[Cankor] Report #265

[cankor at cankor.ca]

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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 265

Friday, 27 October 2006
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Keeping abreast of the prodigious flood of commentaries from the world's 
top Korea watchers and experts presents a challenge to a weekly digest 
like CanKor. Readers will hopefully forgive a Canadian publication for 
its preference of Canadian analyses. Contributions from other countries 
will follow in coming issues.

Our section on CANADIAN OPINION features a comprehensive briefing paper 
by Ernie Regehr, co-founder of Canada's Project Ploughshares, on the 
proliferation issues raised by the DPRK's recent nuclear test. Regehr 
says that the UN Security Council is trying to preach temperance from a 
bar stool. Its five permanent members remain determined nuclear 
retentionists who continue to modernize their arsenals, elaborate 
nuclear use doctrines, and pursue selective non-proliferation. He also 
notes that Kim Jong Il and North American advocates of ballistic missile 
defence have found common cause, and calls on Canada to remember the 
humanity of DPR Korean citizens, even if their own government does not.

As a respite from the nuclear issue that has been dominating public 
discussion in the last three weeks, we include a RESOURCES section with 
reviews of two films and five new books on the DPRK. "Crossing the Line" 
follows the last American defector to the DPRK, 64-year-old James 
Dresnok. Another documentary, "Dear Pyongyang" recounts the story of one 
Korean family with North Korean citizenship, living divided between the 
DPRK and Japan. Books reviewed are "Art Under Control in North Korea", 
"Everlasting Flower", "Nuclear Showdown", "North Korea: The Paranoid 
Peninsula", and "North Korea in the 21st Century."
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Contents:

CANADIAN OPINION
1.   RESPONDING TO THE NORTH KOREAN BOMB
     http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf066.pdf

RESOURCES
2.   AN AMERICAN IN DPRK: REVIEW OF "CROSSING THE LINE"
     
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/movies/19cros.html?ex=1162616400&en=0c204074b763d38c&ei=5070

3.   A FAMILY, A DIVIDED COUNTRY: REVIEW OF "DEAR PYONGYANG"
     
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/165395.html

4.   THE CULT AND THE CRISIS: REVIEW OF 5 NEW BOOKS ON DPRK
     http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1920804,00.html
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CANADIAN OPINION

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7.   RESPONDING TO THE NORTH KOREAN BOMB
     by Ernie Regehr, Project Ploughshares, 27 October 2006

[Ernie Regehr, O.C., is co-founder and Senior Policy Advisor of Project 
Ploughshares, a Canadian ecumenical peace coalition which celebrates its 
30th anniversary this week. -CanKor.]

Scarcely a year before its October 9 test of a nuclear warhead, the 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea or the DPRK) made a 
commitment, in a joint statement with its partners in the Six-Party 
Talks [1], "to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear 
programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the 
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards." In that 
same September 19, 2005 statement "the Six Parties unanimously 
reaffirmed that the goal of the Six-Party Talks is the verifiable 
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner" (Joint 
Statement 2005).

The formula roughly followed the October 21, 1994 Agreed Framework 
between the US and DPRK (Agreed Framework 1994), in which the DPRK 
agreed to shut down the Yongbyon reactor, the only source of nuclear 
materials for its weapons program (International Crisis Group 2006), 
both agreed to pursue the construction of nuclear energy light water 
reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, and 
the US agreed to provide fuel oil, pending the completion of the light 
water reactors (in the 2005 agreement the Republic of Korea -- South 
Korea or ROK -- agreed to provide electricity). Normalization of 
political and economic relations was promised, along with ongoing 
adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to IAEA 
safeguard requirements.

Both agreements came undone, of course, with the first essentially 
running to 2002 and the second failing from the start. Kim Jong Il, who 
presides over a land of extraordinary poverty with a state apparatus of 
extraordinary repression, predictably plays the one card in his hand, 
the international law-defying nuclear card, and has been 
characteristically precipitous and intemperate in his actions. But a 
wide range of experts and commentators insist with remarkable 
consistency that Washington shares much of the blame for the failure to 
resolve this north Asian nuclear crisis. President Jimmy Carter (2006), 
who negotiated with the North Koreans on behalf of the Clinton 
Administration and has stayed in touch with them, points to the 2002 
statement by President Bush that branded North Korea part of an axis of 
evil and his administration's termination of bilateral discussions and 
cooperation in supplying fuel. Carter also links the "severe financial 
sanctions" imposed in 2005 to Pyongyang's resort to the nuclear option, 
which this time included the June 2006 missile tests and October warhead 
test.

Washington analyst Selig Harrison (2006b) also links this year's missile 
and weapon tests to the September 2005 unilateral US economic sanctions, 
imposed in response to counterfeiting and money laundering operations by 
the North Koreans, and to the accompanying US branding of North Korea as 
a "criminal state." He (Harrison 2006a) says that, despite Washington's 
denials, it is still "playing games with 'regime change,'" but this game 
"has become much too dangerous and should now give way to a sustained 
diplomatic effort to roll back North Korea's nuclear weapons program 
while it is still in its early stages."

