Monthly Archives: July 2004

by | 7 July 2004 · 8:39 pm

Lankov on the Fate of North Korean Defectors

NKZone contributor Andrei Lankov’s latest article on North Korea in this week’s Korea Times concerns the Fate of Defectors

In September 1994, a young North Korean named Kim Hyong-dok arrived in Seoul. It was the end of a long trip: he had spent two years trying to secure a passage to the South. He succeeded against all odds and came to Seoul full of expectations.

Two years later Kim Hyong-dok made another escape attempt — this time he was trying to flee back to the North. He was apprehended and jailed, since an attempt to go to North Korea without proper permission is still a crime under South Korean law. In 2001 Kim Hyong-dok — by that time a university graduate and a clerical worker in parliament, remarked: “I shall not escape any more. Utopia does not exist anywhere.” Alas, comprehension of this fact comes to most North Korean defectors with great pain.

North Korean defectors do not fare well in the South. Between one third and one half of them are unemployed, and most others are relegated to low-level unskilled jobs….

Indeed, the heroes of almost all of the “success stories” of the North Korean defectors come from the elite. There is nothing surprising in this. Members of the North Korean upper crust have a good education and possess leadership skills, they know how to learn and how to manage, and last but not least, they have social ambitions.

However, this does not bode well for the future political transition of North Korea. It appears the only leadership material available in the North will be found within the existent elite. The local Party secretaries would become democratically elected mayors, and will avow their loyalty to democracy with the same zeal they once gave to their professions of loyalty to the Great Leader. The secret police operatives will become successful entrepreneurs, and the children of people who sent hundreds of North Koreans to prisons will graduate from the best universities to lead the sons and daughters of their parents’ victims. We have seen it in many other ex-Communist countries.

But what is the alternative? Will it be possible to prosecute all those who played a part in the crimes of the regime? Unlikely: there are far too many of them. And who will become the administrators, teachers, policemen, and engineers in the post-Kim North Korea whenever it arises? And, should unification occur, would not the wholesale replacement of the elite by Southerners be an even greater evil?

I suspect that, when that time comes, smugly superior southern Korean attitudes toward their benighted northern compatriots will resemble smugly superior New England Yankee attitudes toward their benighted southern compatriots–attitudes that still prevail nearly a century and a half after the end of the Civil War! The North will be Korea’s Mississippi for decades after unification. And the supreme irony will be that Koreans up north will soon enough begin to welcome investment from Japanese and American firms, their former external arch-enemies, just as southerners in the U.S. welcomed investment from Japanese and German firms only a few decades after World War II.

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by | 7 July 2004 · 7:41 pm

Lankov on North Korea’s Empty "Breakthroughs"

NKZone‘s Andrei Lankov had another article on North Korea in last week’s Korea Times headlined Breakthroughs End in Naught.

Once every few years the world media discovers that a new historical breakthrough has just taken place in North Korea. These lofty epithets are normally used to describe a new turn in the seemingly endless (and rather fruitless) negotiations between Pyongyang and Seoul or, alternatively, to inform readers that Pyongyang has finally decided to reform its economy.

Being a sort of Pyongyang-watcher for 20 years, I have grown very skeptical about these recurring statements. Indeed, we have witnessed a number of such “breakthroughs” — all of which ended in naught.

In the mid-1980s, Western journalists loved to speculate that North Korea was on the eve of dramatic changes; and so one of the first bouts of media hype about the forthcoming “opening” of the North Korean economy occurred in 1984.

The reason for these hopes was a Joint Venture Law passed by the North Korean parliament in September of that year….

However, it soon became evident that no serious investor was showing interest in North Korea. Ethnic Koreans from Japan, active supporters of Chongryo, opened almost all the joint ventures. And even these people whose pro-Pyongyang sympathies could be taken for granted did not rush to the North with serious money.

Indeed, journalists who hailed the Joint Venture Law in 1984 tended to forget that North Korea had already acquired an unfavorable reputation in the international capital market. In the early 1970s North Korean companies and banks solicited credits from Western banks. In a few years their debt to the West reached some $1.3 billion. In those days, Communist countries were believed to be good borrowers — irrespective of what the Communist leaders thought about the greedy capitalists, they understood the importance of good credit ratings.

