him about his views on nuclear power and the US campaign at the time to pressure the Korean government to buy power plants from the US companies Westinghouse and Bechtel. He hadn’t said much in reply — and Kim told me, with a laugh, that I had probably been disappointed in his answer. I had been; but I was definitely not disappointed with what Kim told me in our interview that day. For the first (and only) time, Kim addressed the sensitive issue of Kwangju and the manner in which the Carter administration, led by Richard Holbrooke, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs, had responded to the tragedy. Essentially, Carter and Holbrooke — enthusiastically backed by Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski — saw the Kwangju incident as a threat to the US-South Korean military relationship and therefore something that threatened vital American interests. At the height of the crisis, as I’ve described in detail in several articles based on declassified documents from the time, the Carter administration decided not to break with the Chun regime and instead tried — and failed — to coax a group of military gangsters into democratic reform. Military and economic aid continued, and the people of Kwangju were dismissed as “radicals” and “extremists” who had brought the calamity on themselves. It was a disgraceful performance, and persuaded many Koreans that America could never be trusted again. Kim Dae Jung knew first-hand what had happened to his compatriots, and in our interview that day expressed deep anger about what had occurred in Kwangju. He publicly criticized the US government for its unequivocal support for the Chun military group and equated that backing to “supporting” the massacre. By releasing a division from the combined US-South Korean command to put down the uprising in Kwangju, he argued, the Carter administration allowed Chun to take power. “If America had not sent one division to Kwangju, Chun Doo Hwan would not have succeeded in getting power,” he said. “If the Americans didn’t support that paratroopers’ massacre, then our people would have risen up for democracy in other cities. We could have succeeded in restoring democracy.” In our interview, Kim also laid out his vision for a future, democratic South Korea and expressed his deep hopes for reconciliation with the North. “In the future, we can realize strong security because we can enjoy the people’s voluntary support and also force North Korea to have a sincere dialogue to bring peace to the Korean peninsula,” he told me. PEACE TREATY FIRST, THEN US TROOPS CAN EXIT Kim was very direct about the role of American forces in his country. They needed to be in South Korea then, he said, because “there is no strong security under dictatorial rule.” But once there was peace, he insisted, the need for US forces would disappear. “We would raise conditions for a permanent peace treaty to ask America troops to withdraw from South Korea.” Much of Kim’s vision became reality, and he died knowing that the people of Kwangju had been vindicated and the threat of war between North and South Korea greatly diminished. But nearly 30,000 US troops remain in South Korea and a US commander remains in control of Korean forces in times of war — making South Korea the only country in the world where a foreign army exerts such influence. As the recent clash between the North and South Korean navies illustrates, we’re still a long way from peace and reconciliation in Korea. Still, Kim’s vision remains. I’m proud to have known this great fighter for democracy, and will always treasure the Chinese calligraphy he wrote for me that long ago day: To care for the People As if They were Heaven.

A violation of the right to health and a call to action On 12 June 2009, the United Nations Security Council approved its strictest economic sanctions to date against North Korea in response to a series of provocative acts, including the detonation of a nuclear device.1 The United States is also considering expanding sanctions and has appointed a high level task force to coordinate military, political, and financial strategies against North Korea. However, economic sanctions are being considered with virtually no public discussion of their potential effects on the North Korean people. Notably, even the health community has been silent. In contrast, during the lead up to the Iraq war, health professionals contributed invaluable insights to public discourse regarding the effects of economic sanctions on health.2 3 Prominent health associations published position papers and issued statements opposing their use.2 4 In fact, economic sanctions have been shown to violate the fundamental right to health.2 5 Furthermore, they do not achieve political change—60 years of US sanctions against North Korea have failed to do so. The health community urgently needs to take the lead in opposing the use of economic sanctions against North Korea on the basis of principles of health and human rights. Economic sanctions create social disruption and material deprivation, including dramatic declines in resources that are essential for health, such as drugs, vaccines, food, water, and energy.2 5 For example, during 10 years of UN imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, mortality among Iraqi children under 5 years old more than doubled (from 56 to 131 per 1000 live births).3 In Cuba, with the loss of Soviet Union trading partners in the early 1990s, population level measures of health declined and then worsened with the tightening of economic sanctions by the US. Shortages in drugs resulted in a 48% increase in mortality from tuberculosis and a 77% increase in mortality from pneumonia and influenza.6 Similarly, North Korea’s economy plummeted under the combined effects of economic sanctions and the fall of the Soviet Union. Its economic and public health systems further buckled with successive years of floods and droughts, leading to widespread malnutrition and up to one million excess deaths in the 1990s.7 Although many of the US trade sanctions against North Korea were lifted during the 1990s, the sanctions that are currently in place continue to handicap North Korea’s attempt to recover from the ongoing public health crisis. Despite their stated intent of targeting illegitimate activity, recently enacted financial sanctions and sanctions on “dual use” items have been implicated in restricting legitimate trade.8 9 10 Dual use refers to technology that may be used for civilian or military purposes. In North Korea, sanctions on such goods have restricted the import of items needed to build a modern economy, such as personal computers.9 Ultimately, North Korean civilians are harmed. Economic sanctions violate principles established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child that assert the right to “a standard of living adequate for health and well-being.” Furthermore, human rights obligations extend beyond national borders to third parties and international bodies. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asserts that “the inhabitants of a given country do not forfeit their basic economic, social and cultural rights by virtue of any determination that their leaders have violated norms relating to international peace and security.”11 Economic sanctions rarely achieve their stated objectives, with perhaps 5% having any success in changing national policies.4 Little evidence is available that economic sanctions against North Korea have had any impact on political change, prevention of nuclear proliferation, or improvement of human rights. In fact, economic sanctions and political threats are likely to have emboldened hardliners within North Korea to militarise even further.10 If military action is unacceptable because of the potential for millions of casualties, and human rights implications prohibit the use of economic sanctions, what should be done? Diplomacy is the answer. Direct negotiations by the US in the 1990s resulted in a nine year freeze of North Korea’s plutonium enrichment programme. In 2007, after direct negotiations with the Bush administration, North Korea began dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear processing plant.12 Despite these gains and the work of the six-party negotiators, full scale diplomacy has yet to be engaged. Such engagement might extend beyond nuclear programmes to health and science. With this “health diplomacy” perspective, the US could usher North Korea into the international community by promoting educational, scientific, cultural, health, and economic exchanges. Ending isolationist policies would be a powerful incentive for disarmament and could potentially empower proengagement elements in North Korea.10 Given the Obama administration’s widely publicised willingness to engage diplomatically with adversaries, such expanded possibilities are now more timely than ever. In light of the grave implications for the health of the North Korean people, the health community must oppose the use of economic sanctions. Through purposeful health diplomacy, US and other health professionals should use their expertise and commitment to human rights to contribute to meaningful engagement. With regard to health, humanity has more in common across political divides than differences, even in North Korea; it is time to work with those commonalities in the pursuit of peace. Sanghyuk S. Shin is a Fellow with the Korea Policy Institute. Ricky Y. Choi, M.D., M.P.H., is a clinical instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Thomas E. Novotny, M.D., M.P.H., is Professor and co-director of the Joint Degree Program (PhD) in Global Health. Competing interests: None declared. Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. References Fackler M, Choe SH. Will sanctions ever work on North Korea? The New York Times 2009 June 12. www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/asia/13korea.html. Morin K, Miles S. The health effects of economic sanctions and embargoes: the role of health professionals. Ann Intern Med 2000;132:158-61. [Abstract/Free Full Text] Ali MM, Shah IH. Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq. Lancet 2000;355:1851-7. [CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] American Public Health Association. Opposing war in the Middle East. Policy Statement Database 1999. Policy no 9923. www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=194. Bossuyt M. The adverse consequences of economic sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights. The United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights Working Paper 2000. www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/c56876817262a5b2c125695e0050656e?Opendocument. Garfield R, Santana S. The impact of the economic crisis and the US embargo on health in Cuba. Am J Public Health 1997;87:15-20. [Abstract/Free Full Text] Woo-Cumings M. The political ecology of famine: the North Korean catastrophe and its lessons. ADB Institute Research Paper 31. Asian Development Bank, 2002. www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf. Lee K, Choi J. North Korea: economic sanctions and US Department of Treasury actions, 1955-April, 2009. National Committee on North Korea. 2009. www.ncnk.org/resources/publications/DPRK_Sanctions_Report_April_2009.doc. Soloman J, Robbins CA. Amidst nuclear standoff, food aid shrinks for hungry North Koreans. Wall Street Journal 2003 May 15. Frank R. The political economy of sanctions against North Korea. Asian Perspect 2006;30:5-36. Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights. The relationship between economic sanctions and respect for economic, social and cultural rights. CESCR General Comment 8. 1997. www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/974080d2db3ec66d802565c5003b2f57?Opendocument. Dombey N. Bush’s best example: if the US looks back, it will see that North Korea responds much better to diplomacy than to threats. The Guardian 2009 May 26. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/26/north-korea-nuclear-obama.

A thawing is occurring in Asia, especially on the Korean peninsula, melting away over a half century of hardened enmity between historic enemies. North and South Korea have revived the reconciliation process that was stalled in 2007, and Japan has promised the region that it will address its colonial past. Rarely are the stars so aligned for genuine peace in Northeast Asia. President Obama should take advantage of this historic warming by sending special envoy Stephen Bosworth to North Korea to finally resolve the outstanding Korean War. Families First Last week, 550 South Koreans made the long-awaited journey across the heavily armed border to Mt. Kumgang in North Korea where they finally met their children, parents, siblings, and extended relatives. Most have waited for this day since 1950 and the outbreak of the Korean War. After a three-year stalemate, that war ended in an armistice, not a permanent peace treaty. As a result, a militarized border, guarded by 1.7 million Korean and U.S. troops, bisects the peninsula and keeps the Korean people apart. The good news is that family reunifications are part of a broader engagement between North and South Korea. Following Bill Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang, North Korea released five detained South Koreans – a Hyundai worker and four fishermen. Pyongyang then sent a high-level delegation to pay respects to the late South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of the Sunshine Policy. South Korean companies are back in business in Kaesong, the industrial park built in North Korea with South Korean capital, where they have even settled a wage dispute. Prime Ministers from North and South Korea have begun bilateral talks. South Korean President Lee Myung Bak recently offered a “grand bargain” of aid and security guarantees in exchange for North Korea scrapping its nuclear weapons (although Pyongyang has not warmed to the offer). Last week, North Korea announced changes to its constitution, scrapping “communism” and incorporating “human rights,” yet another signal that the country seeks global acceptance. The conciliatory spirit isn’t just flowing between the two Koreas. Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama promised that his Democratic Party “has courage enough to look straight into the face of history” and address its colonial past. Already Hatoyama has kept his promise by not following the example of his predecessor and visiting the Yasakuni Shrine, a monument that honors war criminals and that both Korea and China consider an affront. And this past weekend, Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao visited with Kim Jong-Il to revive ties that had frayed earlier this year following North Korea’s second nuclear test. In Washington’s Court The remaining conflict is between the United States and North Korea, and there are signs of rapprochement. North Korea has extended invitations to Ambassador Bosworth and Senator John Kerry. Although it took Bill Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang, North Korea released without condition the two American journalists it held for several months. The jury is still out on the ultimate reasons for and purposes of North Korea’s smile offensive. But Pyongyang appears genuinely interested in talking with Washington. Last week, meanwhile, Stephen Bosworth said, “There is no military solution. Containment does not give long-term results. Negotiations are the way forward,” signaling a significant shift in the Obama policy towards North Korea. But there is still some hesitation in Washington. The Obama administration believes that North Korea deliberately placed roadblocks to engagement by launching a missile in April and testing a second nuclear device in May. In other words, in exchange for President Obama’s unclenched fist, North Korea gave Washington the finger. Also, North Korea has broken the rules of the global game – such as violating the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty – and must be punished. But, in fact, North Korea’s belligerence was in reaction to Obama’s continuation of the Bush policy: denuclearization before talks. In 2008, the Bush administration insisted that North Korea, after already completing two stages of denuclearization, had agreed verbally to sampling as part of verification. But North Korea disagreed, arguing that sampling amounted to “an act of infringing upon sovereignty, little short of seeking a house-search.” The Obama administration, unfortunately, picked up where the Bush administration left off. On her first overseas trip to Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered improved relations “if North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program.” In other words, Washington would talk with Pyongyang only after the latter eliminated its nuclear program. The problem is that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are the symptom, not the root cause of the conflict. Yet many in Washington believe that denuclearization must be managed before security guarantees can be addressed. Diplomatic negotiations are a means to settle differences. Engaging North Korea through direct negotiations doesn’t mean the Obama administration is legitimizing the North Korean leader. Richard Nixon negotiated with China and Ronald Reagan talked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and those societies have changed quite a bit since then. President Obama should uphold his commitment to negotiate, and doing so with North Korea means opening up North Korea and the door to peaceful reunification. Given its leadership in the division of the Korean peninsula and in the Korean War, the United States has a moral obligation to engage North Korea. Not doing so is a dangerous repeat of the same mistakes of the past two administrations, which led, eventually, to a nuclear North Korea. Reunions, Reunification Amid the changing political dynamics in Northeast Asia landscape, one thing remains constant: the Korean peoples’ desire for peace and reunification. In South Korea, a 2005 survey by the Korea Institute for National Unification found that 84% of the population said reunification is an urgent task for the nation. Even a new report by a South Korean economist for Goldman Sachs forecasts that a unified Korea, despite the costs of reunification, could surpass the economies of Japan and Germany’s economy in 30 to 40 years. Though it is difficult to ascertain the feelings of North Korean people, the ones I met on a trip to the country last year were unanimous in their pleas for reunification. Today, the world is watching the emotional reunions of elderly Koreans who have waited their entire lives for this moment. But only a fraction will have this opportunity. Over 85,000 South Koreans have registered for the lottery to be reunited with their families, and for most, time is running out. The time is now to engage North Korea diplomatically and finally end the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty. By supporting the winds of peace and reconciliation blowing across the DMZ, President Obama will have one less foreign policy challenge and move one step closer towards his vision of a nuclear free world. By engaging North Korea, President Obama can help heal the wounds that millions of people – including U.S. vets – have carried for 60 years. Foreign Policy In Focus senior analyst Christine Ahn is a fellow with the Korea Policy Institute and a member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War.

