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 Sharansky
takes on North Korea
Challenging Kim Jon Il...
[Gordon Cucullu] 8/4/05
At a Freedom
House sponsored symposium held on a sweltering July day in
Washington, DC, acclaimed human rights activist Natan Sharansky
publicly challenged the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea. “You
confront evil,” the former Soviet dissident said in a
ringing voice, “you do not negotiate with it.” Sharansky
firmly rejected the notion that it is better to be friendly
with a dictatorship that oppresses its people in the manner
that North Korea does. “It is better to deal with a democracy
that hates you,” he thundered, “than with a dictatorship
that says it ‘loves’ you.”
Contributor
Gordon Cucullu
Former
Green Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now
an editorialist, author and a popular speaker. Born
into a military family, he lived and served for more
than thirteen years in East Asia, including eight years
in Korea. For his Special Forces service in Vietnam
he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry,
and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation
from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs
at both the Pentagon and Department of State as well
as an executive for General Electric in Korea. His
first major non-fiction work, Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin,
is based in large part on his extensive experience
in Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and
businessman. [website]
[go to Cucullu index]
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Reflecting the views of the majority of the speakers and participants
at the North Korea Freedom Day symposium, Sharansky lobbied for
a diplomatic device similar to the Helsinki Accords to be put
in place regarding North Korea. What he meant by this was that
for years the US and Western allies in dealing with the Soviet
Union chose to disengage strategic concerns from human rights
issues. In other words, we would discuss strategic arms limitations
but studiously avoid mentioning the gulag. Other organizations,
mostly NGOs, demanded human rights reform but were disinterested
in strategic issues. Only when the two themes were linked by
a concert of nations at Helsinki, Sharansky reminded, was sufficient
pressure generated on the Soviets that it eventually collapsed
the regime. Such ought to be the case in Northeast Asia, he suggested.
And regime change, he continued, is what is necessary for the
North Korean people to be free.
There were a few voices
that cautioned about “immodest
expectations,” including that of Congressman Jim Leech.
An outspoken proponent for human rights in North Korea, Leech
is, perhaps because of his position as Chairman of the House
Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, reluctant to sound
too aggressive about dumping Kim Jong Il. The juxtaposition of
his caution next to Sharansky’s uncompromising position,
reinforced the point that the latter was trying to make. “I
do not agree,” Sharansky said, “that if the issue
of human rights is raised [with North Korea] that it will jeopardize
peace on the peninsula.” Yet that is exactly what those
who opt for a too-cautious, appeasing approach hypothesize. But
the principal involved powers: South Korea, the US, Japan, China,
and Russia have temporized, equivocated, and tried diplomatic
buyoffs with poor results. The North has continued its dangerous
programs and the people continue to suffer.
In contrast, Sharansky
favors a blunt approach. He was thrilled when he heard President
George W. Bush include the Pyongyang
regime in his famous Axis of Evil speech. “Our happiest
day in the gulag,” he reflected, “was when we passed
around the news that the American President Reagan had called
the Soviets an ‘Evil Empire.’ Finally, we told each
other, there was someone who recognized the reality of the situation.” Such
information was the key to changing the minds of what the calls
the majority population in any repressed society, the “double-thinkers” who
outwardly give support to the totalitarian regime, primarily
out of fear, but secretly oppose it. Give them the proper information,
Sharansky says, and they will grow embolden to oppose the regime.
Information, all agreed, is exactly what the suffering people
of North Korea need. As starved as their bodies have become,
they are even hungrier for the truth. Several participants voiced
strong support for increased information flow to North Korea.
Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), himself a proponent for regime
change, asked panelist Kang Cheol-Hwan for recommendations to
get information into North Korea. Kang is a noted North Korean
defector who spent a decade in the infamous Yodok concentration
camp. He is author of Aquariums of Pyongyang, and met recently
in a highly publicized dialogue with President Bush. Kang spoke
of the need to increase radio broadcasts into North Korea similar
to Voice of America programming that Sharansky had said was so
helpful to the refusniks in the USSR. Kang cited the need also
for radios since the regime allows only those with a frequency
fixed onto the state approved stations to be distributed.
If something as small
as an Ipod can do all the things that tiny device is capable
of doing then a functioning AM/FM radio
with antenna ought to be fashioned that could be manufactured
cheaply and anonymously and smuggled into North Korea by the
hundreds of thousands. If as Kang and Sharansky say, and other
refugees affirm, information is the key to ultimate freedom then
we in the free world ought to devote much more resources to ensure
that we can fulfill the promise of JFK to “let the word
go forth from this day forward…” I’ll guess
that we could manufacture and distribute a million tiny radios
cheaper than the cost of one smart bomb strike.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper,
deputy of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, spoke
with deep emotion of the atrocities taking
place in North Korea. “Whenever we hear stories of gas
chambers,” he said, voice trembling in intensity, “then
you can be certain that we are going to demand answers.” What
is needed to focus attention to the human rights crimes of Kim
Jong Il, Cooper said, is to institute an Office of Special Investigations,
similar to that which exists inside the Justice Department focused
on Nazi crimes. “The creation of an OSI that will investigate,
verify, and document crimes against humanity – from high
officials down to the level of the petty functionary – will
cause great concern within the North Korean hierarchy. They will
know that they will be held accountable for their crimes.”
Members of the symposium
demanded more action from North Korea’s
twin, South Korea. “The continued prevailing silence coming
from South Korea about the abhorrent situation in the North is
unacceptable,” Cooper said, “ It is based on willful
ignorance.” National Assemblyman Kim Moon Soo, Grand National
Party, one of the few vocal human rights champions in the South,
apologized for what he described as an abhorrent attitude of
disregard by the South Korean government for the North Korean
people. “I pledge to work even harder for our fellow Koreans
in the North,” he said emotionally. Let it be known that
Assemblyman Kim has been a tireless proponent for the suffering
people of North Korea. Without his strong, unwavering voice,
the despicable, cowardly appeasement policy of the current South
Korean government would be promulgated unchallenged. Kim Moon
Soo and his like-minded colleagues demand responsibility and
accountability from the ruling party. And the US government needs
to support their efforts. But already we are seeing steps taken
by the Roh Moo Hyun government in South Korea to buy off the
blustering, bullying Kim Il Sung regime with enormous shipments
of rice, fuel oil, electric power, and other supplies. In return
Kim is supposed to give assurances of “suspension” of
his nuclear program.
On a darker, more
ominous note, South Korean companies are supposed to have in
return access to North Korean mineral resources, timber
and other raw materials. Can there be any doubt that these commodities
will be supplies by other than slave labor? The policy of endless
appeasement must cease. Without this support the Kim regime will
collapse. It will implode from its own rottenness. As Natan Sharansky
and the members of the conference demand, “The People of
North Korea must be Free!” tRO
Curious
about North Korea? Learn more in Gordon’s
best-selling book Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin became
the Evil Twin, Lyons Press available at bookstores now.
copyright
Gordon Cucullu 2005
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