The International Crisis Group (ICG 2006) also points to a combination 
of US statements and actions in the immediate wake of the September 2005 
Joint Statement that reinterpreted the agreement and raised issues and 
conditions, important in themselves, but extraneous to the agreement. 
For example, even the "consideration" of providing DPRK with a light 
water reactor could not begin until after the DPRK had met all 
conditions. To drive home the point, Washington took steps to terminate 
the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, an international 
consortium set up in 1995 to support a light water reactor acquisition. 
The US negotiator also raised human rights issues not linked to the 
agreement and, in a perhaps deliberately timed move, forced the Asian 
bank, Banco Delta Asia, to freeze North Korean assets in an excessive 
response to money laundering and counterfeiting charges. The ICG says 
that South Korean officials suspected the US of attempting to sabotage 
the negotiations.

ELEMENTS OF A DEAL
So the main elements of a deal are not a mystery and they were present 
in both the 1994 "framework agreement" reached with the Clinton 
Administration, and the September 2005 Joint Statement. UN Security 
Council Resolution 1718, unanimously adopted on October 14, 2006 in the 
wake of the warhead test, calls on the DPRK to return to the Six-Party 
talks and "to work toward the expeditious implementation" of the 
September 2005 Joint Statement.

The 1994 and 2005 agreements state the deal in positive terms. The DPRK 
receives economic assistance, especially energy assistance such as fuel 
oil or electricity, consideration regarding the building of a light 
water nuclear power plant, a clear recognition of DPRK sovereignty, and 
security assurances. DPRK in turn commits to a denuclearized Korean 
Peninsula, the termination of all military nuclear programs, the 
placement of all civilian nuclear programs and facilities under full 
IAEA inspections, and its return to the NPT.

Resolution 1718 (UNSC 2006) essentially puts forward the same deal, but 
in negative terms -- that is, until the DPRK meets the central demand to 
return to the NPT and submit to IAEA safeguards, it will specifically be 
denied economic cooperation and subjected to a broad range of punitive 
economic measures. In addition to the requirement of full compliance 
with the NPT and IAEA safeguards, which by definition prohibits nuclear 
testing and the pursuit of nuclear technologies for military purposes, 
the resolution goes further and "demands that the DPRK not conduct any 
further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile."

The Council's action is taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and 
thus includes an enforcement mandate, although the specific provision 
for the "inspection of cargo to and from the DPRK" does not include any 
international enforcement mechanism and is thus left to national action, 
"as necessary," that is consistent with national and international law.

The challenge for the international community is to manage the 
appropriate mix of threat and incentive, and some observers doubt the 
effectiveness of redoubled threats. President Carter (2006) reminds us 
that the North Koreans have been "almost impervious to outside pressure" 
and China and South Korea have resisted any pressures that put the 
survival of the regime in the north in question. The resistance to 
threats is not simply an aversion to being pressured; rather, threats 
and punitive sanctions are taken as evidence that the US and other 
Western powers are not honouring the elements of the September agreement 
that call for security assurances and normalization of relations. [2] 
The north has therefore responded more favourably to positive 
inducements, says Carter, especially those that are understood to take 
regime-change strategies off the table.

In other words, besides the implementation of Resolution 1718, the focus 
must now be to return to the September 19 denuclearization agreement, 
which, according to Carter (2006), accords with a "simple framework for 
a step-by-step agreement..., with the United States giving a firm and 
direct statement of no hostile intent, and moving toward normal 
relations if North Korea forgoes any further nuclear weapons program and 
remains at peace with its neighbors. Each element would have to be 
confirmed by mutual actions combined with unimpeded international 
inspections."

Progress on these elements in resumed Six-Party Talks, says Selig 
Harrison (2006a), will require some initial bilateral talks and 
commitments between the US and DPRK. The US "should agree to bilateral 
negotiations. It should press North Korea to suspend further nuclear and 
missile tests while negotiations on normalization proceed, freeze 
plutonium production and make a firm, time-bound commitment to return to 
the six-party talks. In return, the administration should negotiate a 
compromise on the financial sanctions that would reopen North Korean 
access to the international banking system, offer large-scale energy 
co-operation and remove North Korea from the American list of terrorist 
states, thus opening the way for multilateral aid from the World Bank, 
the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, all of 
which North Korea is actively seeking to join."

Maurice Strong (2006), the Canadian entrepreneur and former UN envoy to 
North Korea, points out that North Korea is committed to a nuclear-free 
Korean Peninsula, "but only if the threat they perceive from the world's 
superpower, the United States, and its hostile policies toward them are 
also removed. This would include sanctions and impediments that deny 
membership to North Korea in international development institutions and 
access to the international trade, investment and assistance it requires 
to rebuild its shattered economy."

