Antipodean Group Pushing Engagement Line

The recently released UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) report
into North Korean human rights has reinforced the sense that addressing the
systemic abuses perpetrated by the regime in Pyongyang has never been a more
urgent task.   

At the same time, hints of a fourth nuclear test amid a
protracted period of regional tension imply that the current status quo of
international sanctions and condemnation is unlikely to change for the
foreseeable future. 

North Korea certainly appears to perplex the geopolitical
players of Northeast Asia. Even more so in South Korea, where advocates of
President Park Geun Hye’s principled stance and backers of variations of
engagement continue to publicly lock horns over the most effective way to
induce change in the North. 

Since March 1974, the NZ-DPRK society has taken a different
approach, openly engaging and exchanging with the North via a number of small-scale
projects. These range from a friendship school in Pyongyang to a cooperative
study of migratory birds. Its leaders hope that awareness and understanding
will grow out of the process. 

As other organizations engaging the North Korean regime have
undoubtedly been asked, is any engagement good engagement? For some, the West
does not have a glowing record on human rights and should not comment on
others. For many, however, a relativistic approach falls spectacularly flat in
the face of damning evidence of extraordinary human rights abuses.

For better or worse, as one of only a handful of
organizations on amicable terms with North, the organization possesses insight
into a society insufficiently understood by the outside world. Daily NK sat
down with Chairman Don Borrie and Secretary Peter Wilson to hear their views on
unification, the nuclear threat and building trust with the North.  

Could you briefly
explain the origins of the NZ-DPRK Society?

Don Borrie (DB): I wanted to form a society after being
involved in the Peace Movement during the Vietnam War. I had come to realize
New Zealanders knew nothing about Korea, just as they knew nothing about Vietnam.
Shortly after I became the General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement,
I was contacted out of the blue by the [South] Korean Students’ Association. 

The Korean Student Christian Federation in Seoul were being
persecuted by their government for supporting the traditional farmers when the
government was seeking to amalgamate farm ownership and squeeze the little
farmers out. They were accused of being communist, subverting South Korea and
supporting the North Koreans. As I discovered later they had had next to no
contact with North Koreans, but were nevertheless accused of being
collaborators and were put in prison. We then developed support actions on
their behalf from here in New Zealand.  

During my time as secretary I formed a relationship with
German economist Wolf Rosenberg to collaborate and form a friendship society just
as socialist countries used to do as part of their foreign policy outreach.  We formed the society with the idea that it
wasn’t going to be mass movement, but would be made up of volunteers who would
concentrate on the DPRK, as we felt the DPRK voice was not being heard.

New Zealand in the 1970s saw deep-seated intellectual
battles in the world of the left between the Maoists and the Trotskyites. The
North Koreans, however, claimed to be an ally of both and sought to walk a
middle path.  We accepted this as we were
determined to portray a position true to the DPRK.  In doing so we walked a tightrope between the
two planks of international socialism, while at the same time appreciating the traditions
of the ancient Korean civilization. We have not been overly influenced by the [North
Korean] administration. But I think that we have been not as critical of them as
many in the West who are instinctively hostile.             

So the society’s founding
philosophy was one very much embedded in the politics of the time?

DB: When we founded the society America was still engaged in
Vietnam, which led to their defeat. They have since been working to reassert
their control. But from the DPRK’s point of view they had never wanted to break
with the Americans in any fundamental way until they had to cope with their
aggression that culminated in the Korean War. 
There were more casualties per capita in that war than in World War II.
The DPRK have been mixed in their attitude toward the Americans ever since.

Is the North Korean
government open to anyone who shows an interest?

DB: To my surprise they have been open to right-wing
Americans. For example, in the mid-1990s I took a group of Polynesian dancers
to the April Festival in Pyongyang and Billy Graham was also there with a group
of musicians.

They used to welcome most outsiders who expressed an
interest in their society.  They have
since learned that people come into the country with a variety of motivations,
ranging from hostility to genuine interest in them as a people. Journalists
have borne the brunt of this, and are now seen as untrustworthy.  While they are not adverse to journalists,
they’re certainly very reluctant.   

How do you reconcile
your approach with the known atrocities carried out by the regime?

DB: International relationships are multifaceted and I don’t
think New Zealanders can take a position of being “pure.” For instance, New
Zealand rates with the America in having one of the highest incarceration rates
of indigenous peoples in the world. We are conducting our own racist policies.
However, it’s true that DPRK doesn’t have our libertarian traditions and there are
elements in both North and South Korea that are, in my view, quite cruel to people
who don’t toe the line.

Peter Wilson (PW): Prison camp numbers have actually been
dropping since the early 1990s. While these things exist, we have to remember
that China has announced it will be closing its last work camp by the end of
the year. This would not be the case if Nixon and Kissinger had never gone to
China, and the rest of the world kept them isolated. Just criticizing a country
does nothing to help the situation. There will be change if you bring them into
the fold, create dialogue and establish trading relationships, which is
something the North wants.

You’re suggesting the
full removal of sanctions?

PW: Yes. They shouldn’t be there in the first place.

DB: Sanctions are the first staging post of a war, and we
are still at war with the DPRK. We have not taken the initiative to change the
Armistice Agreement to a Peace Treaty, and we have politicized our development
policy in relation to the DPRK. It’s gone from a humanitarian tool to a weapon
designed to destabilize the regime.

