Donald Kirk – South Korea faces difficult human rights questions

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Talking about “human rights” gives South Korea a severe headache.

There is no way President Moon Jae-in can join US President Joe Biden’s decision not to send a group of bigwigs to join the Chinese official at the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics. South Korea is too close to China on some level to join the US and its Anglo-Saxon soulmates, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, in rejecting China’s big show.

“Human rights” inspire as much controversy and debate as any other issue in diplomatic relations. The abuses were a big reason why Biden ordered a diplomatic boycott of the games. and they are one reason, among others, for the latest U.S. sanctions against North Korea.

Luckily, of course, the US is not boycotting the games as such. That is, American athletes will do their thing as Britons, Australians, and Canadians will do. Millions glued to TV and mobile phone screens will still see all the glowing and glowing jumps and jumps, crazy dashes, and bruises colliding with snow and ice like in the last games on winter in Pyeongchang in 2018. The games will not suffer in the absence of some smiles, handshakes, cheerfully speaking diplomats and bureaucrats who have never heard of. No one in the wide audience gives anything bad about the boring faces in the VIP boxes.

As for the decision of South Korea, America’s ally from the Korean War, not to join the boycott, there is certainly no intended guilt. What choice does Moon have? China is not only the South’s largest trading partner but also North Korea’s big sister, with which Moon is working hard to adapt.

Ah, but here we are on the question of human rights within North Korea – or rather, more accurately, the lack of human rights there. The U.S. and United Nations sanctions are primarily in retaliation for the North’s missile and nuclear test and Dictator Kim Jong-un’s refusal to stop doing more of them, but they are also to protest the record. of the North of the detention, torture and murder of anyone far opposed to the leadership of the Kim dynasty.

Sadly, many people in Korea and the U.S., who are spitting on an end-war agreement they swore would truly open the North-South Korean era of goodwill, would rather forget about the terrible record of human rights of the North. Moon’s people are well aware of how North Korea responded to the mere mention of human rights. They carefully avoid the term while pleading with the Americans, please go along with what is undoubtedly a very vague statement in effect that the Korean War is really and truly over.

As if that kind of pressure wasn’t enough, pro-Northerners in the US were eager for the US to not only support the end-of-war deal but also stop supporting the South militarily. They urged the U.S. Congress to pass a bill declaring the Korean War over while echoing North Korea’s demands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and an end to sanctions.

One topic about which pro-Northerners are relatively sensitive is human rights in North Korea. They blame U.S. policy and the current “state of war” for the suffering of North Koreans while avoiding questions about the vast gulag system in the North where millions have died and at least 100,000 are now held. . A favorite tactic is whataboutism. Ask about abuses in North Korea, and they respond, how about all the abuses in the US, how about your police brutality, overcrowded prisons, inequality, poverty, and everything else pa?

South Korean diplomats and bureaucrats do not usually dismiss questions about abuses in North Korea in a pointless way. Instead, they want skeptics to believe that in fact the end-war agreement will be an important step towards the normalization of relations, after which the North will no longer threaten anyone with nukes and missiles and ten -ten thousand troops ready above the demilitarized zone.

The inference is that North Korea, which is not threatened, will reduce the large military establishment and focus on internal problems, and then lose the bad images familiar to us. More importantly, the South Koreans really want the Americans to stop making a fuss about North Korea’s abuses for fear, horribly, that Kim Jong-un will not join any agreement.

Donald Kirk is the author of 10 books on Korea, Okinawa, the Philippines and the Vietnam War. He wrote it for InsideSources.com.

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