This is the last of three postings in this series. Read the first posting here for an explanation of the idea of the “North flank guard” and the second posting on its reactions to the Yeonpyeong incident last month here.

In 1985 Roland Jahn, an East German dissident who had been expelled from the country by the Stasi, illegally reentered the GDR. Though he soon returned again to the West at the urging of his fellow dissidents, he managed to smuggle in a video camera. On October 9, 1989, during one of the rapidly growing Monday protest marches in Leipzig, this video camera made its way in the hands of Aram Radomski and Siegbert Schefke who filmed on a night when all foreign journalists had been expelled from the city. The day after the protest, during which some 70,000 or so protesters gathered peacefully and chanted, “We are the people,” the first uncensored footage of the Leipzig marches was shown in the West and therefore, since a majority of East Germans also watched West German news reports at the time, in the East. The reports helped spread the protests and contribute to an explosion in their size.¹ The anniversary of that night, which we now know came very close to ending in a brutal police crackdown, is still remembered today as one of the key events of that momentous autumn of 1989.

Footage of such protests, and government reactions to them are no guarantee of success for mass movements. The huge amount of reporting only a few months before covering the June protests in Tian’anmen show this only two well. In authoritarian China, where students are able to relatively easily bypass the internet censorship of Jingjing and Chacha, clearly many of the relatively unpolitical youth of today have either not seen, or have at least not been moved to action by footage such as that of the famous Tank Man, as a PBS documentary suggests.² However, even if states are effective, to various degrees, at controlling information flows, few would deny, that getting and spreading such footage taken inside authoritarian states that offer no protections for freedom of press, and collecting reports from those who are experiencing life within—however fragmentary or riddled with contradictions—is an absolutely essential component to promoting resistance to state oppression and mobilizing concern and support outside.

If this is true for reporting on large political movements, I believe it also holds true for the far more modest goal of reporting on the changing daily lives in a country like North Korea, where there is no known organized dissident movement. Where great economic hardship prevails, mass protests are completely out of the question, and even being caught watching South Korean television dramas can land you in a labor camp or worse, the collecting of video fragments and anecdotes of daily life still requires incredible courage and can contribute in a small but meaningful way to growth of a political, or at least journalistic subjectivity. Thus the Rimjin-gang (림진강/リムジンガン/臨津江) project, which in 2008 began to publish a journal, and online articles containing the fruits of journalistic efforts of a small number of North Koreans who still live in or move into and out of the country, is incredibly valuable. It helps give us a view of North Korea that goes beyond the tired depictions of goose-stepping soldiers or of Kim Jong-il looking at things . It allows a very small number of North Koreans, as paid journalists, the opportunity to learn the skills of gathering information, analysis, and to participate in the creation of their own narrative of life within the country, albeit within the constraints—as is the case with any journalistic publication—of the editorial direction of the project’s founder, Ishimaru Jirō.

It is thus with deep frustration that I read the December 6 Japan Focus article by Suzy Kim about the project: “Understanding North Korea: Rimjin-gang Citizen Journalists out to cure the “Sick Man of Asia”?” Below I discuss the more troubling aspects of the article.

Suzy Kim, an assistant professor at Rutgers University, and a member of the steering committee of the ASCK (the organization mentioned in the earlier postings in the series), is certainly someone who is qualified to comment on publications which deal with daily life in North Korea. Her 2005 dissertation from the University of Chicago, where she studied with Bruce Cumings, is on the “Politics of Empowerment: Everyday Life Within the North Korean Revolution (1945-1950).” The dissertation is one of a small but growing number of works that make use of the important collection of captured North Korean documents in RG242 at the US National Archives that I have written about in an earlier Frog in a Well posting.³

One of several approaches taken in Professor Kim’s wide ranging article on the Rimjin-gang is a criticism of the founder Ishimaru’s interpretation of the reports coming in from North Korea regarding the role and importance of small markets and claims of a breakdown in authority. I take no issue with this kind of critique. I think it is healthy for us to examine and evaluate the interpretations that Ishimaru and others make of the information being brought in from North Korea. I also heartily agree with Professor Kim when she urges us to carefully consider the circumstances under which the footage was obtained, interviews conducted, and guard against broad generalizations based on a small number of anecdotes. We should keep this in mind when considering all sources.

Informants or Journalists?

What I find most disturbing, and yet completely in keeping with the North flank guard approach, is not her critique of interpretations of sources or call for care in dealing with them, but with her dismissive attitude towards these North Koreans as sources of information and their work in a publication like Rimjin-gang. Given Professor Kim’s background as a human rights worker, and as someone who has herself attempted to find a people’s voice in Communist documents, I find this particularly disappointing.

