President Roh Moo-hyun, left, with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev yesterday after a signing ceremony for the natural resource agreements. [Korea Herald:
ASTANA - South Korea and Kazakhstan agreed Monday to join hands in developing petroleum and uranium in this Central Asian country, offering the South inroads to energy exploration in the resource-abundant Caspian Sea region.
The two countries also signed an agreement on the peaceful use of atomic energy in which the South will provide nuclear-related technology to Kazakhstan to help the country develop uranium as nuclear energy to generate electricity and for medical purposes.
President Roh Moo-hyun and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev promised to strengthen bilateral cooperation in energy, trade and other areas when they held a summit in this Kazakh capital on Tuesday.
The details on the deals, you ask? All right:
Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy Lee Hee-beom concluded with Kazakh Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources Vladimir Shkolnik an arrangement to facilitate cooperation between the two countries in developing energy resources.
“South Korea has come to acquire the first bridgehead to the Caspian Sea, which has emerged as a new treasure house of natural resources following the Middle East,” Lee said.
Government officials said South Korea will be able to enhance its energy independence with the joint oil exploration project in Kazakhstan, which they expected would lead to development of 600 to 800 million barrels of oil.
The Korea National Oil Corp. signed a protocol with the state-run oil firm of Kazakhstan, KazMunaiGas, for development of up to 650 million barrels of oil in the Caspian Sea and a memorandum of understanding for another 200 million barrels in the Tenge region.
The Korea Resources Corp. signed an MOU with Kazakhstan’s state-run uranium development corporation, KazAtomProm, for joint development of uranium mines in the southern Kazakhstan region of Budennovsk.
The uranium development is expected to provide 500 tons of uranium every year for the coming 30 years, amounting to 10 percent of South Korea’s uranium consumption.
With the Agreement on the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy, South Korea can now advance into Kazakhstan in areas of nuclear reactors, nuclear hospitals and nuclear fusion, government officials said.
“Kazakhstan hopes to build a foundation for nuclear power development by getting assistance from South Korea, which is equipped with necessary technologies,” Chung said.
The Korea-Kazakhstan agreement on nuclear power is valid for 10 years and can be extended by five years if necessary, the officials said. South Korea has signed similar agreements with 20 countries.
Now, I personally love watching the Korean foreign policy establishment break its fixation with China, Japan and the U.S. to get involved in regions of such obvious importance like Central Asia. It’s beautiful, actually, and deals like the one signed with Kazakhstan reveal that Korea is capable of playing a major role in one of the world’s most geopolitically important areas.
They also reveal, however, the moral hazards of playing in the Great Game. Now, one might be able to say a lot of positive things about Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, but nobody will ever confuse him for a democrat. While not quite as high-profile an association as one might find with U.S. bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, involvement of the nature Seoul has embarked on in Kazakhstan, along with its high profile economic involvement in Uzbekistan (arguably Central Asia’s most Soviet “stan”), essentially associates South Korea with two repressive regimes in return for investment opportunities and access to natural resources, most notably oil and natural gas. I believe that’s what many leftists — including probably more than a few members of South Korea’s ruling Uri Party — would call neo-imperialism… had it been done by the United States. This is not to say that I wouldn’t have made a similar deal (I would have), but there are potentially negative consequences to sponsoring dictators (something the U.S. should know all too well), and it will be interesting to watch whether Korea’s growth as a player on the world stage would be accompanied by both a greater discussion of the rather complex moral issues involved in the pursuit of national interests and greater appreciation of the difficult choices that face nations that enjoy interests that extend beyond their own borders.
On a lighter note, Korea might have to take an occasional shot from Jay Leno, but Koreans should count themselves lucky they don’t have to put up with something like this (hat tip to The Argus):
Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary for the Embassy of Kazakhstan, wants to clear up a few misconceptions about his country. Women are not kept in cages. The national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. You cannot earn a living being a Gypsy catcher. Wine is not made from fermented horse urine. It is not customary for a man to grab another man’s khrum. “Khrum” is not the word for testicles.
These falsehoods, and many others, have been spread by Borat, a character on “Da Ali G Show,” which recently finished its second season on HBO. Like Ali G, Borat is played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian who specializes in prank interviews. As Borat, Cohen has told a dating service that he is looking for a girl with “plow experience,” persuaded a meeting of Oklahoma City officials to observe a ten-minute silence in memory of the (fictitious) Tishnik Massacre, and, most notably, led a country-and-Western bar in a sing-along of “In My Country There Is Problem,” whose chorus goes: “Throw the Jew down the well / So my country can be free / You must grab him by his horns / Then we have a big party.”