The economic sanctions have to go. We need to allow the
Koreans to benefit from what we can offer but at the same time we have to be
prepared to become an honest nation that admits our own faults, weaknesses and
fears.  It is not for us to assume that
our form of society is the world’s best. There is no society which is the
world’s best. If we find a way to communicate and exchange our ideas, skills
and talents, we can live in peace.

Assuming the
sanctions stay, how can the international community best serve the North Korean
people?

DB: We must get off their backs. We’ve got to change [New
Zealand’s] policy from being one dominated by the United States, which is
characterized by the lynchpin of fear.  The
Americans are motivated by fear – fear of the enemy. The enemy is assumed to be
the people that America doesn’t agree with. We must wake up to the reality that
there are other civilizations that we must live with, and learn to appreciate
them. We must also be rid of the pervasive propaganda with respect to our
enemies and open up our relationships to establish friendship and trust.

How have you managed
to build trust with the North?

DB: I think that our small group has forged significant
relationships with the North Koreans and I think they really appreciate our
stickabiltiy. I’ve spent most of my adult life working on this question, and in
a sense have come to be recognized as someone who is prepared to stand
alongside people who are strange and not walk away.  

PW: There is currently a level of trust at the civil society
level, but not at the governmental level as the New Zealand government at least
is perceived to be too close to Washington. They are not seen as taking an
independent line.  

Do you get any sense
of how the North Koreans perceive the Park Geun Hye administration?

DB: It seems the relationship between North and South varies
from verbal denunciations of the other in very lurid terms, to periodic
exchanges of military might. But underneath all this I think there are a
variety of conversations going on that we are not party to.

PW: We get little glimpses of this. We hear the Ministry of
Unification saying, “If our cousins to the North are prepared to do X then we
would be prepared to do it.” These are symbolic things, like hiking and cycling
tours. You could say this is separate from politics but it’s all part of the
bigger picture. The oceans are made up of many little drops.

How did you rate the
sunshine policy?

DB: I was skeptical initially but I did feel a window had
been opened at the presidential level. That the DPRK leadership was open to
dialogue was a revelation to the skeptical West. It is a tragedy that the
momentum generated on that dialogue was cut short. I put this down to the
Americans who became perturbed over the possibility of a Korean rapprochement that
wasn’t conducted by them. The Americans in my view are using South Korea – not
for the sake of the South Koreans but for the sake of themselves.

How do you respond to those in the South that embrace the U.S. military presence?

DB: We can see that aspects of the South Korean culture have
been mesmerized by the West, and there has been an uncritical acceptance of the
concept of the accumulation of wealth as a central feature of development. One
of the deepest anxieties of the North and one of their motivations for hanging
on to their own values and systems is the danger that westernization will lead
to a loss of “Koreanness.”  They are
proud of their identity and history.

However, their homogeneity probably has to adapt to the
realities of global diversity. When a North Korean delegation visited New
Zealand in 2012 they were surprised and troubled by our cultural diversity, and
were in disbelief that we could live together. Their attitude is that Korea is
for Koreans. It’s almost a feeling of anxiety and anger that their cousins in
the South have become so enmeshed in the ways of the West. I don’t think,
however, that the West doesn’t have anything to offer. South Korea should adopt
a more independent policy and pursue economic and political social contacts
with their neighbors. 

What form of
unification do you support?

DB: Kim Il Sung talked of unification happening in stages,
which is probably realistic. He talked of the returning to the common identity,
and a reunification of the two nations under the state of Koryo. He accepted
there were fundamental differences in the two Koreas’ economic systems and he
didn’t believe change could be forced. The development of a relevant Korean
system of economic activity was always going to take a generation or two, but
it’s supposed to be gradual. In a deeper sense it’s about the coming together
of the two societies. But at the same time not destroying the integrity that
the [North] had fought for in standing up to the Americans.

PW: Unification is really something for the Korean people to
decide. It can’t happen while there is still an Armistice Agreement in place of
a peace mechanism. The agreement was foisted on the peninsula by external actors.
Thus we could argue that it’s really the international community’s responsibility
to work to end this state of war – whether that is through a peace treaty or a
peace mechanism or something else. Then the decision to unify should be left to
the Koreans themselves. 

What has stopped a
Peace Treaty going forward?

PW: Apathy, and that others are scared of the United States.
Nobody is prepared to stand up to them as they are beholden to things like
trade. The Americans want to keep their troops in Asia, close to China. The
current situation is one of benign neglect. Obama talks of “strategic patience”
but that’s just ignoring the problem. 

What’s your take on
the North Korean nuclear issue?

DB: [New Zealand] is currently following a dangerous line in
allowing its policy to be formed alongside the United States vis-a-vis the
DPRK, because the DPRK are now in a position where they face being eliminated
by nuclear weapons. We must remove this fear. They are convinced they have to
play the US at their own game, that they are only a little power, and that they
can only take symbolic action. Thus they have elected to engage in nuclear
threats. I’m deeply disturbed by this but I can see it from their point of
view; if they hadn’t developed some way to retaliate then they could have gone
the way of Iraq.

PW: Last year there were reports in the Chinese and South
Korean media that North Korea had diverted more than 250,000 of their military
into building infrastructure. When I was there in July I asked a senior DPRK official
about this and he said, “Yes, now that we have a basic nuclear deterrent, we
can afford to relax a bit and put our labor to more constructive uses.” 

What next for the
society?

PW: We will continue to engage in low-key contacts.  This leads to better understanding on all
sides which is what we are really all about.

DB: We are engaged in a variety of things to bring together small
groups of New Zealand society with small groups of Korean society. In this way
we can develop friendships and build trust with each other.