First, she refuses to call these North Koreans, who risk their lives to collect video footage, conduct interviews and prepare reports on daily life journalists, but instead gives them the designation of ‘informant.’ This is truly unfair. If Ishimaru were simply interviewing these people as subjects, the term might be more acceptable, but they are clearly more than that. Even if, as is the case with many a more inexperienced reporter, these North Koreans have been given relatively detailed instructions on what kind of information to gather, what questions to ask, and so on, Professor Kim does these individuals a disservice by refusing to recognize the active role they play in selecting and collecting the information. Inevitably, since they are on their own in the country, they must make strategic choices about how, when, and where they get information, and what to get. Even if, as Professor Kim suggests, Ishimaru, as editor, interprets their reports to fit his broader understanding of what is going on in North Korea, I cannot see how this is unusual for a small publication whose editor is committed to a certain outlook of how North Korea should develop. Let us, by all means, criticize the interpretations, but appreciate the difficult circumstances under which these individuals, with minimal journalistic training, are working.

These reporters are also criticized for not following the “basic ethics” of journalism given the “security” environment of North Korea, and their work for blending various genres in the magazine including commentaries, editorial pieces, interviews, and secretly recorded conversations. How can this be called journalism, she asks? Surely she is embracing a far too narrow definition: pick up any newspaper or magazine put out by a small organization covering some range of issues or a locality, or which is published underground in an oppressive environment. One will find many features in common between such a publication and the work of Rimjin-gang. Is professor Kim arguing that journalism is only to be had in a fully democratic society with mature and well developed media corporations following well established standard practices?

Professor Kim is persuasive in showing that these individuals actually produced anecdotes and analyses which suggest multiple interpretations. Let us rejoice in this and appreciate the fact that a project like this is providing an opportunity for this to come out, and thus offer us a more rich understanding of life in North Korea. As Kim puts it in her dissertation, where she expresses frustration at the difficulty of finding an ‘authentic’ voice of the people in a large collection of mostly Communist government documents from North Korea, “there was nonetheless that precious gem, a glimpse of the popular voice, which I have tried to highlight here because they permeate quietly under the current of the official line…”⁴

Why should we not try to do the same, whether or not we are looking at North Korean journalists within the country, those who work in China, or who have moved to South Korea? Instead, Professor Kim’s article takes every opportunity to cast doubt on the motivations and highlight the insidious editorial or political pressures that are brought to bear upon these voices, thereby seeking to delegitimize the work completely. Even as Professor Kim is perfectly happy to make general claims about certain realities of everyday life by quoting a few limited anecdotes found in Communist Party (North Korean Worker’s Party) records or Communist Party women’s magazines (and I do something similar at times in my own research, I believe we can and should do this, if with care and qualification) her article leaves us with the unmistakable impression that the testimonies of defectors or reports of North Korean journalists are too clouded with bias and levels of mediation for us to attempt the same. We might call this extreme generosity towards one particular kind of source with complete dismissal of another kind of source (and certainly, this is a feature of flawed argumentation in general, across the political spectrum) the the one-way taint.

Frogs in a Well

Professor Kim also makes a bizarre attack on using these North Korean journalists as a source by pointing out that ‘natives’ are often wrong or limited in their perspective:

“…it is common knowledge that the “native” perspective does not have privileged access to the truth. Indeed the fallacy of a project like Rimjin-gang lies in believing that it has a better grasp of what is going on inside North Korea because the information is coming from within. The magazine opens with the statement, “No one can report on a nation better than its own people.” (3) This is not as self-evidently true as one might presume. Some of the most common East Asian proverbs instruct how a frog in a well knows little about how to place itself in a larger context, and it is undeniably the darkest just under the lamp where its own shadow is cast. Indeed, the magazine itself acknowledges potential for inaccuracy among North Koreans – a comment about Kim Jong-il’s family during an interview is corrected by a footnote with the statement that “much of the rest of the hearsay conveyed in this comment is incorrect.” (313)

It is true, the ‘native’ perspective does not have privileged access to the truth and I think we can safely agree with Professor Kim’s observation that, as a matter of general principle, the authors of Rimjin-gang are wrong to assume a people are necessarily best at reporting on their own nation. Are we surprised to find that these reports, which include hearsay, rumors, and personal opinions of the North Koreans interviewed contain factual error? I’m certainly not, but just as wild rumors reported to the Communist Party and recorded in their documents have been useful to me in understanding what fears existed in society at the time, we can learn almost as much from the language and content of questionable accounts as we can those which we have reason to believe accurate. In fact, I would ask Professor Kim in return, who is best situated to report on what is going on in North Korea? We have been told already that it is not defectors/migrants or editors like Ishimaru. Is it the Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK? Is it foreign tourists or NGO workers who are extremely limited in their access to the country? Surely their well is smaller than that of most frogs. Or is it academics like us, perhaps, or the scholars of the ASCK?

