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2017.06.28
| Won | Pyongyang | Sinuiju | Hyesan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exchange Rate | 8,070 | 8,050 | 8,095 |
| Rice Price | 5,800 | 6,000 | 5,900 |
Time for North to Change the Tune
- [Lord David Alton Column]
Professor Lord Alton of Liverpool |
2012-10-08 15:42
Last week, as the South Korean singer PSY became the first Korean to top the British pop charts with the amusing, quirky dance track "Gangnam Style,” North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister, Pak Kil Yon, was addressing the United Nations General Assembly.
There was nothing much to be amused by in a speech in which Pak said the deteriorating situation on the Korean Peninsula has made it “the world's most dangerous hotspot” which could “set off a thermonuclear war.”
PSY has become an Internet phenomenon, clocking up a staggering 300 million views on YouTube with a dance routine in which he pretends to ride an imaginary horse. Pak’s comments may not have excited the same degree of interest, and the North Korean war horse may be dismissed as a lot of imaginary, jerky saber-rattling and crying “wolf,” but the world would still be foolish to look away.
Instead of indifference, we owe it to the people of the North to speak out more clearly on their behalf. Failure to do so could have catastrophic results.
Volatility, and the failure to hammer out a long term political settlement, could replicate the horrendous hemorrhaging loss of life that saw around 3 million people die in the last Korean war.
Of more immediate concern, and beyond the imaginings of Gangnam dancers and North Korean spokesmen alike, every day there are real-time tragedies. These never secure 300 million internet hits, or a speech at the General Assembly, but they remain the most important reason why the international community needs to do more to secure the peace and to end a war which, after sixty weary years, has long outlived its sell-by date.
Three days before Pak issued his doomsday warning I stood on the banks of the Tumen River, which marks the border between North East China and North Korea; day by day, it is here that Korea’s tragedy continues to be enacted.
For the North Koreans escapees who attempt to cross the Tumen (or the more perilous Yalu), illegal border crossings frequently end the lives of men, women and children shot dead by border guards as they try to surreptitiously leave their own country. If there are truly “terrifying and dangerous hotspots” on the Korean peninsula it is surely these crossing places and the gulags and prison camps in which the U.N. says 400,000 have died in the past 30 years and where 200,000 people remain incarcerated.
The rarely used bridge at Tumen, built in 1941 and which still connects the two countries, reminds me of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie, a symbol of the harsh divisions of the Cold War and the place where, in August 1962, a boy called Peter Fechter, just a couple of years older than me at the time, was shot in the pelvis by East German guards as he attempted to escape East Berlin. His mutilated body was left on the wire, where he bled to death as the world looked on.
Ultimately, it wasn’t Cold War nuclear saber-rattling and doomsday rhetoric which precipitated the end of the Cold War, and fundamental political change, it was the intolerable and systematic abuse of human rights, the killing of boys like Peter, which led populations to rise up and pull down the checkpoints and walls.
Pak is the first North Korean minister to address the General Assembly since Kim Jong Eun came to power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, last December.
The speech was full of invective and rhetoric; including the time-honored anti-American tirade and far-fetched claim that the U.S. is planning a new war on the Peninsula. Special hatred was reserved for the South Korean government of Lee Myung Bak with the comment, "History will bring them to justice". Notwithstanding Lee’s dismal record, Pak’s is a comment which also has particular application to those who shoot their own citizens. How will history judge them?
[imText1]
Pak’s doomsday speech was a missed opportunity to move on from threats, blackmail and bluster; made all the sadder because he could have told the General Assembly about some of the opportunities which offer the North the chance for peaceful change.
He should have highlighted the new economic reforms which his country has announced; two welcome joint economic zones with China, brokered by Kim Jong Eun’s uncle, Jang Song Taek. Hwanggeumpyong-Wihwado and Rasun Special Economic Zones will provide long overdue opportunities for North Koreans to legally earn cash to support their families without having to become illegal escapees: a step in the right direction.
He could have highlighted Kim Jong Eun’s recent speeches promising to ease suffering among the populace and the new right of farmers to keep between a third and half of their produce (modeled on the early Chinese agricultural reforms of the 1970s). These developments will boost agricultural output, help cap rising food prices and ease malnutrition. North Korea requires about 5 million tons of grain and potatoes to feed its people, but since the early 1990s the annual harvest has been around 3.5-4.7 million tons.
The General Assembly would also have been pleased to hear of the new emphasis being placed on scientific and technological education and the raising of the school leaving age. During 2012 students were ordered out of their universities to repair damage from natural disasters, to work in the fields, and to make the country ready for a national holiday. The new leadership knows that this has caused unrest amongst students and disrupted their education; damaging the future development of the country.
Above all, the world wants to hear that North Korea will dismantle its prison camps and free its people. More than anything, this would pave the way for peaceful reunification.
2012 has seen change in North Korea, but before the year ends there will be also be new leaders in South Korea and China, and an election will have been held in the U.S. All three South Korean Presidential candidates, Park Geun Hye (daughter of the military dictator General Park Chung Hee), Moon Jae In (candidate of the centre left) and Ahn Cheol Soo (the popular Independent), have signaled their intention to initiate new dialogue with the North.
North Korea needs to understand that the world wants it to come in from the cold. Its leaders need to understand this and, like Burma’s leaders, welcome it.
While I was standing by the River Tumen last week, the first three students from North Korea’s first international university (PUST) were arriving in London to commence their studies at a famous college– joining two others who are studying as Chevening scholars at Cambridge University. We owe it to their generation, and to the Koreans who have perished during hazardous escapes, to do better than Cassandra-like predictions of thermonuclear war; predictions which, if they came to pass, would reduce the whole peninsula to an irradiated cemetery. Now is a moment for change.
