[imText1]Following the well-received April 25th publication of a column by Professor Bathelemy Courmont, Daily NK seized the opportunity to meet the man himself at Hallym University in Chuncheon, where he lectures in Political Science. Courmont is known as the editor of a journal dealing with Chinese issues, ‘Le Monde Chinois: Nouvelle Asie’; nevertheless, he chooses to reside in South Korea because in his vision of regional politics in North East Asia, “Korea has an important role to play.” It is, he points out, “the best place to try to have new ideas about the North Korean situation.”
Asked why he has chosen Chuncheon over Seoul as the base for this undertaking, he explains, “I am interested in the concept of ‘What is the real Korea?’ For me it’s not Seoul, certainly not these people [he points north toward the DMZ], it’s the people I meet here.” He believes that this amorphous concept of ‘Central Korea’, still in the South but far from Seoul, is a place that could one day act as a bridge between North and South.
Looking closer at his vision of North Korea, Courmont again claims that, as he noted in his column for the Daily NK ‘International Scholars Series’, the North Korean nuclear arsenal “amounts to a ‘virtual deterrence’ policy” whereby “whether they do have atomic bombs or not does not make a difference, as long as the other side believes it.” It is something which he believes is setting a dangerous precedent for other rogue regimes.
Thus, he says it would be much better to see economic engagement with North Korea first and denuclearization later, rather than further sanctions of questionable merit. “If we keep the sanctions, we can be doing it for another twenty years,” he points out. “Kim Jong Eun will be much older, but he will still be the leader, and people will still be starving in his country.”
Courmont is hopeful that the upcoming South Korean presidential election might offer a chance to transform the dialogue in a more favorable direction for this kind of approach. It’s a great opportunity, he believes, not least since it will allow the “demonization of predecessors”.
“Lee Myung Bak won’t be here anymore, and on the North Korean side you can say everything is because of Kim Jong Il; you have new leaders,” he explains.