Wouldn’t our understanding of North Korea, and thus the view from our various respective wells (I needn’t remind the reader of the founding goals of this website), be broadened by applauding, indeed multiplying efforts such as Rimjin-gang, and getting hundreds, no, thousands more of these journalistic, literary, and documentary works from within North Korea, leading hopefully, to ever greater independence, diversity and depth in the writings, interviews, and personal accounts that emerge?

Suzy Kim does not think so. For Professor Kim, “true journalism” requires nothing less than a peace treaty and the normalization of relations with North Korea. Imperfect projects like Rimjin-gang, she argues, will do more harm than good:

[Normalization of relations] is the first step so that North Koreans can “form a space with the freedom to study and debate.” In the words of Kae Myung-bin, “If we can gather together all the opinions of our people, all of their knowledge and power, I believe our society can arrive on our desired path and start a historical movement. The main players in this country are we, the people.” (83) It is time to give this vision a chance. Rimjin-gang can be a useful venue by which such visions of debate of different opinions and perspectives can have free reign. However, without the proper historical context to make sense of North Korea’s current condition and a concerted effort to present a diversity of views, it can only stifle such a vision, perpetuating the tragic state of war.

I share with Professor Kim a desire that negotiations will some day soon bring a peace treaty and the normalization of relations but I see no reason to believe why this will rapidly produce a “space with the freedom to study and debate.” While I too am touched by the quote from Kae Myung-bin which emphasizes the power of the people, unlike Professor Kim, however, I think we should encourage projects like Rimjin-gang, even when they lack “the proper historical context” or “a concerted effort” to present a diversity of views (note her addition of the word “concerted” since she has herself argued already that there are in fact a diversity of views in Rimjin-gang accounts). We ask too much of such a young and fragile publication. Let there be a hundred Rimjin-gang projects, each with their own approach, but let us first appreciate the innovative efforts of the one we have.

UPDATE: Professor Kim posted an extended reply to my critique in the comments of the original article and I encourage interested visitors to read and evaluate her response to my points. I will only add here a reassurance to readers that, as a student of the aftermath of Japanese empire, I hope my previous postings here at Frog in a Well, and the dissertation I am currently writing on the politics of retribution against collaborators in Korea and China (1937-1951), will produce sufficient evidence that I am not one to “dismiss Korea’s history of colonialism, division, civil war, and its place in cold war geopolitics.”

1. Mary Elise Sarotte 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe Princeton University Press (2009), 20-21.
2. Part six of the documentary shows the film maker presenting an image of the Tank Man to a few Beijing University students. I have my doubts about this scene, in which the narrator claims that students don’t know anything about the Tank Man. He may be right, generally speaking, but in this specific case at least one of the students whispered “89″ but then reported not being able to recognize the image. It is possible the students knew or suspected the reference but refused to acknowledge it on camera.
3. She also uses the transcribed and published version of these documents put out by the 國史編纂委員會, a large multi-volume series: 北韓關係史料集, though the cover of these volumes has a mistaken hanja character, rendering the title 北韓關係史科集 so you may want to search for that as well. Access to the published collection was under various pointless “security” restrictions to access at the Korean National Library as of 2008 when I last checked the collection there. However, I was able to get the Harvard-Yenching library to order a copy of this collection so it can be seen without restriction by visitors in Boston. One annoying problem with the published version is that it does not give the original archival references for each document, making it harder to cross reference with the originals – a problem Professor Kim also notes in her dissertation.
4. Suzy Kim “Politics of Empowerment: Everyday Life Within the North Korean Revolution (1945-1950)” Unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago (2005), 9.

This is the second of a three part series. Read the first posting here.

On November 28, a South Korean artilleryman mistakenly fired a single 155mm shell north into the Demilitarized Zone during a drill. Although the defense ministry notified its counterparts in North Korea of the mistake some two hours after the incident, it was all too late. North Korean artillery forces, fearing that the attack was the prelude to a full scale invasion, responded by firing over a hundred shells into the south, pounding a South Korean military base but also a nearby village community, resulting in four deaths, including two civilians.

This is how a military exercise can escalate into an artillery exchange. It reveals the dangers of having two bitter opponents, armed and opposing each other on opposite sides of a thin stretch of land with nothing but a fragile armistice preventing the continuation of a war that still awaits its peace treaty. While each side must keep their front line forces prepared for an outbreak in hostilities by means of military exercises, even the smallest mistake like this can result in tragedy.