To the great disappointment of Western bankers, North Korea proved to be an exception to this rule. Pyongyang did not care much about repaying debts to the USSR and China — and did not see any reason why Westerners should be treated differently. Thus, in the late 1970s, Pyongyang became the first Communist country to default on its loans. Of course, its credit rating was ruined, but the North Korean bosses hardly grasped the importance of this fact.

In the 1980s, however, they learned about the importance of credit ratings the hard way. The Western businesses simply refused to deal with a partner they believed to be unreliable.

During the 1980s, Romania’s Ceausescu and North Korea’s Kim Il-sung had a mutual admiration society, both being determined to achieve national autarky (called Juche in North Korea). But Ceausescu seems to have learned a valuable lesson from the misfortunes of North Korea, and later Poland. He bled Romanians dry in order to repay his foreign loans. In fact, Thomas P. M. Barnett (author of The Pentagon’s New Map) writing in the Christian Science Monitor on 28 December 1989 (a few days after the Ceausescus had been executed) thinks this was Why Ceausescu Fell: His Silent War Against the Romanian People Backfired.

This silent war dates back to 1982, when Ceausescu implemented severe austerity policies designed to retire the nation’s foreign debt by 1990. Why so quickly? The Romanian dictator had witnessed Warsaw’s near default on its large foreign debt. Poland’s subsequent economic collapse convinced Ceausescu that his regime had to avoid this scenario at all costs.

This was the era when pig’s feet were labeled patrioti in Romanian because they were the only part of the pig that stayed in country.

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by | 6 July 2004 · 8:31 pm

Short-lived Chinese Intellectuals

Asiapages reads depressing news about Chinese intellectuals.

A recent survey by the State Commission for Economic Restructuring reveals that China’s intellectuals, a broader term used in China to cover academic scholars or any professionals who have an advanced education, have an average life expectancy of 58–at least 10 years less than the general public.

She observes that “over-eating, over-drinking and little sleep have also been blamed for such short life-spans.”

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by | 6 July 2004 · 7:59 pm

Indonesian Presidential Elections

I was going to post something on the Indonesian presidential elections but, as usual, The Head Heeb provides far better coverage of contextualized current events in the part of the world I monitor–even though the proprietor is away and guests have taken over his kitchen. In this case, Conrad Barwa serves up a 4-course meal: Susilo Bambang Yudhyono as antipasto, Megawati as primo, tough Gen. Wiranto as secundo, and Amien Rais as dolce (far niente).

While there, be sure to scroll down to Daniel Geffen’s informative post about the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

UPDATE: Macam-Macam has more on the Indonesian elections.

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by | 6 July 2004 · 7:48 pm

Cambodian Americans on the Fourth of July

Santepheap, the Cambodia Weblog, offers the following compilation for the Fourth of July.

Americans were paying attention to Cambodian-Americans this Fourth of July.

Chantra Gooch talks about her life before, during and after the Khmer Rouge regime Utah’s The Spectrum

Timothy Chhim (second item) talks about his life in New York’s Journal News.

Vanna Phim told her story in The Lowell Sun.

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by | 5 July 2004 · 10:42 pm

Naipaul on the Revolutionary Blame Game

No one I met spoke of any kind of revolution as a possibility. That idea, so loved by Iranians of an earlier generation, had been spoilt now, as in the old USSR; revolution was a word that had been taken over by the religious state. No one ever spoke of the possibility of political action. There were no means, and no leaders in sight. No new ideas could be floated. The apparatus of control was complete. The actual rulers, though their photographs appeared everywhere, were far away; government here, as someone said, was “occult.” And still, in the general inanition, there was a feeling that something was about to happen. It made people nervous.

One afternoon, as we were driving up into the mountains above Tehran, Mehrdad, after seeming to say that people had learned how to live with the restrictions, abruptly said the opposite. He said, “Everybody is frightened. I am frightened. My father and mother are frightened.” (Poor father, again.) “They are not sure what the future will bring for them or for us, their children. They are not so worried for me. I am an adult now and can look after myself. But my brother is very young. The eight years or so he has to live before he becomes an adult are going to be very dangerous years.”