God…
10 Comments
Here’s another story about Central Asian Koreans. Now, I didn’t roll with too many “Koreiski” there, but I didn’t get the impression that they have it nearly as bad as the article would have me believe. Actually, the tone of the whole thing kind of seemed like a mellowed-out Vladimir Zhirinovsky freaking out about the way Russians get treated in the Near Abroad. But, that’s just me.
Kazakhstan is actually a pretty nice and open place for Central Asia, and you could do a lot worse than Nazarbayev. Speaking of which, Turkmenistan is far more Soviet than even Uzbekistan. Indeed, Kazakhstan’s neighbors (on all sides) make the place look liberal.
http://cgunson.com/sb2004
Wasn’t sure if you caught this story about Kazakhstan’s Koreans. It appears that Koreans are about the only ethnic minority not fleeing the country. That shouldn’t surprise me, I guess. Uzbekistan’s Koreans seemed pretty happy to stay put.
Wow, Roh actually doing something useful for South Korea. Something like this should be applauded.
Nathan’s Central Asia “-Stans” Summary:2004-09-21
MONTH 09/04 TOPICS INCLUDE: NATO Scraps Exercises in Azerbaijan; Kazakhstan Votes; Secret Mission Removes Uzbek Uranium; “Borat” Give Kazakhstan a Bad Name; It’s Cotton Time; Japan and Korea Pursue Central Asia Partnerships; Kazakhstan Tightens Bor…
Don’t forget the trade agreements Korea made with Suddan last week. Not exactly the right country at the right time to do any international agrements with.
it’s kinda scary how similar they look…they might’ve been separated at birth, except one dyes his hair black. haha.
That the Korean government wouldn’t worry too much about making economic deals with dictatorships (or other less-than-democratic governments) doesn’t surprise me. As far as the expansion of Korean corporations go, Korea has basically exported its labour situation (from the 1970s-80s) overseas. Many of the well-known Nike sweatshops in Indonesia and China are actually run by Korean contractors. Union busting and abysmal treatment of workers is as common in factories there, as well as in Guatemala, Honduras, or Vietnam, as it was in Korea 30 years ago. You have to wonder how their Northern ‘brothers’ are going to be treated in Kaesong; will they make them bust their asses for that $65 a month?
It doesn’t really surprise me, makhno, that Korean corporations would do something like that. First off, that’s hardly a Korean phenomenon, and moreover, I don’t think it’s necessarily an evil thing to do — they are providing investment and jobs in countries whose major competitive advantage is the cost of labor. What I have trouble understanding, however, is the lack of discussion — especially in the ruling party — concerning human rights and foreign policy (in the opposition party, of course, it’s different, as they seem at times hardly concerned about human rights in Korea, let alone other countries). What irks me in particular is that many in the ruling party will enthusiastically criticize U.S. support for past South Korean dictators, but fail to criticize their own support of autocratic regimes, in this case, in Central Asia. Most Uri Party lawmakers, after all, let it be known early on that they thought China, rather than the United States, should be Korea’s key diplomatic and economic partner. Realistically speaking, this might make sense, especially in the long-term, but nowhere did I here it mentioned that by cozying up to China, the Uri Party was getting in bed with precisely the same kind of authoritarian “development dictatorship” that they slammed the U.S. for backing in S. Korea during the 60s, 70s and 80s. To put it more starkly, what we saw was the “inheritors of the Gwangju spirit” cozying up with the descendents of those who butchered fellow pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square. Since then, there has been a falling out with China, but this has been a result of emotional historical issues and Chinese diplomatic clumsiness, not the result of either President Roh or the Uri Party making a conscious decision to hold themselves to the same lofty ethical standards to which they apparently hold the United States. Again, I’m not saying that particular foreign policy decisions in China, Central Asia, or anywhere else for that matter have been wrong, necessarily. What I find vexing is that there is plenty of discussion about the ethical flaws — both past and present — of U.S. foreign policy, but little discussion of the ethical impact of Korean foreign policy, almost as if being a mid-ranked power frees Korean policy makers from having to ask questions. Again, this is not necessarily a Korean thing — recently, I guess it was the German foreign minister who was bitching about U.S. inaction in the Sudan. Regardless of whether his criticism was justified or not, it did beg the rather uncomfortable question of what exactly Germany was doing in the Sudan, the answer to which was, of course, a whole lot of nothing.
Eyes on Korea: 2004-09-29
NK Options; ROK in Iraq; S. Koreans helping N. Koreans produce nerve gas, S. Korean intellectual criticizes biased and unobjective U.S. understanding of N. Korea, S. Korean spooks for Kerry, N. Korean pressure cookers, the Great S. Korean prostitution …