Both China and South Korea are obviously keen to see the DPRK comply 
fully with Resolution 1718, but both are at the same time reluctant to 
implement it to the extent that it risks either regime collapse or a 
sudden attack. From China's perspective, regime collapse could draw it 
into responding to a rapidly escalating humanitarian disaster that 
spreads into China and could lead ultimately to the reunification of a 
Korea that is clearly in a Western rather than Chinese orbit.

In the meantime, the world remains confronted with a full-fledged 
nuclear crisis in North Asia. Canada is not a central player, yet Canada 
is a Pacific Power, as Foreign Minister Peter MacKay reminded Canadians 
(Brewster 2006). Perhaps more to the point, Canada has been and needs to 
remain, in the context of this crisis, a key proponent of the 
disarmament and non-proliferation principles established in the NPT and 
the decisions of its review conferences. Indeed, the goal articulated in 
the September 19 Joint Statement -- that is, "the verifiable 
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner" -- is a 
succinct expression of what the NPT norms and principles mean in that 
region. In the context of strong Canadian support for that goal, Canada 
should insist that the international community cannot accept the DPRK, 
or any other additional state, among the ranks of nuclear weapon states, 
that disarmament and non-proliferation standards be universally applied, 
and that multilateralism offers the best hope for meeting the common 
objectives.

NO MORE NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES
The world cannot afford to acquiesce to North Korea's misguided nuclear 
ambitions, the way it has to those of India, Israel, and Pakistan. This 
North Asian nuclear crisis requires timely and sustained attention from 
the international community to achieve the goal of restoring the DPRK as 
a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) party to the NPT, with all of its 
nuclear facilities operated for non-military purposes under safeguards 
agreements with the IAEA -- in other words, implementing the agreed 
September 19, 2005 declaration.

While the defiance of international non-proliferation norms and Treaty 
obligations by any state is appropriately characterized as a crisis, it 
doesn't follow that the dangers and consequences of the Korean nuclear 
crisis are imminent. Although the DPRK has obviously made a major and 
unacceptable stride towards a nuclear weapons capability, it is still a 
long way from mating a nuclear warhead to a long-range missile. That 
further development must certainly not be allowed to happen, and all 
parties have agreed that the only means of prevention is to roll back 
and eliminate the DPRK's military nuclear programs. The need for care 
and caution in the process is obvious, not only because current 
approaches have demonstrably failed, but also because we have all become 
long-term stakeholders in the outcome. Measures leading to the regime's 
collapse would raise "the prospect of loose nukes ending up in the hands 
of power-mad generals in the midst of a war in Korea, or being spirited 
out of the country to find their way into the hands of terrorists" 
(Hayes & Savage 2006).

But there is much more at stake than the threat of loose nukes -- 
notably the threat of escalating nukes within states. The greater danger 
is that the escalation of nuclear weapons under the control of 
governments will lead to the unraveling of the nuclear non-proliferation 
regime itself, undermining restraint and ushering in a new nuclear arms 
race. Indeed there are some who are essentially telling the White House 
that such a nightmare scenario would be a desired outcome. Here is the 
advice David Frum (2006) gives to his former boss in the White House:

"Encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and 
create its own nuclear deterrent... A nuclear Japan is the thing China 
and North Korea dread most... Not only would the nuclearization of Japan 
be a punishment of China and North Korea, but it would go far to meet 
our goal of dissuading Iran -- it would show Tehran that the United 
States and its friends will aggressively seek to correct any attempt by 
rogue states to unsettle any regional nuclear balance. The analogue for 
Iran, of course, would be the threat of American aid to improve Israel's 
capacity to hit targets with nuclear weapons."

While we must hope that official Washington is not as breathtakingly 
irresponsible as Frum, the danger that this crisis will spawn nuclear 
escalation is dangerously real. Fortunately, there are other voices as 
well, such as that of George Perkovich (2006) of the Carnegie Centre:

The most important thing is for the United States to take the lead in 
involving Japan, South Korea and China in very intensive diplomacy about 
how all of the major powers in Northeast Asia can avoid the temptation 
to engage in an arms race which will exacerbate fears of a nuclear 
confrontation in the region. Given that some people perceive that 
Japan's new leadership might wish to reconsider Japan's nuclear policy, 
it is vitally important that the United States lead an intense and 
sustained effort with Japan, South Korea and China to clarify each 
other's intentions and policies in ways that avoid any nuclear competition.

AFFIRMING A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF NON-PROLIFERATION
The established disarmament and non-proliferation standards that Canada 
supports and must insist upon as relevant to the resolution of the 
current North Korean violation of the non-proliferation regime include 
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the 
negotiation of a treaty to ban fissile material production for weapons 
purposes (FMCT), negative security assurances (NSAs), adherence to the 
IAEA Additional Protocol to allow for more effective and intrusive 
inspections of nuclear facilities, and reductions with a view to the 
elimination of existing nuclear arsenals.

