[Cankor] Report #257 SIXTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear readers,

On the 6th anniversary of the CanKor Report, we are offering you a 
special treat.

First of all, for this issue only, we will not bore you with 
heart-rending appeals to help us out of our dire financial straits. (Of 
course, we will not turn down donations if you feel so inclined. Details 
of how you can do that may be found at the very end of each issue of the 
CanKor Report.)

But best of all, this issue serves up a piece of original summer fiction 
for your reading pleasure. Well, "fiction" may in this case be an 
exaggeration. In any case, check it out.

And remember: YOU READ IT FIRST IN THE CanKor REPORT!

The CanKor team.
**************************************************
CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 257 -- SIXTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Friday, 4 August 2006
*************************************************

In celebration of the sixth anniversary of the publication of the CanKor 
Report, the weekly Canada-Korea electronic news and information service, 
Editor-in-chief Erich Weingartner has written a fictional profile 
entitled PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT.

"If any DPR Korean happens to read this story," says Weingartner, "I 
want to underline that the person I am describing does not actually 
exist. He is a fiction, a figment of my imagination, a composite crafted 
from a quarter century experience interacting with Koreans."

Even the name of the character is fake, explains Weingartner, as will be 
immediately obvious to all Koreans. Breaking all naming rules, Pak Kim 
Li is a combination of the three most popular family names in Korea.

Erich Weingartner is uniquely qualified to tell this story. He has 
visited Korea on many occasions since 1978. His first visit to the DPRK 
was on behalf of the World Council of Churches in 1985. In 1986 he 
arranged the first encounter since the Korean War between church 
delegations of both sides of Korea in Switzerland. Until 1995 he 
organized three more such inter-Korean non-governmental conferences. 
 From 1997 to 1999 he headed the Food Aid Liaison Unit of the UN World 
Food Programme in Pyongyang, traveling by land cruiser throughout all 
provinces of the DPRK, visiting ports, rail yards, warehouses, 
nurseries, kindergartens, boarding schools, orphanages, hospitals, 
factories, farms and many families in their homes, both in rural and 
urban settings.
*************************************************

PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT
by Erich Weingartner, Editor, CanKor, 4 August 2006

Pak Kim Li is 36, married, and father of a 5-year-old son. He also 
fathered a daughter, who would be 12 years old today, had she not died 
of a nutrition-related infection at age 3 -- for lack of appropriate 
antibiotics during the "arduous march" of 1997, the low point in what 
the outside world refers to as "The Great North Korean Famine".

Pak's father is a retired university professor, formerly head of the 
music department at Kim Il Sung University. Pak himself did not exhibit 
much musical talent, so his parents arranged for him to be married to 
one of his father's star students. She teaches piano at the Children's 
Palace in Pyongyang.

Pak's uncle was a diplomat, which afforded the young nephew an 
exceptional opportunity to spend a year in Indonesia when he was ten 
years old. Attending a private school for the Indonesian elite, he 
learned some of the official Bahasa, but preferred to speak Javanese 
with his school friends. He also took an introductory English course and 
generally discovered a love and aptitude for languages. With his uncle 
working in the commercial section of the embassy, he decided at an early 
age that he wanted to become an international businessman.

Back in Pyongyang, he was persuaded to pursue a study of languages. When 
he graduated from high school, he volunteered for military service like 
all his classmates, but did not receive a notice of conscription. 
Instead, he was told that he had been chosen to pursue accelerated 
language studies. He found this exceedingly embarrassing, especially in 
his relationship with girls, who admired the young recruits, but 
considered him a coward.

As the son of a prominent member of the Korean Worker's Party, Pak was 
an obedient Young Pioneer and an enthusiastic member of the League of 
Socialist Working Youth, eventually himself gaining Party membership. He 
attended self-criticism sessions and political education classes 
religiously.

His academic achievements led to an Asian languages professorship at 
Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, but he continued to study 
English privately. Following the death of Kim Il Sung, rumors began to 
circulate that the 1994 Framework Agreement concluded with the USA might 
lead to increased international trade. On the advice of his uncle, he 
started taking evening courses in economics, hoping this would prepare 
him for the opportunities ahead.

