Thursday, June 05, 2003
Nothing to report first hand today, but two interesting pieces that I would like to share. The first if from the Opinion page of the WSJ. The second is from a blog, called innocents abroad: www.innocentsaborad.blogspot.com. Thanks to both the WSJ and to Collin May.
A Defector's Story
My escape from North Korea--and South Korea.
BY BOK KU LEE
Thursday, June 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
Bok Ku Lee is not my real name, but one I've adopted to protect my family.
For a number of years I served as head of the technical department at a munitions complex that made missile guidance systems and related electronic devices for North Korea's military. I was one of 100,000 or so scientific and professional people involved in the regime's weapons of mass destruction industry.
While I made enough money to modestly feed my family, I witnessed mass starvation and oppression of those less fortunate, and unspeakable abuses of power and lifestyle excesses by senior political officials of the regime. As did everyone, I lived in constant fear of being sent to the gulag for the slightest indiscretion.
Nonetheless, I was trusted with some of the regime's biggest secrets. While serving, I was sent to Iran to test launch one of our missiles with a new guidance system for the then-ruling Ayatollah Khomeini. I consulted with colleagues who were sent to serve on an operational war basis for Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, and others who were sent to other countries to sell, service and install such missile systems. I ordered, supervised and monitored the foreign purchases of electronic and guidance material--90% of which came from Japanese suppliers. I worked with some of the 60 or so Russian scientists who had been "cherry picked" by the regime to work in Pyongyang's nuclear, atomic, chemical and biological warfare programs--and who continue to work there.
Yet, like most of my fellow countrymen, I longed for the day when I could escape the Stalinist prison my country had become. That day came six years ago. I made my escape in July 1997 by crossing the Yalu River into China after sundown. I lived in China for two years with enough money, contacts and employable skills to make me less vulnerable to starvation or capture than most North Korean refugees. That said, I lived in constant terror of capture by Chinese authorities, for I knew that such capture would have resulted in a death sentence upon repatriation to the North. In 1999, thanks to an ethnic Korean in China who notified me of a fishing boat scheduled to ferry dozens of illegal laborers that very night, and, unknown to the operators of this boat, I escaped to South Korea as a true stowaway.
Upon my arrival, I was debriefed by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, and occasionally put in the hands of unsophisticated American questioners in Seoul. Remarkably, the South Korean officials made it clear to me that I would be in danger if I were to speak out about the WMD programs I had worked on or the atrocities I had witnessed. It soon became obvious that they feared my testimony because it might jeopardize South Korea's "sunshine policy," which seeks to keep the North's repressive regime in power in order to avoid the economic consequences to the South were it to collapse.
Incredibly, Seoul seems unwilling to accept that propping up Kim Jong Il's regime has had grave consequences for the world. While traveling to the China-North Korea border last year, I met with former colleagues and learned that the production at our old missile guidance system plant was up to normal levels following receipt by the regime of substantial amounts of foreign currency from the South. In 1997, when I left the plant, the output had shriveled to 30% of the pre-Nodong One launch in 1993 due to the lack of hard currency that had limited the capacity to pay for Japanese parts imports.
Last year, facing increased pressures from the South Korean Intelligence Service to remain an invisible man, I decided to do all I could to escape from South Korea's hands. I obtained a passport under the pretense of traveling to Japan, and, with the aid of an underground-railroad activist, obtained a visa that brought me to the U.S. last month. While here, I put on a hood to protect my identity, held a press conference in Washington and testified before the Senate in open and closed sessions about what I know about Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction.
The reaction to my activities on the part of the South Korean intelligence was immediate. My wife, a North Korean escapee who'd been captured by the Chinese and sent to a North Korean prison before escaping again, was subjected to threatening phone calls from police and intelligence officials that so terrorized her as to cause her collapse and hospitalization. Thanks to the intervention of Sens. Richard Lugar, Peter Fitzgerald and Daniel Akaka--to whom I shall remain forever grateful--South Korean officials have since been contacted about the treatment of my wife, and the harassment and intimidation have, for the moment, ceased.
