"Persistence Is Futile"

Claudia Rosett writes about North Korea, in yesterday's OpinionJournal:

.... In prestigious journals such as Foreign Affairs, analysts have been churning out discussions of various nuanced ways in which the Free World might render up favors to try to calm Kim's nerves about his own "security." Never mind that Kim's reign, from its personality cult to its plutonium-uranium-missile-famine-and-gulag program, is based on lies, huge lies and more lies. We have legions of experts parsing every offensive, bullying syllable of North Korea's diatribes, seeking any opening to which the U.S. might congenially and eagerly respond. After U.S. insistence on a broad Asian conclave of multilateral talks with North Korea degenerated into a bilateral North Korean extortion attempt last week in Beijing, Mr. Powell has now examined Kim's latest nuclear-blackmail proposal and lost no time in pronouncing it "useful."

The madness of such tactics resides, alas, not in the cold calculations of Kim's camp, but with America and its allies. The truth is that there is no deal the U.S. or its friends can strike that Pyongyang can be trusted to honor. There is no aid we can offer North Korea's famished people that Kim will not abuse. And there will be no decent peace until he and his regime are gone. The reason is simple. North Korea's system needs enemies; take that away, and the entire ideological foundation of the Kim cult starts to crumble. There would be no one to blame for all the misery and militarization but the actual source: the Pyongyang regime itself.

As for the theory that with just a little more talk, aid and understanding, Kim would be so gullible as to try to truly reform his ways, well, forget about it. Unless Kim is willing to risk his own welfare for the greater good of his fellow citizens -- and there is zero precedent for that -- he cannot for one instant leave himself vulnerable to anything even approaching free choice among his subjects. Whatever the mythic status of the country's 22 million or so brainwashed citizens accord the dead Kim Il Sung, too many North Koreans these past nine years have tried to survive under the younger Kim by eating rats and dirt; too many have seen their loved ones die under Kim's guiding hand.

At a recent Prague symposium on human rights in North Korea, U.S.-based democracy activist Suzanne Scholte estimated that Kim, on average, every day, "is murdering 42 people in his political-prisoner camps and 391 children and adults by intentionally starving them to death." This, Ms. Scholte added, is a conservative estimate. Based on testimony from international humanitarian groups and North Korean defectors, she suggests the real figures may be three or four times as high. In other words, it's a good bet that given any genuine opening in North Korea, whether by way of liberalization or unplanned loss of control, the only reason ordinary citizens might hesitate before toppling the statues of Kim Jong Il would be the desire to first dangle the "Great Leader" from the highest outstretched arm of the nearest outsized replica of himself.

About the only sane note in all the recent furor surfaced last week, with reports of a classified memo sent around inside the administration by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, advocating diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang with the aim of bringing about -- yes -- regime change. But it's not just Kim who stands in way. The pity here is that if anyone seems to fear the possibility of regime change almost as much as Kim himself, it's the negotiating establishment of the U.S. and its allies.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/01/03 08:19:42 AM
Categorized as International.