Paik Yonjae - Australian Quaker, Keith Watson

Paik Yonjae - I am trying to find more information about an...




Paik Yonjae
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I am trying to find more information about an Australian Quaker, Keith Watson, who wrote this letter in 1964~1965. Does anyone have a clue...?

Dear Kyu **, and Je **
I received Je **’s letter last week and it affected me deeply. I wonder if you know what a great inspiration you both are to me.
When I left Korea I was determined to try to go North Korea so I could gain a better understanding of the Korean problem. But since I have parted from you my thoughts are with you more and more. I am challenged by your devotion and your poverty of spirit. After receiving Je **’s letter I made a big decision. I will not go to North Korea. For if I go there it will be impossible for me ever to return to South Korea – at least, until the country is re-united.
Also last week I read for the first time Ham Sok Hon’s New Year’s message which appeared in the Tonga Ilbo on January 1st, 1964. I read it and again, and I knew that what he said was true. The solution of Korea’s problem will not come by negotiations not by the kind of foreign aid that is now being given. The only solution is for the Korean people to have a new spirit – conscience, courage, faith, cooperation.
So I have decided to dedicate my life to building brotherly relations between countries. And in particular I shall devote myself to the relation between Australia and Korea. Because Korea is such a significant country. There is no other country so significant for world peace. Out of Korea a new baby will be born; the baby is true democracy and international brotherhood. Now you are all going through the birth pangs. But something is lacking to help the baby to be born. I think that something is support and encouragement from outside. I see you and the Friends and other people whom you introduced to me as the seed of this new life. I think of Ham Sok Hon as your figure-head.

Now I know without any doubt that my task is to support and encourage you all. Thus, I have decided to return directly to Australia. There I shall travel about the country spreading Ham Sok Hon’s message – the good news of Korea. I have given you all, through Ham Sok Hon, all my money (about 700,000 won). I am strong and healthy and I want to work with both my body and mind. But I shall not work for money but only for service. I shall accept money only for my bare needs. If the only hope for Korea, and for the wold, is poverty of spirit, then you Koreans must have poverty of spirit. And if you are to live in poverty of spirit, then so must I. If I am really to be a bridge between your country and mine, how can my message of Korea be other than a total concern, in deed as well as word, for the suffering of Korea?
So long as I share all my wealth you, I believe I shall have power to draw other Australians, perhaps starting with Friends, to share likewise. This is because I have faith in you and also faith in my fellow Australians. I believe in what Ham Sok Hon says: “we must achieve an impossible thing. To do this we need something outside the present contents of living, above and beyond all our spiritual activities. Because we lack this something, we cannot extricate ourselves from the grip of incantation of reality. What is this something? It is faith.”

Now there is no question of “helping” you, just a question of your and my responsibility.
I have written, and shall write more, detailed letters to Lee Yoon Gu and Ham Sok Hon. So you must read them in order to understand better my thinking. One of the most important things is that the aid you receive from outside should be completely free for you to use as you think best. But this will require careful administration and coordination. That’s why I wish someone like Yoon Gu may use his abilities in this respect. And you will have to be careful about organizations, I think over-organization will kill the whole movement. 

Now I need your help just as much as you need mine. Please pray for me just as I am praying for you. I don’t mean praying with words, but with our whole lives.
Will you read this letter the Poolmoo Hakwon staff and pupils and to the people of Kidok’ok Nong Won? I want them to know how they inspired me and how much I am placing my faith in them. 

I always remember you saying at work camp that for your, the most significant of Christ’s sayings was “Happy the poor in spirit”. I also regard this as the most significant. Poverty of spirit is the key principle for the growth of the new Korea. 

Your Friend,
Keith




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Sejin Pak 찾아보죠. 함석헌 선생에 대해서는 호주 퀘이커 중에 나이 먹은 분들이 많이 알고 있더군요. 호주에 오셔서 몇 도시를 돌고 가셨던 것 같더군요. 70년대 였던가?

North Korea’s Rich-Poor Divide

North Korea’s Rich-Poor Divide



NORTH KOREA’S RICH-POOR DIVIDE
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL ON 11/10/07 AT 7:00 PM
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Even amid the grandeur of North Korea's Myohyang Mountain tourist area, where few Westerners have ever been allowed to visit, it's impossible not to gawk at him: a middle-aged North Korean sightseer decked out in a crisp Kim Jong Il-style suit, sunglasses and implausible upswept hairdo. But the most striking thing isn't his Dear Leader-wannabe getup; it's the device he's holding. In one of the most desperately poor countries on earth, it's worth half a year's pay for most of his fellow inhabitants: a sleek little Japanese digital video Handycam.

Everyone has heard that North Korea is a country that can't feed itself—as underlined earlier this year by the United Nations World Food Program, which warned once again of the danger of impending famine in the Hermit Kingdom. Less well known, though, is that some people in North Korea are actually getting rich. Reliable statistics are hard to come by, of course, given the obsessive secrecy of the North Korean state. Still, when a South Korean university polled 500 defectors from the North in 2005, 58 percent of them said that the biggest change in their home country over the previous three years was the widening gap between rich and poor; another 28 percent cited the increase in personal wealth. Last year the South Korean aid organization Good Friends, which boasts a broad range of sources in the North, published a revealing study of its own. It concluded that North Korea's wealthy now spend 10 times as much on food as those less privileged, live in homes equipped with modern conveniences like refrigerators and washing machines (largely unknown to their countrymen), and can even afford maids and private tutors for their children. "What you're seeing now on the one hand is more cars on the street and nice fruit being sold in Unification Market in [the capital city of] Pyongyang," notes Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "And yet many people still don't have food security."

The reasons for the growing divide go back a decade or more. Ever since the virtual collapse of the economy back in the mid-1990s, accompanied by a famine that is estimated to have killed some 1 million people, most North Koreans have been forced to resort to barter or under-the-table buying and selling to get by. In 2002 Kim's government passed a set of piecemeal reforms that grudgingly acknowledged the reality of private market forces in broad swaths of the economy. Pyongyang alone now has 38 private markets. At the same time the North has been opening itself up to trade with neighbor China and, to a lesser extent, South Korea as well. As a result, some North Korean managers have stripped their own factories of machinery to be sold as scrap metal to the resource-hungry Chinese, while cheap consumer goods have flooded into the North in return. According to Chinese customs statistics cited by the Tokyo think tank Radio Press, the number of video players exported from China to North Korea in 2002 was 71; last year it was 350,000. Chanel bags and SUVs are no longer exotic sights on the streets of Pyongyang.

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Just take the testimony of 38-year-old defector Choi In Ho (not her real name), who left the North in October 2004. Once the 2002 reforms legalized private trading, she says, shrewd speculators spotted an opening. They reap huge profits by buying up grain at times of plenty and then throwing it back on the market during shortages. Others take advantage of the miserable transport system by quietly commandeering state-owned trucks and using them to bring products to areas where demand is greatest. "Through such trading, some people are becoming richer and richer, while others nearly starve," Choi says. "Because North Korea is a socialist country, everyone is supposed to be equal. In reality, the income gap is growing, and it's making people angry."

North Korea has always had a stark social divide. Reports on the lavish lifestyle of the country's ruling elite have trickled out for years. Kim Jong Il's personal sushi chef and pizza cook have regaled readers with accounts of the Dear Leader's rarefied taste in cognac and seafood. Last summer a Japanese TV station caught one of Kim's children following Eric Clapton on concert tour across Europe—the sort of luxury the vast majority of North Koreans could only dream of, assuming that any of them were in a position to learn about it. Earlier this year Kim's elder son, Kim Jong Nam, was apparently persuaded to give up his home in the Chinese territory of Macao when journalists there began trading details of his extravagant partying. Lately, it's said, he's been holed up somewhere on the mainland.

