Freedom House IX: Bleat the Press
There may be dozens of reasons why Koreans and Americans view North Korea so differently, but if you leave the “root causes” argument to another day, the more immediate cause is how the South Korean press covers the issue. Having had a disillusioning view of how the media boloed their coverage of the ADVANCE Democracy Act, I didn’t have terribly high expectations for how the South Korean media would approach a press conference with Natan Sharansky. To some in the South Korean media, Sharanky’s name inspires the same conspiratorial, hissed code language about “neocons” that it draws in Europe. In Sharansky’s case, the neocon label is particularly suspicious. Sharansky was already being shadowed by the KGB for his dissident views when most American neocons were still Hubert Humphrey Democrats.
Jae Ku himself tipped me off shortly before the press conference started. It may have been organized somewhat hastily; many journalists appeared to have come just to hear Sharansky, yet it was just me and eight Korean journalists, representing most major Korean papers with the exception of the Chosun Ilbo. Not all of the journalists asked questions, so I can avoid telling you exactly who asked some of the dumber questions (except to say that the Hankyoreh asked one of them). Between some of the journalists’ impenetrable illogic and Sharansky’s impenetrable accent, I literally found myself trying to string a cable between two widely spaced abutments. Still, there was entertainment value for you and me. As always, these should not be seen as verbatim transcripts, but as accurate representations of the ideas the speakers conveyed, using their exact words whenever I could write that fast. Each of the questions below was asked by a different journalist.
My expectations were low before the press conference began. I really didn’t catch enough of the conversation to give you a quote, but from what I overhead of the conversation of most of the journalists present, it was apparent that they (save the RFA man) held Mr. Sharansky in varying degrees of contempt.
Q (from RFA): Do you have any idea why North Korea james Radio Free Asia, but not the Voice of America?
A. You should look on that as a big compliment. It may be that your station has the most impact on telling people the truth about their own day-to-day lives. In the USSR, the stations that the government jammed the most were Radio Libery and Radio Free Europe.
Q. Do you have any comment on the rumor that after the Six-Day War, Israel tried to make a missile nonproliferation deal with North Korea? [OFK comment: what a dumb question. Sharansky didn’t leave the USSR until nearly twenty years after that, and North Korea didn’t begin testing missiles until the 1990’s.]
A. I don’t know about this. I was on the security cabinet for some years and never heard of sucgh a thing.
Q [OFK: more of a speech, which I’ve condensed out of sheer mercy]. There are two schools of thought on North Korea. One school says that we should put human rights at the forefront of our negotiations and engagement with North Korea. But the other is that by just providing rice and trade, and by starting joint projects such as Kaesong, that we can provide for North Korea’s future prosperity and eventually reunify. What do you think of this?
A [looking at the reporter like a spare sexual organ had just grown out of his forehead]. I don’t think you heard my speech. Totalitarian regimes need to world to be both enemy and friend–an enemy to divert popular discontent, and a friend to be a source of aid. To allow them to do that is a big mistake. [During the Cold War,] the United States was helping the Soviet Union by selling it wheat. Meanwhile, they had their troops in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and Angola. As far as giving food, aid, of course, if there is a way humanitarian aid organizations can have direct access to make sure that the food is going to the hungry, then of course, that must be done. But [unless we do that,] aid only ends up strengthening the regime’s structures and becoming a tool for the regime’s manipulation. We must become directly involved to help the people, not the regime.
Q. As you know, Gorbachev claims that it was he would transformed the Soviet Union rather than dissidents such as yourself. What do you say to this?
A. I credit three people for transforming the Soviet Union: Senator “Scoop” Jackson, Andrei Sakharov, and Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev was first and foremost a communist who wanted to save soviet communism. He knew that in order to acquire the trade and the foreign technology he needed to do this, he would have to give the people some freedom. Of course, there is no such thing as giving people a little bit of freedom. One people taste freedom, they just want more. But after giving people this small amount of freedom, he then tried to limit it. Look, for example at how he tried to stop the freedom and independence movements in the Baltics and the Ukraine. So while those who didn’t live in the Soviet Union may see Gorbachev as a liberator, those who lived in the USSR see him as one who tried to stop change. But of course, he was much better than Brezhnev. On that, I agree.
Q. Do you think it is necessary to dramatically change the North Korean regime?
A. When I speak of changing the North Korean regime, I don’t mean that you must send troops. In most cases, change must come from the inside.