The UN Security Council is trying to preach temperance from a bar stool. 
All five permanent members of the Council (P5) are recognized as nuclear 
weapon states (NWS) under the NPT and are obliged to dismantle their 
nuclear arsenals according to Article VI of the Treaty and as confirmed 
in the 1996 World Court opinion. [3] China and the United States refuse 
to ratify the CTBT, even though they obviously want North Korea and all 
other states to abide by it. They refuse to negotiate an FMCT even 
though they obviously want North Korea and all other states to end all 
production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Despite the Treaty 
commitment to abolish nuclear weapons -- a commitment which they 
reaffirmed through the "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon 
States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals 
leading to nuclear disarmament" (NPT 2000) -- the P5 remain determined 
nuclear retentionists. They continue to modernize their arsenals, 
elaborate nuclear use doctrines, and pursue selective non-proliferation 
(e.g., accepting nuclear testing in some cases, such as India and 
Pakistan, but opposing it in others).

PERSISTENT MULTILATERALISM
Multilateralism remains the best defence against a continuing double 
standard and selective non-proliferation. The collapse of talks 
following the September 19 joint statement was no doubt due to a range 
of circumstances, with plenty of blame to go around, but Washington's 
unilateral imposition of sharpened economic sanctions in relation to 
issues not directly linked to the talks was a major factor.

The best protection against such diversions comes from a multilateral 
effort that is based on non-proliferation imperatives that emphasize the 
universal character of non-proliferation norms and reject the double 
standard that is now at the heart of US-led non-proliferation efforts.

In this case the DPRK is particularly hostile to multilateral 
negotiations, preferring bilateral talks with the US. Indeed, it is 
clear that direct talks and accommodations between the DPRK and the US 
are a prerequisite to a positive outcome, but such talks should proceed 
strictly within the multilateral framework of the Six-Party Talks and 
not undermine the common agenda.

INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
Most versions of the formula for a resolution of the North Asian nuclear 
crisis include the provision of nuclear reactors to the DPRK. The steps 
from a nuclear power reactor to a weapons capability are many and 
complicated, but acquiring civilian reactors is definitely part of the 
journey. Iran's efforts to enrich uranium for its planned light water 
reactors are at the core of the international community's dispute with 
Iran. The uranium enrichment process to bring it to the minimal levels 
required in light water reactors is the same process needed to produce 
the high levels of enrichment suitable for use in a bomb. If that 
process is not ultimately brought under strict international control, 
the international community will inevitably find that uranium enrichment 
capability, as well as other advanced nuclear research efforts and 
technologies, will become widely dispersed with obvious and dangerous 
non-proliferation implications.

The North Korean and Iranian disputes should be the occasion to develop 
new standards for the international control of weapons-related 
technologies and materials that are nevertheless part of the civilian 
nuclear energy industry. As we have noted in the case of Iran (Regehr 
2006), an arrangement by which Iran would end its enrichment and 
reprocessing efforts in exchange for international commitments to assure 
it access to nuclear fuel would further efforts toward a system of 
international or multilateral control of the nuclear fuel cycle. The 
same basic arrangement should accompany any DPRK acquisition of new 
nuclear power capabilities. The IAEA and its Director General Mohamed 
ElBaradei, aided by an experts group study, have considered ways to 
multinationalize uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing 
facilities so that these sensitive processes that produce weapons-grade 
materials, even if intended only for electricity generation, do not 
remain under the control of individual states. Most such proposals 
include provisions for an international, perhaps IAEA-controlled, fuel 
bank that would provide fuel to civilian reactors unless ordered not to 
do so by the Security Council (IAEA 2005).

BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENCE
 From its earliest days the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has needed 
the cooperation of Kim Jong Il to preserve the North Korean threat. A 
potential North Korea threat has provided the primary rationale for the 
system to its Congressional advocates, and Mr. Kim has been consistently 
accommodating. The October 9 nuclear warhead detonation also gave a 
boost to the BMD lobby in Canada, just days after the Senate Defence 
Committee recommended, in a report optimistically titled "Managing 
Turmoil," that Canada once again pursue participation in Washington's 
BMD program.

The Senate argued for BMD because "it is not offensive and not a threat 
to any other nation," at the same time that American advocates like 
Frank Gaffney Jr. (2006) and David Frum (2006) argue for it precisely 
because it is threatening -- especially to China. Thus Kim Jong Il and 
North American BMD advocates have found common cause for the moment. 
Eventually more prudent minds will prevail -- even The Globe and Mail's 
John Ibbitson (2006), a consistent supporter of BMD, seemed to 
reluctantly agree that, despite the hype in the context of the current 
Korean nuclear crisis, Canada, including the current Government, is not 
in a mood for another go at BMD. Serious strategists, after all, 
recognize that any possible protection that BMD could offer from a North 
Korean missile would be immediately undercut by manifold increases in 
the Chinese nuclear threat.