And yet something does appear to be changing. Economist Yoon Deok Ryong from the Korean Institute of Economic Policy notes that in the past North Koreans who wanted a better life simply joined the Communist Party, which assured them a certain level of privilege. These days, by contrast, they can achieve the same end by going into business. Hazel Smith, a professor at the University of Warwick in England, says the North Koreans she's surveyed once hoped their children would join the army as a way of getting ahead. Now, she says, the hope is that they'll go into private trade—ideally with a few hundred dollars in capital provided by their parents. North Korea is beginning to register the rise of homegrown business tycoons like Jon Sung Hun, head of Korea Pugang Corp., a conglomerate that exports pharmaceuticals, machinery and minerals in return for consumer and investment goods.

Jon is the son of a former North Korean ambassador to China—which shows, among other things, that it still helps to know the right people. Still, says Yoon, the new class of North Korean entrepreneurs can no longer count on the cash-strapped Communist Party to provide them with their livelihoods. Rampant corruption at virtually all levels of the North Korean state ensures that money increasingly trumps ideology—in ways that could potentially threaten the system. "From the standpoint of the state, people in the army and party are getting rich," says Noland. "On the other hand, they may be getting rich in ways you can't control." Experts caution that no one should expect North Korea's cautious flirtation with capitalism to topple the system overnight. By all appearances Kim retains iron control over the hearts and minds of ordinary North Koreans. And many of those getting rich—in the secret police or the army—are precisely the people he relies on to keep him in power.

The long-term problems, however, are obvious. Several foreigners with regular access to North Korea say the influx of consumer goods has brought with it a sharp increase in North Koreans' knowledge of the outside world. Meanwhile, says Yoon, the Kim regime's reluctance to commit itself to a comprehensive program of Chinese-style economic reform will create problems down the road. In South Korea in the 1960s, he points out, a rising economy afforded the underprivileged a justified hope that they too might one day be able to get rich—a sense of opportunity denied to ordinary North Koreans under present conditions. Among their other effects the 2002 reforms have also spurred hyperinflation, one more crushing blow to people who depend solely on salaries in the worthless North Korean won. (The wealthy, by contrast, enjoy access to the Chinese yuan, which circulates widely inside the North, or other foreign currencies.) Just to compound the problem, Yoon says, Kim's government has yet to provide a proper social safety net for its people. "The income gap itself is not a problem," he argues. "The problem is that the North Korean government doesn't have the capacity to save the people who are in the poorest class."

Socialism, anyone?

평창에서 北에 반드시 얻어내야 할 두가지

평창에서 北에 반드시 얻어내야 할 두가지



평창에서 北에 반드시 얻어내야 할 두가지
[한반도 브리핑] 평창에서 美 중간선거까지 북미 간 다리 놓아야

김연철 인제대학교 교수
2018.01.31 10:43:17

평창은 평화의 신이 준 선물이다. 올림픽 휴전으로 상승하던 한반도의 위기가 잠시 중단되었다. 그러나 평창의 시간이 지나가면, 무엇이 우리를 기다릴지 알 수 없다. 우리는 평창에서 평창 이후를 준비해야 한다. 이제 곧 평창의 열기가 타오를 것이다. 그러나 위기의 원인을 해결하지 않으면, 위기의 안개가 사라지지 않는다. 우리는 성화의 불이 꺼지기 전에, 위기의 해법을 마련해야 한다.


북한과 미국의 다리를 잇는 2+2


위기의 시간은 길었고, 꼬인 매듭이 복잡하기 때문에, 금방 해결국면으로 전환하기는 어렵다. 지금 우리는 해법이 아니라, 해결의 문에 도달할 수 있는 다리를 만들어야 한다. 해결의 문만 열 수 있다면, 해법은 적지 않다. 평창에서 우리는 어떤 다리를 놓아야 할까? 가장 중요한 다리는 물론 북한과 미국을 잇는 다리다.


두 가지를 북한에 요구하고 얻어내야 한다. 첫째는 출구의 확인이다. 2016년 7월 6일 정부 대변인 성명으로 발표했던, "조선반도의 비핵화는 김일성과 김정일의 유훈"이며, "김정은의 의지"라는 입장이 유효한지를 물어봐야 한다. 이 입장은 상황이 변했고, 북한의 핵능력이 달라졌지만, 북한체제의 특성상 그렇게 쉽게 부정하기는 어렵다. 북한이 조건을 달고 상응조치를 요구하겠지만, 비핵화라는 최종목표를 다시 확인해주는 것이 중요하다. 미국이 협상을 거부할 수 없는 근거이고, 다시 협상을 시작할 수 있는 동력을 제공할 수 있기 때문이다.


둘째, 협상이 이루어지는 동안에 북한은 상황악화 조치를 취하지 말아야 한다. 일단 북한은 핵무장의 완성을 선언했기 때문에, 핵실험이나 미사일 발사시험을 추가할 필요가 없다. 북한 핵무기의 기술적 완성도에 대해서는 여러 평가가 있을 수 있으나, 현재 수준의 동결을 약속한다면, 협상을 다시 시작할 수 있는 환경을 만들 수 있다. 일부에서는 동결에 부정적이지만, 동결은 최종목표가 아니라, 비핵화의 출발이다. 동결을 해야 비핵화의 길을 떠날 수 있다.


미국에 대해서도 두 가지의 의사를 확인해야 한다. 첫째는 미국은 북한문제인지, 아니면 북핵문제 인지를 선택해야 한다. 미국이 북한체제의 붕괴를 목표로 한다면, 한국은 동의할 수 없다. 북핵문제는 당면한 현안이고, 북한문제는 시간을 기약하기 어렵다. 북한 붕괴론은 이미 실패한 정책이기도 하다. 북핵문제의 위기 수준을 고려하면 시간이 국제사회의 편도 아니고, 그렇게 한가한 상황이 아니다.


트럼프 정부는 이미 몇 차례 북한의 붕괴를 바라지 않는다고 말했지만, 그렇다고 당면한 현안인 북핵문제를 해결하겠다는 의지도 모호하다. '전략적 인내' 정책이 실패했다고 하면서도, 북한의 태도변화를 기다리는 '인내'를 지속하고 있다. 제재를 강화하면 북한이 굴복할 것이라는 가정은 '전략적 인내'정책의 핵심이다. 제재의 효과는 분명 과거와 비교할 수 없지만, 그렇다고 정치군사적 압력으로 작용할지는 미지수다.


제재를 강화하면 할수록 억지의 필요성은 약화되는 것이 아니라 강화될 것이다. 제재를 북핵문제 해결의 수단이 아니라, 북한문제 해결의 수단으로 고려한다면 성공하기는 어렵다. 북핵문제의 해법을 고려할 때 제재는 목표가 아니라, 하나의 수단에 불과하다. 시간의 역전이 벌어진 상황에서 아직도 제재의 효과를 기다릴 만큼 시간의 여유가 있는 것도 아니다.