My experience as a North Korean weapons official and defector, and my knowledge and ongoing relations with other defectors and current North Korean officials, led me to a few critical conclusions that may be of value to American officials who now, in a post-Iraq world, are confronting full-force the reality of Pyongyang's lunatic regime.
First, "understandings" with Pyongyang that cause the exchange of hard currency for "guarantees" that the regime will discontinue its nuclear and WMD programs are both immoral and doomed to failure. Immoral because such understandings come, in the end, to this: promises by Pyongyang not to export terrorism are exchanged for assurances to Pyongyang that it is licensed to commit as much terrorism against its own people as it wishes. And doomed to failure because, as the Clinton agreements prove, any effort to finance, legitimize or empower the regime only strengthens its desire and capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction.
I come from a country whose rulers are indifferent to the mass starvation of their own people--one whose citizens are on average more than seven inches shorter than their Southern brothers and sisters, and one that requires its citizens to rise early in the morning to join screeching public-address systems in singing absurd songs of praise to a deranged leader. But--and this is now increasingly true and true to a degree that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago--my fellow countrymen know and openly acknowledge that Kim Jong Il is both evil and lunatic and doomed. More and more, midlevel officials like me in the North Korean military and WMD industry see the regime's blustering threats against other countries as evidence of its isolation, desperation and declining hold on power.
The time has come for South Korea and the U.S. to encourage the defection of thousands like me who are prepared to tell the world what they know and whose departure will deprive the regime of skills it needs to survive. Such mass defections will occur if the defectors are given a reasonable prospect for safe harbor outside of North Korea. At the same time, Seoul should end its barbarous "sunshine policy," which sentences fellow Koreans to slavery because giving them freedom would cost too much money.
In short, the time has come to recognize that a policy of promoting democracy, insisting and ensuring that humanitarian aid actually go to the hungry rather than the regime, and encouraging mass defections, will cause the repeat in North Korea of what happened when East Germans defected to Austria through Hungary, thereby triggering the implosion of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. This is a real and likely prospect for the oppressed people of my country and for world security.
Fantastic! I strogly support the return to a world in which ideals are the guiding principle of those who have the power to change things!
From innocents abroad:
All the Wild Things France Can Muster
As I mentioned a few days ago, I haven’t been posting much lately, in part because I was traveling and in part because I’ve been rather busy with other work. But I have another reason for my lack of blogging of late – I needed to catch my breath. The war in Iraq and, even more so, the diplomatic wrangling during the lead up to the war were a rather tiring affair especially when you’re a blogger living in France but supporting the US. However, the world takes no breathers and politics, in France and the rest of the world, moves on.
What I’ve found most interesting since the end of the war is the relative silence of the French. With reports of sectarian bickering and difficulties in the post-war reconstruction team set up by the Americans, it would seem that the French critics of the war should now be taking every opportunity to take swipes at the US, but they aren’t. There are the odd criticisms in the French press, but nothing to compare to the pre-war vitriol. This could be explained by the rather extreme situation that war presents, and yet it does seem a bit odd that so much was said before the event of war, while so little is being said during the ongoing event which is reconstruction.
I suspect there are two reasons for this silence. The first is that the unprecedented success of the military operation left the critics with some egg on the face. Despite all the claims of the naysayers - that the war would turn into a quagmire, that the Arab street would explode and governments would fall throughout the region, that millions of civilians would die – the actual progress of the war was astounding and resulted in the fastest military advance in the history of warfare. Incidentally, the same critics raised the same objections over Afghanistan. Having been utterly and amazingly wrong in both cases, it seems these critics have decided to take a bit of cover. And we can’t forget the simple fact that these same people and nations are also now trying to get back in the American good books, except maybe for France. As a result, they seem leery about saying much even though one could raise legitimate questions about the efficacy of reconstruction efforts; though I suspect there are also legitimate answers for such questions.