* The viewpoints expressed in Guest Columns are not necessarily those of Daily NK. This guest column is scheduled to appear in The Universe newspaper on Thursday 11th October, and has been reproduced with the kind permission of the author.
There was nothing much to be amused by in a speech in which Pak said the deteriorating situation on the Korean Peninsula has made it “the world's most dangerous hotspot” which could “set off a thermonuclear war.”
PSY has become an Internet phenomenon, clocking up a staggering 300 million views on YouTube with a dance routine in which he pretends to ride an imaginary horse. Pak’s comments may not have excited the same degree of interest, and the North Korean war horse may be dismissed as a lot of imaginary, jerky saber-rattling and crying “wolf,” but the world would still be foolish to look away.
Instead of indifference, we owe it to the people of the North to speak out more clearly on their behalf. Failure to do so could have catastrophic results.
Volatility, and the failure to hammer out a long term political settlement, could replicate the horrendous hemorrhaging loss of life that saw around 3 million people die in the last Korean war.
Of more immediate concern, and beyond the imaginings of Gangnam dancers and North Korean spokesmen alike, every day there are real-time tragedies. These never secure 300 million internet hits, or a speech at the General Assembly, but they remain the most important reason why the international community needs to do more to secure the peace and to end a war which, after sixty weary years, has long outlived its sell-by date.
Three days before Pak issued his doomsday warning I stood on the banks of the Tumen River, which marks the border between North East China and North Korea; day by day, it is here that Korea’s tragedy continues to be enacted.
For the North Koreans escapees who attempt to cross the Tumen (or the more perilous Yalu), illegal border crossings frequently end the lives of men, women and children shot dead by border guards as they try to surreptitiously leave their own country. If there are truly “terrifying and dangerous hotspots” on the Korean peninsula it is surely these crossing places and the gulags and prison camps in which the U.N. says 400,000 have died in the past 30 years and where 200,000 people remain incarcerated.
The rarely used bridge at Tumen, built in 1941 and which still connects the two countries, reminds me of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie, a symbol of the harsh divisions of the Cold War and the place where, in August 1962, a boy called Peter Fechter, just a couple of years older than me at the time, was shot in the pelvis by East German guards as he attempted to escape East Berlin. His mutilated body was left on the wire, where he bled to death as the world looked on.
Ultimately, it wasn’t Cold War nuclear saber-rattling and doomsday rhetoric which precipitated the end of the Cold War, and fundamental political change, it was the intolerable and systematic abuse of human rights, the killing of boys like Peter, which led populations to rise up and pull down the checkpoints and walls.
Pak is the first North Korean minister to address the General Assembly since Kim Jong Eun came to power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, last December.
The speech was full of invective and rhetoric; including the time-honored anti-American tirade and far-fetched claim that the U.S. is planning a new war on the Peninsula. Special hatred was reserved for the South Korean government of Lee Myung Bak with the comment, "History will bring them to justice". Notwithstanding Lee’s dismal record, Pak’s is a comment which also has particular application to those who shoot their own citizens. How will history judge them?
[imText1]
Pak’s doomsday speech was a missed opportunity to move on from threats, blackmail and bluster; made all the sadder because he could have told the General Assembly about some of the opportunities which offer the North the chance for peaceful change.
He should have highlighted the new economic reforms which his country has announced; two welcome joint economic zones with China, brokered by Kim Jong Eun’s uncle, Jang Song Taek. Hwanggeumpyong-Wihwado and Rasun Special Economic Zones will provide long overdue opportunities for North Koreans to legally earn cash to support their families without having to become illegal escapees: a step in the right direction.
He could have highlighted Kim Jong Eun’s recent speeches promising to ease suffering among the populace and the new right of farmers to keep between a third and half of their produce (modeled on the early Chinese agricultural reforms of the 1970s). These developments will boost agricultural output, help cap rising food prices and ease malnutrition. North Korea requires about 5 million tons of grain and potatoes to feed its people, but since the early 1990s the annual harvest has been around 3.5-4.7 million tons.
The General Assembly would also have been pleased to hear of the new emphasis being placed on scientific and technological education and the raising of the school leaving age. During 2012 students were ordered out of their universities to repair damage from natural disasters, to work in the fields, and to make the country ready for a national holiday. The new leadership knows that this has caused unrest amongst students and disrupted their education; damaging the future development of the country.
Above all, the world wants to hear that North Korea will dismantle its prison camps and free its people. More than anything, this would pave the way for peaceful reunification.
2012 has seen change in North Korea, but before the year ends there will be also be new leaders in South Korea and China, and an election will have been held in the U.S. All three South Korean Presidential candidates, Park Geun Hye (daughter of the military dictator General Park Chung Hee), Moon Jae In (candidate of the centre left) and Ahn Cheol Soo (the popular Independent), have signaled their intention to initiate new dialogue with the North.
North Korea needs to understand that the world wants it to come in from the cold. Its leaders need to understand this and, like Burma’s leaders, welcome it.
While I was standing by the River Tumen last week, the first three students from North Korea’s first international university (PUST) were arriving in London to commence their studies at a famous college– joining two others who are studying as Chevening scholars at Cambridge University. We owe it to their generation, and to the Koreans who have perished during hazardous escapes, to do better than Cassandra-like predictions of thermonuclear war; predictions which, if they came to pass, would reduce the whole peninsula to an irradiated cemetery. Now is a moment for change.
* The viewpoints expressed in Guest Columns are not necessarily those of Daily NK. This guest column is scheduled to appear in The Universe newspaper on Thursday 11th October, and has been reproduced with the kind permission of the author.