둘째는 수동적 접근에서 능동적 접근으로 전환해야 한다. 미국 국민들은 북한의 핵무기가 미국 본토를 위협할 수 있다는 점을 우려한다. 그렇다면 기다릴 것이 아니라, 능동적으로 해법을 마련해야 한다. 미국 내부적으로 북핵문제의 우선순위가 확실히 높아졌다. 북핵 역사 30년 동안 정책관심도로 보면 지금이 가장 높다. 최근 여론조사에서도 특히 공화당 지지자들이 북한 관련 사안이 중간선거에서 가장 중요한 현안이라고 꼽았다. (1월 27일 카이저가족 재단 여론조사)





▲ 남북 여자아이스하키 단일팀 선수들이 28일 충북 진천 국가대표선수촌 빙상장에서 A.B 팀으로 나눠 훈련 및 미니 게임을 진행했다. ⓒ대한체육회

다리를 잇는 협상의 기술


평창에서 우리는 부지런히 움직여야 한다. 불신의 계곡에서 신뢰의 다리를 놓는 일은 쉽지 않다. 북한과 미국은 현재 서로 상반되고 충돌하는 신호를 동시에 보내고 있다. 양측의 대화를 연결하려면, 상반된 신호 중에서 긍정적 신호를 분류해서 다듬고 의미를 부여해서 다른 쪽에 전달하고, 답변 과정의 상반된 신호 중에서 다시 긍정적인 것만 모아서 똑같이 의미를 부여하고 살을 붙여 다른 쪽으로 옮겨야 한다. 신뢰는 언제나 눈덩이처럼 뭉쳐지는 것이다.


어디서부터 시작할지는 양측의 입장을 충분히 들어봐야 한다. 들어보면 언제나 희미하지만 문제를 해결할 실마리를 발견할 수 있다. 우선적으로 김정은 위원장과 트럼프 대통령의 인정욕구를 활용할 필요가 있다. 문재인 대통령이 트럼프 대통령을 칭찬했을 때의 효과를 우리는 목격한 적이 있다. 중간선거가 다가올수록 트럼프 대통령은 외부에서의 '인정'이 필요하다. 북한도 이 점을 주목할 필요가 있다. 김정은 위원장도 트럼프 대통령을 칭찬해 볼 것을 권하고 싶다.


트럼프 대통령의 인정욕구는 매우 중요하다. 트럼프 정부의 정책결정구조는 여전히 혼란스럽고, 다수가 대결지향적인 국제정치관을 갖고 있으며, 북핵문제의 본질에 관한 이해가 부족하다. 그래서 트럼프 대통령의 입장이 중요하다. 트럼프 대통령이 발휘할 진정효과는 중간선거 이후에도 지속된다는 보장이 없다. 평창이 1차 고비라면, 미국의 중간선거 이후는 또 다른 고비가 될 수 있다. 중간선거 이후 예상되는 트럼프 정부의 레임덕은 혼란을 의미한다. 그전에 우리는 북핵문제의 해결의 문을 찾아야 한다.


평창이 중요하다. 평창에서 이루어질 외교가 평창 이후를 결정한다. 평창에서 북한과 미국의 다리를 놓기 위해서는 그 전에 우리가 동원할 수 있는 모든 외교적 자원을 동원해야 한다. 미국의 여론을 고려할 때, 언제나 정부뿐만 아니라 정부 밖의 여론을 동시에 고려해야 한다. 트럼프 정부의 주요 인사들의 생각도 중요하지만, 미국 여론에 영향을 미치는 주요 인사들과의 접촉을 강화할 필요가 있다. 미국 내부적으로 북핵 해결의 중요성을 인식하는 여론이 높아질수록, 해법에 관한 고민도 깊어질 것이다. 미국 내부에서 이성적이고 합리적인 해법이 목소리를 낼 수 있도록 도와야 한다.


북한의 입장도 고려해야 한다. 북한의 평창 참여 결정은 갑자기 이루어졌고, 앞으로의 전략적 방향 역시 분명하지 않다. 김정은 위원장의 생각은 아직 유동적이고, 내부적으로 다양한 의견이 존재할 것이다. 접촉 국면에서 북한은 우리 측의 의지를 의심하고 묻고 또 묻고 확인하려 할 것이다. 물론 무엇보다 미국의 본심을 알고 싶어 할 것이다. 어느 정도 판단을 해야 고위급 대표단에 누구를 보낼지 결정할 것이다. 우리는 협의를 할 수 있는 사람이 올 수 있도록, 가능성을 보여줘야 한다. 평창이 만들어낼 감동의 크기도 영향을 미칠 것이다.


평창 이후를 생각하며, 평창을 보자


평창에서 우리는 협상의 다리를 놓아야 한다. 다리를 놓을 때, 가장 중요한 것은 중심이 튼튼해야 한다. 우리 스스로가 북핵문제의 본질을 이해하고, 해법의 구조를 파악하는 것이 중요하다. 중심이 있으면 쉽게 흔들리지 않는다. 시민들도 평창 이후를 생각하면서, 평창을 바라보았으면 한다. 위기 상황에서 평창이 열리고, 북한의 갑작스러운 평창 참가 결정으로 충분한 협의의 시간이 부족했다. 급하게 진행되는 상황에서 크고 작은 차질이 빚어지는 것이 당연하다. 좀 더 넓고 긴 시각으로 평창을 바라보았으면 좋겠다.


그리고 여전히 평창을 정파적 시각으로 접근하는 사람들에게 간곡하게 호소한다. 지금은 그럴 때가 아니다. 세상이 어떻게 돌아가는지, 주위를 둘러보고 우리가 어디에 서 있는지를 한번이라도 생각해봐라. 지금은 색깔론을 앞세워 정치적 이득이나 계산할 때가 아니다. 우리가 처한 상황이 그렇게 한가하지 않다. 이제 곧 손님들이 온다. 국내적으로 올림픽 휴전을 시작해서, 여야가 초당적으로 지구촌 사람들을 맞이했으면 좋겠다. 

================

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김연철 인제대학교 통일학부 교수는 성균관대학교에서 정치학 박사 학위를 받았습니다. 이후 삼성경제연구소 북한연구팀, 고려대학교 아세아문제연구소에서 활동했으며 2004년 7월부터 2006년 1월까지 통일부 장관 정책보좌관을 역임했습니다. 저서로 <냉전의 추억>, <북한경제개혁연구> 등이 있습니다.

1801 Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a ‘bloody nose’ carries a huge risk to Americans - The Washington Post

Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a ‘bloody nose’ carries a huge risk to Americans - The Washington Post








Opinions

Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a ‘bloody nose’ carries a huge risk to Americans




North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. (AFP/Getty Images)
By Victor Cha January 30 at 8:28 PM


Victor Cha is a professor at Georgetown University and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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• North Korea, if not stopped, will build an arsenal with multiple nuclear missiles meant to threaten the U.S. homeland and 
• blackmail us into abandoning our allies in Asia. 
• North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will sell these weapons to state and nonstate actors, and he will inspire other rogue actors who want to undermine the U.S.-backed postwar order. 

These are real and unprecedented threats. But the answer is not, as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike. Instead, there is a forceful military option available that can address the threat without escalating into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.

When I was under consideration for a position in this administration, I shared some of these views.

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1:11

Tokyo holds first ever North Korea missile drill




Japan’s capital practiced its first North Korean missile evacuation drill on Jan. 22. Hundreds of people participated in the drill. (Reuters)
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Some may argue that U.S. casualties and even a wider war on the Korean Peninsula are risks worth taking, given what is at stake. But a strike (even a large one) would only delay North Korea’s missile-building and nuclear programs, which are buried in deep, unknown places impenetrable to bunker-busting bombs. A strike also would not stem the threat of proliferation but rather exacerbate it, turning what might be a North Korean moneymaking endeavor into a vengeful effort intended to equip other bad actors against us.
I empathize with the hope, espoused by some Trump officials, that a military strike would shock Pyongyang into appreciating U.S. strength, after years of inaction, and force the regime to the denuclearization negotiating table. I also hope that if North Korea did retaliate militarily, the United States could control the escalation ladder to minimize collateral damage and prevent a collapse of financial markets. In either event, the rationale is that a strike that demonstrates U.S. resolve to pursue “all options” is necessary to give the mercurial Kim a “bloody nose.” Otherwise he will remain undeterred in his nuclear ambitions.