Q [from the far-left Hankyoreh Sinmun]. President Bush is known to be much impressed with you, and many have said that your book inspired some of the statements in Bush’s second inaugural address. Yet others would say that your ideas are little more than a justification for more American unilateralism. What is your reaction to this?
Stop this transcript now! I simply can’t abide the sheer addlebrained mutilation of language and logic by which abetting one-man despotism is “multilateralism,” while calling mere words of encouragement to a long-suffering and repressed people who should be ruling themselves, “unilateralism.” How ironic that the tyranny-loving Korean left still rides the tired horse of democratic dissent from right-wing tyranny when it has lost all contact with democratic values. Democracy–as the Hanky has since forgotten–is the ultimate form of multilateralism. This is the logical vacuum that is the Hankyoreh Sinmun today. I warned the reporter that he wouldn’t like what I have to say. So if you’re reading, sir, be very ashamed of yourself. Sharansky obviously had an equally low regard for the question. He released a sigh of exasperation before beginning his answer. I wonder if it depressed him to think that he’d spent nine years in Siberia to emerge and hear the language of freedom and slavery distorted in ways that would have sent Orwell to an even earlier grave.
A. I was glad to hear President Bush’s statements. President Bush tried to demonstrate that he’s on the side of dissidents. There are different models for democracy for different countries. It won’t always be a Western model. I haven’t always supported U.S. foreign policy. I have long been highly critical of the United States for supporting the [dictatorial] regime in Saudi Arabia. And of course, it’s too early to say that President Bush’s declared policies will be implemented. As for your charge of unilateralism, I have never said that spreading democracy means sending troops. The U.S. should only send troops in very extreme cases. I believe that Iraq was such a case. If your idea is that supporting democracy really means sending troops, you are simply wrong. If your idea is that the United States has not always implemented a policy of spreading democracy, then that is true.
Q. You and other dissidents criticized Kissinger and detente, and now you criticize the South Korean “realism” [how I fought to suppress my laughter at the use of that word]. [Rephrase alert:] Weren’t you wrong about detente, and if so, why shouldn’t we believe that you’re wrong about Korea, too?
A. Yes, we were critical of Kissinger and detente. Henry Kissinger helped the Soviets to reach their main aim–to have the U.S. as a source of aid and energy, while still serving as a useful external enemy. . . . It is a big mistake for South Korea to pursue a policy of appeasement.
I’d wanted to gently challenge Sharansky on the very real differences between the Soviet and North Korean machinery of repression–thus challenging his prescriptions for changing North Korea. Unlike him, I don’t see any Helsinki model–or any other bloodless model–as having the potential to succeeed (although I strongly support trying, because I think we have that obligation before we start seeding the countryside with SKS carbines and RPG-2s). I didn’t get that chance, because the Korean journalists elbowed me aside like so many fishwives when the catch comes in. When the last question had been asked, I had time to shake Mr. Sharansky’s hand as he left the room, which made it worth the time. Truthfully, I’ve admired the man for decades.
To be fair, the questions weren’t all bad, the RFA man clearly didn’t share the world view of most of the others in the group, and I should say that the Donga-A correspondent was not among those present.
What followed next was more rather contemptous talk amongst some of the journalists, who clearly didn’t think I understood a thing they had said. Then, one of them, somewhat embarrassed, turned to me and looked at my copious notes. It might even have been the guy from the Hanky. He asked me if I’d be willing to explain just exactly what Sharansky had said, because truthfully, it must have been very difficult for them to understand through Sharansky’s thick Russian accent. Hating myself already for doing it, I agreed, thinking it best not to give anyone an excuse to misquote Mr. Sharansky. I spent the next ten minutes repeating my notes aloud while the journalists stuck recorders into my face.
I must have underestimated my own fame in this small pond, because several of them appeared to know my first and last name. Now, I’m not undercover, but I like to have some control over my privacy and the dissemination of details of my personal life. Although I told them that they were welcome to cite or link anything published in this blog, I asked them to be courteous enough not to print my name (a courtesy I extended to them as well), and to remind readers that I speak only for myself. Hopefully, they’ll respect that. Hopefully, my good deed will go unpunished.
But give Natan Sharansky’s ideas a fair hearing, or accept my suggestion that they read his book (it was apparent that most of them hadn’t)? That would be too much to ask.