The second reason for French silence, and probably the more interesting, is that the French have returned to more pressing diplomatic matters, matters which I encountered head-on today as I walked past the Place Ernest Denis along the Boulevard du Montparnasse. The French public sector was engaged in something it does quite well – it was holding a demonstration, and considering how many people actually work for the French public service, these things can run for miles. Today’s demonstration was not the first, but one in a series that have been going on for over a week now. The object, actually objects of the demonstrators’ anger include various reforms that the French government is currently implementing: pension reform, education reform, decentralization of government services and administration. Personally, I support the reforms which are long overdue. Still, there is substantial resistance because the proposed changes represent, in essence, the end of the Mitterand era of expansive government services. This isn’t to suggest that France’s far-reaching social system, known as dirigisme, is coming to an end. What it does mean is that the dreams of the French left for a thorough socialized and centralized state system built around the motto of “solidarite” are in trouble.
In this regard, France isn’t alone in Europe. Italy has already embarked on similar reforms, which elicited similar protests in that country. Austria is doing the same and meeting with the same demonstrations by the public sector. And Gerhard Schroeder, despite being a socialist, has called for precisely the same changes to the German corporatist social system. In short, there is something of a revolution going on in Europe. But there is a question as to whether the reforms will be enough. The Economist recently ran an article with some dire warnings. It noted that, as far as the French public is concerned, a majority support the marchers in the street and believe that pensions and education spending should not be cut back. Indeed, it was attempts to introduce similar reforms by the centre-right government of Alain Juppe that brought the Socialists back to power in the election of 1997. But from the Economist’s perspective, the whole issue may be a mute question in any case, because according to most projections, even the current reforms as proposed by the French government will be insufficient to save the public pension system. France is heading for something of a social collapse.
The problem for France, and the rest of Europe is not new, at least not the cause. Europe, as is now common knowledge, has decided to quit reproducing. In other words, demographics are working against the old continent. Almost every West European nation, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, has a birth rate well below the 2% replacement level. This is expected to continue will into the future, and even with increased immigration levels, the population of Europe is expected to decline significantly over the next 50 years. By contrast, North America’s population is expected to grow at a steady rate. Not surprisingly, this is going to lead to a decline in Europe’s overall percentage of global economic output. A recent study by a French think tank predicted that Europe’s share of global production will fall from its current rate of 22% to 11% by 2050. The North American percentage will fall only slightly from 25 to 22%.
As I noted, however, this situation isn’t entirely new for France. One of the main reasons for France’s decline relative to the German states during the nineteenth century was precisely demographics. While Germany, along with England, experienced substantial population growth during the nineteenth century, France’s population remained unchanged. The reasons for this were varied. One was simply that France had thrown so many of its young men onto the field of battle during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that it didn’t have the base from which to expand its population (a similar thing happened to the German states after the Thirty Years War from 1618-1648). The other reason, a more spiritual reason if you will, was that France had become a rather excessively bourgeois country. Simply put, it had become complacent, with a pacifist citizenry intent on enjoying its trite luxuries. This was one of the main criticisms French historian Ernest Renan launched against his country in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Unfortunately for France, this didn’t stop Napoleon III, the scion of the second French empire, from seeking military glory during his tenure, and against the militaristic Germans no less. The result was the Franco-Prussian War and a stunning defeat for the French. Renan’s advice after the debacle was for France to reconsider its domestic situation and make some much need changes. France, and in many respects, the rest of Europe instead decided to increase their militaristic posture and colonialist competition, resulting in World War I.
After World War II, however, under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle, France did attempt to implement many of Renan’s suggestions. Today, some would argue that Jacques Chirac is following in de Gaulle’s path. Though I support the French government on the issue of pension reform, along with other European governments, I don’t see this action as being specifically Gaullist. Rather, I think it may be something quite different and far more threatening. But I’ll save that for the next post.
posted by Collin May at 5/19/2003 04:28:57
A Defector's Story
My escape from North Korea--and South Korea.