Yet, there is a point at which hope must give in to logic. If we believe that Kim is undeterrable without such a strike, how can we also believe that a strike will deter him from responding in kind? And if Kim is unpredictable, impulsive and bordering on irrational, how can we control the escalation ladder, which is premised on an adversary’s rational understanding of signals and deterrence?

Some have argued the risks are still worth taking because it’s better that people die “over there” than “over here.” On any given day, there are 230,000 Americans in South Korea and 90,000 or so in Japan. Given that an evacuation of so many citizens would be virtually impossible under a rain of North Korean artillery and missiles (potentially laced with biochemical weapons), these Americans would most likely have to hunker down until the war was over.


While our population in Japan might be protected by U.S. missile defenses, the U.S. population in South Korea, let alone millions of South Koreans, has no similar active defenses against a barrage of North Korean artillery (aside from counterfire artillery). To be clear: The president would be putting at risk an American population the size of a medium-size U.S. city — Pittsburgh, say, or Cincinnati — on the assumption that a crazy and undeterrable dictator will be rationally cowed by a demonstration of U.S. kinetic power.

An alternative coercive strategy involves enhanced and sustained U.S., regional and global pressure on Pyongyang to denuclearize. This strategy is likely to deliver the same potential benefits as a limited strike, along with other advantages, without the self-destructive costs. There are four elements to this coercive strategy.

First, the Trump administration must continue to strengthen the coalition of U.N. member states it has mustered in its thus far highly successful sanctions campaign.

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6:59

This 1960s nuclear fallout shelter is a time capsule to the past — and offers lessons for the Trump era




(Video: Erin Patrick O'Connor, Daron Taylor, Monica Hesse, Thomas LeGro/Photo: Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
------------
Second, the United States must significantly up-gun its alliances with Japan and South Korea with integrated missile defense, intelligence-sharing and anti-submarine warfare and strike capabilities to convey to North Korea that an attack on one is an attack on all.


Third, the United States must build a maritime coalition around North Korea involving rings of South Korean, Japanese and broader U.S. assets to intercept any nuclear missiles or technologies leaving the country. China and Russia should be prepared to face the consequences if they allow North Korean proliferation across their borders.

Lastly, the United States must continue to prepare military options. Force will be necessary to deal with North Korea if it attacks first, but not through a preventive strike that could start a nuclear war.

In the land of lousy options, no strategy is perfect, but some are better than others. This strategy gets us out of crisis-management mode. It constitutes decisive action, not previously attempted, by President Trump. And it demonstrates resolve to other bad actors that threats to the United States will be countered. Such a strategy would assuredly deplete Pyongyang’s hard currency, deter it from rash action, strengthen our alliances in Asia for the next generation and increase the costs to those who continue to subsidize Pyongyang.


A sustained and long-term competitive strategy such as this plays to U.S. strengths, exploits our adversary’s weaknesses and does not risk hundreds of thousands of American lives.


Read more on this topic:

The Post’s View: At last, some good news on North Korea

Eugene Robinson: We need to change the way we talk about North Korea

Lawrence Krauss and Robert Rosner: We’re as close to Doomsday today as we were during the Cold War

John R. Kasich: Loose talk about war with North Korea is irresponsible

David Ignatius: What North Korea told a U.N. envoy trying to prevent war



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AFSC Update on North Korea

AFSC Update on North Korea

AFSC webinar on North Korea View this email in your browser

Update from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) on North Korea Thursday February 15th 2018 Dear Friends As many of you will know the American Friends Service Committee have an ongoing concern for North Korea and have staff both in the United States and Asia who are concerned about engaging with the DPRK in a positive way. You can read about their work on the AFSC website: https://www.afsc.org/office/north-korea I am grateful that Lucy Roberts, Director of the Asian AFSC office has agreed to give Quakers in the Asia West Pacific Section of FWCC an update on their work on Thursday 15th February 2018. The update will be in the form of a webinar, using Zoom, for 1 hour and the outline is below. If you would like to be part of this, then please reply to this email and we will send instructions about how to participate. It is easy to do. You will be able to join in individually on your computer, laptop or phone or you could invite a few Quaker friends to be with you so that you can participate with a group. in friendship Webinar Outline Engaging North Korea   An update with American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Introduction (5 minutes) Lucy Roberts, AFSC Regional Director in Asia. Lucy is based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Current Context (15 minutes) Dr Linda Lewis, based in Seattle manages AFSC work in North Korea. Linda will talk about the context AFSC is working within in relation to the DPRK. AFSC advocacy in the United States (15 minutes) Daniel Jasper will join us from Washington DC. Dan will talk about the approach of the United States to North Korea and the current advocacy work of AFSC Australian perspective on North Korea (10 minutes) James Reilly Associate Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. James will talk about North Korea from the perspective of Australia Discussion (15 minutes) The time of the webinar is below: Aotearoa/New Zealand 3.00 PM Australian Eastern Daylight Time 1.00 PM Western Australia Daylight Time 10.00 AM Japan 11 AM Singapore   10. AM Hong Kong   10.00 AM Philippines   10.00 AM South Korea   11.00 AM Cambodia   9.00 AM India   7.30 AM Looking forward to seeing you on line on Feb 15! Ronis Ronis Chapman  Secretary FWCC AWPS ronisc@fwccawps.org

Associate Professor James Reilly - The University of Sydney

Associate Professor James Reilly - The University of Sydney







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ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JAMES REILLY


M.A. University of Washington, PhD George Washington
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Member of China Studies Centre



H04 - Merewether Building
The University of Sydney


Telephone +61 2 9036 9329
Email james.reilly@sydney.edu.au

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Biographical details


James Reilly is an Associate Professor in Northeast Asian Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His research and teaching are in the areas of Chinese foreign policy, East Asian politics, and international relations. In the Department, he teaches undergraduate and post-graduate units on East Asian Politics and Chinese politics.

He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (George Washington University 2008) and an M.A. in East Asia Area Studies (University of Washington 1999), was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford (2008-09), and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (2015-16). He also served as the East Asia Representative of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in China from 2001-2008.

He is the author of Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China’s Japan Policy(Columbia University Press, 2012), and the co-editor of Australia and China at 40 (UNSW Press, 2012). His articles have also appeared in numerous edited volumes and academic journals, including: Asian Survey, China Quarterly, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Journal of Contemporary China, Modern Asian Studies, Survival, and Washington Quarterly.
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Research interests

Chinese foreign policy
East Asian politics
International relations
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Teaching and supervision

Current Courses
GOVT2424 - Politics of China
GOVT2611 - Capitalism and Democracy in East Asia
CISS 6016 - Chinese Foreign and Security Policy
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Current research students
Project titleResearch student
Chinas and Japans Foreign Aid Programs for Developing and or Undeveloped Countries Hui GUO
Middle Powers in the Asia Pacific: Rules, Roles and Relations Sarah TEO

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In the media


2017, Reilly, J., Presentation at the Australia-China Relations Institute (UTS), 18 July, on "China's economic clout and economic diplomacy". Available here.

2017, Reilly, J., Interview on ABC's Rear Vision program, "Relectant Allies: China and North Korea", 9 July. Available here.

2015, Reilly, J., Presentation at the Council of Foreign Relations on "China's Influence on the North Korean Economy". Listen to the podcast here.

2015, "China's Comfort Women", FT.com, March 20, including commentary by Dr Reilly here.

2014, Reilly, J., 'Grappling with the scale of China's power', ABC News, AM. January 18, Available here, and the Lowy Institute report available here.

