North Korea Sort-of Admits Cheonan Sinking?
Buried within the latest AP report on Jimmy Carter’s visit to North Korea was this wonderful morsel:
Carter said North Korean officials expressed deep regret for the deaths on the South Korean warship Cheonan and for the civilians killed in the island shelling. But, he said, it was clear that “they will not publicly apologize and admit culpability for the Cheonan incident.” North Korea denies sinking the ship, despite an South Korea-led international investigation that blamed the country. It says it was provoked into the island shelling by South Korean live fire drills.
No, they didn’t intend to apologize … until the awesome global stature of Jimmy Carter and his Superfriends (TM) forced Kim Jong Il to grant them a personal audience-cum-intervention, where Kim tearfully apologized for starving, torturing, or terrorizing virtually everything in reach and agreed to check himself into rehab.
Just kidding! Actually, Kim snubbed Carter again and sent his Foreign Minister and the head of his rubber-stamp parliament to repeat their standard demands — a North-South summit without apologies or preconditions, and “[T]hey won’t give up their nuclear program without some kind of” vague, ill-defined, vanishing “security guarantee from the U.S.” That’s pretty much what the North Koreans said before Agreed Framework II, which of course brought us to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program one crumbling cooling tower, plus numerous diplomatic and material gains for North Korea. Really, though, the smothering irony of this entire story has to be that Carter and his admirers hold him out as an expert on dealing with North Korea because of Agreed Framework I, a triumph so smashing that Carter is still begging the North Koreans to disarm 17 years later.
Carter must have been especially disappointed that Kim didn’t even tell his minions to release his newest American hostage, a pity given the perfect convenience of seizing a hostage just in time for Carter’s arrival. There is, of course, the pity of that plea from the man’s family that he’s in ill health. In spite of this, another AP correspondent (here, the unforgivably experienced Foster Klug) calls Carter “well-respected” by the North Koreans, notwithstanding the fact that we now know just what the North Koreans really think of Jimmy Carter. But even the most reasonable inferences that Klug could have drawn from his own report tell us that much.
When asked why the North Koreans didn’t meet with His Most Highly Regarded Excellency, Carter replied that the South Korean President wouldn’t meet with him, either. Could it be that the South Korean government regards Carter just as highly as the North Korean government regards him? Or that Carter’s visit has unwittingly revealed a sliver of common ground between the Koreas?
“We don’t question the decision of a head of state about the priorities they set for their own schedule,” Carter said.
Among other priorities, this particular head of state is known for his world-class collection of Daffy Duck cartoons and the lethality of his prison camp system.
A final fallacy about North Korea is again refuted in this story. The American diplomatic class and its fan-boys would have us believe that North Korea’s diplomatic Lotharios only manage to outmaneuver America’s best and brightest so consistently through their fiendish cleverness. I incline to the view that North Korean diplomacy isn’t fiendishly clever, it’s just usually less incompetent than ours. Conceding guilt for sinking the Cheonan without apologizing for it isn’t clever. For North Korea, it’s the worst of everything. It gets no credit for contrition, and yet it refutes and embarrasses its sympathizers from Seoul to New York. A more clever North Korea would either apologize for a payoff or stick to denial, but one could just as easily say that a more clever North Korea would be South Korea.
Discussion on this situation, from a different aspect, can be found at:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/04/28/those-who-the-gods-wish-to-destroy/#more-14366
Wow – just stunning. Kim Jong Il buys weapons and luxuries with the food money, obstructs and diverts food aid, and we’re the ones who are committing a human rights violation? I’m no doctor, but the man really seems to be losing his mental faculties. This should be bigger news. Carter is a national embarrassment.
Just stck to the facts! Pointing out the facts about American sanctions as you did a few posts earlier is good work – and thanks. But, “contrition”? States don’t apologize; stupid Christians do. As I offered here, there are plenty of empirical theories why North Korea attacked the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong. Leave the theology to the psychologically ill.
http://radcontra.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/different-perspectives-on-north-korea-and-the-sinking-of-roks-cheonan/
And stupid atheists form communist states like the DPRK that end up as theocracies like the DPRK which is brainwashed by the cult of Kim Il-sung. You are welcome to join them, Hume.
I will deal with the issue of North Korea’s apparent admission later, but for now I’d like to say I’m disappointed in Hume’s Bastard’s anti-Christian remarks.
I can see knocking Christians for doing un-Christian things or things Christ would get really pissed off at, especially if they’re done in His name. But calling them stupid for apologizing for stuff? If the leaders of the world did more people apologizing, showing contrition, and avoiding things they’d have to apologize for later, the world might just be a better place.
Note to usinkorea: that is what Christian-bashing looks like.
Note to KCJ: Other cheek. Turn. Now. Perfectly mirrored “stupid atheists” remarks will win no converts to your side.
It’s been widely documented that Kim’s famly were prominent Presbyterian elders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung
Bradley K. Martin also drew attention to the connection between Christianity and juche. I think this monster is on your side, brother.
