Chosun Ilbo columnist Lee Seon-min — a favorite of mine, as you know — contributed some thoughts on the dilemma posed by the North Korean human rights issue for Korean progressives. It’s been translated below, and those with an interest are encouraged to read on.
North Korean Human Rights And ‘Progressive’ Forces
We can say that the North Korean human rights issue is the ???Achilles????? Heel???? of South Korea?????s progressive forces. For progressives, who stand upon human rights, freedom and peace like an inherited treasured sword, the serious human rights abuses taking place in the North cannot help but be very troubling. They don’t want to get critical of NK human rights for fear of being accused of helping hostile elements, but then it’s hard to avoid being accused of having a double standard if you ignore the problem, too.
Faced with this dilemma, the solution chosen by progressives was ???agnosticism.???? They said they could not believe information on ???the real human rights conditions in North Korea???? propagated by the U.S. and Korean governments. Their ???conviction???? that information of North Korean human rights abuses were full of biases and distortions didn’t change despite the massive influx of defectors that have come to South Korea since the late 1990s with direct descriptions of the miserable state of affairs in the North. An extreme minority of ???progressive???? individuals claimed that there needed to be interest in the North Korean human rights issue, too, but the great majority have turned a deaf ear to those claims.
What is different now is that for the last two years, the UN Human Rights Commission has adopted resolutions on North Korean human rights. The resolution showed that North Korean human rights realities was not simply a North Korean domestic problem or a political issue between the two Koreas and the United States, but had also become a major international issue based on humanitarianism. Moreover, European civil society and press showed great concern for North Korean human rights, and the fact that the EU led the adoption of the of the resolution showed that ???progressive???? claims that raising the North Korean human rights issue was a U.S. ???conspiracy???? could no longer fly.
At this point, within some quarters of the ???progressive???? camp, they began to carefully point out that it was impossible to not deal with the North Korean human rights issue. In a strategy paper published in spring by the nationalist left camp, it claimed, ???Korea?????s mainstream human rights groups need to more actively come out for improving North Korea?????s human rights situation???? There is a need to develop an approach combining unification, security and intra-Korean economic cooperation policies from the standpoint of human rights.???? Whether by conscience or by strategic judgment, the understanding that the North Korean human rights issue can no longer be ignored is spreading among “progressives” ever so gradually.
News that some lawmakers and human rights groups have expressed opposition to the recent passing by the U.S. House of Representatives of the ???North Korea Human Rights Act???? would seem opposed to this trend. How do those people feel, then, about the fact that many North Korean brothers cannot exercise even basic rights and suffer torture and forced labor in prison camps? Why don?????t they understand that improvements in the North?????s human rights situation would facilitate humanitarian assistance to North Korea and peace on the Korean Peninsula? Are these people, who claim that the bill would not have an effect on improving human rights in North Korea, preparing a plan that could have a substantive effect on North Korea?????s human rights situation?
The North Korean human rights issue has become the ???litmus test???? for differentiating real and fake progressive in our society. We can guess as to why some ???progressive???? forces that are servile to the North Korean regime would work so hard to avoid this issue. Excluding them, if other ???progressive???? forces cannot sincerely respond to the North Korean human rights issue, they could no longer be called ???progressive.????
Lee Seon Min (smlee@chosun.com)
9 Comments
Good piece, although I worry that anything published in the Chosun Ilbo will fall on deaf ears among self-styled “progressives’ here. It would be downright revolutionary to see similar views published in the Hankyoreh, although I fear that paper falls into the “servile to the North Korea regime” category.
Why in the world should any progressive submit to a litmus test on what shall or shall not define “progressive” given by the likes of an organization that has done nothing in its history to promote progressive politics? The only “self-styled progressives” would be those conservatives who have the nerve, resting on nothing other than the bones of the North Korean dead (albeit, only those killed by North Koreans, certainly no concern is given towards those killed by the United States in its genocidal warfare) and self-righteous rhetoric, to stake a claim to some kind of political or moral highground on this issue. Ironically, it is the self-styled conservatives who seem to persistently resist taking into account the immutably harsh truths of the historical/geopolitical context in the hopes of gaining some pyrrhic political gain. This is why such rhetorical tripe falls on deaf ears. . .
I’m sorry, but did Lee strike a nerve? First off, if you’d actually bothered to read Lee’s “tripe,” you know that he is quite aware of the need for conservatives to face their past. And regardless of how much spittle you emit ranting about “genocidal U.S. wars,” the fact is that a large number of progressives have very little to say when actually confronted with something that really does look like genocide. Sure, the Korean Human Rights Commission can condemn U.S. actions in Iraq, but when the head of commission goes before the National Assembly and says he’s unaware of what is transpiring in the North AND that he couldn’t say which Korea respected human rights better, he’s going to get criticized for double standards (among other things). But hey, this is nothing new — as much as “progressives” like to rant about freedom, human rights and progressive politics, they were silent about Soviet atrocities, silent about Chinese atrocities, and in fact, generally silent any time the murderers claimed to be doing their killing in the name of the working class. What, all of a sudden progressives understand the concept of “constructive engagement” in North Korea? Shit, they didn’t seem to understand the concept very well in South Africa or a list of other U.S. allies they wanted to isolate for human rights violations that don’t even begin to compare to the North’s. When Korean progressives slam the U.S. for backing Park and Chun and cry Gwangju 5.18 while they themselves back Kim Jong-il, sit out UN Human Rights Commission votes on North Korea and make friends with those who shot down fellow democracy activists in Beijing, it’s a double standard, and no where in your tripe above did I see you explain this.
