South Korea’s Credibility Problem

China’s plans for the economic colonization of Rason in North Korea have set off a great deal of fretting in South Korea about China grabbing up North Korean resources. In my experience, those who fret about this are usually setting up an argument for South Korean investment in the North. But we know how that’s always ended. Instead of pouring more money into this bottomless pit, South Korea ought to let it be known that after reunification, Korea will invoke the doctrine of odious debt and nullify those contracts.

There are multiple reason for South Korea to be concerned about Chinese investment in North Korea, including the stripping of resources, the danger of creeping colonization setting the stage for future boundary disputes, and most immediately, China’s tendency to perpetuate and reward North Korean aggression against the South. Those issues are fundamental to Korea’s nationhood.

And yet it’s hard to take South Korean concerns about China’s plans for Rason seriously when South Korea’s trade at Kaesong continues, inexplicably, to grow. South Korea is trying to mask this colossus of a contradiction by closing down massage parlors there — as Robert would say, “The humanity!” — and investigating firms that trade with North Korea without going through Kaesong.

But this is mostly cosmetic. I have stronger views about the right of North Korean workers to organize unions than I do about access to hand jobs there, but since when does anyone really believe that Kaesong is going to be a harbinger of political change in North Korea? And if the original justifications for Kaesong are now nullities, can any honest person reconcile this unconditional and unaccountable subsidy to Kim Jong Il’s regime with the financial accountability provisions of UNSCR 1874? South Korea can hardly criticize China for bailing out Kim Jong Il while it’s paying for the shells that land on its towns and the torpedoes that sink its ships. And why should the United States spend its diplomatic and financial capital to protect South Korea as long as that’s the case?