As relations with North Korea show signs of improvement two recent articles have brought to the fore old and unconfirmed allegations of North Korean state-sponsored counterfeiting. Both the August 24 issue of The Independent1 and the September issue of Vanity Fair2 advance arguments for North Korea’s guilt and do little to hide their desire for the U.S. to take a more aggressive approach to that nation. David Samuels’ article in The Independent relies for the most part on oft-repeated stories. I’ve addressed many of those in an earlier article for the Korea Policy Institute and so I will focus here for the most part on the Vanity Fair article. David Rose, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, makes the centerpiece of his article the conviction last year of Taiwan national Chen Chiang Liu on charges of passing counterfeit currency. Chen Chiang Liu was arrested for feeding $100 supernote bills into slot machines at Las Vegas casinos, playing a few rounds, and then obtaining legitimate cash by turning in the unused balances for refunds. According to Rose, a man convicted of smuggling claimed that Liu was a frequent visitor to North Korea. In a taped discussion with undercover FBI agent Bob Hamer, Liu had at one point mentioned having personal connections in North Korea. Yet the U.S Department of Justice press release issued on the conviction of Chen Chiang Liu states that Liu and his co-conspirators told the undercover agent “that the counterfeit bills were manufactured by unidentified suppliers and co-conspirators outside of the United States.”3 On the other hand, Hamer reports that he recorded co-conspirator Chao Tung Wu on hidden camera telling him that the money was manufactured in North Korea and distributed via the Russian embassy in Beijing. Wu apparently offered to have Hamer travel with him to Beijing and sit outside the embassy while he made the transaction.4 Hamer’s secretly recorded tapes which were played at the trial revealed the conspirators talking of the counterfeit currency as being produced in North Korea and passed through official Chinese contacts to the Russian embassy. A damning claim, but look more closely and one notes that the stories are hearsay. There is no direct eyewitness account relating to production. Posing as a customer, Hamer purchased around $2 million in counterfeit currency. He felt he was trusted and that the conspirators were telling him the truth. But was he trusted? How wise would it have been to reveal to a new customer information on the scope of the operation, including the sources of production and distribution? A more plausible alternative would be that the conspirators constructed a believable cover story in order to protect the suppliers, and what story would be more believable to a political conservative such as Hamer than one of North Korean culpability and Chinese and Russian complicity? Yet another possibility is that the conspirators were indeed loose-tongued, but that the suppliers had been wise enough to misdirect them as to the source and distribution channels. No criminal enterprise would last long if its members blabbed essential information to new contacts. There is something else that does not quite ring true with the story. Is it really credible that Russia and China would risk important economic and diplomatic relations with the U.S. for the sake of the paltry sums being negotiated by Liu? Why would North Korea counterfeit U.S. currency? “They need money,” Vanity Fair quotes Park Syung Je, director of a think tank associated with the South Korean military, as saying. “Where else can they get it?” Rose points out that former State Department official David Asher and economic analyst William Newcomb have calculated the amount of North Korea’s hard-currency reserves based on data supplied by that nation’s trading partners and came to the conclusion that North Korea is running a trade deficit of about $1.2 billion per year. That shortfall, they assert, is plugged through illegal means. “It not only pays, it plays to their strategy of undermining Western interests,” Asher says. Specifically, the North Korean “Office 39” is said to be responsible, “which is estimated to bring in between $500 million and $1 billion a year or more.” Estimated by whom, the article does not say. Nor is there any indication as to how outsiders arrived at those figures, presumably no easy task as it concerns a secrecy-shrouded organization whose supposed raison d’être is criminal activity. Given North Korea’s sanctions-induced exclusion from international credit, the argument appears convincing. North Korea is importing more goods than it can afford and no credit can be obtained. Therefore, this level of trade can only be sustained through illegal means. Yet, as I have shown in an earlier article on the subject, the production of supernotes requires significant investment. As Rose himself admits, the total quantity of supernotes “to date is small.” Little more than $50 million has circulated. The volume is inadequate to compensate for the expense of production. For North Korea, this would be a money-losing endeavor. To evade this awkward fact, Rose reports that David Asher testified before Congress that the total “might be” in the hundreds of millions. Setting aside the speculative nature of that assessment, let us assume for the moment that despite all evidence, Asher is correct. Also assume that the total runs toward the high end, at $800 million. The deal Hamer negotiated with Liu called for him to purchase supernotes at the rate of thirty cents on the dollar.5 That is the price the middle-man would receive. To ensure a profit for the middleman, the producer would inevitably receive less. For the sake of argument, we will assume that the producer receives the lion’s share of this portion, 25 cents on the dollar. In that case, the sale of supernotes at the level of Asher’s speculative estimate would have yielded a mere $200 million. We will make one more assumption, that somehow no expense was involved, that all of the labor, the factory, the expensive equipment and supplies cost nothing. Divide those earnings over the last decade, and we come up with a figure of $20 million per year, which would do little to alleviate an average annual deficit of $1.2 billion. As for the secondary motivation of “undermining” U.S. interests, the quantity of supernotes is so miniscule compared to the total legitimate production of U.S. currency as to have no effect. Furthermore, the bulk of supernotes have circulated outside of the United States. A more ineffectual operation would be hard to imagine. While North Korea surely has serious trade balance issues, it is likely that Asher and Newcomb’s calculations did not take all factors into account. North Korea earns much of its foreign currency through the sale of military hardware. It may be presumed that not every purchaser of arms from North Korea is going to want to make information on those transactions public. Similarly, one of North Korea’s trading partners is Myanmar, a nation whose leadership tends to be secretive. It is not likely that Myanmar would report the extent of its contract with North Korea for the construction of a tunnel system.6 It is not clear if barter trade is taken into account