If the current crisis is finally resolved, as it must be, along the 
lines of the September 2005 Six-Party Joint Statement, the 
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will have the happy result of 
denying the North American BMD lobby one of its valued allies.

CONCLUSION: REMEMBERING HUMANITY
Immediately after the North Korean nuclear test, the UN Office for the 
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2006) warned of the inevitable 
deterioration of humanitarian conditions for a Korean population already 
enduring extreme suffering. The UN World Food Program is currently able 
to support only one million of the six million people in need. Floods 
this past summer have exacerbated the situation and some of the newly 
displaced are currently being sheltered in abandoned mines. The UN now 
warns that "if China and South Korea, which in recent years have been 
the leading providers of economic and food aid to the North, respond to 
the nuclear tests with an embargo, day-to-day living conditions for the 
North Korean people will deteriorate rapidly, which in turn may lead to 
increased internal displacement and refugee flows."

In their famous 1955 manifesto, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein 
called on the world to abolish nuclear weapons and pursue peaceful means 
of settling disputes, and enjoined us all to "remember your humanity, 
and forget the rest." Especially now, we need to recall that plea on 
behalf of the citizens of North Korea, when their own government 
remembers the rest but forgets their humanity, and when the rest of the 
world contemplates responses that could very well visit further acts of 
inhumanity on them.

NOTES
[1] The Six-Party Talks involve the DPRK, China, Republic of Korea 
(South Korea), Japan, Russia, and the United States.

[2] The Joint Statement (2005) includes the following two declarations: 
"The United States affirmed that it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean 
Peninsula and has no intention to attack or invade the DPRK with nuclear 
or conventional weapons." "The DPRK and the United States undertook to 
respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together, and take 
steps to normalize their relations subject to their respective bilateral 
policies."

[3] On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the 
judicial branch of the United Nations, issued its advisory opinion, 
Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. The ICJ (1996) found 
1) that the threat or use of nuclear weapons "would generally be 
contrary" to humanitarian and other international law regulating the 
conduct of warfare, and 2) that under Article VI of the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty and other international law states are 
obligated to "bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear 
disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international 
control."

[For references attached to this paper, please consult the original 
online at http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf066.pdf. 
--CanKor.]
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RESOURCES

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8.   AN AMERICAN IN DPRK, REVIEW OF "CROSSING THE LINE"
     by Mark Russell, The New York Times, 19 October 2006

Even at 64 years old and in failing health, James Dresnok projects an 
imposing figure. Six-foot-five with a huge frame and giant jowls, he 
speaks into the camera with a firm, distinct Southern accent. Metal 
teeth glint as he talks. "I will give you the truth; I've never told 
anyone before," says Mr. Dresnok, a former soldier, a defector and, for 
the last 44 years, a resident of Pyongyang, North Korea.

Mr. Dresnok is at the center of Daniel Gordon's documentary "Crossing 
the Line," along with the stories of three other American defectors who 
crossed the 2.5-mile, landmine-strewn demilitarized zone to live in 
North Korea. The documentary is Mr. Gordon's third look inside the 
secretive Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The first, "The Game of 
Their Lives," examined the 1966 World Cup soccer team that defeated the 
Italian team and made it, against all odds, to the Cup's quarterfinals. 
Then "A State of Mind" followed two young girls participating in the 
North's overwhelming Mass Games.

The director met his co-producer, Nick Bonner, in 1997 while researching 
the North Korean soccer team. Mr. Bonner has been working with North 
Korea from Beijing for 14 years as the director of Koryo Tours, a travel 
agency. "The Game of Their Lives" made the two men minor celebrities in 
North Korea. "We have taken an apolitical viewpoint, with interviews 
from both sides of the spectrum," Mr. Gordon wrote in an email message. 
"Our previous films have been shown both in North and South Korea," a 
testament to the neutrality of the films, he wrote.

But "Crossing the Line," which had its world premiere on Monday night at 
the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, explores more 
political and controversial territory. "This was the story that we 
thought we could never tell," Mr. Bonner said in an interview after the 
film's premiere. "But we said to the North Koreans, if someone does not 
make this film soon, you won't ever have any record."

Mr. Dresnok was born poor in Norfolk, Va., in 1941. His parents divorced 
when he was 9. His father then abandoned him, and he ended up bouncing 
through a series of foster homes. On his 17th birthday he enlisted in 
the Army. When he returned from service in Germany, his wife wanted a 
divorce. Even now, decades later, the memory makes him cry. "I'm just 
thankful we never had any kids, because I swore I would never leave my 
children," he says as he breaks down in the film.