Of course, this is not what happened. There was an artillery shell mistakenly fired into the demilitarized zone on November 28, and it did reportedly take two hours for the North to be informed of the mistake, but this is not the incident that recently resulted in a deadly North Korean artillery attack on a South Korean military base and a nearby village.

Instead, the island of Yeonpyeong, one of a small collection of islands which hug the North Korean coast but which, under the terms of the 1953 armistice, remain under South Korean control, came under artillery attack from the North on November 23, in the first such incident since the end of major hostilities over fifty years ago. Four people died, many were injured, and an entire community was evacuated while the village on this heavily militarized island shared the fate of the nearby bases.

That morning South Korean forces had conducted an artillery training drill but no shells struck on or near North Korean shores before the North launched its attack. Southern forces shot their shells to the southwest, in order to avoid crossing the Northern Limit Line (NLL) which has, rightly or wrongly, served as the maritime border between the two sides for decades.¹ Nor was this exercise some irregular or sudden move to threaten the North, being part of a monthly drill not associated with any larger joint US-Korean military exercises. That morning North Korean forces demanded a halt to the drill, but this too was anything but new. North Korean forces regularly demand a halt to such exercises in the South, including those in the contested maritime territory around the NLL.

As far as I can tell, we are left with a picture of a morning that was business as usual: North Korea protesting South Korean drills, whether or not those are connected to the larger joint exercises, North Korea contesting the Northern Limit Line, and South Korean forces conducting their monthly drills, firing to the southwest into the sea, an act that North Koreans nearby have surely seen them do many times before. Is there a casus belli here? I fail to see it. At the very least (and I still don’t think this would be enough), the North would need to offer some clear and public indication that they will no longer tolerate any further artillery fire into the contested seas and that further exercises will result in a military response. The problem, of course, is that it is difficult for the North to make any such warning credible when they threaten not just military force, but the complete destruction of its enemies on a fairly regular basis. Even if North Korea was trying to make a unique and credible threat in its messages on November 23, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate that North Korea must itself take responsibility for.

So how has the North Flank Guard responded to this incident? Let me offer two examples: The statement recently issued by the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea² and the Factsheet: West Sea Crisis In Korea by Nan Kim, posted with an introduction by John McGlynn at Japan Focus and also available as a PDF directly from the National Campaign to End the Korean War.

North Korea, the ‘Reacter’

The ASCK statement on the Yeonpyeong incident describes the events I outlined above in the following way, and I have bolded some phrases for emphasis:

Last week, a joint U.S-South Korean military exercise escalated into artillery exchange between the two Koreas. North Korea’s artillery bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island killed four and wounded many more. South Korea’s response left an as-yet unknown number of casualties in the North. Now the United States and South Korea have begun joint war games in the Yellow Sea. U.S. forces include the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Okinawa, the 7th Air Force stationed in Osan, and the aircraft carrier USS George Washington based in Yokosuka. U.S. and South Korean marines will stage a combined amphibious landing exercise on the west coast of Korea.

These massive military maneuvers are escalating tensions and threaten to trigger general armed conflict. We appeal to all sides to desist immediately from warlike actions and stop this cycle of ever-increasing threats and shows of force. All parties must back down before sparking a conflict that would threaten millions of lives.

Filled with military detail from the Southern response, there is here a causal link established between the US-Korean exercises that coincided with the monthly drill on Yeonpyeong and the North Korean attack, but even more an emphasis on the response to the North Korean attack. Like so many other ASCK statements, some of which I have referred to in a previous posting on the organization, there is some fascinating sentence structure at work that is designed to avoid an explicit claim: an exercise escalated into an exchange. All by itself, apparently. A more honest rendering of this sentence would have been, “South Koreans provoked a North Korean attack with their frightening military exercises,” but the authors of this statement have decided to pull slightly away from this with a softer construction, allowing the surrounding sentences to provide the punch. The next paragraph, while calling for all parties to back down, begins again with an emphasis on the “massive military maneuvers” on the part of US and South Korea. Nowhere in this opening is North Korea’s attack explicitly denounced. The statement does eventually denounce the attack, but only buried in the middle of a later paragraph that hands out blame to everyone in equal measure.

In the following section, providing “background” to the “rapid military escalation” there are eleven sentences, of which only three address North Korea as an actor: one stating the fact that the North shelled the island, one on the casualties this caused, and one on the threat by the North to launch further attacks. Overwhelmingly the emphasis in this section is once again on depicting the annual military exercises “amidst” which this attack occurred, speculation that the return fire could have created even higher destruction in the North, and on the response of the US and South Korea following the attack.

