Instead, I found this blunt, commonsense statement from Ellen Frost, a research fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, about the continual Chinese harping on Japanese actions in World War II:
What kind of leaders in China? The kind of leaders who employ these tactics because they’re desperate to keep their citizens’ mind off of domestic problems. The kind of leaders who will use any means available to strike back at a Japanese government ready to slash their generous ODA–itself a form of war reparations–on account of Chinese economic growth and ingratitude to the country that has most helped the Chinese achieve that growth.
Their neighbors in South Korea also seem to have squandered all their goodwill in the United States.
Lee Kyo-kwan has written an article in the Asian Times headlined, “Seoul and Washington Closer to Divorce”. That’s not his opinion—that was the view expressed by a former official of the American government:
South Korea and the US have drifted so far apart on North Korea policy there is now speculation the longtime partners are getting close to divorce.
Kurt Campbell, former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific, reportedly likened the two to a king and queen who live separately but pretend to be happy before their subjects. The allies do not want to announce their divorce because it would have enormous consequences, he said at a seminar in Washington on February 27.
It is believed US officials no longer trust their South Korean counterparts on North Korea policy. Fueling that speculation has been the recent friction between Seoul and Washington over how to deal with US allegations North Korea is counterfeiting US dollars. While Washington has stepped up financial pressure on Pyongyang in an effort to defend the US currency, Seoul appears to have opposed such a move.
If divorce does come, the United States should forget to send the alimony check. The South would only find a way to send it to the North.
There is no question that North Korea has been counterfeiting and passing off American currency for years. The North has printed so many bogus greenbacks that even they’re choking on them. Several years ago, foreign diplomats in Pyongyang paid in American dollars were chagrined to find their cash worthless when they tried to deposit it in local banks. The special Pyongyang shops and restaurants that cater to foreigners and accept American dollars also found they were getting too much of their own funny money back.
This lack of South Korean common sense—or overabundance of gall–is astonishing on several levels. First, they’re asking the Americans to ignore attacks on the integrity of their own currency. That’s bad enough, but considering that the American dollar is the de facto global currency, it’s bad for everyone everywhere.
Second, the South Koreans are content to let the Americans spend millions of the same dollars they’re trying to devalue to defend the country against the North Korean threat. Yet, allowing the North Koreans to get away with counterfeiting props up the economy in Pyongyang, making the threat that much worse.
Perhaps psychological counseling is in order.
On the one hand, it’s understandable that the South Koreans would feel sympathy for the common people of the North, who have suffered tremendously under the current regime. On the other hand, there’s no question that Kim Jong-il and his father rank with Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Pol Pot as the most depraved and malevolent rulers of modern times.
We’re all aware to some degree of conditions in the North: concentration camps, mass executions, starvation to the point of cannibalism, and people picking through animal feces for undigested kernels of corn while Kim and the elites enjoy a lifestyle not that far removed from the comfortably well-off in the West. Indeed, the distillers of Hennessey cognac have admitted that Kim was their single largest individual customer in the world at one time. CNN reported in 2003 that he averages between $650,000 and $720,000 per year in Hennessey purchases. In contrast, the average North Korean earns about $900 per year.
I hope Hennessey got paid in real dollars.
It’s one thing to sympathize with South Korean efforts to help people who, after all, are their own countrymen. It is another thing entirely, however, to make matters worse for their countrymen by actively impeding efforts to destabilize the criminal regime that brutalizes them and remove a man who, if apprehended, would surely be executed for crimes against humanity.
At best, this is what psychologists call enabling behavior—acts that contribute to or promote the destructive behavior of another.
At worst, current South Korean President Roh is guilty as an accomplice to a crime. People who are accomplices to murder are just as guilty as the murderer. Has the president considered what happens to people who are accomplices to crimes against humanity?
Of course, President Roh would not be the only South Korean standing in the dock with Kim Jong-il. His predecessor, Kim Dae Jung would be there to keep them company. The former South Korean president bribed the North Korean leader (presumably in authentic currency) to hold an inter-Korean summit, for which he won the Nobel Prize.
Apparently, Kim Jong-il turned around and spent the money to buy “key components for nuclear weapons, 40 Soviet-made MiG jets and a submarine from Kazakhstan”, as this article reports.
President Roh might find a loophole, however. He could claim incompetence to stand trial—an inability to distinguish between right and wrong. Two weeks ago, Roh gave a speech to commemorate the 87th anniversary of the March 1 Movement, a series of demonstrations for Korean independence from Japan that began on March 1, 1919. At that time, he addressed the Japanese desire to amend its pacifist constitution to allow for self-defense as in a “normal country” (to use the Japanese expression).
Here’s an excerpt from a report on Roh’s speech:
South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun on Wednesday expressed opposition to moves in Japan to amend its pacifist Constitution, saying Japan’s hope to become a ”normal country” need not entail legal changes to build up military power.
Japan should instead work to secure other countries’ trust by adhering to globally accepted principles of conscientious behavior, Roh said.
That statement alone should save him from prosecution. If President Roh tries to prevent Americans for defending their own currency and removing a despot that’s more of a threat to South Korea than anyone else, and slams the Japanese for amending their constitution to permit self-defense, it’s obvious he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of “globally accepted principles of conscientious behavior” and what constitutes a “normal country”.
I can’t remember any other chief of state demonstrating such an utter lack of understanding of the potential calamity his behavior can cause.
We can only hope that in their next election, the South Koreans elect a normal president.
Then again, the opposition party leader is Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the assassinated former dictator Park Chung-hee, who came to power in a coup, suspended the Korean constitution, and tortured opposition leaders.
I guess we’ll have to wait a little while longer.
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