Soon after, he re-enlisted and was assigned to South Korea, but his 
bitterness led him to spend his money on prostitutes and drinking. "I 
was fed up. If I died or I lived, I didn't care." At noon on Aug. 15, 
1962, with a court martial looming for forging a pass, Pfc. James 
Dresnok took the 12-gauge shotgun he was cleaning and, wearing his 
fatigues, walked across the DMZ in broad daylight.

Once in the North, he joined Pvt. Larry Allen Abshier, who had defected 
three months earlier. In December 1963, Specialist Jerry Wayne Parrish 
also defected, and then Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins in January 1965. 
Together, the four became propaganda heroes for the North.

After a couple of years in North Korea, though, the cultural differences 
felt overwhelming, so in 1966 the four fled to the Soviet Embassy in 
Pyongyang, asking for asylum. But the Russians turned them over to the 
North Koreans. Mr. Dresnok braced for a horrible punishment. But, he 
says, none came. They were ordered to undergo more "education," Mr. 
Dresnok said, and he decided he would try to fit in. "Man is the master 
of his life, and little by little I came to understand the Korean 
people," he said.

By 1972, Mr. Dresnok was considered rehabilitated and was granted North 
Korean citizenship. He married an Eastern European woman and had two 
children. After that wife died, he remarried and had another child. He 
started appearing in propaganda films in 1978 and acted in more than a 
dozen over the next decade. Many North Koreans still call him Mr. 
Arthur, after a character he played in one film.

Mr. Dresnok could barely contain his disgust when he talked about Mr. 
Jenkins, who left North Korea in 2004 and gave a series of high-profile 
interviews about the wretched life he endured in his four decades there. 
Mr. Dresnok calls him a liar and bore. As for Mr. Jenkins's claim that 
Mr. Dresnok used to beat him sadistically, Mr. Dresnok responds that 
they once fought, but there were only two punches: "I hit him and he hit 
the ground." After a few minutes he becomes visibly agitated and asks to 
change the subject.

Mr. Dresnok says he is a true believer in the North Korean system. "I 
wouldn't trade it for nuthin'," he states emphatically. He is proud that 
two of his three sons attend the prestigious Foreign Language School in 
Pyongyang, saying he could never have afforded such an education in the 
United States. "I don't want my sons to be an illiterate old man like 
me." But he is a celebrity in North Korea, and although Pyongyang is 
poor by Western standards, it is the city of the elite for North 
Koreans. "Anyone living in Pyongyang is privileged," Mr. Bonner said. 
"But the main force behind us was human interest."

But privilege is probably not the answer to understanding why Mr. 
Dresnok and the other American defectors decided to build their lives in 
North Korea; belief is. Three of the four American defectors, with the 
exception of Mr. Jenkins, came from broken homes, with missing or 
abusive fathers. They made homes in the most extreme totalitarian state 
in the world, where Kim Il Sung is portrayed at the ultimate father 
figure for the entire nation. Even though Mr. Dresnok has numerous 
health problems (mostly related to his smoking and drinking, which he 
refuses to stop), the North Korean government provides for him and his 
family.

Which leads into the second time Mr. Dresnok cries in the film. While 
talking about the North Korean famines of the 1990's, he says that 
despite the hundreds of thousands who died, the North Koreans never cut 
his rations. "Why? Why do they let their own people starve to death to 
feed an American?" he asks as he tears up. "The Great Leader has given 
us a special solicitude. The government is going to take care of me 
until my dying day."
*************************************************

9.   A FAMILY, A DIVIDED COUNTRY: REVIEW OF "DEAR PYONGYANG"
     by Lim Beom, The Hankyoreh, 20 October 2006

The nationality and residency of second-generation Zainichi Korean Yang 
Yonghi, 41, is a complicated matter. Zainichi is the term to describe 
ethnic Koreans in Japan, who have not been granted citizenship, despite 
some having been there since the beginning of the last century. Yang's 
parents, who live in Osaka, chose to take up North Korean citizenship 
after the division of the two Koreas. Her three brothers carry North 
Korean nationality as well, and they crossed over to North Korea in 
1971, living there ever since.

But Yang, now in Tokyo, decided to switch her citizenship to South 
Korean, completing the paperwork two years ago.

"Dear Pyongyang," a documentary released last August, journeys between 
Pyongyang and Tokyo to tell the intricate story of Mrs. Yang's family. 
It is set for its first screening in South Korea this November. A 
follow-up project received funding from the Pusan International Film 
Festival as part of money for the production of documentaries by 
overseas Koreans. The second film will focus on the life of Mrs. Yang's 
nephew in Pyongyang.

I met Yang on October 15 in Busan. The stories she told me seemed to 
capture the contradictions and irony of national division in an age of 
globalization. Her father, Yang Gong-seon, came to Japan from his 
homeland of Jeju Island with his siblings in 1942 at the age of 15. 
Though he tried to return home after Korea's liberation, his mother 
warned him against going after the April 3, 1947 uprisings, in which 
many residents of Jeju Island, suspected of being communists, were 
massacred.