None of the “background” concedes the possibility that North Korea might have had any other motivation in launching the attack other than as a reaction to the drill itself or the joint exercises going on around the same time. I cannot bring myself to believe that the distinguished scholars who have backed this statement can all truly believe this. If many critics demonize the North Korean regime, the North Flank Guard infantilizes it. The narrative provided belittles the strategic thinking that must be at work within the North Korean regime and the preparation and thought that must have gone into an attack like this. We may not fully understand the logic behind the attack, for obvious reasons, but let us at least appreciate that North Korea has made a calculation, and North Korea has decided to act under circumstances and time of its choosing: not react like some scared and cornered prey.

The Factsheet by Nan Kim is also completely dominated by a discussion of the South Korean and US military actions, like the ASCK statement only using statistics when wanting to impress the reader with the military might being exhibited by the South. No mention in either the Factsheet or the ASCK statement is made of the fact the drill was a monthly affair (Nan Kim helpfully added this in the comments in response to a bewildered reader) or that North Korea regularly protests exercises conducted in the South. These facts are central to interpreting this event in the context of an exercise of force as part of a language of diplomacy. The narrative in these texts depicts action (threatening US-South Korean exercises, island drills) and reaction (North Korean attack), “North Korean artillery units responded by firing on a South Korean artillery base on Yeonpyeong Island.” It is a narrative of the US and ROK as the ‘deciders’ and the North as a ‘reacter,’ without any consideration of possible reasons why North Korea might rise above the “chatter” of regular interactions to commit an unprecedented attack on the territory of the South.

Negotiations and Negative Reinforcement

I share with the ASCK and the Factsheet the conviction that negotiation is the only genuine way forward to defusing tensions on the peninsula. The use of force, even in a series of carefully controlled escalations between each side, carries with it too many risks and there is every indication that North Korea is always willing to carry this farther than the US and South Korea are. Like the ASCK, I am concerned that the change in the rules of engagement after the incident to allow an asymmetrical response will facilitate future escalation, though I believe the new joint US-South Korea exercises that followed the incident are an inevitable result; a minimum response by the South to show it is committed to defense against further attacks.

Without some sudden collapse of the regime in the North, a long awaited eventuality that has been predicted to be around the corner for decades but completely beyond the ability of external powers to bring about under any realistic conditions, this is truly the only way forward. However, we must also recognize that the attack on Yeonpyeong has made this more, not less difficult to achieve. With a hawkish conservative in power (and far more hawkish conservatives demanding blood from outside the Blue House), there is huge pressure to resist negative reinforcement: North Korea wants immediate negotiations resulting in further aid and other concessions, in addition to any possible domestic motivations behind the recent attack, it also presumably believes an escalation of violence will force a more rapid return to negotiations that will primarily benefit itself.

This has worked time and time again on previous occasions, without North Korea ever having to give up its golden egg (nuclear weapons). There is a serious danger in continuing to allow North Korea to use military provocations as its default tool for achieving its national aims. This not only threatens peace on the peninsula, but will be a message heard by powers around the world.

The question then, is how can the US and South Korea move forward on negotiation without contributing to a form of geopolitical moral hazard? While most other commentators on North Korea, including those who agree negotiation will ultimately be the only way to resolution, recognize this core dilemma, it is completely absent from the Factsheet, or statements of the ASCK.

The third part in this series:

The North Flank Guard: Everyday Life in North Korea

1. The Northern Limit Line, established unilaterally by the United Nations Command in 1953, without consultation with North Korea, cuts to the north of the islands left in South Korean control. While it aimed originally to prevent southern ships from going north and serves a useful security purpose to protect the islands, North Korea has contested the line since the 1970s. It also violates the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention provisions for a 12 nautical mile coastal limit. The maintenance of the line is an important part of the unfair economic environment for northern fisherman in the area, as well as blocking direct egress of ships from the North Korean coast there. The North Koreans claim a line much farther to the south, the acceptance of which would surround South Korean islands, barring a small corridor, with North Korean military waters, an untenable arrangement. I’m very much in favor of adjustments in the line, fair coastal access for North Korea, and a fair division of the economic bounty of the region, all to be accomplished through negotiations between North and South Korea, but the reality today is that the security tensions in the region, and the fact that the region around the NLL has become a graveyard for those who died in so many conflicts in the waters will make it difficult or not impossible to make any changes while tensions are so high. The more blood is spilled in the region, the more each side will harden their views. For helpful background see John Barry Kotch and Michael Abbey “Ending Naval Clashes on the Northern Limit Line and the Quest for a West Sea Peace Regime” Asian Perspective 27.2 (2003).
2. They do not give the statement a separate page so I unfortunately cannot offer a permanent link to it.

