Korea: When Kim's Meet By Eric Margolis June 18, 2000 LOS ANGELES - This week's meeting of the leaders of South and North Korea produced an enormous outpouring of pent-up emotion by the long-suffering, long-separated Korean people. Watching South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung embrace North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il( 28% of Koreans are confusingly surnamed `Kim'), left even this hardened cynic, who has taken a skeptical view of Kim Dae Jung's `sunshine policy' towards the North, impressed and deeply moved. The two Kim's agreed to work towards peace and eventual Korean reunification. South Koreans will begin visiting their long-lost families in the North. A hot line will be set up between Pyongyang and Seoul. Though vague, the agreements were still a major accomplishment by the bitterly hostile Koreas. Koreans have been invaded, colonized, and exploited for centuries by China or Japan. Attempts by Japan to extinguish Korea's language and rich culture made the proud, prickly Koreans determined to prove to the world they a distinct people, and second to none in Asia The bloody 1950-1953 Korean War left Korea divided for the past half century. While the South's 47 million people have gone from abject poverty to relative prosperity, North Korea's 21.5 million citizens remain in a grim Orwellian-Stalinist police state whose moribund economy is heading towards eventual collapse. The urgent need for massive aid from abroad is probably why North Korea's `Dear Leader,' Kim Jong-il, finally accepted the South's patient overtures. South Korea immediately rewarded the North with US $ 450 million in emergency aid and 200,000 tons of fertilizer. Washington, which has been bribing North Korea with $5 billion to stop building nuclear weapons, lifted 50-year old trade sanctions against the North and offered additional aid. Japan is expected to sweeten the pot. `Rogue' Iraq should be so lucky. What North Korea's `Dear Leader' intends to do with his huge, 1.1 million-man army, 75% of which is dug in along the Demilitarized Zone only 30 miles north of Seoul, remains a mystery. So, too, the North's continued development of missiles capable of hitting Japan, Okinawa, and North America - and its nuclear capability, including several nuclear warheads. Japanese press reports this week claimed North Korea was still actively producing enriched uranium in spite of having pledged to halt production. North Korea's ability to fire nuclear-armed missiles at North America, and US plans to erect a limited missile defense shield to counter such a `rogue state' attack, has drawn Russia into the fray. Moscow strongly opposes the US anti-missile system, fearing it will serve as the foundation for a far larger, more capable ABM defense. China expresses similar concerns. So Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to shortly visit North Korea, apparently to try to talk the `Dear Leader' into halting his missile program that has so enraged the Americans. Meanwhile, South Koreans are reveling in the thought of eventual reunification - but not too soon. The South is struggling to climb out of recession. Supporting the bankrupt North would shatter South Korea's economy. South Korea fears `unexpected reunification' that produces millions of starving Northern refugees almost as much as the long-threatened invasion by the North. South Koreans are too euphoric right now to notice that North Korea seems to be achieving an important long-term goal: driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul, and cutting the US out of inter-Korean relations. Off in Tokyo, the Pyongyang summit was greeted with polite smiles. But a far more telling sign occurred in South Korea, where a hit film depicts a reunified Korea blasting Japan with nuclear-armed missiles. Fiction, to be sure, but a united Korea of nearly 70 million hardy people, with a powerful, high-tech industrial base, 1.8 million troops , and nuclear weapons, would be a formidable military and commercial threat to Japan. Tokyo has long given discreet support to North Korea to curb its more malevolent behavior - such as kidnapping, bombings, and drug dealing - and to keep Korea divided. Japanese are well aware of the hatred must Koreans bear them, and Korea's desire to humiliate Japan for its past brutal colonial behavior. China, which has good relations with both Koreas, seems happy with the status quo and uneager to see a powerful, united Korea on its northern border that might one day turn unfriendly. Russia, gravely concerned by the long-term threat of Chinese expansion into Siberia and the Russian Far East, would like to enlist a united Korea as an ally to counter the menacing Chinese. Back in Pyonyang, `Dear Leader' Kim, reputedly a lover of Hollywood movies, must be reveling in his debut on the world stage as a media and political star. Though his late father, `Glorious Leader' Kim-il Sung officially remains leader of North Korea, Kim Jr. has now finally emerged into the limelight and, interestingly, broken with his father's policy of permanent hostility towards the South. But Kim shows no sign of liberalizing or relinquishing power. He will continue to soak the South, the US, and Japan for aid, while retaining his Stalinist control over the North, and occasionally blackmailing his neighbors and the US with nuclear weapons. The `Dear Leader' intends to have his rice cake and eat it too. Copyright: E. Margolis, June 2000 ************************************************************************ ********************************** War at the Top of the World - The struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet - by Eric Margolis is available at major book outlets and online in both the US and Canada - recently reviewed in The Economist as "His account of recent warfare in Asia's highest mountains is both gripping and instructive." To send *personal mail* to Eric Margolis, please do not click reply, but use this link: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ************** To UNSUBSCRIBE to this list click the following link and enter the words UNSUBSCRIBE FOREIGNC in the body of the email. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