Having experienced the outside world, however, he soon concluded that 
the economics courses he was taking were of no practical value, 
imparting only dogmatic socialist theory, hopelessly inadequate for the 
openings he was preparing for in the real world. He quit and studied 
more English.

1997 was a devastating low point in his life. When he found himself 
unable to obtain antibiotics to save his daughter's life, even in the 
exclusive shops frequented by the Pyongyang elite, he realized that his 
country was in deep trouble. With his wife increasingly absent from work 
due to illnesses that he suspected were the consequence of depression, 
he started to look around for other opportunities. Although he was a 
competent teacher, he was convinced that he had more to offer in service 
of his country.

-- /// --

In early 1998, a recruiter from the Flood Damage Rehabilitation 
Committee (FDRC) visited his university. Attending a general faculty 
meeting, he learned that leader Kim Jong Il had appealed to the United 
Nations for temporary food aid because several years of natural 
disasters had devastated DPRK agriculture. The FDRC had been established 
by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to administer relations with UN 
relief agencies, non-governmental organizations and foreign bilateral 
donors. With the number of foreign aid workers now exceeding the number 
of interpreters available to the Foreign Ministry, professors with 
appropriate language skills could apply for sabbaticals to work with the 
United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and an assortment of European 
NGOs.

Not hesitating for a moment, Pak told recruiters that he was eager to 
hone his English skills. After easily passing the required language 
test, he was enrolled in a crash course on how to deal with foreigners: 
rules of engagement, security parameters, access requirements, reporting 
responsibilities, and above all, how to answer sensitive questions.

His first assignment was with an aid worker the authorities considered 
"non-problematic". No sooner had he reached the WFP office than he found 
himself traveling in a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser, equipped with a 
short-wave radio capable of receiving BBC broadcast news. The driver 
headed out of the city and into a countryside he had never experienced 
before. The foreigner was friendly and verbose, delivering a steady 
stream of conversation about his own home country and the world outside 
the confines of the DPRK. For the next two hours, Pak thought he had 
gone to heaven.

The euphoria ended when they arrived at their destination. In the hill 
country of South Hwanghae province, they entered a small coal mining 
community, where the foreigner had arranged to visit a local nursery and 
some private homes.

At the nursery, the foreigner asked to see the "special care room", 
where the most malnourished children were being spoon-fed a fortified 
porridge made of powdered corn-soya blend, donated by the WFP. The sight 
of the listless, emaciated children reminded Pak of his own deceased 
daughter. He could hardly concentrate as the foreigner gently pressed a 
finger into the skin of one child's foot, then showed Pak the depression 
or "pit" that remained, explaining that this is an example of edema, 
caused by protein deficiency.

The home visits were no relief. In one apartment, they talked to the 
wife of a coal miner whose husband sat propped up in one corner, coal 
dust ground permanently into his skin. He was making wheezing noises, 
breathing with difficulty. The distraught woman explained that he was 
dismissed from the hospital because there was neither medicine nor food 
for him.

"Emphysema," explained the foreigner to Pak. "It's an occupational 
hazard. Coal dust in the lungs. You can get the same effect from smoking 
cigarettes."

On the way back to Pyongyang, Pak was silent for a long time. The 
intensity of this experience caused him emotional turmoil. He had seen 
poverty as a child in the slums of Indonesia, but this was his own 
country. Sheltered in the protected environment of Pyongyang, he had 
always taken for granted that the glorious revolution had defeated 
poverty. He didn't know on whom he should focus the embarrassment and 
anger he was feeling.

Pak was and still is a true believer in Kimilsungism. He considers the 
founder of the DPRK to be a god. He believes that the son of the 
founder, the "dear leader" Kim Jong Il, is the best and obvious person 
to succeed his father. These are articles of faith. His mind simply 
excludes the possibility that the leader or the system could be 
deficient. If his country experiences difficulties, the causes can only 
be insufficient commitment by lazy or disloyal fellow citizens, natural 
disasters, or outside interference. The latter had certainly been the 
case in Korea throughout history.