BY BOK KU LEE
Thursday, June 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
Bok Ku Lee is not my real name, but one I've adopted to protect my family.
For a number of years I served as head of the technical department at a munitions complex that made missile guidance systems and related electronic devices for North Korea's military. I was one of 100,000 or so scientific and professional people involved in the regime's weapons of mass destruction industry.
While I made enough money to modestly feed my family, I witnessed mass starvation and oppression of those less fortunate, and unspeakable abuses of power and lifestyle excesses by senior political officials of the regime. As did everyone, I lived in constant fear of being sent to the gulag for the slightest indiscretion.
Nonetheless, I was trusted with some of the regime's biggest secrets. While serving, I was sent to Iran to test launch one of our missiles with a new guidance system for the then-ruling Ayatollah Khomeini. I consulted with colleagues who were sent to serve on an operational war basis for Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, and others who were sent to other countries to sell, service and install such missile systems. I ordered, supervised and monitored the foreign purchases of electronic and guidance material--90% of which came from Japanese suppliers. I worked with some of the 60 or so Russian scientists who had been "cherry picked" by the regime to work in Pyongyang's nuclear, atomic, chemical and biological warfare programs--and who continue to work there.
Yet, like most of my fellow countrymen, I longed for the day when I could escape the Stalinist prison my country had become. That day came six years ago. I made my escape in July 1997 by crossing the Yalu River into China after sundown. I lived in China for two years with enough money, contacts and employable skills to make me less vulnerable to starvation or capture than most North Korean refugees. That said, I lived in constant terror of capture by Chinese authorities, for I knew that such capture would have resulted in a death sentence upon repatriation to the North. In 1999, thanks to an ethnic Korean in China who notified me of a fishing boat scheduled to ferry dozens of illegal laborers that very night, and, unknown to the operators of this boat, I escaped to South Korea as a true stowaway.
Upon my arrival, I was debriefed by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, and occasionally put in the hands of unsophisticated American questioners in Seoul. Remarkably, the South Korean officials made it clear to me that I would be in danger if I were to speak out about the WMD programs I had worked on or the atrocities I had witnessed. It soon became obvious that they feared my testimony because it might jeopardize South Korea's "sunshine policy," which seeks to keep the North's repressive regime in power in order to avoid the economic consequences to the South were it to collapse.
Incredibly, Seoul seems unwilling to accept that propping up Kim Jong Il's regime has had grave consequences for the world. While traveling to the China-North Korea border last year, I met with former colleagues and learned that the production at our old missile guidance system plant was up to normal levels following receipt by the regime of substantial amounts of foreign currency from the South. In 1997, when I left the plant, the output had shriveled to 30% of the pre-Nodong One launch in 1993 due to the lack of hard currency that had limited the capacity to pay for Japanese parts imports.
Last year, facing increased pressures from the South Korean Intelligence Service to remain an invisible man, I decided to do all I could to escape from South Korea's hands. I obtained a passport under the pretense of traveling to Japan, and, with the aid of an underground-railroad activist, obtained a visa that brought me to the U.S. last month. While here, I put on a hood to protect my identity, held a press conference in Washington and testified before the Senate in open and closed sessions about what I know about Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction.
The reaction to my activities on the part of the South Korean intelligence was immediate. My wife, a North Korean escapee who'd been captured by the Chinese and sent to a North Korean prison before escaping again, was subjected to threatening phone calls from police and intelligence officials that so terrorized her as to cause her collapse and hospitalization. Thanks to the intervention of Sens. Richard Lugar, Peter Fitzgerald and Daniel Akaka--to whom I shall remain forever grateful--South Korean officials have since been contacted about the treatment of my wife, and the harassment and intimidation have, for the moment, ceased.
My experience as a North Korean weapons official and defector, and my knowledge and ongoing relations with other defectors and current North Korean officials, led me to a few critical conclusions that may be of value to American officials who now, in a post-Iraq world, are confronting full-force the reality of Pyongyang's lunatic regime.