in Asher’s and Newcomb’s calculations, but this is an important element in North Korea’s international trade. For example, North Korea receives palm oil from Malaysia through the Palm Oil Credit Payment Arrangement, which includes a significant barter component.7 Some of North Korea’s contracts with Chinese firms call for payment in coal. According to a Chinese trade official, “There are mines there, under production by big Chinese companies. We give them oil, equipment, everything, they give us ore. It’s a kind of barter.”8 Barter arrangements make sense for cash-strapped North Korea. The biggest gap in Asher’s and Newcomb’s estimates relates to China, North Korea’s main trading partner and immediate neighbor to the north. Trade between the two nations rose to $2.79 billion in 2008, a large portion of which was funded by the Chinese government. Most of the imports North Korea receives are paid through credit supplied by China. “The North Koreans pay with some money, but they have a very short money supply, so credit is very important,” says Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at Beijing People’s University. “The Chinese government has never said how much it gives in either credit or aid. This is a secret, but it is in China’s interest to maintain a stable North Korea.”9 There, certainly, is the means for North Korea’s survival, rather than paltry sums said to be earned from the sale of supernotes as well as other criminal operations. It should also be mentioned that the term “supernote” is sometimes used loosely to describe any high-quality counterfeit. While Bob Hamer’s description of Liu’s counterfeits seems to indicate the strong possibility that real supernotes were involved, one cannot be sure.10 Earlier this year another Taiwanese national, Chen Mei-ling, was sentenced to prison for importing counterfeit currency into the United States.11 The U.S. Secret Service determined that the counterfeits fell into the “supernote category,” a phrase which indicates that there are a variety of counterfeits circulating, of varying but high quality. A little over a year ago, Taipei police closed down what was termed “the most sophisticated counterfeiting factory ever found in Taiwan,” whose “printing technology shocked the U.S.”12 Apparently that factory’s output fell into the supernote category while not quite achieving the near-perfect level of supernotes themselves. The use of the same term for both a specific thing and a generic category muddies the waters when supernotes are being discussed. Just which supernote is being referred to at any one time is not always apparent. There are certain conclusions that Rose wants to lead us to. The experts that he relies on tend to have a certain ideological bent, lending support to the thrust of his argument. David Asher is a senior associate fellow with the Asian Studies Center at the right-wing Heritage Foundation. He played a key role in the Bush Administration’s campaign to sever North Korea’s access to foreign currency and normal international banking operations. Prior to joining the Bush Administration, he was associate director of the Asian Studies Program at the deeply reactionary American Enterprise Institute.13 Park Syung Je is a long-time critic of South Korean engagement with the North. He rejected the opening of the tourist center at Mt. Kumgang with the comment, “If you support a dictator, people die.”14 He was equally dismissive of former South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun’s efforts at improving relations with North Korea. “We have to ask ourselves why we support North Korea with aid,” he complained. “They don’t want to reform. They don’t want to change.”15 These are men who want to see relations with North Korea worsen. And here we come to the point of the articles. Rose laments the Bush Administration’s closing down of the Illicit Activities Initiative, the linchpin of which was the attempt to shut off North Korea’s access to foreign exchange. The Obama Administration has yet to make any meaningful diplomatic gesture towards North Korea; instead it has gradually ratcheted up the pressure through the steady addition of sanctions. There has been discussion concerning the direction of policy, and opponents of negotiations with North Korea are taking the initiative by shaping public opinion through articles such as these. The rhetoric can get overheated at times. Rose writes that Liu’s crimes “threatened not only the integrity of America’s currency but the very fabric of international peace.” The test firing by North Korea of seven missiles on July 4, 2009 was an action “threatening the whole of Japan and South Korea.” Uniquely so, one might add, given the frequency with which nations around the world test fire missiles without managing to threaten their neighbors. Rose reports that the Bush Administration was at one point planning to issue several criminal indictments against individuals in the leadership of North Korea, and quotes former senior prosecutor at the State Department Suzanne Hayden as saying, “The most difficult thing is connecting evidence of criminality to a state’s leader, because there is so much deniability built in. But there isn’t a whole lot of activity in North Korea that isn’t sanctioned by the leadership, and the evidence we had already built up was very good. These cases were very doable.” It is difficult to imagine an action more calculated to permanently destroy any chance of diplomacy than the indictment of North Korean leaders on trumped up criminal charges. David Samuels in his article for The Independent notes in a sarcastic tone, “The failure of Bush’s second-term diplomacy offensive makes it all the more unlikely that Obama’s campaign promises about the wonders of engagement will result in real-world success. While Bush’s late-blooming interest in diplomacy may have seemed churlishly overdue, it also carried a credible threat of force.” Samuels disappointedly notes Obama’s “failure to respond decisively” to North Korea’s test firing of missiles, when what apparently was called for was hostility and belligerence. Similarly, Rose in his article for Vanity Fair wants to frame how his audience views relations with North Korea. “What cannot be in doubt is the scale of the challenge now confronting President Obama,” he concludes. Nor, one might add, can there be any doubt about how neo-conservatives are attempting to use scare tactics to influence policy. Those forces will not rest until diplomatic contacts with North Korea have been expunged forever and the region teeters on the edge of crisis. The two articles appeared in the wake of indications that accusations against North Korea about the production of supernotes could have provided the basis for expanding sanctions. After meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in June, South Korean foreign minister Yu Myung-hwan said the U.S. was expected to hit North Korea with new sanctions over the counterfeiting issue, an action which South Korea and Japan were asked to join.16 The recent announcement by the Obama Administration of its willingness to engage in bilateral talks with North Korea as a step toward resuming the six-party talks is a heartening development. It is likely that alarmist stories concerning North Korea will continue to appear, as opponents of dialogue step up efforts to block progress. They will argue that punishment is the only suitable response to a nation so irremediably criminal in nature. The voices of reaction, as ever, will be loud in the pursuit of their narrow interests. It is time for proponents of a peaceful resolution of U.S.