Her father chose to take up North Korean citizenship but remain in 
Japan, eventually becoming a high-ranking officer in Chongryon, or the 
General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, the pro-Pyongyang 
group of ethnic Koreans in Japan.

When Yang was six, her three brothers left for Pyongyang. "I vividly 
remember people bidding farewell to the boat bound for North Korea at 
the Port of Nigata," she said. "They sang songs and shouted 'hurray!' as 
confetti filled the air. It seemed at the time as if my brothers were 
going further away than I could imagine."

Eleven years later, Yang went to Pyongyang to meet her brothers. "It was 
awkward, and I didn't know what to say," she recalled. "All we could do 
was exchange simple words. Our meeting time was also very short."

Though she would return to Pyongyang many times in the following years, 
and despite the fact that she and her brothers would talk more deeply on 
those occasions, a sense of doubt began to grow within her heart. 
Following pro-Pyongyang high school policy, which says that "graduates 
must perform service for Chongryon," she went to Osaka against her will 
and spent three years teaching at a pro-North Korean school. After that, 
she said to herself, "I have done all I can, and now I will live as I 
choose."

Finding work as a waitress instead, she pursued her long-held dream of 
working in theater. Though she thought of changing her nationality to 
South Korean at the age of 30, her father strongly opposed, vowing that 
he would "never forgive" her, even after his death.

After her 30th birthday, Yang's interests started to lean toward 
documentary films. "At first, I thought I would film my family for the 
sake of leaving a record behind," she said. "However, after attending a 
documentary festival, I started to think more and more about the 
format's possibilities."

She went to New York at 34 to study documentary production. "Though it 
was complicated as a Zainichi with North Korean citizenship to go to 
America, it was not impossible," she said. "But it has become all but 
impossible since the inauguration of the Bush administration."

Present in New York on 9/11, she spoke of her sorrow on that day. And 
also of her realization of her own tenuous identity.

"When I thought about it, if I had been a victim, there would have been 
no embassy there to help me. I met the North Koreans employees working 
under the UN secretariat, and they asked me whether it was even legal 
for a North Korean citizen to come to America in the first place."

With time's passage, the world changed, and so did the attitude of her 
father. "He once lamented, 'How on earth can my daughter be going to 
imperialistic America?' but afterward, he pondered taking a trip to New 
York himself. But I told him he could not come."

Finally, after gaining the permission of her father, she changed her 
citizenship to South Korean in 2004. From tracking down her brothers in 
Pyongyang in 1995 to her father bedridden with illness in 2005, the 
images captured in "Dear Pyongyang" are at once distinct yet universal, 
thus making for a moving picture about one family's story. This year, it 
was awarded the NETPAC Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and the Special 
Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

"I hope to go to North Korea once every two or three years," she said, 
"but I worry about the bad state of the North Korean economy. My parents 
used to send all sorts of goods over there, and now it would seem that 
this role has been left to me. After all, I cannot go there with empty 
hands."

Recently, however, a formidable barrier has formed. With the latest 
nuclear crisis, the North Korean vessels that used to travel frequently 
to and from Japan have been barred from entry altogether.
*************************************************

10.  THE CULT AND THE CRISIS: REVIEW OF 5 NEW BOOKS ON DPRK
     by John Gittings, The Guardian, 14 October 2006

-- Art Under Control in North Korea by Jane Portal, Reaktion, 192pp
-- Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea by Keith Pratt, Reaktion, 256pp
-- Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World by Gordon Chang, 
Hutchinson, 352pp
-- North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula by Paul French, Zed Books, 323pp
-- North Korea in the 21st Century by James Hoare and Susan Pares, 
Global Oriental, 192pp

The first lesson anyone visiting the Democratic People's Republic of 
Korea has to grasp is that the real and the unreal, the normal and the 
abnormal, are inextricably intertwined. An ability to separate out these 
conflicting elements is essential for anyone seeking to understand the 
North Korean regime and its people.

As the nuclear factor looms larger, getting this balance right may 
become a matter of life or death. Korea, especially the North, is now a 
publishing item: the books before me -- and these are only some recent 
titles -- include a polemic urging "obliteration" of the Pyongyang 
regime; a more sober analysis of the "paranoid peninsula"; a full-scale 
history of Korea from its mythical past up to the Seoul Olympics; a 
general guide to the North by Britain's first diplomat there; and the 
first study of North Korean realist art.