He remembered his instructions on how to deal with foreigners, and felt 
an urgent need to justify himself to the man sitting in the back seat of 
the vehicle.

"We are experiencing these difficulties because of several years of 
natural disasters," he offered. There was no reply.

"Floods and droughts," he added for effect. Still no reply.

His unspoken anger began to boil to the surface and came out in the 
words he had been taught to memorize:

"We would be able easily to solve all our problems if the Americans 
would not try to strangle us with their sanctions and military threats."

He felt better having externalized his anger at a scapegoat acceptable 
to his faith, but in his heart he still bore a visceral awareness that 
for at least a decade, the system he still believed to be the best in 
the world had lost its shine.

"We haven't come to your country to lay blame." The foreigner finally 
spoke -- so quietly that Pak turned around to read his lips. "We're only 
here to help you solve your own problems."

Perhaps because of the death of his daughter, perhaps because of his 
wife's bouts of depression, Pak somehow felt personally responsible. 
More than before his visits with the foreigner, he became aware of his 
own privileged status. In his political education sessions on Saturday 
mornings, which now included other North Korean staff members of the 
foreign affairs community, he began to urge his compatriots to intensify 
their commitment to the "Second Chollima Movement", a restoration 
campaign initiated by leader Kim Jong Il, which Pak interpreted as 
finding innovative problem-solving ideas.

Pak was thrilled when in 1998 the DPRK launched what he had no doubt was 
a satellite into orbit, but was dismayed at the negative international 
reaction, particularly from Japan, which after all had its own satellite 
programme. But he was equally pleased that his country declared a 
unilateral moratorium on further launches and missile tests in view of 
the fact that US President Bill Clinton had at last authorized a 
meaningful, top-level dialogue with the DPRK.

Although Pak himself had assisted in the 1998 WFP-UNICEF nutritional 
survey, he was never able to believe the results published in the West, 
which suggested that the DPRK was one of the top three countries 
worldwide with the highest level of malnutrition. He knew from personal 
experience that the situation of North Korean children was grave. But 
what could possibly be gained by shaming his country with unfair 
comparisons, as though they were in some sort of contest for the top 
spot on a scale of disasters? He understood and supported his superiors' 
decision never again to permit foreigners to dictate and conduct 
national nutritional surveys.

-- /// --

In Pak's mind, history and mythology had the same unreal quality. The 
anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle, the founding of the DPRK, the 
patriotic war against American aggressors -- these he knew from history 
books, not from personal experience. He always marveled at the depth of 
emotion when his parents would tell stories of the war.

He could better relate to the division of Korea, since he had several 
times been to Panmunjom, interpreting for visiting foreigners. He felt 
deeply the injustice of division, but standing at the dividing line that 
crossed the blue barracks, he harboured no personal hostility toward the 
South Korean soldiers staring at him through binoculars from the other 
side.

Divided Korea was a matter of fact -- a sad fact, a tragic fact, but 
nevertheless an incontrovertible fact of life.

Korean reunification on the other hand was a matter of faith -- an 
eschatological faith, something you live for every day of your life, 
even though it may not happen in your lifetime. "Korea is one," so many 
posters reminded him again and again. To him this wasn't just a slogan. 
It was an article of his creed. It never crossed his mind to doubt it.

And then, very suddenly, almost without warning, this faith in 
reunification was rewarded with a new fact: the inter-Korean summit of 
the year 2000.

This followed upon another minor disappointment. He had been working for 
a brief period with an NGO that employed very young, very inexperienced, 
and very idealistic aid workers. None of these European youths had ever 
been in Asia, let alone Korea. They knew nothing of Korean history, 
treated him with great suspicion, and made demands on him that he was 
unable to meet, no matter how hard he tried.