In politics, a direct attack is not always the most effective. One way to proceed is to target someone or something that is seen to represent a more extreme, a more pure representation of your opponent’s ideas and concentrate at least some of your efforts here. Let us call this the “politics of envelopment.” One of the most misguided responses to such a threat of a politics of envelopment, however, is what I will call a “flank guard” form of active defense. Alas, on the political left, and especially among those who, including myself, might be described as democratic socialists, this approach is all too common. The “left flank guard” often takes the form of a spirited defense of even the most indefensible extremes on our flank. The most common ways this is actually carried out is by means of evasion (of accusations), dramatic reversals (“On the contrary, you are the terrorist!”), distraction (“Look at those literacy rates!”), and good old fashioned omission of inconvenient truths.

With the end of the cold war, the “left flank guard” has mostly been deployed in the defense of authoritarian leaders who emit that nostalgic socialist scent (e.g. Venezuela), historical figures who are seen as worthy leaders of revolution but who lost in their struggle for power (e.g. Trotsky), or any resistance or liberation movement that is seen as the best current option for opposing some hated regime (e.g. Hamas). The important point to make here is that few of those in the left flank guard really believe that freedom of expression should be curtailed as it is in Venezuela, that enemies of the revolution should be mercilessly slaughtered, as did Trotsky, or that theocracy is a good supplement to generous social policies. Yet, for some reason, their defenders believe that the survival of our political cause requires us to take a stand and vigorously defend those whose oppressive policies and brutal violence often far outmatch those of our current opponents. I, on the other hand, find this tendency nothing short of repulsive, but more importantly, of no benefit to the cause of social justice.

In the academic world of Korean studies, we might call this phenomenon the “North flank guard,” because the form it takes is:

1) A mobilization of scholarly efforts against opposition to the North Korean regime or those who highlight its human rights issues.

2) A refusal to clearly acknowledge North Korean responsibility for the escalation of tensions at numerous points in the last few years. This treats North Korea as a passive force, reacting only to provocation, rather than as an active composite subject which carefully calculates the potential domestic and international gains to be made from any new crisis.

3) The minimization or sometimes omission of any mention or substantive detail of the oppressive characteristics of the North Korean regime.

4) The fallacious pursuit of a historical argument which seeks to trace all contemporary woes back to the sins of Japanese colonialism, or to US and Soviet military occupations. Let’s call this, “The argument of original imperial sin.”

In the next two postings, I want to introduce a few of the most recent examples of the “North flank guard” in action and why I find it deeply troubling.

The second and third postings:

The North Flank Guard: A Military Exercise Escalated into Artillery Exchange
The North Flank Guard: Everyday Life in North Korea

Of late I have become depressed by what I see as a lack of credibility in some of the efforts to counter the flood of media reports and bombastic condemnations of North Korea. I believe that continued calls for dialogue and warnings against escalation must be accompanied by an honest and active critique of North Korean policies together with a full recognition of the agency of the North Korean state as an actor – not merely a re-actor to the policies of South Korea, the United States, or other parties.

Concerned Scholars

In 2005 I joined an organization called the ASCK, the “Alliance of Scholars Concerned About Korea.” I was only in the second year of my PhD program, but was delighted to hear of an organization of scholars and graduate students who were concerned about US polices towards the two Koreas and sought to promote dialogue, cooperation, and peace on the peninsula. I believed that this organization, reminiscent of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) that led academic opposition to the Vietnam War among scholars of Asia, could help provide historical context for the tensions among the Koreas, warn against potentially ineffective US policies, and perhaps spread a better understanding of the North Korean regime’s domestic and international polices that critiqued its many flaws without demonizing it.

I became disillusioned with the organization, however, when I came to see that the most distinctive and consistent aspect of its portrayal of the Korean Crisis was what it avoided, rather than what it focused upon. In its statements, emailed calls for action, and on its webpage I found that, time and time again, the ASCK carefully avoided treating North Korea as a strategic actor responsible for its own actions. Either it treats North Korea as if it were some kind of otherwise harmless chemical substance that only explodes in reaction to certain other chemicals, or else when it calls for action, North Korea is appended at the end of a list of concerned parties, as if it were some minor last minute addition to a shopping list, “Buy me some milk, bread, carrots, oh, and while you are there, a pack of gum.”

