The End of Sunshine

North Korea is now threatening to expel South Korean  staff from Kumgang. 

A spokesman for the North Korean military unit in charge of the region around Kumgang said it would kick out all South Koreans “we deemed unnecessary” from the resort. Although South Korea suspended tourism after the shooting, more than 260 South Korean businesspeople remain there, most of them affiliated with Hyundai-Asan, a Seoul-based company that operates the resort together with the North Korean  government.

The unidentified spokesman said the North’s People’s Army will also take action against “even the slightest hostile actions” in and around the tourist  zone.  [IHT, Choe Sang-Hun]

Notice how reporter Choe Sang-Hun presupposes that Park wandered into a restricted zone notwithstanding all of the circumstantial mysteries about where she was shot, what this “restricted zone” was doing next to a tourist resort, or why it wasn’t marked.  And despite the fact that it was the North Koreans who murdered an unarmed housewife, Choe also seems to lay all of the blame on President Lee for “deteriorating relations” because he  has the temerity to demand answers about the murder of one of his citizens.  To too  many reporters, there is an easy acceptance of North Korea’s brutality as a natural, morally neutral, unalterable condition, as though we were speaking about bad weather.  But to his everlasting credit, Lee is still sticking to his guns on getting some answers about the murder of Park Wang-Ja. 

In any event, the end of Kumgang (I don’t disguise my hope that  it will be)  will be worse news for the North Korean military than it will be for regional stability, the reduction of tensions, the North Korean people, or any of the other supposed beneficiaries of this failed experiment.  It’s more evidence of what I’ve  been saying  about North Korea all along:  until the regime’s fundamental character changes — which won’t happen without a revolution, probably a violent  one —  every issue will eventually become a human rights issue. 

Better, this  could also  have more adverse effects  for the companies that are doing business in the Kaesong Industrial Slave Labor Park.  The North Koreans, who had already been extorting most of the profits out of Kaesong, had recently decided to “punish” Lee by limiting traffic into the complex limiting the traffic into the complex.  None of this could possibly be good news for the stock prices of companies that have operations in Kaesong, and any interference with businesses there will be deterring investors for … at least as long as there is a North Korea, anyway.  Of course, there may be people who are in international  finance just  for the cheap thrills, but why  go to this much trouble when there  are so many traveling circus performers to write sub-prime mortgages for?