This group of foreign youths eventually decided that they could not 
continue to work in the DPRK without losing their integrity, and blamed 
their failure on "insufficient humanitarian space" in his country. Pak 
was hard pressed to understand what that actually meant. His superiors 
blamed the whole incident on Pak's lack of experience, i.e., his 
inability to keep foreigners under his control.

He expected to be dismissed from his international duties and sent back 
to his teaching job at the university. What he didn't know was that the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs was already preparing for the expected 
influx of foreign delegations following the summit, which would once 
again stretch their human resources -- especially their pool of 
interpreters -- to the limit. They reassigned Pak to the UNDP, which 
they considered a safer place for him.

With the 2000 Summit and the June 15 Joint Declaration, the universe 
seemed to have shifted. The future seemed to have come closer. Everyone 
was electrified by the enormity of this event. Coming home from the 
airport where he had joined the throngs welcoming South Korea's 
President Kim Dae Jung, he heard his wife playing the electric keyboard 
that she had not touched since his daughter's death. She told him she 
had watched the event on television and decided she wanted to have 
another child to experience the reunification of Korea.

-- /// --

Their son was born nine months later. By then, George W. Bush had been 
elected president of the USA, and the positive developments in the dying 
days of the Clinton administration were being systematically reversed. 
The terror attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 only 
made matters worse. The "axis of evil" State of the Union speech in 2002 
was the most galling. But more frightening was the 2003 invasion of 
Iraq, which Pak fully expected would be followed by invasions of the 
other two countries identified as members of this imaginary axis: Iran 
and his own homeland.

Prior to the announcement by his government of a series of economic 
adjustment measures on 1 July 2002, Pak got his wish to attend a UNDP 
course in market economics in Shanghai. This was an eye-opening 
experience, but not only in a positive sense. He did not enjoy the 
overcrowded streets, the excessive traffic, the air pollution, the 
beggars who accosted him on every street corner. Although his hosts were 
welcoming and polite, he felt the Chinese looked down on him as a relic 
of their own past. He began to resist the unspoken but implied pressures 
to conform to some "Chinese model" of development.

"Korea is not China," he would repeat to himself. "We will manage our 
own development in our own way, by our own hands." This was the way of 
"Juche", the self-reliant idea introduced by his venerated leader and 
eternal president Kim Il Sung.

Pak's studies in Shanghai opened his eyes to both the potentials and 
dangers of economic openings. He became aware of the DPRK's economic 
vulnerabilities, and began to appreciate the motivation of his country's 
leader Kim Jong Il when he stressed "military first" policies, even 
though Pak began to wonder if the military understood the limitations of 
their own role.

Some of his close friends took the plunge and started their own 
businesses by trading with China and selling their wares in the open 
markets that were springing up in various parts of Pyongyang and other 
cities. Some of them did very well. Waving wads of dollar bills in front 
of his face, they enticed him to join their example.

But Pak was more cautious. Something bothered him about the increasing 
monetization of his society. Accumulating personal wealth seemed to 
become a higher goal among some of his contemporaries than the 
overarching goal of helping his country to survive. He believed in going 
slow, in order to avoid the inevitable mistakes the budding 
entrepreneurs would make, not to mention the reversals of policy that 
were part and parcel of the economic trial and error he was witnessing. 
His father once told him that it is good to learn from your mistakes, 
but it is better to learn from other people's mistakes.

Pak wanted to know more, in order to be prepared to act more 
intelligently. He read voraciously. He devoured UNDP literature 
available at the office. He took home foreign newspapers, magazines, 
journals, CDs and DVDs. He studied the transitions in Vietnam and 
Cambodia. He followed events in the former Soviet republics. He came to 
realize that there is not only one road to development. It gave him some 
hope that there could well be a Korean way, not yet tried, and perhaps 
better than the others, since Koreans could learn from the mistakes of 
all the others.