-North Korean issues to speak out. There is much riding on the outcome. Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit. 1David Samuels, “Counterfeiting: Notes on a Scandal,” The Independent (London), August 24, 2009. 2David Rose, “North Korea’s Dollar Store,” Vanity Fair, September 2009. 3Gregory A. Bower, U.S. Attorney, District of Nevada, “Federal Jury Convicts Man in ‘Supernotes’ Counterfeiting Case,” U.S. Department of Justice, September 17, 2008. 4Bob Hamer, “North Korean Counterfeit and Few Seemed to Care,” Big Hollywood, March 18, 2009. 5Bob Hamer, “North Korean Counterfeit and Few Seemed to Care,” Big Hollywood, March 18, 2009. 6“North Korea Aids Burma Tunnels,” Radio Free Asia, June 18, 2009. 7“North Korean Keen on Buying More Palm Oil from Malaysia,” Utusan Online (Kuala Lumpur), June 23, 2004. 8“North Korean Coal Exports Hint at Barter,” China Post, August 5, 2009. 9“China, NKorea Trade Boom Despite Rocket Tensions,” Agence France Presse, April 5, 2009. 10Bob Hamer, “North Korean Counterfeit and Few Seemed to Care,” Big Hollywood, March 18, 2009. 11Press release, “Woman Sentenced to 33 Months for Bringing $400,000 in ‘Supernotes’ to the United States,” U.S. Department of Justice, Northern District of California, U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello, January 30, 2009. 12William Lowther, “US Fears Return of Taiwan-Made Supernotes,” Taipei Times, February 1, 2009. 13http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/davidasher.cfm 14Evan Osnos, “North Korea Takes a Shot at Capitalism,” Chicago Tribune, December 11, 2005. 15Paul Wiseman, “Koreas Agree to End War, Boost Economies,” USA Today, October 5, 2007. See also Park’s views in the International Crisis Group’s paper, “Korea Backgrounder: How the South Views its Brother from Another Planet,” December 14, 2004. 16“Lee Chi-dong, “U.S. May Sanction N. Korea for Alleged Criminal Acts: Minister,” Yonhap (Seoul), June 12, 2009.

As the United States and North Korea prepare to re-engage one another through diplomacy, there remains skepticism in Washington about whether North Korea will ever agree to denuclearize, just as there is skepticism in Pyongyang about whether Washington will ever make peace with it. But former President Bill Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang in August yielded valuable information and concrete diplomatic results to warrant reassessment of what is possible by way of bilateral talks with North Korea. Among these: Kim Jong Il’s personal reception of Clinton revealed the high degree of importance that North Korea attaches to personal involvement and contact between leaders at the highest levels. Pyongyang’s preference for Clinton, among several possibilities, as an envoy to retrieve reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling indicates that it wants to pick up where it left off in 2000 — a moment when normalized relations between the U.S. and North Korea appeared on the horizon. Clinton reported General Secretary Kim Jong Il to be fully in command, rational and broadly knowledgeable of the issues. This is consistent with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s observations following her meeting with Kim Jong Il in 2000. The government in Pyongyang is stable and not on the verge of a succession crisis. As a result of Clinton’s trip, North Korea invited U.S. Special Representative on North Korea Policy, Stephen Bosworth, and Special Envoy to the Six-Party Talks, Sung Kim, to Pyongyang to start bilateral talks. North Korea reached out to South Korea, sending a delegation to Seoul to pay respects to former President Kim Dae Jung who passed away in August, restarting North-South economic cooperation and other trust building measures. As a result inter-Korea relations are improving. In light of these developments Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth reported in Tokyo on September 8, 2009 that the Obama administration is open to bilateral talks with North Korea, but “not as a substitute” for the six-party talks. While taking pains to discourage any perception of a significant shift in U.S. policy, State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley, in a press conference, September 11, 2009, further cautioned that such talks would be a “short term” measure to convince North Korea to return to the six-party talks. In any case the administration’s openness to bilateral talks with North Korea is hopeful and consistent with its position that it will “extend a hand” if adversaries “unclench their fist.” Previously the administration maintained that it would only negotiate with North Korea upon its return to the six-party talks, relying upon international sanctions and China’s influence with Pyongyang to bring the talks back online. However North Korea was already heavily sanctioned before the new administration took office, and it does not regard its relationship with China as an adequate counterweight to what it perceives as hostility from the U.S. stemming from the Korean War. If the six-party talks are to be revived, it will require vastly improved relations between the U.S. and North Korea. The U.S. should use this opportunity for bilateral talks with North Korea to achieve this purpose. The administration should: Send Ambassadors Stephen Bosworth and Sung Kim to North Korea without delay. Their task should be to achieve a consensus with their counterparts in Pyongyang on the strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, of the six-party talks and past bilateral talks, upon which to base the next steps towards addressing the security concerns of North Korea, as well as the U.S. China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. President Obama should send, with Bosworth and Kim, a personal greeting to General Secretary Kim Jong Il expressing his appreciation for the release of the reporters and his commitment to improving relations with North Korea and pursuing the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula by means of diplomacy. The administration should support all efforts by North and South Korea to restore good relations and pursue economic cooperation, cultural exchanges, and family reunions as prescribed by the North/South Summit of 2000. While bilateral talks may not be a substitute for the six-party talks as a forum for achieving regional security arrangements in Northeast Asia, multilateralism by itself cannot build trust between the U.S. and North Korea. Ending Cold War hostilities on the Korean peninsula will require the bilateral efforts of the U.S. and North Korea to forge a peacemaking process in which denuclearization of the Korean peninsula may proceed unhindered by legacies of the Korean War. Paul Liem is President of the Korea Policy Institute. The brief was prepared for legislative outreach activities in Washington DC, September 16 and 17, 2009, organized by the National Campaign to End the Korean War.

