The Marmot’s Hole

As Joshua of One Free Korea points out, North and South Korean journalists found a remarkable amount of common ground in a historic first meeting between media figures from both sides of the DMZ:

The content of the joint statement sounded strange to me. It starts by saying that, “In order to carry out the duty and responsibility of the witnesses of the South and North Joint Statement of June 15, 2000, the journalists of the South and the North proclaim as follows …” It then presents four tasks for journalists: “We, journalists of the South and the North, support the Joint Statement of June 15, 2000 and take the lead in implementing it; We firmly oppose and reject any outside intervention in the internal affairs of the nation and threats of war; We will reject any report that can foster the disintegration of the nation and report fairly in the direction of promoting reconciliation and unity of the nation; We will continuously promote our joint cooperation projects.”

You can read the entire text of the joint statement in Korean here.

That’s right—no mention of the nuclear issue. Nor does it appear that South Korean delegates went out of their way to criticize the North’s recent nuclear tests or encouraged the North to abandon its nuclear program.

Which is not to say, of course, that the delegates had little to talk about. For example, the joint chairman of the South Korean delegation, Chung Il-yong of the Korean Journalists Association, had quite a bit to say in his lead-off address, including:

“The imperialist country which provoked an invasion war for its own interests is an obstacle to the accomplishment of a self-reliant and peaceful unification… Rather that having the hegemon and its client states demanding the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the states that possess nuclear weapons should come forward for nuclear disarmament as is written in the NPT”

There’s more at the Korean Journalists Association website. Chung said, among other things:

“The June 15 Joint Declaration was a glorious deed in Korean history bringing an end to the cursed history of confrontation and enmity and opening a new age of reconciliation and harmony… There are still some anti-Korean, Cold War forces both inside and outside Korea [read, the United States, Japan, the GNP, the Chosun Ilbo, etc.] taking issue with and vilifying this natural declaration of independent, peaceful unification.”

He also reaffirmed his group’s support for abolishing South Korea’s National Security Law and asked that the North help relax South Koreans’ concerns about its supposed desire to unify the peninsula by communizing the South. Oh, and he suggested that North and South Korean journalists write articles praising one another so as to foster a positive point of view in viewing one another and work toward earning each other’s trust.

How nice.

The other two Southern speakers—Media Today editorial chief Ko Seung-woo and Hankyoreh planning committee member Son Seok-chun—were hardly any better. We’re talking about a bullshit factor roughly similar to what you might have expected at a summit meeting of the Warsaw Pact. This led OhMyNews—OhMyNews!—staff writer Kang Yeong-sik to pen a very despondent column criticizing the Southern delegation for remaining silent on North Korea’s nuclear test.

According to Kang, Ko’s speech was the best of the bunch—at least he made direct mention of the North’s nuclear test, but he did so in a reserved tone that greatly contrasted with the bombast in which he lauded the meeting itself.

Kang was most disappointed with Son, a figure who for years has lambasted both Korea’s conservative and progressive camps. Accordingly, he was greatly looking forward to hearing what Son would say, but the Hankyoreh journalist spent the first part of his speech criticizing “U.S. imperialism” and recounting pleasant memories of the June 15 Joint Declaration. In the second part of his speech, he said that without unification under a federal system, Korea could not pursue balanced development, and that without balanced development, Korea could not pursue unification under a federal system. He criticized Southern journalists for paying too much attention to the “costs of unification,” and hoped that the meeting would focus attention on the positive effects of unification. He proposed that the media not only inform people of the positive effects of a unified Korean economy, but also actively set as an agenda specific tasks to bring about the actualization of such an economy.

Oh, and he also encouraged the media to stop negative reports and editorials—negatively influenced by the United States, he claimed—-concerning the Kaesong Industrial Complex. He ended his speech by citing the Rev. Moon Ik-hwan, who said, “The South and North should praise and encourage one another.”

Le~t the Sunshine in…