He watched helplessly as his country lurched from hope to despair and 
back to hope in a seemingly endless cycle, like a person with a bipolar 
disorder. In September, Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan signs the 
Pyongyang Declaration, with promises of establishing diplomatic 
relations. In October, US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly 
accuses the DPRK of running a secret uranium enrichment programme. In 
November, South Korea concludes an agreement to establish the Kaesong 
Industrial Park across the DMZ in North Korea. In December, the USA 
announces it will cease its contractually obligated delivery of heavy 
fuel oil to the DPRK. In 2003, matters just seemed to go from bad to worse.

Pak supported his country's decision to arm itself with nuclear weapons, 
because he was convinced that the USA would not hesitate to do to the 
DPRK what it had done to Iraq. On the other hand, Pak also realized that 
military power alone would not solve his country's problems. His 
readings had convinced him that as necessary as military preparation was 
as a deterrent to defend his country, there had to be parallel efforts 
in other fields. What is needed above all -- and this he knew from 
personal experience -- is a much higher level of education for his 
people, more suited to modern times.

Pak spent a year posted at the DPRK Mission to the United Nations in 
Geneva and experienced first-hand the humiliation of condemnation by the 
United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He felt like the whole world 
was conspiring to prevent the very changes the international community 
claimed it wanted in the DPRK. How could they not see that they were 
pushing his country into a defensive posture that could only serve to 
strengthen the frightened Old Guard among his compatriots -- exactly 
those people who were intent on turning back the hands of time?

To his own surprise, he was given the chance to accompany a DPRK 
delegation to one of the sessions of the Six-Party Talks in the summer 
of 2005. His task was to help minor officials communicate in one-on-one 
side meetings at the talks. He experienced some pride in the fact that 
the DPRK was being courted by five of the world's most powerful nations.

But the talks themselves filled him with more anger. Although reading 
Western newspapers had given him some hope that genuine negotiations 
could break the security impasse and set his country back on the road to 
development, what was in fact on offer was his country's capitulation. 
He became convinced that the Six-Party Talks were merely a forum for 
bribery and threats, or what the foreigners like to call "carrots and 
sticks."

-- /// --

Pak supported the decision -- a subject of internal debates since 2002 
-- to terminate the receipt of food aid at the end of 2005. Already in 
the early days working with the WFP, he learned from his foreign 
colleagues that food aid always creates dependencies, and is therefore 
incompatible with Juche. At the UNDP he learned that whereas food aid is 
useful only as a short-term stopgap in a disaster area, development is 
an ongoing process that all countries are involved in. Unlike chronic 
food shortages, which point to policy deficiencies, development is 
something both normal and honourable, as long as it is self-guided, and 
not simply imposed from the outside.

He was less content about the decision to terminate the presence of 
NGOs. Although his own experience with NGOs was not a happy one, he did 
acknowledge that a number of them imparted useful expertise and novel 
ideas. Besides, the exit of food aid agencies and NGOs would limit 
opportunities for travel within his own country -- something he saw as a 
serendipitous fringe benefit that had altered his own perceptions, and 
could do so for other young compatriots.

Even this small sacrifice he believed to be worthwhile if there were a 
genuine commitment to development. And this was indeed the policy his 
government announced to the United Nations. The key to Korea's future -- 
of this Pak Kim Li is convinced -- lies in obtaining all the knowledge 
the world has to offer, without capitulating to foreign manipulation, 
without accepting foreign answers to problems only Koreans themselves 
could understand.

He was happy when early in 2006 he became involved in the drafting of 
the UNDP's next comprehensive country programme, a three-year project 
design that leaned heavily in the direction of "capacity building", a 
term he now understood to be synonymous with education.

But would the international community respond with the requisite 
financing? None of his international colleagues held out much hope. "Not 
until the nuclear issue is resolved," they would repeat endlessly. His 
readings regarding international aid to other parts of Asia, Africa and 
the Middle East had persuaded him that you could always get resources 
when children are already dying of starvation. But it appeared far more 
difficult to finance the development needed to prevent starvation.

-- /// --

Since he had never served in the military, Pak understands little of the 
military mind. He trusts that those in charge know what they are doing, 
although he fervently wishes there were another way. He is tired of the 
constant state of mobilization and the endless militaristic language 
that is broadcast via radio, television, newspapers and public 
announcements.