Even on issues that did not directly involve tensions between the Koreas, I have been troubled by inadequacies in some of their campaigns. In the past few years ASCK has supported the efforts to spread the work of the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission which has done valuable work, especially in uncovering information about atrocities committed during or just before the Korean War, but the overwhelming emphasis of reporting on their findings is about atrocities committed by anti-Communist forces in a way that occasionally leaves out context or perspective. ASCK has justly protested against heavy-handed political intervention into the revision of history textbooks by conservative forces in South Korea, a position I agree with, but if it cares about history education it should also then be willing to point out the problems in the narratives of existing South Korean textbooks and call for their reform. The ASCK has supported House Resolution 121 on the “Comfort Women” issue, again a laudable cause, but given how distant this is from the organization’s professed goals, one would hope they would direct somewhat more energy into a statement condemning North Korean treatment of returning refugees, or the abuse of its own people, which is undeniably closer to the heart of their mission.

Silence, and Other Sins

It is in its handling of the tensions with North Korea, however, that the ASCK has been truly disappointing. When North Korea carried out its nuclear weapon test in October, 2006, I expected a strongly worded statement of condemnation from the organization attached to an appeal for calm and a realistic appraisal of the alternatives going forward. Nothing. Following North Korea’s May, 2009 nuclear test, I thought surely this time the ASCK would be forced to make a statement condemning the test. Almost all of the current ASCK steering committee and other leading members did stir in June, 2009, but in an unexpected manner when they signed a circulated “Statement from Professors in North America Concerned about Korean Democracy” (English | Korean) deploring the fact that, since the election of Lee Myung-bak, “Korean democracy had lost its way.” It condemned the suppression of candlelight vigils, and problematic government moves against the freedom of press and online activism.

I too was concerned by Lee’s handling of the protests, even if I believe it is too much to say that Korea’s young democracy had “lost its way.” If anything it has been the progressive movement that has lost its way, and as a result, lost the trust of the Korean people who subsequently elected a conservative President. It is now a time to regroup, rethink, and plan for the next election. It was not, however, so much the position espoused in the 10 June 2009 statement signed by over two hundred professors (I’m not sure what organizations led the drive to collect them) that dismayed me as the fact that the ASCK or its members put together no statement and collected no signatures at the time condemning a North Korean nuclear test that happened only a few weeks earlier on 25 May, 2009 and coming, rudely, only two days after the suicide of former president Roh Moo Hyun. Compared to the more muted response to the 2006 test, which nevertheless led to the unanimous passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1718, this time even China and Russia were surprisingly vocal in their strong condemnations, which helped lead to the passing of the more sharp-toothed UN Security Council Resolution 1874 in June of last year. But ASCK mobilized no scholars against these tests, or even bother, at this point, to weigh in on the dangers of United Nations sanctions being unproductive, even if justified in their condemnation.

I don’t think North Korea would have cowered at the spectacle of having its nuclear tests criticized by a few academics: it is not about that. It is about credibility; it is about taking the right position, of being willing to make a clear honest statement about something that touches the heart of one’s issue, and avoid the hypocrisy that plagued so many progressives in the Cold War who took a stand against American imperialism but fell silent when faced by the horrors of Communist oppression.

Sometimes the ASCK does speak up and mention North Korea, but when it does so, it is reluctant to treat North Korea like a full participant in the crisis, even when arguably (and I’m not even asking them to go this far) it is the primary source of tensions.

Let us look at two representative examples:

1) “Time to End the Korean War” (2003)

It is always the United States which is the primary target for the ASCK. Article two of this statement singles out the US for criticism and accuses it of pushing the Korean peninsula “perilously close of war” (Poorly chosen words, at any rate, since a major push of the ASCK is to get everyone to realize that the war never ended) and specifically mentions its “threats of embargo, preemptive strikes and regime change” but nowhere in the statement is there an acknowledgment that the DPRK plays a significant role as an obstacle to peace on the peninsula.

It is very unfortunate that the supporters of the statement listed at the bottom which, to ASCK’s credit, includes almost all of the leading scholars of Korea in the United States and Europe—many of whom I deeply respect—did not point out this disturbing asymmetry. At the very least they could have appended a watered down phrase to article two saying something along the lines of, “and the policies of the DPRK haven’t exactly been helpful, either.”