With this insecurity, certain fantasies had taken hold. The most extraordinary was that Khomeini had been a British or European agent. I had heard it first from Mr. Parvez, and had thought it part of his paranoia. But then I had heard it from many other people. There had been a meeting in the French West Indian island of Guadeloupe, according to this story, and the Powers had decided to foist Khomeini on the Iranian people. The Iranians were simple people; they could be persuaded by skilled propaganda to demonstrate for anything; people had joined the demonstrations against the Shah not out of conviction, but simply to do what everybody else was doing. The establishing of an Islamic state in Iran was an anti-Islamic plot by the Powers, to teach Muslims a lesson, and especially to punish the people of Iran. And, as if answering those fantasies, there were even signs of the faith being questioned in certain aspects.

Mr. Parvez had said, “The war [against Iraq] was fought in the name of Islam. It was a blessing in disguise. Without the war people wouldn’t have got so fed up with Islam.” That had seemed extreme. But then I had detected wisps and shadows of religious uncertainty in some people’s conversation. Just as–in these fantasies issuing out of a people stretched to the limit by revolution, war, financial stringency, and the religious state–it was said that Iranians were not really responsible for the Iranian revolution, so I heard that Iranians were not really responsible for the more dramatic aspects of the Shia faith. The bloody scourgings of Mohurram, the mourning month: the idea was really imported from Europe, from the Catholics; it had nothing to do with the original faith.

I talked about this to Mehrdad. He said, “It’s something habitual. Our enemies are always responsible. Blaming others, not ourselves.”

SOURCE: Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage, 1998), pp. 226-227

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by | 5 July 2004 · 9:22 am

Romania’s "Big Dig" Turns 20

Transitions Online translates a recent story from Evenimentul Zilei [‘The Daily Happening’?].

On 26 May, Romania marked the 20th anniversary of the inauguration of the Danube-Black Sea canal. A dream of the then-communist authorities, the canal became a symbol of the nightmare of communist repression, at least during the first part of its construction between 1949 and 1951. After a break of 25 years, [former Romanian dictator] Nicolae Ceausescu resumed the construction process. It took another eight years of work–a huge national labor project followed by years of glorification of what the communists called “the Blue Thoroughfare,” and it was celebrated again and again during communist national festivities in the “Song of Romania.”

The construction of “the dustless road” [as the canal was called in a novel by Romanian writer Petru Dumitriu, an proponent of the social realism movement in the 1950s] required studies by more than 1,000 experts in construction and more than 33,500 execution reports. During its construction, 300 million cubic meters of soil were excavated, and some 3.6 million cubic meters of concrete were used. The result was a navigable canal 64.4 kilometers long with two, 310-meter-long double locks at each end.

Built on the backs of the country’s political detainees, with blood, effort, and maybe too much sacrifice, the Danube-Black Sea canal remains the biggest project ever carried out in Romania. But 20 years after it was opened, the canal works at only 40 percent of its capacity.

The idea for a canal linking the Danube River with the Black Sea reportedly originated in a Soviet “suggestion,” when Stalin sent a stern order to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej [the Romanian communist leader until 1965] to liquidate the opposition in Romania. “I will give you the technical equipment, and you can solve two problems at the same time: You get rid of the kulaks and the landed gentry and irrigate Dobrogea [the territory between the lower Danube River and the Black Sea],” Stalin is said to have told the Romanian communist leader sometime in the late 1940s in Moscow….

Construction on the canal officially started on 15 July 1949. The labor force came from three sources: paid workers, forced labor, and military conscripts. The political detainees were euphemistically called “forces from the Interior Ministry.” […]

Ceausescu had the idea of resuming construction after a 1972 visit to Antwerp, Belgium, and a 1973 trip to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where he learned about a project called “the Canal of Europe,” which aimed to link the Rhine with the Danube–a 3,500 kilometer, transcontinental river route….

On 26 May 1984, with tens of thousands of people lining the two sides, Nicolae Ceausescu inaugurated the canal in festive style. The project at the time was estimated to be worth 10 trillion lei [approximately 3.3 billion average monthly salaries in Romania at the time]….

The canal today links the Danube with the Black Sea and can be used in both directions. With the opening to traffic in 1992 of the Main-Danube canal in Germany, a direct link between the Black Sea and the North Sea (through the ports of Constanta and Rotterdam) was established. It has a capacity of 10 million tons of traffic a year.