Dr. Bo-Hyuk Suh is a former senior researcher at the South Korea National Human Rights Commission, is currently Research Professor at the Center for Peace Studies at Ewha University. The paper below was presented at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, CA on June 23, 2009 at a panel on human rights in North Korea sponsored by the Korea Policy Institute. Human rights discourse has a long history; and we have seen rising interest in the post-Cold War era. But discussion about human rights does not take place in a vacuum: it is tied to other issues such as development, peace, humanitarianism, and reconciliation. Problems of international concern have arisen due to diversity in values and priorities among nations. The situation in North Korea is one such case, and we have witnessed different approaches to different issues, particularly human rights issues and peace. There has been much unproductive dispute over which problem has to be resolved first: some say that human rights problems must be resolved before there can be talk of negotiating peace, while others say that an end to the Korean War must be the foundation for addressing other matters including human rights. To overcome this impasse, this paper proposes that peace be included in the category of human rights, and the security situation be considered in any strategy to improve human rights. Then we can find new directions in the discussion of human rights in North Korea. This paper explores ways to improve human rights in North Korea through consideration of the current situation on the Korean peninsula and the interrelation between human rights in North Korea and peace on the Korean peninsula. Let’s start by looking at peace from the perspective of human rights. Peace: A human right or a pre-condition for human rights? The charter of the United Nations indicates that peace and human rights are in complementary relation to one another and that one cannot be sacrificed for the other. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) state that human rights are the basis of peace. The Tehran Proclamation of 1968 “[r]ecogniz[es] … that peace and justice are indispensable to the full realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It is thus conceivable that peace is not a kind of right but an essential condition for human rights. However, there is a growing awareness that peace is a kind of right. On February 27, 1976, the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution and announced that “Everyone has the right to live in conditions of international peace and security.” The United Nations General Assembly approved the ‘Declaration on the Preparation of Societies for Life in Peace’ on December 15 of the following year. According to article 23, paragraph 1 of the ‘African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights’, which has been adopted by each state in Africa, it was the first regional human rights institution that recognized the right to peace. Eventually, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the ‘Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace’ in 1984. The declaration states that defusing the threat of war, especially nuclear war, interrupting the use of force, and settling international disputes through peaceful methods are required to realize the right to peace. The right to peace could be defined as the right to live in a secure and nonviolent world, and also the right to live a life free of war. The right to peace can be understood to include the repudiation of wars of aggression, the repudiation of the right to collective self-defense, the elimination of armaments, the elimination of activities against peace by a nation (arms exports), the elimination of activities contrary to a peaceful existence (conscription system), the protection of the people’s fundamental human rights, and so on. To enjoy the right to peace, it is required to establish a just society by striking at the root causes of conflicts as well as by minimizing conflicts and their influences. The right to peace includes collective commitments from individuals to their nations and to the international society. There are also passive and active requirements necessary for peace. The passive requirement is that the principle of respect for human rights be the foundation for peace. Peace-making should be established on the basis of human rights and peacekeeping and peace-building also need to be based on human rights.1 The active requirement comports all the efforts for achieving and maintaining peace at the national, regional, and international levels. The right to peace and the right to human security have a lot in common. Human security starts with the observation that the existing nation-oriented security paradigm based on military power can’t contribute to positive peace. Human security is not for the citizens of one particular nation but for every individual in human society, and the goal of human security is not the conservation of the nation but an improvement in the quality of life of human beings. The main concern is not a power struggle or one-sided military action but multilateral efforts to curb violence, protect human rights, and provide social and environmental resources necessary to a dignified human life. Therefore, human security naturally is greatly concerned with human rights. The right to peace and security is very important because threats to human security stand in the way of protecting all kinds of rights. However, while we might all be able to immediately agree upon some components of the right to peace, there are others upon which international society has yet to come to consensus. Specifically, some have said that it would be difficult to count the right to peace among the international human rights because the meaning of the right to peace itself is not clear enough to be designated as a right under current international law.2 That is, the right to peace has contents and categories which are incomplete and evolving, and which have to take shape over time. The right to peace is one of the third generation of rights known as solidarity rights as well as development rights. Of course, the fact that efforts to clarify the right to peace are still in process cannot be used as an excuse for reducing or delaying efforts to improve every aspect of human rights.3 Also, it is not right to identify the right to peace with absolute pacifism because the right to peace allows the just use of violence in particular cases such as humanitarian crises.4 Human rights in North Korea and peace on the Korean peninsula: Mutually interdependent universal values It is clear that the North Korea nuclear crisis is directly connected to peace on the Korean peninsula. However, this problem, which is not only a military one but also tied to the reconstruction of the North Korean economy and to inter-Korean economic cooperation, has been treated too shallowly. The complexity of the North Korea nuclear crisis can be grasped if we consider the official position announced by North Korea with regard to its nuclear program. North Korea stated its basic position as “defusing threats to independence and the right to live” and offered three conditions for nuclear negotiations, namely U.S. recognition of North Korea’s sovereignty, assurance of nonaggression, and removal of obstacles to economic development.5 Also, North Korea included economic content such as provisions for economic cooperation and supplies of electricity and food, and proposed a so-called “package deal framework” and “simultaneous action order” for the comprehensive resolution of nuclear issues.6 The negotiation strategy of North Korea reveals that it uses weapons of mass destruction as a diplomatic strategy, within the context of a lack of economic resources. After the advent of the Obama administration in 2009, North Korea has purposively chosen to foster an atmosphere of crisis. There was the launch of the rocket on April 5, its second nuclear test on May 25, and subsequent missile launches. To be sure, these actions are part of North Korea’s crisis diplomacy, but we must indeed understand them for what they are on face value: as moves to increase military power. On January 17, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said toward the Obama administration, “normalization of relations and the nuclear problem are different matters.” North Korea also asserted “the reason we made nuclear weapons was not to normalize relations with U.S. or to attain economic aid but to protect ourselves from the U.S. nuclear threat,” and gave notice of the nuclear test. Regarding North Korea’s actions, international society is pushing ahead with multilateral and unilateral sanctions. Prior to that, international society declared the rocket launch, which North Korea asserted as a peaceful use of space, as a military provocation. North Korea regarded international criticism as threats toward