The Marmot’s Hole

The KT ran an interview with favorite Marmot whipping boy Minister of Unification Jeong Se-hyeon that should give non-Korean speakers a fairly good idea why I think the man’s an ass. Anyway, allow me to reprint the piece below, with some commentary when appropriate.

Governments topple overnight in some countries when people suffer from lack of food, fuel and other basic necessities.

Despite the dire straits it is in, North Korea has kept itself afloat for more than a decade since the 1990s when the economy started skidding downhill, and Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun thinks he has an answer as to its secret of survival.

He claims it’s because the outside world has scant understanding of the psychology common among Asian Communist countries, where the traditional emphasis on perseverance has been coupled with the socialist camaraderie, seemingly giving its population an immunity to economic hardships.

Yep - psychology. People don’t mind starving. Which is why the country is forced to keep itself hermetically sealed and maintain possibly the tightest police state in human history. It would also explain all those refugees fleeing into, of all places, China. But anyway:

Its geographical location, being situated between China and Japan both of whom shudder at the thought of an exodus of refugees, means the Pyongyang regime can count on its neighbors support when the chips are down.

Cute, Jeong - it’s China and Japan who are worried about those refugees. South Korea wouldn’t factor into that equation, would it now? I mean, that’s why your government’s pumping all that aid into North Korea, isn’t it? Well, at least he realizes the real reason why the regime’s still afloat - outside money, and a lot of it.

“When you think only about energy and food shortages, China under Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution definitely should have collapsed. In fact, millions did perish, but the regime went on,” said Jeong during an interview with The Korea Times for its 53rd anniversary.

Those who were talking about the North’s collapse were thus voicing little more than their own wishes, and the minister said pointedly that many in the Clinton administration made the same mistake, signing the Agreed Framework in 1994 thinking they would never have to implement it because Pyongyang was going to cease to exist soon.

Of course, we’re not thinking of only energy and food shortages, we’re also thinking of things like socio-economic structure. China was, an still is, a mostly rural, agricultural nation. North Korea, on the other hand, is an urbanized, industrialized nation currently experiencing deurbanization as a result of a breakdown in its food system. The only other industrialized states to experience such a phenomenon? Germany and Japan in the later stages of WW II - doesn’t look good for North Korea, now does it?

Jeong’s right about the 94 Agreed Framework, however - a lot of Clinton’s people figured the DPRK wouldn’t last long enough to see that accord implemented. Of course, I don’t think many of them expected South Korea to work so hard to keep the North Korean regime afloat, either.

“Now even if we don’t give food aid, China will provide a significant part of the North’s needs as it is quietly doing now. Maybe half of the North Korean population will perish but we will have the other half alive and very angry,” he said.

You want to see angry, Jeong? Wait until change finally does come, and talk to all those North Koreans forced to live in Hell because politicians like you thought it was cheaper to subsidize the gulags than to pay the costs of unification. Asshole.

Jeong, a veteran North Korea negotiator who has worked at the ministry since 1977, said Pyongyang’s dictatorship paradoxically provides a unique chance for drastic reform and the opening up of the country.

“North Korea can always attribute changes to its ruling Kim Il-sung ideology,” he said. “A Pyongyang official once claimed it was the late Kim’s order that they dig into capitalism, and attributed the failure to their own shortcomings.”

Positive changes are also apparent in North Korea’s dialog tactics with the South, the minister added with confidence.

“At the last 12th inter-Korean talks, we basically said all that we wanted to say on the nuclear front, to which the North Koreans in the past would surely have entered a fight, but now they sit and listen. They know our advice helps.”

That “failure” to dig into capitalism was due less to their own individual shortcomings than it was to the shortcomings of a system that, simply put, cannot be reformed without putting the regime in serious peril. We’ve been hearing talk of “change” in North Korea for years now, and nothing ever comes of it. And the only reason the North Koreans sit and listen to what you have to say is because they know that all you’ll do is turn around and parrot North Korea’s line to the Americans. Congratulations, Jeong - you’re Pyongyang’s interlocutor with Washington.

South Korea has repeatedly told the North that a multilateral security guarantee, as opposed to the bilateral format insisted on by Pyongyang, could also work toward the North’s interest, he added.

“We told them, you cannot demand the U.S. do something that doesn’t exist in their diplomatic history and the North apparently listened to our advise. I think our inter-Korean talks had a teaching nature.”

“The North Koreans are changing, albeit slowly.”

Yes, those inter-Korean talks had a teaching nature, but as always, it was the South that got schooled. For those unfamiliar with the way inter-Korean ministerial talks proceed, they usually follow this format:

1. South Korea brings up nuclear issue;

2. North Korea tells them to go to Hell, but send rice and fertilizer before they do;
3. South Korea expresses disappointment over North’s attitude, then agrees to send rice and fertilizer. Talks and and South calls for a “softened American stance” on North Korea.

But luckily, I guess the South Koreans’ persistent wetting of their pants every time the Norks make some off-the-wall threat has finally paid off. No thanks to the Bush people, of course.

The minister, famous for witty Chinese fables and parables during inter-Korean talks, which are usually volleyed back by something similar from his North Korean counterpart, said the two Koreas have indeed come a long way.

“In the 1970s we always started talks by mentioning the weather, because there was nothing else to talk about,” Jeong said.

Chinese fables, eh?

• Jeong: A man from the state of Chu was crossing a river. In the boat, his sword fell…

• Nork delegate: Shut up, bitch. When are you sending the fertilizer?

Well, anyway, at least the two Koreas have so much to talk about now. I mean, with all this aid and investment flowing south to north, I’d imagine the logistics alone must take hours to work out.