On 26 May 1984, Mr. and Mrs. Far Outliers were close to finishing a grim but fascinating year in Romania. We took a day trip by train from Bucharest to Constanta and back in the spring of 1984, crossing the Danube bridge and looking for the traces of the shortcut canal that so many Romanian dissidents spent their last years digging. The train was jam-packed, with people standing a handspan away from our heads blowing smoke into our hair. I finally tried to open a window. What an uproar that caused! Real springtime air on uncovered heads was deemed far more deadly than cigarette smoke in our lungs. In Constanta, we visited an impressive (but empty) mosque and the history museum, had lunch at a faded rococo casino, and were forbidden to take photos of the picturesque Port Tomis, lest it betray secrets to the U.S. (or Turkish?) navy.

Halfway Down the Danube has more.

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by | 4 July 2004 · 10:31 pm

Naipaul on Revolutionary Fashion

Mehrdad’s sister was unmarried, and had little chance of getting married, since too many men of suitable age had been killed in the eight-year war [with Iraq]. She simply stayed at home when she came home from work: silent, full of inward rage, her unhappiness a shadow over the house and a source of worry for her parents, who couldn’t work out a future for her. It was too difficult for her to go out; and now she had lost the will. In this she was like the fifteen-year-old daughter of a teacher I had got to know. This girl had already learned that she could be stopped by the Guards and questioned if she was alone on the street. She hated the humiliation, and now she didn’t like to go out. The world had narrowed for her just when it should have opened out.

In February 1980 I had seen young women in guerrilla garb among the students camped outside the seized U.S. embassy: Che Guevara gear, the theater of revolution. I remembered one plump young woman, in her khakis, coming out of a low tent on this freezing afternoon with a mug of steaming tea for one of the men: her face bright with the idea of serving the revolution and the warriors of the revolution. Most of those young people, “Muslim Students Following the Line of Ayatollah Khomeini,” would now have been dead or neutered, like all the other communist or left-wing groups. I don’t think that young woman with the mug could have dreamed that the revolution to which she was contributing–posters on the embassy wall and on trees were comparing the Iranian revolution with the Nicaraguan, making both appear part of a universal movement forward–would have ended in this way, with an old-fashioned tormenting of women, and with the helicopters in the sky looking for satellite dishes.

The very gear and style of revolution now had another meaning. The beards were not Che Guevara beards, but good Islamic beards, not cut by razors; and the green guerrilla outfits were now the uniform of the enforcers of the religious law.

SOURCE: Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage, 1998), pp. 225-226

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by | 4 July 2004 · 6:22 pm

A Foxhole View of the Korean War

In June 1950, Pfc. Susumu Shinagawa of Able Company, 34th Infantry, found himself heading north from Pusan, at the southern end of Korea, to stop the North Korean troops advancing south.

The train chugged to a stop just before daylight at Pyongtaek. There was a light, steady drizzle as we got off the train and waited in the muddy streets for our orders. Without a poncho, I was soaked to the skin. When the orders came, Able and Baker Companies were to set up blocking positions on two hills about 2 miles north of the town. Charlie Company was designated the reserve company somewhere behind us.

The rain stopped when we started the 2-mile hike to our objective. When we got to the hills Able Company veered left and occupied the hill to the left of the road and Baker Company peeled off to the right of the road. Separating us were rice paddies, a rail line, and the road. I could see a small bridge several hundred yards farther north. Five hundred yards separated our company from Baker Company.

We paired off and dug our foxholes. I can’t remember who my foxhole buddy was at the time. About this time we were sloshing around on the hillside, slipping and falling, which made it difficult to dig our holes.

The 3d Platoon was on our left and the 1st Platoon was in the rice paddies to our right. My platoon, the 2d, was in the middle. There were no friendly units to the left of the 3d Platoon.

From my position I could see refugees moving south on a road to the left of the 3d Platoon. My squad leader came by and told my buddy and me to camouflage our position with some branches and leaves. Then it began to rain. It rained for about an hour. I was already soaking wet from the earlier rainfall when we first arrived at Pyongtaek.