Carrying water for Kim Jong-il makes Ddongae arguably the ultimate Devil’s Advocate. This person’s two recent posts on this issue draw heavily from the propaganda jargon of the DPRK (”hegemonic politics”…..”genocidal war”). Need we say more?
Maybe ddongae is a user from a ruling family in the DPRK himself? Could be, but its far liklier that he’s Noam Chomsky since they both talk in the same garbage English propped up with fake intellectual thesaurus-words.
North Korea is gassing children and starving millions, and who’s genocidal? To the likes of dung-twae, the people who are trying to give them asylum. All of which proves that there’s just no reasoning a man out of something he was never reasoned into.
The Korean left is free to tolerate the mass murder of its brothers, but why such bile when other nations reach out to the North Korean people and offer them aid, asylum, hope, and other things the Sunshine policy has failed to give them?
The Hani accidentally got it right when it said that it ought to be “up to North Koreans to decide what political and economic system they will have.” Let’s start by polling the 230 who landed in Songnam today, then work our way up to the 300,000 who are hiding in China. We can even discuss letting the North Korean people hold a free election. How about next week?
We should be listening to the North Koreans. No shrill braying can drown out the persuasive impact of their voting feet or the looks on the faces of their children as they peer through the curtains of the bus windows. They have captured the debate without uttering a word.
I don’t think there is one ‘litmus test’ so much as that we all have to try to keep an open mind and open eyes. Totalitarianism usually sneaks up on a country. So can tyrrany and kleptocracy, its less-glamorous cousins.
We South Koreans and Americans in particular, need to keep our eyes open. And unfortunately, not just about North Korea.
Clearly, though, North Korea is a very extreme case of a government gone utterly mad. Its a government where people matter very little compared to the elite, and their justifying ideology. Very little indeed. Less than in almost any other nation.
But things like that happen in many countries. We in South Korea and the US need to avoid that disconnect from reality that is all too easy..
For people who identify with one side or another in our respective political debates, that especially means we shouldn’t shrink from criticizing people’ on our own side’.. since the human rights movements have become particularly politicized in both countries.
“Thou Shalt Not Kill” might be a good starting point.. followed by “Thou Shalt Not Steal” etc. Or your local equivalent…
At the risk of sounding a little pompous, I should explain my own personal ‘litmus test’.
It is whether the victims of a situation are being put in what I’d call an ‘impossible situation’.
As someone who was put in a lot of these situations as I was growing up, the incredible cruelty of it is obvious to me.
How does it happen? Greed. And rationalization. Greedy people will attempt to justify the things they want to do..
These greed-centered types have been that way for a long time, and they are very good at hiding it.. Even from themselves. Since they don’t like to admit that they don’t care about others, they reverse engineer situations that allow them to do what they want to do. That ‘justify’ this.
For example, why spend money on schools if the ’schools don’t work’?
Never mind that they do…
So, it’s very easy, applying this understanding, to catch them in the act.. and it can also give you instructive weapons for fighting them. Which often means exposing their MO for all to see.
Sordid…
So, in North Korea, the fact is that Kim Jong Il and his gang really don’t give a dammn about the people there, apart from their friends. Well, maybe they do care in a sort of abstract sense, but not enough to actually make *any* kind of sacrifice for them. But they could never admit this.
So, they put their thinking caps on and reverse engineered an impossible situation that will result in the justification of their doing what they want to do even though that ‘necessitates’ leaving many to starve..to death, even. (Hey, its not personal! It’s not my fault you fucked up..)
But, if you’re follwing me, you can see that from the point of view of the non-elite North Korean, it IS an impossible situation, because normally, but especially if someone in the family gets one of those black marks, there is no way he and his family can survive long-term by following Kim Jong Il’s rules.
And, if you break them, and get caught, the result will be even worse.. That is an impossible situation like few others..
You see similar situations in other, similar countries..
When we see them, we have to speak out.
But you have to look close, they are easy to ignore because we get used to them…
How come these defectors don’t drive a vigorous debate about NK human rights in South Korea? I mean, I know theres a few vocal but widely reviled figures like Hwang Jang Yop and that internet radio thing, but how come the defectors don’t kick up a truly huge fuss? I would imagine the vast majority of them have horror stories about life back home, so how does that NOT translate in at very least forcing South Korea to press for human rights in North Korea?
BBC aired on June 27 a damning documentary with an additional DPRK refugee (in addition to Kwon Hyeok who spoke to BBC earlier) testifying having himself conducted gas chamber experiments on political prisoners. DPRK defectors that the BBC piece interviews tell that ROK officials have been pressuring them not to talk to anyone.
“Since I spoke with you (BBC), the Nat’l Intelligence Service has been harrassing me.
Vice minister of unification: “Their claims are in most cases exaggerated”
This report will surely add to the impression that ROK is intentionally pushing aside the human rights question (as if this was any news), and becoming DPRK’s most important partner.
The report should be visible for today (see the link).