Why Should We Believe Chris Hill?

Chris Hill is the man in whom Congress will have to invest its trust if it decides to throw away America’s leverage and let the State Department de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism this summer.  The terms of Hill’s deal with Kim Jong Il are  so  hopelessly vague  and endlessly flexible  that the viability of this whole process rests on two  thin  and brittle reeds: Kim Jong Il’s good faith and  Chris Hill’s veracity.   Enough said?  If not, read on.

Today, Hill’s credibility  finds  itself wedged  between Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and one Professor Yoichi Shimada, a Professor of International Relations at Fukui Prefectural University in Japan and a well-known activist on behalf of Japanese abducted by North Korea.  Shimada is sufficiently well regarded to have  testified before the House International Relations Committee  in April 2006.  At issue is a letter Shimada says he delivered to Hill  from the widow of  Rev. Kim Dong Shik, a wheelchair-bound missionary, lawful permanent U.S. resident,  and humanitarian who was trying to rescue North Korean refugees.  The North Koreans kidnapped Rev. Kim in China in 2001, carried him back to North Korea (without China’s knowledge, we must suppose), and starved him to death, thus consigning him to the same fate as millions of North Koreans. 

In  his June 18th  article about Rev. Kim and the government that forgot him,  Kessler writes:

Advocates for Japanese abductees met last November in Washington with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the administration’s chief negotiator with North Korea, and say they handed him a letter from Kim’s wife urging the administration to demand a full accounting of her husband’s fate. “How can it be true that North Korea is no longer a terror-sponsoring nation,” the letter asked, when Kim “was kidnapped and his fate is still not known to us?”

Yoichi Shimada, a Japanese professor who accompanied a Japanese lawmaker to the meeting, said that when they gave Hill the letter, “we reiterated that the abduction issue was not a Japan-NK bilateral one but an international one involving even a U.S. permanent resident.” He said Hill made no comment.

Kim’s wife said she did not receive a reply. Hill has no memory of receiving her letter, a State Department official said, but would answer it if she re-sent it. 

“We are concerned about this case and all the other cases of abductions,” Hill said in a statement. “I have raised repeatedly with North Korea the need to address concerns about the abduction issue, not only with respect to Japan, but other countries as well, including South Korea.” [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler; emphasis mine]  

Significantly, Kessler can barely contain his crush on Hill and features him prominently in  a book he’s now hawking.  Perhaps unwittingly,  Kessler sets Hill up to be directly refuted by Prof. Shimada, to whom I wrote today, and who gave me permission to publish his response:

Since the meeting on Nov. 15th, 2007, was held as one between the Japanese delegation and Chris Hill, Mrs. Kim Don-shik was not present there.

However, we handed Chris Hill her letter on the spot explaining abduction was not at all Japan-NK bilateral issue like I told a Washington Post reporter.

We handed Mr. Hill, not his subordinate or anyone else, Mrs. Kim’s letter directly. Period.   [E-mail message from Prof. Yoichi Shimada to OFK, June 21, 2008; emphasis mine]

Both stories can only be true if  you really believe Hill simply forgot this, in which case  he  must concede  his own callousness and the falsity of his expressions of concern about Rev. Kim’s kidnapping and death.   

The other possibility is that he didn’t forget.  I believe I previously  caught Hill  lying  to an assemblage of reporters last year  when he denied having had “a chance” to review North Korea’s nuclear declaration during a November 2007 visit to Pyongyang.  The North Koreans later alleged, and State was forced to admit, that they offered a declaration that was so facially deficent that State refused to accept it.  Hill had a motive  to deny the  abortive declaration  to conceal North Korea’s bad faith.  (A rumor passed along by a friend is that  the North simply re-offered  its old  1994 declaration, which Hill refused to accept.  I’ve never heard Hill’s or State’s explanation for this, but Victor Cha bravely  obfuscates in an  effort to defend Hill despite  Cha’s evident distaste for Hill’s media exhibitionism — see the bottom of  page 1.)

On a related note, we are still awaiting word from the General Accountability Office as to whether the April 2007 return of millions in criminally derived funds from a Macau bank to the  North Korean regime, at Hill’s urging,  violated U.S. money laundering laws, to say nothing of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718.

At the very least, someone should explain to Mrs. Kim why everyone in her government from either party has betrayed her, her husband, their children, and the cause for which he gave his life at a time when President Bush was paying it the supreme tribute of false words.  Just so that we can dispense with the nonsense that State hasn’t seen Mrs. Kim’s letter, I’ve uploaded the full text:

mrs-kim-dong-shik-letter-to-hill1.doc

You may say that the story of Rev. Kim Dong Shik is only  the story of one man  who lies dead and buried  a nation  filled with  mass graves.   You  might argue the situational ethics of subordinating the interests of  those  who knew and loved  him to  the  security  of millions, if only Hill’s diplomacy were remotely likely to produce such a result.  But  there is more significance to the story of Kim Dong Shik than the little white lie of absolving Kim Jong Il  of terrorism.  This  story  is a microcosm of  North Korea’s refusal to conform its behavior to any norms of civilization, and of America’s endless willingness to accommodate itself to Kim Jong Il’s every lie, insult, threat, crime,  and atrocity.  Not only does it illustrate why we can’t trust Kim Jong Il, it illustrates why we cannot trust Chris Hill.

Kim Jong Il won’t give up his nukes, ever.  His own minions have has told us so, if we’re willing to listen.  Not even Chris Hill could possibly believe otherwise.  If Hill has other motives for pressing on with his failing initiative, he should  explain what they are so that we can have an honest discussion about them.  Given the fact that  State, on  Hill’s advice, has  put off demanding  up-front disclosure or disarmament  for the foreseeable future, we’re entitled to be skeptical about a process that has descended into diplomatic onanism, because we’re only negotiating against ourselves now.