Nothing happened that night except that it rained all night. My steel helmet kept my head dry—the only part of my body that wasn’t wet. Within a couple of hours there was more than a foot of water in our foxhole. My feet were sloshing in my oversize boots. In July the weather was very, very warm and, despite being soaking wet, I wasn’t cold. I got out of the foxhole and sat on the edge of the foxhole. My buddy was asleep, curled up in over a foot of water. When I gazed north into the darkness I asked myself, What am I doing here? How can events turn so drastically in such a short time from one of ease and comfort to this miserable situation that I am now in?

Sometime after midnight I was startled by several explosions coming from the north. I didn’t know what caused them but later someone explained that a patrol from one of the other companies had gone to destroy the small bridge just north of our positions.

Just before daylight, a light morning fog settled on the hill but did not affect our visibility. Then I heard a loud bang. I peered through the fog and saw three tanks making their way toward us on the road near the blown-up bridge. We knew that Task Force Smith, which was north of us, didn’t have tanks so we knew the tanks were North Korean. Then puffs of smoke appeared from the enemy tanks and a split second later we could hear the sharp blast of their guns.

To the back and left of the tanks I could see more tanks, followed by North Korean infantry. Then another line of tanks and more infantry came into view on the right side of the road. Our mortars located in the rear started firing and I could see the rounds exploding among the North Korean tanks and infantry. Our mortars had no effect on the tanks. When the line of tanks was about 300 yards away, a few of the men opened fire. I fired my M-1 rifle for the first time in more than a year. My right shoulder got sore after emptying a few clips at the North Koreans.

Then enemy tanks turned their big guns on our hill, the bursting shells showering the area with shrapnel, dirt, and rocks. The fog had now dissipated and I could clearly see the North Korean infantrymen as they ran past the blown-up bridge and fanned out on both flanks. We were in danger of being surrounded.

“Pull out! Pull out!” came frantic shouts from the top of the hill. I was only too damn happy to obey the order. I grabbed my gear and hauled ass with several other men to the top of the hill and down the reverse slope. We headed for the village behind the hill. There were no officers around to give us any instructions.

While we were retreating, several shots rang out. No one knew where the shots came from but this meant the North Koreans were probably very close. Before we got to the village, we were fired on by North Koreans who somehow got abreast of us on our left about 200 yards away. Not only were they behind us, but they were in a position to surround us. We dove to the ground and fired back. I emptied a clip, firing blindly, when my rifle jammed. I tried kicking the bolt free but it wouldn’t budge. The North Koreans stopped firing, so we decided to move again.

We came to a granary that was just outside the village and stopped to rest. While we were deciding what to do, a Korean civilian ran toward us and told us the North Korean soldiers were coming. We hurried inside the granary and hid behind some bundled rice straws.

The North Koreans knew where we were and threw hand grenades into the granary. They also just shot it full of holes with their burp guns. Wood splinters and rice straws filled the air above us. My rifle was still jammed so I couldn’t return fire. All of a sudden, I felt my right arm being thrown back. I tried to move it but could not feel a thing. I thought, Good God, my right arm is blown off! I turned my head and reached out with my left arm to find out what was wrong and saw my right arm bent back in an awkward position. Instinctively, I pulled my right arm back in place. Through all of this I don’t remember feeling any pain. I was relieved to know that I had not lost my arm and stuck it in my shirt like a sling. We didn’t have a chance to fire back. Someone yelled, “We may as well surrender or we’ll all be killed. Okay?”

For a brief moment no one said anything. Finally, during a lull in the firing, one of the guys yelled, “We surrender! We surrender!” The firing from the outside stopped, and he got up and walked to the door. We all followed him out of the granary.

For the first time I came face to face with North Korean soldiers. Man, they looked mean. One had a uniform different from the others and I guessed he must have been an officer because he had red epaulets on his uniform. Gesturing with their weapons and blabbering in Korean, which none of us understood, they herded us in a single file on the road and pointed north.

I really felt terrible having to surrender and I thought this day would be the last day of my life.

As we were walking out, I realized that I was also shot in the thigh just above the right knee. It was a clean wound where the bullet passed through and I felt little pain. With wounds on my right arm and right leg, I wondered what was going to happen to me. But both wounds bled very little so I was lucky in a way. While our captors were deciding what to do with us, one of our guys opened up my first aid kit and helped me apply sulfur and bandages to my wounds. For the next five or six days, that was all the treatment I had.

