My opinion is just the opposite. Collaboration by the international community-that is, China and the United States-to economically isolate North Korea until the Kim Jong-Il regime agrees to completely and transparently give up its development of nuclear weapons: I believe this is the right resolution.
I have learned, from lunch conversations in Valentine, and from op-ed articles in newspapers, many of the opposing arguments. During the Clinton administration, North Korea did not produce a single ounce of plutonium; with its tough stance, the Bush administration is egging on the North Korean government and abetting Kim Jong-Il in the isolation of his own people.
North Korea did not produce plutonium during the Clinton administration because its tactic of threatening peace in East Asia to prop up its dying economy was working. In 1994, North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear program in return for $5 billion worth of free fuel and two nuclear reactors from the United States.
But even while humoring the United States in the '90s, North Korea made it a point to show its jumpiest neighbors that its belligerence had not been tamed. In 1998, North Korea launched a rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean. The North Korean spokesman insisted afterwards that it was a satellite, not a missile; but in any case the rocket jolted Japan and South Korea as desired.
Neither is it a trustworthy fact that North Korea was honoring its agreements with the United States, as it was discovered in 2002 that North Korea may have been acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium since the late '90s. Once his crude bullying strategy has worked, Kim Jong-Il will recycle it over and over again.
Even with all these facts, I might favor diplomatic negotiations if I had the slightest inkling that the ongoing famine and the heinous human rights violations in North Korea would be alleviated as a result.
Those who argue that diplomatic negotiations, not sanctions, will help the civilians of North Korea are not listening closely enough. Recently, there have been several video footages smuggled out of North Korea and broadcasted on various television networks or circulated on the Internet. These footages were taken by a few North Koreans brave enough to go in and out of North Korea through the Chinese-North Korean border for the sole purpose of alerting the world to what is going on within the Hermit State. These footages portray the frequent sight of the food aid from the United Nations, the United States and the Salvation Army being sold in the black market to those few North Koreans with money, while the homeless orphans pick at the fish bones and crumbs on the ground.
I urge you to see it for yourself: "Children of the Secret State," the best documentary about the human rights situation in North Korea I have seen to date, can be viewed for free on Google Video. In it, a North Korean orphan who defected to China testifies that the government runs hostels, where orphans are incarcerated and denied food and medication. A North Korean farmer tells the story of being ordered by the government to grow opium (later processed and turned into drugs such as heroine, and exported for government profit), on soil meant for growing potatoes; he was forced to throw away the potato seeds. A representative of the non-profit organization Action Against Hunger testifies that his organization withdrew from North Korea after seeing that its aid was not being distributed to those who needed it most. Other organizations such as Doctors without Borders and Oxfam have also pulled out of the country after witnessing that the North Korean government diverts their aid away from the neediest civilians, mostly to the military.
What more must the North Koreans, those few who are given the chance to be heard, tell us before we realize that the Kim Jong-Il regime will not feed its citizens even when given the means to do so? We cannot help the suffering by helping their persecutors.
Expecting the same democratization that happened in China as a natural outcome of its government's participation in international trade during the '80s to happen in North Korea is also misguided. China is more than 77 times the size of North Korea; its population at the time of its democratization, too, was incomparably larger than the current 23 million of North Korea. Kim Jong-Il's task of isolating and brainwashing the citizens of North Korea is a much lighter one than the Chinese government's has been. Counting on diplomatic negotiations to break down the walls that Kim Jong-Il has built between the North Korean civilians and the outside world is naïve optimism. Even if the United States and others agree to more fluent commerce between themselves and North Korea, not one person will leave, nor will any information enter those walls against Kim Jong-Il's will. There is scarcely any similarity between Kim Jong-Il and the Chinese leaders of the '80s and '90s. To Kim Jong-Il, whose only intention is maintenance of absolute power over his state, the first priority is control of information within the personality cult that is North Korea; boosting the nation's economy is a far second.
"Talk is not appeasement," goes the catchphrase. But what else should we call a policy that sustains and even compensates a state that uses intimidation for spoils, after it has continually shown blithe disregard for international law and contempt for the lives of its own citizens? Our task now is not to promote a talk with North Korea, but to impose economic coercion with the intention to disarm North Korea once and for all.
Though the Security Council's resolution prohibiting trade with North Korea of luxury goods and weapons is a step towards the right direction, it is insufficient. China, despite its outward disinclination, has started to play a more influential role in ostracizing North Korea economically. Massive plans for industrial collaboration between the two nations and normal trade along the border are dissolving. The participation of Chinese-based banks in fiscal sanctions also seems imminent, and as a result, North Korea's export to China and foreign currency import will be seriously injured. Such direct strain on its economy is the only language that will get through to North Korea. Alleviation of egregious human rights violations and of the threat against peace in East Asia will only come as a result of separating Kim Jong-Il from his sole leverage.
Janet Ha '07 was Kim Jong-Il for Halloween (what could be more frightening?).