2014, "The Flying Factory", The Economist, November 14, including commentary by Dr Reilly here.

2013, Reilly, J., 'China’s DPRK economic engagement: don't blame the sunshine', East Asia Forum. Available here.


Publications for the Carter Center US-China Perception Monitor



2015, Reilly, J. 'Traveling China's New Silk Road'. Available here.

2015, Reilly, J. 'New and Old Silk Roads'. Available here.

2015, Reilly, J. 'High-Speed Travel from Lanzhou to Urumqi'. Available here.

2015, Reilly, J. 'Adventures Aboard the Slow Train to Almaty'. Available here.
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Videos

Dr James Reilly talks about his research interests, and the Masters programme in the Department of Government and International Relations.
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PhD and master's project opportunities
Government and International Relations
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Selected grants

2015
China's Economic Statecraft: Turning Wealth into Power; Reilly J; Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP).
2011
Putting ODA in Perspective: A Comparative Study of Official Development Assistance in Asia and Europe; Reilly J; Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia/Joint-Action Bilateral Research Programs.
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Selected publications & creative works



Australia and China at 40(University of New South Wales (UNSW) Press, 2012)


Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in Chinas Japan Policy(Columbia University Press, 2012)


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Books
Reilly, J. (2012). Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in Chinas Japan Policy. New York: Columbia University Press. [More Information]


Edited Books
Reilly, J., Yuan, J. (2012). Australia and China at 40. Sydney: University of New South Wales (UNSW) Press.


Book Chapters
Reilly, J. (2017). Popular Nationalism and Economic Interests in China's Japan Policy. In Robert S. Ross and Oystein Tunsjo (Eds.), Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China. Ithaca NY, United States: Cornell University Press.
Reilly, J. (2016). China: Turning money into power. In Mark Leonard (Eds.), Connectivity Wars: Why Migration, Finance and Trade are the Geo-Economic Battlegrounds of the Future, (pp. 189-196). London: European Council on Foreign Relations. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2016). Chinese Sunshine: Beijing's Influence on Economic Change in North Korea. In Evelyn Goh (Eds.), Rising China’s Influence in Developing Asia, (pp. 193-216). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]

Reilly, J. (2016). Going Out and Texting Home: New Media and China's Citizens Abroad. In Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, Guobin Yang (Eds.), The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, (pp. 180-199). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2015). Answers and questions on China-Japan relations. In B. Shao (Eds.), China under Xi Jinping: Its Economic Challenges and Foreign Policy Initiatives, (pp. 275-277). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2015). Economic Statecraft. In David S.G. Goodman (Eds.), Handbook of the Politics of China, (pp. 381-396). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Reilly, J. (2012). A Northeast Asian Model of ODA? Comparing Chinese, Japanese and Korean Official Development Assistance. In Christopher M. Dent, Jorn Dosch (Eds.), The Asia Pacific, Regionalism and the Global System, (pp. 216-231). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. [More Information]
Reilly, J., Yuan, J. (2012). Australia's Relations with China in a New Era. In James Reilly and Jingdong Yuan (Eds.), Australia and China at 40, (pp. 2-20). Sydney: University of New South Wales (UNSW) Press.
Reilly, J. (2012). Soft Power in Chinese Foreign Policy: Concepts, Policies, and Effectiveness. In Emilian Kavalski (Eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Chinese Foreign Policy, (pp. 125-134). Surrey, UK: Ashgate. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2010). China's Online Nationalism Toward Japan. In Simon Shen, Shaun Breslin (Eds.), Online Chinese Nationalism and Chinas Bilateral Relations, (pp. 45-72). Plymouth, United Kingdom: Lexington Books.
Reilly, J. (2008). Harmonious World and Public Opinion in China's Japan Policy. In Sujian Guo, Jean-Marc F. Blanchard (Eds.), Harmonious World and Chinas New Foreign Policy, (pp. 189-223). Lanham, United States: Lexington Books.
Reilly, J., Na, W. (2007). China's Corporate Engagement in Africa. In Marcel Kitissou (Eds.), Africa in China's Global Strategy. United Kingdom: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd.Hide last 9


Journals
Reilly, J. (2017). China's economic statecraft in Europe. Asia Europe Journal, 15(2), 173-185. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2017). Leveraging Diversity: Europe's China Policy. EUI Working Paper, 33(July), 1-16.
Reilly, J. (2014). A Wave to Worry About? Public opinion, foreign policy and China's anti-Japan protests. Journal of Contemporary China, 23(86), 197-215. [More Information]

Reilly, J. (2014). China's Economic Engagement in North Korea. The China Quarterly, 220, 915-935. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2014). China's Market Influence in North Korea. Asian Survey, 54(5), 894-917. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2014). The Curious Case of China's Aid to North Korea. Asian Survey, 54(6), 1158-1183. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2013). China and Japan in Myanmar: Aid, Natural Resources and Influence. Asian Studies Review, 37(2), 141-157. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2012). A Norm-Taker or a Norm-Maker? Chinese aid in Southeast Asia. Journal of Contemporary China, 21(73), 71-91. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2012). China's Unilateral Sanctions. The Washington Quarterly, 35(4), 121-133. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2012). Counting On China? Australia's Strategic Response to Economic Interdependence. Chinese Journal of International Politics, 5, 369-394. [More Information]
Linley, M., Reilly, J., Goldsmith, B. (2012). Who's Afraid of the Dragon? Asian Mass Publics' Perceptions of China's Influence. Japanese Journal of Political Science, 13(4), 501-523. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2011). Remember History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China's War of Resistance to Japan. Modern Asian Studies, 45(2), 463-490. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2009). The Rebirth of Minjian Waijiao: China's Popular Diplomacy toward Japan. Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper, (115).
Gill, B., Reilly, J. (2007). The Tenuous Hold of China Inc. in Africa. The Washington Quarterly, 30(3), 37-52. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2006). China's History Activism and Sino-Japanese Relations. China: An International Journal, 4(2), 189-216. [More Information]
Gill, B., Reilly, J. (2000). Sovereignty, Intervention, and Peacekeeping: The View from Beijing. Survival (Abingdon), 42(3), 41-59. [More Information]Hide last 13


Magazine / Newspaper Articles
Reilly, J. (2016). "China-North Korea Relations" in Beijing's Asia Pivot in 2016: Expert Roundup. The Council on Foreign Relations. [More Information]


Research Reports
Reilly, J., Reilly, W. (2015). The role of China as an education aid donor, ED/EFA/MRT/2015/PI/44, (pp. 1 - 38). Paris, France: UNESCO. [More Information]
Reilly, J. (2013). China's Economic Statecraft: Turning Wealth into Power, November 2013, (pp. 2 - 20). Sydney, Australia: The Lowy Institute for International Policy.

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Economic Assimilation of North Korean Refugees in South Korea: Survey Evidence by Ji Hong Kim, Taejong Kim :: SSRN

Economic Assimilation of North Korean Refugees in South Korea: Survey Evidence by Ji Hong Kim, Taejong Kim :: SSRN

Economic Assimilation of North Korean Refugees in South Korea: Survey Evidence

KDI School of Pub Policy & Management Paper No. 06-19

21 PagesPosted: 20 Feb 2007 

Ji Hong Kim

KDI School of Public Policy and Management

Taejong Kim

KDI School of Public Policy and Management

Date Written: December 2006

Abstract

This paper studies the economic assimilation of North Korean refugees settled in the South. Do the North Korean refugees get assimilated into the labor market in the South at all? If yes, how fast is the assimilation? More specifically, what is the initial wage gap at the entry between refugees and native workers with identical observable characteristics? How does the gap change as time passes? For the purpose, we analyze the unique survey data set constructed for this study. The cross section survey has detailed retrospective information not just on labor market activities of the refugees, but also on their economic life while still in the North. The survey covers about 700 adult refugees. For the comparison of the refugee workers with the natives, the survey data set are combined with the 2002 wave of the Korea Labor Institute Panel Study (KLIPS). In comparison to the assimilation of immigrant workers in the US, initial wage gap seems much larger for the North Korean refugee workers, but also closes at a higher rate than is the case in the US. The disconcerting finding is that the gap in employment probabilities is also large in the Korean context, and takes a long time to close, especially for female refugee workers.