First, "understandings" with Pyongyang that cause the exchange of hard currency for "guarantees" that the regime will discontinue its nuclear and WMD programs are both immoral and doomed to failure. Immoral because such understandings come, in the end, to this: promises by Pyongyang not to export terrorism are exchanged for assurances to Pyongyang that it is licensed to commit as much terrorism against its own people as it wishes. And doomed to failure because, as the Clinton agreements prove, any effort to finance, legitimize or empower the regime only strengthens its desire and capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction.
I come from a country whose rulers are indifferent to the mass starvation of their own people--one whose citizens are on average more than seven inches shorter than their Southern brothers and sisters, and one that requires its citizens to rise early in the morning to join screeching public-address systems in singing absurd songs of praise to a deranged leader. But--and this is now increasingly true and true to a degree that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago--my fellow countrymen know and openly acknowledge that Kim Jong Il is both evil and lunatic and doomed. More and more, midlevel officials like me in the North Korean military and WMD industry see the regime's blustering threats against other countries as evidence of its isolation, desperation and declining hold on power.
The time has come for South Korea and the U.S. to encourage the defection of thousands like me who are prepared to tell the world what they know and whose departure will deprive the regime of skills it needs to survive. Such mass defections will occur if the defectors are given a reasonable prospect for safe harbor outside of North Korea. At the same time, Seoul should end its barbarous "sunshine policy," which sentences fellow Koreans to slavery because giving them freedom would cost too much money.
In short, the time has come to recognize that a policy of promoting democracy, insisting and ensuring that humanitarian aid actually go to the hungry rather than the regime, and encouraging mass defections, will cause the repeat in North Korea of what happened when East Germans defected to Austria through Hungary, thereby triggering the implosion of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. This is a real and likely prospect for the oppressed people of my country and for world security.
Fantastic! I strogly support the return to a world in which ideals are the guiding principle of those who have the power to change things!
From innocents abroad:
All the Wild Things France Can Muster
As I mentioned a few days ago, I haven’t been posting much lately, in part because I was traveling and in part because I’ve been rather busy with other work. But I have another reason for my lack of blogging of late – I needed to catch my breath. The war in Iraq and, even more so, the diplomatic wrangling during the lead up to the war were a rather tiring affair especially when you’re a blogger living in France but supporting the US. However, the world takes no breathers and politics, in France and the rest of the world, moves on.
What I’ve found most interesting since the end of the war is the relative silence of the French. With reports of sectarian bickering and difficulties in the post-war reconstruction team set up by the Americans, it would seem that the French critics of the war should now be taking every opportunity to take swipes at the US, but they aren’t. There are the odd criticisms in the French press, but nothing to compare to the pre-war vitriol. This could be explained by the rather extreme situation that war presents, and yet it does seem a bit odd that so much was said before the event of war, while so little is being said during the ongoing event which is reconstruction.
I suspect there are two reasons for this silence. The first is that the unprecedented success of the military operation left the critics with some egg on the face. Despite all the claims of the naysayers - that the war would turn into a quagmire, that the Arab street would explode and governments would fall throughout the region, that millions of civilians would die – the actual progress of the war was astounding and resulted in the fastest military advance in the history of warfare. Incidentally, the same critics raised the same objections over Afghanistan. Having been utterly and amazingly wrong in both cases, it seems these critics have decided to take a bit of cover. And we can’t forget the simple fact that these same people and nations are also now trying to get back in the American good books, except maybe for France. As a result, they seem leery about saying much even though one could raise legitimate questions about the efficacy of reconstruction efforts; though I suspect there are also legitimate answers for such questions.