them and went ahead with the nuclear test, insisting that it was a self-defense measure. What we need to focus on is that these power contests between nations violate North Korean people’s and Korean people’s rights to live peacefully. Meanwhile, the global community regards the situation of human rights in North Korea as poor. Human rights are universal, total, interdependent, and interrelated. Therefore, an approach limited to specific areas not only is against the basic character of human rights but is also of questionable effectiveness. International society needs to balance its efforts to improve human rights in North Korea. Thus far, the international community has mainly criticized them, and sometimes used humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip. It is true that civil and political rights in North Korea are poor and it is necessary to continue monitoring this situation. But it is necessary to distinguish criticism from political pressure. A pressure-oriented approach could generate a backlash from a North Korean government that considers such an approach as a political offensive aimed at bringing about the collapse of the North Korean government, and could hamper efforts to improve human rights by reinforcing the North Korean government’s control over people and breaking off diplomatic exchanges and contacts. We should note that efforts to improve human rights could result in violations of human rights that we didn’t intend. The right to survival in North Korea is in the same shape. North Korea has been going through a food shortage of over one million tons annually even after the “Arduous March,” the term people in North Korea use to refer to the worst period of the famine in the mid- to late 1990s. “Good Friends,” a South Korean organization addressing human rights in North Korea, reported that (1) People in North Korea who are safe from food storage are 10% of total population, 2 million, in August 2008; (2) some ten million people, which represents over half the total population, often have difficulty in getting even one full meal a day; and (3) over 3 million suffer from serious malnutrition and are at risk of starvation. In spite of this situation, humanitarian aid is decreasing and is being used as a political tool. Discontinuing or decreasing humanitarian aid aggravates the North Korean people’s right to live, as well as stymies collaboration opportunities between North Korea and the international community. Humanitarian aid should be given and be distinguished from nonhumanitarian aid. The problem of enhancing transparency has to be addressed in the process of providing humanitarian aid and should not be used as a reason for cutting off aid. Improvement strategy of human rights in North Korea: A phase-in approach We can see the mutual interdependence between peace on the Korean peninsula and human rights in North Korea theoretically and practically from the above discussion. The nuclear problem and human rights in North Korea are not separate matters that must be prioritized; rather they exist in complementary relation to one another and need to be resolved comprehensively. We need to examine the foundation and direction of any approach to human rights in North Korea. Considering the complexity and sensitivity of human rights issues in North Korea, we should approach them by taking the situation and external environment in North Korea into consideration. The foundation for approaching human rights in North Korea includes (1) the observance of principles, (2) the practical improvement of human rights, (3) the cooperative improvement of human rights, and (4) harmony between human rights and peace. The ways and paths toward the improvement of human rights in North Korea will depend on various actors’ understanding of human rights, their circumstances, and their capacity.7 The roadmap shown below presupposes some facts. First, there is the matter of the “issue hierarchy” between North Korea and the other primary nations concerned. North Korea aims to ensure the security of its government as its priority foreign policy goal and puts great emphasis on solving the food shortage and the rebuilding of its economy. The members of the six-party talks, including South Korea, U.S., China, and so on, pursue a denuclearized Korean peninsula as the first goal, and overall have granted human rights in North Korea relatively little significance. If we approach it from a different angle, according to Vitit Muntarbhorn, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, “No assessment of the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea would be complete unless its interrelationship with international human rights standards, democracy, peace, human security, demilitarization/disarmament and sustainable development is also taken into account.”8 Second, within a comprehensive view of human rights, human rights in North Korea covers various fields, but it is an undeniable fact that the guarantee of a minimum level of the people’s basic human rights is an overriding concern. The minimum level of the people’s basic human rights means the right to live and the right to security.9 Third, if promoting human rights is the common goal of all nations, when the international community is concerned about particular nation’s human rights, it should be accompanied with efforts for the actual improvement of human rights in that nation. Also, it is necessary for South Korea to approach “human rights on the Korean peninsula” in the context of its pursuit of unification with the North and lead the improvement of human rights in Asia. On this roadmap for the improvement of human rights in North Korea, we can approach it on four levels: (1) the category of comprehensive human rights, (2) the correlation between human rights and other rights, (3) the assignment of each actor’s role, and (4) the continuation of the North Korean government. The roadmap pursues the improvement of human rights in North Korea by a phase-in comprehensive approach. A phase-in approach is required because human rights in North Korea are relatively poor and related with other issues, and a comprehensive approach is needed because human rights in North Korea covers a wide range and there are many related actors. The steps to the improvement of human rights in North Korea start from the current situation and continue to the stage of formation of conditions — the stage of performance — the stage of completion, and every step has goals, variables, and roles for the actors. There are two more points to understand the roadmap for the improvement of human rights in North Korea. Every step is made up of goals and variables. Also, the improvement strategy of each step is the main action plan and also is gradually promoted. For example, if the strategy in step I is still effective in step?, then a new strategy for step II can be added. The reversal toward the previous step will not happen in this situation. Roadmap for the improvement of human rights in North Korea Task Step Goal Role of Actors Variable North Korea International Community South Korea Step I Recovery of the right to survival Peace settlement Increasing food production Transparency in distribution Establishment of human rights legislation Humanitarian aid Monitoring of human rights situations Protection of North Korean defectors Humanitarian aid Resolution of humanitarian issues Protection of North Korean defectors Humanitarian situation Military tensions Step II Establishment of human rights infrastructure Conversion of the International Covenants on Human Rights into domestic legislation and signing on to it Institutionalization of human rights education Development aid Human rights dialogue Technical cooperation Increasing economic cooperation Beginning arms reduction in South and North Korea Building peace regime Step III Protection of civil and political rights Stop violating CPR Conversion of military budget into civil one Support civil society (personal and information exchanges, education, etc.) Accelerating reformation and opening Step IV Implementation of the International Covenants on Human Rights Real protection of CPR Separation of the three powers Establishment of national human rights institution Support for implementation of democratization Democratization Peace is a requirement for the general realization of human rights as well as a human right in itself. Ongoing military tensions such as the armistice on the Korean peninsula, U.S. security threats toward North Korea, and North Korea’s nuclear development are challenges to peace and could make improvement of human rights in North Korea difficult. Therefore, it is meaningless to discuss peace on the Korean peninsula without the improvement of human rights and to discuss human rights in North Korea without peace on the Korean peninsula. Mutual interdependence of peace and human rights on the Korean peninsula is expected to deepen further.