2) “A Transnational Appeal for Peace and Security in Northeast Asia” (2009)

The ASCK is a master of passive constructions designed to avoid difficult questions of responsibility, except when such responsibility can be directly attributed to anyone except North Korea. In this appeal, found on the positions page of the ASCK, we learn that “The United States, South Korea, and Japan are tightening sanctions” but “Tension is rising,” “military tensions actually increased,” and the “Northeast Asian region was swept by fears by a sudden change in the nuclear situation.” This sudden change, we learn, came at the end of a chain of events which places North Korea in the position of the victim. Here is the narrative as portrayed by the ASCK:

In April Pyongyang “announced that it would launch a satellite.” There is no mention of why this might be a very bad idea, completely counter productive, a potential violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718, and that a communications satellite is not the best use of an economically failing state’s resources. President Obama and the Security Council condemned the launch and tightened sanctions. North Korea then, on May 25, “responded to what it viewed as the statement’s infringement on its sovereign right by conducting a nuclear test.” The UNSC passed Resolution 1874 to punish North Korea “for what it believed” to be a violation of previous resolutions, and North Korea “in turn” tested more missiles. This was all part of a “vicious cycle of confrontation.”

Later in the document, again in reference to North Korea’s launch of a satellite, a whole paragraph is supplied to present North Korea’s argument in defense of its satellite-loaded missile launch, but not a single sentence is spared in the document to outline why most of the world, except for such noble supporters of democracy as Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, have expressed sentiments ranging from concern to outright shock and condemnation. No mention is made of the fact that it is highly likely that delivering a satellite into orbit was not the only, likely not even the primary purpose of the launch. Instead, North Korea’s claims are presented without any skepticism.

This entire narrative only functions, however, if we see each step as directly connected to the previous one – of each move being a reaction to some previous provocation. This, I believe, is not only incredibly naive, but seriously underestimates the intelligence and strategy of the North Korean regime.

More troubling in this statement is how little is expected of North Korea. It calls on Obama and Chairman Kim Jong-il to “return to a course of dialogue” but all of the rest of the demands made in the statement are directed to other governments: the United States, South Korea, Russia, China, and Japan. It does not ask North Korea to stop nuclear tests, stop firing its missiles, or end its constant threats of war. It brings up the Japanese frustrations with North Korea over the abduction question but does not ask North Korea to address them. On the contrary, in what must be an ominous reference to colonialism it notes Japan’s “historical responsibility for the present crisis,” and notes Japan’s “refusal to fulfill its obligations to provide oil to North Korea under the Six-Party agreements” without any reference to North Korea’s failures to follow through with its many broken promises.

In other words, if someone is coming to this issue without any prior knowledge of the background of events, they can not be blamed for getting the impression that North Korea is a pitiable, if feisty victim of international bullying.

A Call For A New ASCK

These two examples are part of a pattern that is deeply troubling. Barring a major shift in its approach, I believe graduate students and scholars who might sympathize with the noble goals set out in the ASCK mission statement should distance themselves from this organization, and refuse to support any statements such as those listed above. I sincerely hope a new cooperative alliance of scholars concerned about Korea will eventually take its place. There is a desperate need for such an organization, but the statements put out by the ASCK risk creating suspicion and attracting ridicule. Progressive supporters of direct dialogue between the United States and North Korea, a defusing of the military tensions, and a final peace treaty are often vilified as “pro-North Korean” or seen as apologists for its oppressive regime. I believe the vast majority of ASCK members and statement supporters are strongly opposed to North Korea’s Stalinist dictatorship and its oppressive policies and their individual writings often confirm this. Doubtlessly some of them believe that there is enough in the media already which condemns North Korea’s nuclear tests, its domestic oppression, and its brinkmanship, and that therefore an organization such as the ASCK plays an important balancing role by focusing on its counter-critique. To those friends I can only say that I think this is both a tactical mistake in terms of lost potential support, as well as morally troubling.

As historians and academics studying Korea, there is nothing wrong with us taking a firm political stand. There is no apolitical history, the very questions we ask in our research already betray the assumptions that guide our scholarship. However, some questions, when asked, present themselves like a mirror, reflecting naturally, if uncomfortably, back upon ourselves.

Now, as tensions are reaching a new peak following the likely North Korean sinking of the South Korean vessel Cheonan, it is more important than ever that all of us engaged in the academic study of Korea who are deeply concerned about the future of peace on the Korean peninsula speak up. If we support continued dialogue, a carefully moderated response, and oppose any talk of military retaliation, we should do so without denying North Korean responsibility and, despite our justified skepticism of all state parties, tentatively accept the most likely explanations provided. If the ASCK refuses to provide such a voice and live up to its mission, then we should either create an alternative organization or individually make our positions known.

-Konrad M. Lawson

Japan Focus has an article detailing and displaying Gobau’s Korean War art which has a plethora of arresting images. Gobau worked from the Republic of Korea side: North Korean forces are not shown in a good light, but South Korean forces don’t get a pass on their purportedly anti-communist atrocities.