The second reason for French silence, and probably the more interesting, is that the French have returned to more pressing diplomatic matters, matters which I encountered head-on today as I walked past the Place Ernest Denis along the Boulevard du Montparnasse. The French public sector was engaged in something it does quite well – it was holding a demonstration, and considering how many people actually work for the French public service, these things can run for miles. Today’s demonstration was not the first, but one in a series that have been going on for over a week now. The object, actually objects of the demonstrators’ anger include various reforms that the French government is currently implementing: pension reform, education reform, decentralization of government services and administration. Personally, I support the reforms which are long overdue. Still, there is substantial resistance because the proposed changes represent, in essence, the end of the Mitterand era of expansive government services. This isn’t to suggest that France’s far-reaching social system, known as dirigisme, is coming to an end. What it does mean is that the dreams of the French left for a thorough socialized and centralized state system built around the motto of “solidarite” are in trouble.
In this regard, France isn’t alone in Europe. Italy has already embarked on similar reforms, which elicited similar protests in that country. Austria is doing the same and meeting with the same demonstrations by the public sector. And Gerhard Schroeder, despite being a socialist, has called for precisely the same changes to the German corporatist social system. In short, there is something of a revolution going on in Europe. But there is a question as to whether the reforms will be enough. The Economist recently ran an article with some dire warnings. It noted that, as far as the French public is concerned, a majority support the marchers in the street and believe that pensions and education spending should not be cut back. Indeed, it was attempts to introduce similar reforms by the centre-right government of Alain Juppe that brought the Socialists back to power in the election of 1997. But from the Economist’s perspective, the whole issue may be a mute question in any case, because according to most projections, even the current reforms as proposed by the French government will be insufficient to save the public pension system. France is heading for something of a social collapse.
The problem for France, and the rest of Europe is not new, at least not the cause. Europe, as is now common knowledge, has decided to quit reproducing. In other words, demographics are working against the old continent. Almost every West European nation, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, has a birth rate well below the 2% replacement level. This is expected to continue will into the future, and even with increased immigration levels, the population of Europe is expected to decline significantly over the next 50 years. By contrast, North America’s population is expected to grow at a steady rate. Not surprisingly, this is going to lead to a decline in Europe’s overall percentage of global economic output. A recent study by a French think tank predicted that Europe’s share of global production will fall from its current rate of 22% to 11% by 2050. The North American percentage will fall only slightly from 25 to 22%.
As I noted, however, this situation isn’t entirely new for France. One of the main reasons for France’s decline relative to the German states during the nineteenth century was precisely demographics. While Germany, along with England, experienced substantial population growth during the nineteenth century, France’s population remained unchanged. The reasons for this were varied. One was simply that France had thrown so many of its young men onto the field of battle during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that it didn’t have the base from which to expand its population (a similar thing happened to the German states after the Thirty Years War from 1618-1648). The other reason, a more spiritual reason if you will, was that France had become a rather excessively bourgeois country. Simply put, it had become complacent, with a pacifist citizenry intent on enjoying its trite luxuries. This was one of the main criticisms French historian Ernest Renan launched against his country in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Unfortunately for France, this didn’t stop Napoleon III, the scion of the second French empire, from seeking military glory during his tenure, and against the militaristic Germans no less. The result was the Franco-Prussian War and a stunning defeat for the French. Renan’s advice after the debacle was for France to reconsider its domestic situation and make some much need changes. France, and in many respects, the rest of Europe instead decided to increase their militaristic posture and colonialist competition, resulting in World War I.
After World War II, however, under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle, France did attempt to implement many of Renan’s suggestions. Today, some would argue that Jacques Chirac is following in de Gaulle’s path. Though I support the French government on the issue of pension reform, along with other European governments, I don’t see this action as being specifically Gaullist. Rather, I think it may be something quite different and far more threatening. But I’ll save that for the next post.
posted by Collin May at 5/19/2003 04:28:57
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Loads of good news from the G8 meeting in France yesterday: apparently G.W. Bush made himself clear enough and Chirac understood the lesson.... or did he? After pledging support troops for the peace force in Iraq and strong action against terrorism yesterday...Mr. Chirac today blasted away against US presence in iraq, the war and all else American. With friends like this one... how does the old saying go? And all this was said as soon as George W. had left the meeting, most certainly not to his face!
How very Euro-polite!
How very Euro-polite!