Keywords: economic assimilation, refugees, North Korea

JEL Classification: D63, E24, J31

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The Distribution of Income in North Korea | PIIE

The Distribution of Income in North Korea | PIIE




The Distribution of Income in North Korea
Marcus Noland (PIIE)
February 19, 2013 6:45 AM


A couple of months ago, the KDI School of Public Policy and Management put out a paper by Kim Taejong and Kim Ji-Hong which uses a 2005 KDI survey of 700 North Korean refugees to generate estimates of the distribution of income in North Korea, focusing on the period 1996-2003.

Kim and Kim are well-aware of the challenge of deriving a sample representative of the remaining resident population and the problem of recollection bias. They attempt to deal with these issues in part by trimming their sample of outliers, and re-weighting their sample using a question that asked the respondents about their self-assessment of their position on the income distribution. In short, the exercise faces some significant methodological challenges and the authors employ some clever responses that should bias their results in a conservative direction.

The authors describe the results as “mind-boggling.” The estimated Gini coefficients, a standard measure ranging from 0 to 1, with 1 being the most unequal, range from 0.63 in 1998 to 0.86 (2002-03). As the authors observe, if these trimmed sample “estimates are to be believed, one might consider North Korea as the country with the most unequal distribution in the world.”

The authors then re-weight the sample using the inverse of the self-perceived quintile on the income scale. Depending on the particular model they use, they are able to dampen the results somewhat, generating estimated Gini coefficients of 0.58-0.60 for 1998, and then showing a rise to the range of 0.66 to 0.85 during the period 2002-04. Even if one considers the low end estimates around 0.6, that would still put North Korea in a league with Brazil, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, and Swaziland—the most unequal countries in the world covered by contemporaneous World Bank data. As Kim and Kim observe, “even more alarming, of course, is the strong possibility that even these unusually high values of Gini coefficients are likely to understate the true state of income distribution in North Korea.”

It is unclear how these estimates might relate to current situation. Obviously a lot has changed in the intervening decade. But Kim and Kim are congratulated for making a serious effort to get at a little understood issue. The results underscore a basic point sometimes lost in socialist rhetoric, namely that a political system as repressive and unaccountable as North Korea’s enables inequality on a scale seen in few if any other countries.

A Telling Comparison: Israel versus North Korea | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

A Telling Comparison: Israel versus North Korea | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization




A Telling Comparison: Israel versus North Korea
By Kim Petersen
Global Research, November 13, 2017
Region: Asia, Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Law and Justice, United Nations
In-depth Report: NORTH KOREA, PALESTINE



485
19 7

545



Missing from corporate media accounts is what causes the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK aka North Korea) to be singled out for opprobrium for what, essentially, is developing a deterrent against any entity that would attack it.


A comparison with how the United Nations deals with North Korea vis-à-vis another member state state, Israel, is instructive.

Israel occupies Palestinian territory; destroys Palestinian olive groves and poisons Palestinian sheep; sprays Palestinian homes with sewage; sabotages Palestinian water supplies; cuts off power to Palestine; terrorizes Palestinians for hours at checkpoints, including the sick, infirm, and pregnant women, some who are forced to give birth at the checkpoints; stops fishermen from earning a living from the sea; shells hospitals, schools, and playgrounds; blows up kids on beaches; and commits myriad other war crimes. Israel has nuclear weapons and ICBMs. The last point is the only one that North Korea shares with Israel.

Yet only North Korea is vociferously criticized and sanctioned by the US and its allies. Is this fair?

And is it just that North Korea is bullied and sanctioned for developing a self-defense?

Creation

Israel was brought into existence by the UN granting Palestinian land from Mandate Palestine to Jews, who happened to be mainly migrant Jews from another continent – Europe.

North Korea was created by World War II victors, predominantly the United States, splitting a country into two halves. Thereby, one ethnic group was separated from the other by a border.

Occupation

Whereas the Koreans are indigenous to Korea, Americans are occupying the territory of many Indigenous nations, as are Jewish Israelis (with the exception of Mizrahi Jews) occupying Arab territories.

Israel signifies a situation whereby one group of outsiders was favorably positioned by the UN to carry out an occupation of an Indigenous people.

The DPRK signifies a situation where a people indigenous to a territory were separated from kin by an outside entity. The self-determination of Koreans was not respected.

Notably, the US came into existence as a colonizer, a colonial-settler state, that remains in occupation of the territory of many Indigenous peoples; this includes the Hawaiian islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, and other islands of Micronesia, the Chagos archipelago, etc.

The Role of the UN

Over and over again, the US and NATO ideologues describe the DPRK as a threat. Why? What country has DPRK ever been at war with other than an internecine conflict with the Republic of Korea over half a century ago, a war into which the US inserted itself and the United Nations provided diplomatic approbation. Since the preamble to the UN Charter stated its determination to allay future generations from experiencing the scourge of war, what could be more hypocritical than for the UN to authorize war against another UN member?

The scope of the tendentiousness of the US and UN becomes fully transparent when the case of Israel is considered.


The case of Israel is another blight on the UN as it abnegated its Article 1 which calls for “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” The people of Mandate Palestine were not permitted self-determination, and the land was carved up. The Palestinian majority wound up with 42 percent of the land, the Jews were gifted 56 percent of Palestinian land, and Jerusalem was designated an international city. Palestinians rejected the plan. Subsequently Jews ethnically cleansed Palestinians from the land, waged wars, built settlements in occupied Palestine, and erected an illegal wall that has rendered the remainder of Palestine into discontiguous bantustans.




Israel has hardly been a sterling member of the UN, and the list of UN Resolutions targeting Israel is long. The list would be much longer were it not for the US wielding its veto power in the UN Security Council.


If indeed the UN is handling similar issues differently depending on who the member states are, then a question arises: How is the supposed neutrality and image of the UN as an honest arbiter affected by its differential treatment of members? And: What impact does this have for international justice?

Israel’s Wall and the DMZ

The World Court has ruled the Apartheid Wall (Wikipedia calls the 650-700-km structure that reaches a maximum height of 8 meters and cuts through much of the West Bank the “Israeli West Bank barrier”) to be illegal and ordered it torn down.

William Parry’s picture book — Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine (Pluto Press, 2010) — vividly drives home the oppressor-oppressed dynamic. The book portrays Israelis separating Palestinian families from one another, Palestinians being prevented from tending to their crops, Israelis inflicting economic deprivation on Palestinians, Israelis targeting of school children, and Israelis intended humiliation of Palestinian workers passing through checkpoints in the wall. Against the Wall also depicts the spirit, art, and determination of the Palestinian resistance, the anger of the occupied people, and messages to the world.

In the case of Israeli Jews, the wall is their statement of desiring separation from Palestinians. In stark contrast, the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula is a demilitarized zone forced by Americans on Koreans, many of who still desire reunification.