Let us start at the top (as one can't avoid doing) with the cult of the 
Kim dynasty, father and now son. Pervasive is an understatement for a 
phenomenon from which there is no place to hide. A painting in Art Under 
Control -- Jane Portal's fascinating study of the interface between art 
and politics in North Korea -- shows a little girl playing the accordion 
while a boy with chubby knees sings that "We're the happiest in the 
world (because of the benevolence of Great General Kim Il Sung)". I have 
seen 20 little girls with accordions in the Pyongyang Children's Palace 
playing a similar song in unison -- and 20 more in the next room playing 
it on the cello. It is a cult that consciously refers back to the dawn 
of Korean history. Kim Jong Il is portrayed as inheriting the mandate of 
Tangun, the mythical founder of Korea 5,000 years ago. This requires Kim 
Jong Il to have been born on the slopes of the sacred Mt Paekdu -- where 
Tangun first appeared -- although Kim's real birthplace was in the 
Soviet Far East. Keith Pratt, in his full and fascinating study of 
Korean history, cites previous attempts in the imperial era to 
appropriate the Tangun myth: if Korea were ever reunified in the future, 
he writes, "the implications of a new 'semi-divine' birth on its [Mt 
Paekdu's] slopes would be obvious".

The cult is fascinating and horrifying (as well as being a huge 
diversion of scarce resources) but the central question today lies 
elsewhere: is Kim Jong Il a rational leader with whom the West can do 
business, or a loose missile (perhaps, after Pyongyang's nuclear test, 
an unguided bomb) to be neutralized before he destroys himself and 
possibly the world? The second view, unsurprisingly, was the one 
favoured by the Bush administration, which on coming to power aborted 
the dialogue with Pyongyang begun under Bill Clinton.

Gordon Chang's Nuclear Showdown would do well on George Bush's bedside 
table: Chang regards North Korea as a rogue state that has put "all 
humanity at risk" and depicts Kim Jong Il as a monster, recluse and 
lover of S&M videos who can "barely say six words" in public. Chang's 
prescription for dealing with the North is regime change, indeed "regime 
obliteration" through military force if diplomacy should fail. Chang's 
first book, The Coming Collapse of China, was much better researched and 
argued in spite of its apocalyptic title. Now he seems to be bidding for 
a bigger and more dangerous bang.

Paul French's more balanced study of North Korea today reminds us that 
Kim Jong Il, far from being tongue-tied, appears "capable and 
knowledgeable" to those who have met him, including the former US 
secretary of state Madeleine Albright. When Kim Jong Il met a delegation 
of senior South Korean media figures in 2000, at the height of Kim Dae 
Jung's "sunshine diplomacy" towards the North, he spoke as a Korean 
nationalist: "The smaller the nation, he declared, the stronger it must 
be to keep its pride." But he added that no one need worry, because it 
would be madness for North Korea to launch "two or three" missiles at 
the US.

French's thesis is the exact opposite of Chang's: North Korea is "a 
failed state and therefore liable to become unstable unless engaged 
enthusiastically and strategically". The outside world ignored the North 
for decades, he argues, except at intelligence levels, and "a little 
paranoia is perhaps forgivable". The 1994 Agreed Framework, which was 
supposed to reward Pyongyang for halting its nuclear programme, was 
"never really taken seriously by Washington". This longer historical 
view is essential if one is to grasp not only what drives the North 
Korean regime but what it shares (to the growing irritation of the US) 
with the South.

"Nationalism is strong," says Pratt, "in both North and South Korea. The 
world needs to understand it, though not necessarily to fear it." 
Koreans on both sides of the 38th parallel (based, according to Pratt, 
on "nothing more than a National Geographic map") are still acutely 
conscious that for them the cold war is not over.

Hardest of all is to understand what life is like for millions of 
ordinary North Koreans, apart from the fact that they have been 
desperately short of food for more than a decade. Jim Hoare and Susan 
Pares, who have written an entertaining account of setting up the new 
British embassy in Pyongyang, have a good eye for human detail. North 
Korean society, they tell us, is becoming more differentiated and 
unequal as the regime gingerly introduces market reform. There are golf 
courses, pet dogs and even private cars; there has been a decline in 
collective effort such as clearing the snow, and there are more 
pickpockets on public transport and at markets. Public health made big 
improvements until the 70s, but has since fallen away: there are sad 
stories of elderly people dying alone in unheated apartments or on the 
stairs of high-rise blocks.

Hoare was for years the only British diplomat in Whitehall who tried to 
understand the effect of the past on North Korea. His colleagues would 
grimace and roll their eyes when he argued that Pyongyang might have a 
rational point of view. The official Foreign Office line was that the US 
state department had 100% ownership of the North Korean problem and it 
would be folly for Britain to get involved. Even in the South Korean 
capital, British diplomats insisted that they were "just a commercial 
mission".

There was a patchy dialogue with the North in the 90s, but Hoare says 
the atmosphere was often frosty, "with minimum courtesy on the British 
side". Not until 2000 -- after Italy and Australia had already 
recognized Pyongyang and US-North Korean relations under Clinton were 
improving -- did Britain have the nerve to follow suit. What an 
opportunity Britain missed. It is still a long and difficult task to 
bring North Korea in from the cold, but one that is vastly preferable to 
a nuclear showdown.
*************************************************

End CanKor # 265

*************************************************


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