The trafficking story is a dangerous pursuit—but without more information and world attention, tens of thousands of North Korean women and girls are caught up as victims with no place to turn. With the safe return of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korea, where they had been convicted of illegally entering the country, it behooves us to look at the story they were trying to cover when apprehended in March by North Korean officials. Whatever the details of their arrest—yet to emerge—the reported subject of their journalistic quest, human trafficking, is part of a growing global tragedy. Proportionally, the trafficking of North Korean women into China is a small part of an enormous worldwide criminal enterprise (see sidebar). However, of North Korean women and girl refugees in China, an estimated 80 to 90 percent are victims of trafficking. This is likely the highest percentage of trafficking in a single population. The trafficking of these women is tangled up in the thorny politics of the region. North Korean refugees began crossing into China in large numbers in the 1990s. North Korea considers such people defectors and treats them as criminals. It denies the existence of trafficking and treats its victims as corrupt and traitorous criminals for consorting with foreigners. China views the refugees as illegal migrants and, by longstanding agreement, deports 5,000 to 10,000 North Koreans every year. The UN withholds official refugee status, saying only that they are monitored as an at-risk population. China has a long history of trafficking its own women and girls as sex workers or as wives for rural bachelors, so it’s no surprise that North Korean women became another “product” for traffickers.Human Trafficking—The Global Picture In a previous age when European empires and settler nations like the United States engaged in the trafficking of Africans to the Americas, it was called the slave trade. The modern day slavery called human trafficking enslaves a wide range of people, including Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, and Latin Americans, and victims can be trafficked within a country as well as trafficked internationally. An estimated 161 countries are involved as countries of origin, transit countries, destination countries, or some combination. The U.S. State Department estimates that 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Estimates for the number of people trafficked domestically appear to be unavailable. About 80 percent of the internationally trafficked victims are women and girls. Estimates of the number of people worldwide who are currently enslaved through trafficking range from 4 million to as high as 27 million. Both domestically and internationally trafficked victims are coerced into labor, often sexual. An estimated 70 percent of all trafficked women and girls are sold into commercial sex work. Whether legal as slavery once was or illegal as trafficking now is, enslaving human beings continues to bring in big money. Human trafficking generates an estimated $32 billion in yearly profits, according to the International Labor Organization. Nearly half the profits—$15.5 billion—is made in industrialized countries while another $9.7 billion is made in developing Asian nations.—Ji-Yeon Yuh Even as China cracks down on refugees, officials who are often in cahoots with traffickers and buyers turn a blind eye to women forced to work in karaoke bars and other commercial sex establishments. The wider world takes little notice of these victims, with mainstream media closely focused on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Estimates of the number of North Korean refugees in China range from the Chinese government’s low of 10,000 to activist organizations’ high of 300,000—some 70 percent of them women, aid workers say. With nowhere to turn for official assistance, they are particularly vulnerable. Even those who have lived in China for years remain in constant fear of exposure and deportation. Consequently, trafficked North Korean women are under the near-absolute domination of traffickers and buyers. The available evidence points to a dramatic expansion in the trafficking of North Korean women over the past decade. Based on the aid workers’ estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the female refugees are trafficking victims, there could be as many as 168,000 trafficked North Korean women and girls in China, and thousands cross the border each year. It is no longer a case of local Chinese gangsters tricking North Korean women already in China and selling them as wives to rural bachelors. It is now a systematic, albeit sprawling industry operating in both North Korea and China that lures North Korean women with promises of jobs and then sells them into commercial sex work or into servitude as personal laborers and sex slaves—”wives”—for men. While once North Korean women were sold primarily in areas bordering North Korea, now there is evidence that they are being sold throughout the area north of Beijing. During a research trip to northeastern China in 2001, I was able to interview a number of North Korean refugees, both men and women. The most horrifying story, however, is an interview that never took place because the woman was kidnapped the night before our scheduled meeting. Traffickers pretending to be police raided the remote mountain cabin where she was hiding with her husband and young children, and seized only her. That incident shocked my friend who had arranged the meeting, an ethnic Korean and a Chinese citizen who helped refugees find shelter and work. Although he learned that this was the work of a local gang and that she would probably be sold to a rural bachelor in another province, he was unable to discover what happened to her, much less find and rescue her. Going to the real police, of course, was not an option, for that would immediately result in the forced repatriation and probably imprisonment of her family. Women kidnapped while in North Korean have usually been approached by neighbors or fellow villagers, acting as scouts for traffickers, who promise transport and jobs in China. Once in China, the women are brought to a collection house and matched with buyers and transporters who take them to their owners. Along the way, they are abused, raped, and kept in isolation in order to make them compliant and fearful. The on-the-ground traffickers are nearly always ethnic Koreans, whether from China or from North Korea. There have even been reports of North Korean refugee women working as traffickers with their Chinese husbands. A North Korean woman sells for between 2,000 and 20,000 yuan, hefty sums in a provincial economy where monthly salaries average between 1000 and 1500 yuan. But salaries are only for those lucky enough to have jobs. The economy is so depressed in northeast China that many local residents, both ethnic Korean and ethnic Chinese, have been going overseas as contract laborers since the 1990s. Many households are supported wholly or in part through remittances from overseas family members. The monetary lure of trafficking is strong. Although activists operate an underground railroad to ferry North Korean refugees to countries where they can apply for asylum, these efforts are risky, usually fail to reach women trafficked into sex work, and often worsen the problem because it prompts China to engage in crackdowns on both refugees and activists. Since most activists are Christian and try to spread the Christian faith, China also has a handy excuse for hostility to churches. With Chinese officials focused on deporting refugees—and border guards, military officials, police officers and other government officials colluding with traffickers—there is no clear picture of the trafficking organizations. Those visible participants—scouts and transporters—are the grunts of the operation. Who’s in charge making the big bucks and calling the shots? Large crime syndicates have become involved, but it is not clear how deeply. Nor is much known about the smaller organizations—how many there are or who are the ringleaders. Perhaps this is the kind of information that Laura Ling and Euna Lee were seeking, or perhaps a simpler story about local traffickers. Their experience shows that investigating trafficking is a dangerous but also a necessary business. The world’s authorities need to do more than demonstrate the scope of trafficking and its human tragedy; they also need to crack down on trafficking rings and institute measures that provide all trafficking victims with basic protections. For trafficked North Korean women and girls, extending official refugee protections outlined under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and pressuring China to treat them as refugees would be a start. Ji-Yeon Yuh is a board member of the Korea Policy Institute, a co-founder of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea and board president of KANWIN, a Korean American women’s organization focusing on domestic violence. An associate professor of history and founding director of the Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern University, Yuh was formerly a journalist, and has conducted numerous research trips to China and lived in Yanji City for most of 2002. She is the author of Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America, and serves as the historical consultant for Still Present Pasts—a multimedia museum exhibit exploring the legacies of the Korean War for Korean Americans that has toured the United States and Korea. She is currently working on Contested Nationalisms, a history of ethnic Koreans in China, Japan, and the United States during the 20th century. The Korea Policy Institute thanks Ji-Yeon Yuh and The Women’s Media Center for granting permission to republish this article.