With the defeat of Japan looming in the closing days of World War II, the division of Korea was decided at the Potsdam Conference. North Korea states,


“[T]he Korea question was decided according to the interests of the United States … contrary to the requirement and demand of the Korean people.” [1]

Koreans also blame Japan for the separation:

Had the Japanese not occupied Korea, the United States could not have interfered in Korean affairs and the question of the 38th parallel would not have come into being. Therefore, Japan also takes blame for the division of Korea. [2]

Nukes and ICBMs

Although undeclared, it is well known that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, yet it escapes censure by the US and sanctions by the UN.

One might inquire how a state like the US with its huge stockpile of nuclear-tipped ICBMs has standing to criticize other states for doing what it does? Does this not pose a moral quicksand for the US? Also why does the US elude censure for not abiding by article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons?

Some Questions

If outsiders had allowed Koreans to decide their fate, if outsiders had not forcibly split the Korean peninsula, would Koreans be agitating, fighting to unify the Korean peninsula? [3]

If Palestinians had been able to determine and control immigration to their country, as is the case for nation states everywhere, would they have allowed a group of outsiders to establish an exclusive state for that group’s people negating their own state?

If the answer to both questions is no, then why are the Palestinians and North Koreans demonized for decisions made by outsiders that denied them their natural rights?

Conclusion

On the one hand we have a self-designated Jewish State that was carved out from a landmass colonized by Britain. Britain passed the matter to the UN which took a chunk of the land and gave it to others, without the consent of the Palestinian people who for millenia have lived, loved, played, worked, and farmed there. Israel, the Jewish state, ethnically cleansed 800,000 non-Jews from the land and later expanded its non-declared borders. Israel is clearly a racist state. All this was with the acquiescence of the US. Israel has been in contravention of several UN resolutions, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and has never been sanctioned by the UN. In addition, the US has exercised several vetoes in the UN Security Council to protect Israel from censure. As well, Israel became a nuclear-armed state with ICBMs. Does the US demand sanctions against Israel? No, it lavishes billions upon Israel each year; currently running at $3.8 billion a year. Most of this “aid” [4] is in the form of military assistance — which is being challenged as violating US law against supporting secret nuclear states.

Korea, the state of the Korean people, saw its people separated into the two halves of the peninsula. This again was imposed from the outside, without the consent of the Korean people, chiefly by the US. North Korea has committed no acts of ethnic cleansing. On the contrary, it was the victim of major devastation caused by the US when the latter intervened in a civil war, committing numerous war crimes. [5] The US threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons during the war on the Korean peninsula, had nuclear weapons stationed on South Korean soil for several years, has nuclear-armed warships docking in South Korea, has nuclear-armed warplanes and nuclear-armed submarines stationed in nearby Japan. Yet North Korea, in stark contrast to Israel, is singled out for the severest vitriol from the US and its western allies. The UN bends to the US through its Security Council imposing sanctions on North Korea although it has attacked no other country. It has pursued nuclear weapons and ICBM capability as has the US, Israel and the seemingly hypocritical China and Russia, the latter two nuclear states having voted for sanctions against North Korea.

A simple analogy should suffice: If a bully — much larger than you and who has used unrestrained violence against you in the past — threatens you with a gun, would you want to face the bully without a gun?

Is there a moral principle that would posit that North Korea should face the mightily armed US, a US which rejects peace with North Korea, without a deterrent to attack against it?

Unless one can reasonably answer yes to the preceding two questions, then the punitive actions targeting North Korea should cease immediately. If actions targeting any entity are required, then how about targeting the entity/entities that caused North Korea to seek a nuclear deterrent?


Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: kimohp@gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Notes


1. Korea in the 20th Century: 100 Significant Events, (Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2002), p 98.

2. Korea in the 20th Century, p 98.

3. An earlier article looks at what was transpiring in Korea following the defeat of Japan: “A ‘Presence’ in the South of Korea.”

4. It is farcical to refer to financial gifts to an OECD member state as “aid.”

5. See Korean Truth Commission, Report on U.S. Crimes in Korea: 1945-2001 (New York: 2001).

Featured image is from Al-Monitor.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Kim Petersen, Global Research, 2017

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North Korea’s 3-Tiered Society | The Diplomat

North Korea’s 3-Tiered Society | The Diplomat



North Korea's 3-Tiered Society


North Korea is plagued with economic and political inequalities. Can the international community help the marginalized?
By 38 North / John Feffer
May 08, 2015









This is an updated version of an article first published at 38 North, a blog of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS. It is republished with kind permission.

It’s not likely that an Occupy Pyongyang movement will set up tents in Kim Il-sung Square anytime soon. Protest, after all, is virtually non-existent in that society. But the same widening inequalities that plague the United States and the global economy can also be found inside North Korea. What was once a relatively equitable society, albeit at the low end of per-capita GDP, has been experiencing a rapid polarization in wealth. The implications of this widening gap on North Korean government policy — as well as on international policies promoting human security inside North Korea — are enormous.

The headlines coming out of North Korea over the past few years have been a study in contrasts. On the one hand, four separate international nutritional assessments in 2011 found chronic malnutrition that, according to the UN, affects one in three children under five. Although 2012 was the year of kangsung daeguk — an economically prosperous and militarily strong power — the overall statistics tell a different story. The North Korean economy, which had recovered somewhat by the beginning of the new millennium from its near collapse in the mid-1990s, contracted in both 2009 and 2010, according to South Korean sources. Although the next couple years showed anemic growth, Pyongyang has been unable to wean itself from dependence on Beijing’s food and energy assistance, and, out of necessity, has negotiated lopsided deals with China over access to mineral wealth and ports. Farmers have been forced by the lack of fuel and spare parts to rely more heavily on manual labor. Workers steal from their factories to supplement meager salaries. The inability of North Korea to revive its agricultural and manufacturing sectors has adversely affected the larger bulk of the population, the broad class of workers and farmers who have relied on employment in state enterprises and state farms as well as food from the public distribution system.Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

But there is another set of news stories about North Korea. The number of cell phone subscriptions in the country, for instance, passed the one million mark — out of a population of roughly 25 million — in 2012, only three years after the initial launch of the 3G network, and then doubled that rate, reaching two million subscribers in May 2013. Private markets have expanded throughout the country, with two mega-markets that can now serve up to 100,000 people a day. Someone, a lot of someones, is using these phones and shopping in these markets. Indeed, signs of a thriving nouveau riche are everywhere in Pyongyang — fancy pizza places, more cars on the roads, imported plasma TVs — and there is much talk of “golden couples,” namely a husband in government with an entrepreneur wife. Even part of the official economy is prospering. The center of the capital city is busy with new construction. The government has put resources into the IT sector, with some notable achievements in software development, but as in the West, these investments will not likely produce large-scale employment.

A large part of North Korea, in other words, has slipped back into the 19th century of manual labor in the fields and hardscrabble, subsistence living, while a relatively small elite is living in the 21st century world of smart phones and espresso drinks. Although such a two-tiered society is not uncommon in the developing world, North Korea once prided itself on breaking free from this model of stratified development. True, the regime traditionally maintained a rather complex political hierarchy based on perceived loyalty to the system, but this neo-Confucian system is giving way to a more familiar economic class system. To the two aforementioned classes must be added a third. The human rights situation within North Korea remains abysmal, as an estimated 150,000 people languish in political prison camps under atrocious conditions. This represents a third class of people in North Korea: political untouchables.

Any policy toward North Korea must somehow take into account these three groups of people: the prospering, the struggling, and the incarcerated. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have devoted much energy to this latter group, using name-and-shame tactics to shed light on the predicament of those deprived of all rights. Humanitarian organizations tend to focus on the lower half of the middle category, those who have plummeted through what little remains of the country’s social safety net. Development organizations devise projects for the upper half of the middle category, those who can work in various manufacturing and agricultural ventures such as goat farms or forestry projects. And the business community negotiates with its North Korean counterpart, an emerging entrepreneurial elite.