We were taken to a village, where we joined about a dozen captured Americans, including a couple of ROK soldiers and a lieutenant from our company. There were now a couple dozen of us and about a dozen North Korean soldiers.

They questioned us and wanted to know why we had come to Korea and all that bull. After they were done, we were marched to the rail line, where we thought we were going to be shot. At this point I really didn’t care much and accepted whatever they were going to do with us. No one cried or complained. I guess we were too numb to realize the seriousness of the situation. Instead, they lined us up by the color of our hair. Those with red, blond, and brown hair were put in one column and those with black hair in another column. “You are all Japanese,” a North Korean said, pointing to us with black hair, “and you are all Americans,” he said, pointing to the light-color-haired men. No one tried to explain we were all Americans. It wasn’t funny then, but recalling that incident later in the prison camps made me laugh.

Except for me, because of my injured right arm, all the prisoners’ hands were tied behind their backs with commo wire. I was allowed to keep my hands under my shirt to support my injured arm. We were then marched north along the rail line. It was dark when we arrived at a small village after about four hours of walking. We were all crowded into a jail house that had wooden bars, just like the ones I saw in Japanese movies back home. My arm and leg didn’t hurt too much that night and I was grateful for that.

SOURCE: A Foxhole View: Personal Accounts of Hawai‘i’s Korean War Veterans, edited by Louis Baldovi (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2002).

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by | 4 July 2004 · 11:34 am

Sumo Onomastics

Among other things, July Fourth this year marks the beginning of sumo’s Nagoya Basho. Former #1 maegashira (“leading” rank, the lowest ranking in the highest division) Hokutoriki, who forced the sole yokozuna (grand champion) Asashoryu into a playoff on the final day of the Natsu Basho in May, has been promoted two ranks, to sekiwake (junior champion), right below ozeki (champion, formerly the top rank). The Georgian Kokkai, who made his “big league” (makuuchi) debut in January, is now ranked a #2 maegashira.

As a backgrounder, I’ll offer a glimpse into the onomastics of sumo, focusing mostly on the foreign rikishi. Corrections from experts in either the language or the sport would be most welcome.

The Mongolians Asashoryu (‘Morning Green Dragon’) and Asasekiryu (‘Morning Red Dragon’) belong to the illustrious Takasago-beya (‘stable‘), whose current master’s ring name was Asashio (‘Morning Tide’), a name that dates back beyond the 46th yokozuna (1959) Asashio, whom I used to watch as a kid, as he fought the 45th yokozuna (1958) Wakanohana and the later 48th yokozuna (1961) Taiho.

The Mongolians Kyokutenho (‘RisingSun Heaven Roc/Phoenix’) and Kyokushuzan (‘RisingSun Eagle Mountain’) belong to the smaller Oshima-beya, whose master fought under the name Asahikuni (‘Morning Sun Land’).

The Mongolian Tokitenku (‘Time Heaven Sky’) and his Japanese stablemate Tokitsuumi (‘Time Harbor Sea’) belong to the Tokitsukaze-beya (probably ‘Time Harbor Wind’), which is reputed to be foreign visitor-friendly. The gloss ‘harbor’ doesn’t really do justice to tsu, which is the first character of tsunami, literally ‘harbor wave’, which would sound no more fearsome than “tidal wave” would in English if we didn’t know better.

The Georgian Kokkai (‘Black Sea’ in its “Chinese” pronunciation) and his Japanese stablemate Hayateumi (‘Tailwind/Gale Sea’ in its tricky native Japanese reading) belong to the fairly new Oitekaze-beya (probably ‘Chasing Wind = Tailwind’).

The Korean Kasugao (‘Spring Sun King’) belongs to the small Kasugayama-beya (‘Spring Sun Mountain’), whose master fought as Kasugafuji (probably ‘Spring Sun Wisteria’).

Although they belong to different stables (Miyagino and Otake, respectively), makuuchi-division Mongolian rikishi Hakuho (‘White Roc’) and juryo-division Russian rikishi Roho (‘Dew Roc’) share the character ho ‘large mythical bird’ (hence ‘roc, phoenix’).

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