A Tyranny Slowly Coaxed to Demise

The world would breathe a little easier if, miraculously, the whole Korean peninsula were to end up more like the South (a democracy, fast-developing, upside unlimited) than the North (a tyranny, fast-unraveling, downside unlimited). And guess what? The first sigh of relief may come as soon as Wednesday in New York. That’s when the world’s most incompetent government (North Korea) is expected to assent to the wish of the world’s most globally ambitious one (the United States) to talk to the world’s sometimes most emotional one (South Korea) to attempt to resolve the lingering formal state of war on the Korean Peninsula.

What’s in it for us besides the idealism bit? Well, leaving aside all that bottom-line, trading-partner, open-markets stuff, the comparative advantage of worldwide freedom over tyranny never seems quite as salient as when one thinks of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. What a funny name for a nationwide disaster area. It’s a Stalinist backwater that cares little about true democracy, little about its people and thinks even less of the wise republican idea that all power in a society should be limited, especially the sovereign’s and the people’s. Not only don’t its leaders respect that, they don’t respect their own people, because now they can’t even feed them. And more is lacking there than food: The tyrants in charge have run the place into the ground.

When I asked South Korea’s soft-spoken foreign minister, Yu Chong Ha, about his troubled brethren, he told me, more in sadness than in anger: “Famine is a phenomenon that other governments have overcome through history. But to be broke as a state, I just don’t think they can go on for a long time. And if we don’t deal with them in a correct manner now, there is the possibility that they will become hysterical.”

Seoul is but a short missile lob away--about 40 miles as the surveillance plane flies. But it might as well be as remote as Mars as far as starving North Koreans are concerned. They never get to see it, except when a few of them are slipped in as programmed spies; and if the populace at large were to see what life is like down south, they would scarcely believe it, much less want to return to the barren farm.

Notwithstanding its economic downturn, its bitter labor problems, its bumbling politicians (and President Kim Young Sam’s personal depression and poll-ratings nosebleed) South Korea is a pulsating, thriving nation, with a capital city that’s an East Asian Manhattan. It’s a madhouse with ear-shattering construction on every other block, traffic jams perhaps the insane equal even of Tokyo’s and madcap pedestrians who never walk when they can run because they’re in such a hurry to get rich.

It’s true that the Kim government is on its way out and the South’s ruling class, not without reason, but sometimes neurotically so, tosses and turns at night, fearing that the North Koreans are about to take Uncle Sam to the cleaners. If the U.S. isn’t careful, they say--over and over again, and I talked to several top officials--Uncle Gullible will be lured down the aisle and then left bereft at the altar (and these, they remind, are the kind of communists who’ll pocket the engagement ring as they leave). As Yu put it, “As long as they get what they want, the talks will be stalled for a long time. It’ll be a long, drawn-out marathon.”

But this particular New York marathon could have a happy ending, because for once the United States is acting like the world power that it is. As Yu puts it, “The most important role for America is for you to be there. North Korea has a psychological need for you to be present, because while they do distrust you, they distrust us more. And the appearance of dealing with you quiets their internal critics. They can say, ‘We talked to America.’ You satisfy their vanity.”

Hey, whatever works, works. Now is the time to put egos aside and let the presence of a superpower work its magic, if there is any in reserve. Sure, the South Koreans are weary and frustrated by the constant attacks, verbal and otherwise, from the North, by their own political and economic stumbles and by Washington’s arrogance in taking them for granted while playing kissy-face with the North. And it’s understandable that they would fear that the North Koreans will examine the tea leaves and divine in them a reason to hold tight, take the food aid, go home and not reform. But gloom may be just the wrong outlook on these talks.

Suddenly President Clinton’s daring, three-year diplomatic effort to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, bring North Korea into the real world and edge the two Koreas closer is starting to come together. So what if the administration is bogged down in the muck of the so-called Asian money scandal and hasn’t gotten around yet to naming a new assistant secretary of state for East Asia, much less a new ambassador to South Korea. Who’s perfect? Certainly not the South Koreans, not to mention the regime in the North. Call us Uncle Gullible, if you will; but at least we set the table and it looks like the warring brothers will sit down together.