A human security approach offers one method of integrating these very different target communities in North Korea by looking at interlinked strategies that can lift all boats. At the very least, as a 2012 conference on the subject at Chatham House in London demonstrated, such an integrated approach asks the right questions. Will economic investments and capacity-building projects that favor the new elite eventually trickle down? Can emergency humanitarian assistance meet the basic needs of the most vulnerable so that they can eventually participate in North Korea’s new economy? What engagement strategies can hope to reach the people who barely survive in facilities far from the eyes of international observers?

Addressing Human Security

The concept of human security, promulgated by the United Nations Development Program in 1994, broadly covers economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. As formulated by Lincoln Chen, then at the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University, “human security can be said to have two main aspects. It means, first, safety from such chronic threats such as hunger, disease and repression. Second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life—whether in homes, in jobs or in communities.” The concept was developed further by the Commission on Human Security, chaired by Sadako Ogata and Amartya Sen, which issued its report Human Security Now, in 2003.

A group of North Korea experts, NGOs, policymakers, social entrepreneurs, businessmen, and more gathered at Chatham House in 2012 to think through how the concept of human security could be applied to the DPRK. They pooled their knowledge of the varied projects currently going on inside North Korea — teaching English, building green houses, creating joint ventures with North Korean entities — with the objective of combining efforts and reaching more North Koreans at all levels of society. The group began by acknowledging that the name-and-shame approach, however meritorious the intent, has had limited effect — as far as we know — on improving real existing human rights inside North Korea. The Chatham House gathering investigated how dialogue and diverse levels of engagement could eventually achieve the same ends by addressing a wider set of political, economic, and social issues.

As participants pointed out, certain strategies take the long view of cultivating North Korea’s political and economic elite in the hopes that this group will alter government policy from the top and create bottom-up demands for change. Several organizations, for instance, are currently working to expand English-language programs that, by their very nature, cater to an academic elite from grade school through university. In addition to providing a skill that can foster further engagement with international actors, such a curriculum could incorporate content on human security as a way to prepare this elite with a language and a philosophy of human needs that can substitute for an already discarded Marxist discourse. North Korea has signed several UN conventions on human rights, and the existing engagement with international institutions provides another opportunity for capacity-building, this time with North Korean officials. The incentive here, as with English-language programs, is that North Koreans receive a concrete benefit: technical training that can open the doors to development assistance to targeted communities (such as women, children, the disabled, and so on).

Other strategies address the middle category of development. The Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), located just north of the DMZ and run by South Korean firms, now employs more than 50,000 workers. Importantly, these are not just elite workers. Over 80 percent of the Kaesong workers possess only a high school degree. The Fuller Center in the United States, meanwhile, has embarked on a project of building sustainable housing in North Korea, beginning with a model village outside of Pyongyang for a group of nursery workers. In addition to reducing the country’s overall energy costs if developed throughout the country, the project could immeasurably improve the living standards of average workers. Improved farming practices — crop rotation with green manure, low tillage techniques, rice intensification in paddy fields — could go a long way toward reviving North Korean agriculture and address the chronic malnutrition that has plagued the country for much of the last 15 years. China is heavily invested in mining operations in North Korea. International organizations could work with China on promoting best practices related to labor and environment that could improve the working conditions for North Koreans laboring in what is one of the most dangerous occupations.

Humanitarian relief, in the short term, can also help the most vulnerable North Koreans in this middle category by strengthening food security, the cornerstone of human security. This relief can also have a multiplier effect if connected with education (distribution of food in grade school) and infrastructure development (food-for-work programs).

The Third Category

For much of the last 20 years, individuals and organizations working on human rights could not get inside North Korea. That situation has marginally improved. The U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Robert King visited North Korea in May 2011 to assess the food situation inside the country. Lord Alton and Baroness Cox, two British parliamentarians who have not hesitated to discuss publicly the sad state of North Korean human rights, have visited the country several times. “In every meeting with senior North Korean officials, we talked about the prison camps and other grave human rights issues,” reports Benedict Rogers, co-founder of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, who was part of their 2010 delegation.

Pyongyang’s receptivity to such delegations is not universal. Vitit Muntharbhorn, the first UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights, was never allowed into the country, nor has his successor Marzuki Darusman managed the trick either. The more recent effort of the Commission of Inquiry, sponsored by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, met with similar hostility from North Korea, which refused entry to the three commissioners (Darusman, Michael Kirby of Australia, and Sonja Biserko of Serbia). The COI report provided one of the most comprehensive, and damning, portraits of the human rights violations inside North Korea.

King and the British parliamentarians succeeded largely for two reasons. They have established over the years personal relationships of trust with North Korean counterparts. And they hold out the prospect of significant benefits that might accrue from a successful visit — humanitarian aid, commercial investment, and restarted nuclear negotiations. In exchange, North Korean officials endure the requisite conversations about human rights, particularly as they relate to the third category of political untouchables.

So far, neither side has gotten what it wants, neither a substantive inquiry into human rights nor a package of economic assistance. But engagement across political and ideological gulfs, particularly with North Korea, is not for people with attention deficit disorder. You’re either in it for the long haul or you might as well find other work. In the meantime, engagement strategies demonstrably improve the human security of many North Koreans in the middle category, such as the workers at the KIC who initially arrived at their jobs visibly malnourished and have recovered through meals in the cafeteria and consistent salaries.

The question remains whether the human security approach outlined above can ultimately reach this third category in a way that formal diplomacy and NGO advocacy have not. Those who adopt the elite strategy hope that the next generation of political leaders will absorb and eventually adopt a mindset consistent with international standards of human rights. Those who lean toward a development approach envision a new middle class that reduces the economic polarities of the society and eventually creates concomitant political demands that first address the specific interests of the new class and then eventually extend to all citizens. And humanitarian organizations aspire to provide foodstuffs even to those in the political camps, or at least to relieve the pressure on society at large such that more food is available for the most marginalized. In theory, an integrated approach can produce a positive feedback loop in which success with one segment of the population encourages success with another.

The current trends, however, are not promising. The North Korean government has worked with rather than against the trend toward greater inequality. Private markets, investments in the IT sector, joint venture restaurants and casinos: these changes improve food security for the fittest, for the rising entrepreneurial elite and the workers and farmers who already have a leg up. A successful human security approach pushes against such social Darwinism. It promotes economic development for all North Koreans.

Revolutions are generally not wrought by the wretched, but rather by a rising economic class that demands political power commensurate with its growing economic clout (or that revolts when economic expectations are not met by the ruling power). Nevertheless, rising inequality inside North Korea will continue to erode the regime’s legitimacy if the broader swath of the population can only look on as a small elite plays with its smartphones. Of course it is not the job of outside actors, particularly NGOs, to bolster the government’s legitimacy. But to prefer greater inequality on the assumption that it will hasten regime collapse is as misguided a strategy as the old Marxist desire to “hasten the contradictions of capitalism” so that the economic system succumbs all the sooner to revolution. Capitalism is obviously still around, and so is the North Korean government. If we care about helping average North Koreans, we must devise strategies to help them now and not at some unknown point in the future under some imagined political system.

A human security approach can only work with the cooperation of the North Korean government, at all levels. There is no evidence that Kim Jong-un encountered the concept of human security during his brief sojourn in Switzerland. But if he and his current political entourage hope to truly create kangsung daeguk (a strong and prosperous nation), they would do well to work with outside actors on an integrated strategy that goes beyond the needs of just the golden couples of Pyongyang.

John Feffer is director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.