When in the summer of 2004 both Koreas agreed to dismantle loudspeakers, 
signboards and other propaganda tools directed at each other across the 
DMZ, it was as though a heavy burden had been lifted off his shoulders. 
It provided a measure of hope, just like the inter-Korean summit of 2000 
had done.

And it is hope he misses in the current situation. When he was still 
alive, leader Kim Il Sung also emphasized the importance of a strong 
army. But at the same time, he offered the people hope in a bright 
future. As much as Pak believes the "military first policy" to be 
correct for this time and place, it has dawned on him that military 
power may well offer security, but it cannot offer hope. And hope is 
what will motivate his people toward development. What is the hope that 
he can pass on to his son?

It was not difficult for him to predict how events would unfold in late 
Spring 2006. After disrupting his country's foreign trade with banking 
sanctions, the USA turned its attention to the quagmire in the Middle 
East. Stung by the threat these banking actions represented for China's 
own trade, Beijing increasingly treated the DPRK with annoyance and 
impatience, while it too refocused attention to geopolitical 
considerations, joining with Russia to gain influence in the oil-rich 
Middle East. Japan seized the opportunity to ingratiate itself to the 
USA by becoming its blunt instrument, using the abductee issue to please 
its domestic electorate, while intensifying international threat 
perceptions of the DPRK. Meanwhile, the conciliatory Roh Moo Hyun 
government of South Korea was losing out to a more aggressive, 
US-friendly opposition.

Clearly something was needed to shake up these negative developments for 
the DPRK. In its opaque wisdom, the DPRK fell back on the tried and true 
strategy of brinkmanship and rolled its latest long-range missile, the 
Taepodong II, onto the launching pad.

When the USA reacted stridently with threats of dire consequences, Pak 
knew that it would be impossible for the DPRK military to back down. He 
had his personal opinion about what his country should do, but he kept 
these to himself. He suspected that in reality, the USA actually wanted 
the DPRK to fire the rocket. It would play into the hands of American 
and Japanese plans for a regional missile defense system. And because 
China wants desperately to avoid this development, they would need to 
show that they are capable of regional threat limitation, and that means 
demonstrating their ability to control the DPRK.

Once again, concludes Pak, as so often throughout our history, the 
regional powers are using Korea as a pawn for their own games. Why are 
we helping them play these games? What can we possibly gain?

Pak quickly suppresses these thoughts. These are issues for greater 
minds to deal with. And greater minds -- this he refuses to doubt -- are 
directing the destiny of his people. He wishes fervently that he could 
understand the logic that he seems to be missing. Then he files these 
concerns in a hidden compartment of his mind, while he concentrates on 
the small part of the puzzle that he does understand.

-- /// --

For his son's 5th birthday, Pak bought a wristwatch at the Tong-il 
market in Pyongyang.

"You see this pointer moving around very quickly?" he asked his son. 
"That is you. It counts the seconds, because to you, every second in 
life counts."

"This other, fatter pointer," he continued, indicating the minute hand, 
"that's your family -- your parents, your grandparents, your uncles and 
aunts, your teachers, your neighbours. This hand moves much more slowly. 
By the time you have gone all the way around the circle, your family has 
moved only from one mark to the next.

"This shorter pointer here, the hour hand, is the slowest. But it is the 
most important of the three. This is your country. If you pay too close 
attention, you won't see it moving at all. The best way is to just go 
about your business. Keep moving at your own pace. Don't wait for the 
minute hand or the hour hand to catch up. And when you've almost 
forgotten where it was last time you looked, look again, and you'll see 
it moved while you weren't watching."

Lifting his son onto his lap, Pak Kim Li whispered into his ear: "Let me 
tell you the most important secret about this watch: If the second hand 
stops moving, the hour hand will stop moving as well. If you want to 
serve your country, you must be sure never to stand still."
*************************************************

End CanKor # 257

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