@kushibo: you continue to miss the point. Joshua made a category mistake: states are not people. Leaders are also not “people”, but rather figureheads and representatives of the electorate, depending on the case, that gives them their authority. There is prudence in policy, but not conscience.
Please don’t Christianize politics.
As for being nice to Christians, all I can say is: “Please go to your heaven, and leave this paradise to humans.”
Oh, my God! Kim Il-sung’s forebears were Christian clergy?! How did this happen.
Oh, wait. I learned that when I was like, ten.
Anyway, kudos on delivering what is an uncharacteristically coherent comment from yourself. You’re still gratuitously bashing people based on your own bigotry, but at least it’s getting easier to follow. 😀
No, Hume’s Bastard/radcontra, North Korea is not my monster. I am not an adherent of 19th century-style Presbyterianism, and I do make a habit of calling out my fellow brethren on things, which is why (as I alluded above), folks like usinkorea have labeled me anti-Christian.
Nice try, though.
Why is it “bigotry” to oppose a) a religion, b) a religion that more often undermines social order than not, c) a religion based on magic, and, d) a sample of odious organizations, like the Catholic Church, that justify rape, etc. A religion, like Christianity, that condones immorality in the name of a broader forgiveness is especially useful for the inculcation of despots. It’s not surprising the future dictators of the Kim clan were loyal Presbyterians.
I’m with Hirchens (and I am ignostic): we need to save humanity by freeing it from such a wicked Christian dictator.
A first for OFK! The Juche tyrants are actually Christians! I knew it! I knew it! (and probably Catholics too, *snicker, snort…*)
from: http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2011/04/29/carter-upsets-nk-human-rights-activists/
On Friday afternoon, a collection of five non-government groups called a news conference to criticize Mr. Carter. They pointed out that, when he was president in the late 1970s, he criticized human rights violations carried out by authoritarian government that ruled South Korea at the time. By 1987, South Korea had democratized.
“He denies that doing the same thing now will make a difference in North Korea. It’s really ridiculous,†Young Howard, president of Open Radio for North Korea, said at the news conference.
Joshua wrote:
Thanks for dealing with the Hume’s Bastard’s attempt to indict all of Christendom for the atrocity that is the Pyongyang regime, as well as the bigotry question. It saved me the trouble at a time when I’m a tad busy.
KCJ: But, Christianity is the root of all evil in the modern world! Where else would manipulative tyrants find a license for imagination and control than in heavens and strange creatures, all connected to a panoply of earthly organizations drawing on people’s money and blind allegiance. And, even intelligent fall for it! That certainly sounds like North Korea. Or, Zimbabwe. Libya?
@Joshua: Asking North Korea for an apology is unrealistic. Instead of humiliating the state, which is not undermining the state, perhaps even strengthening it by allowing the Kim clan to portray themselves a victim to North Koreans, the U.S. should communicate incentives for prudent behavior. That would include normalizing relations with its neighbors, allowing inspections of its nuclear facilities, and razing its gulags. Punishing clearly is not working.
@Glans: I’m glad you quoted that article. This is a general approach to IR I prefer, not this moralistic emphasis on punishing and apologizing. Cha’s testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee is also a good read.
As for China, I think any marginal value North Korea has for China economically is dwarfed by its security value to keep Japan off-balance. China thinks of the region in terms of a triangular relationship between itself the U.S. and Japan. If China, so the documentation goes, can keep the region stable and peaceful through fostering this relationship, it can develop itself and defend itself in the long term against its main threats, which happpen to be Japan and the US. So, I would say, to solve the Korean problem, solve the Sino-Japanese one first.
@Hume’s Bastard
Apology should not be a precondition to normalization? I’m sorry, but did you have someone proofread what you said before you clicked the “Submit Comment” button? Really? Honestly? No kidding?
I’m not sure where to begin with your statement equating an apology to humiliation. Do you have kids? Do you think it’s “humiliating” to make them apologize for their misdeeds? Personally, the “apology” that South Korea wants doesn’t go nearly far enough. We’re only talking about 2 incidents in a long series of ****-ups by Pyongyang. If you have any doubts about my statement, just ask someone who lost a family member in the KAL-007 incident, the family of Park Wang-Ja, or any one of the thousands of defectors living in South Korea. I’m sure a worthless (and in all likelihood, insincere) apology will do very little to resolve the injustices thrust upon them by Pyongyang’s “bellicose” policy of foreign engagement.
By the way, did you just start looking this information up? I ask because I’d like to know how can you get Pyongyang to raze concentration camps when they won’t even admit that they exist in the first place?
North Korea is not run by a government. It’s run by a criminal organization parading itself to the international community as a legitimate government.
@Glans: I’m glad you liked that link. I also liked Cha’s testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. As for China, there’s some indication in documents, that Beijing worries more about Japan, and I think North Korea exists because it’s a thorn in Japan’s existence. Any economic benefits are just gravy.
@The Porcine Majesty: That second paragraph with its illogical irrelevancies is just embarrassing. Is that what American education is coming to?
Last paragraph: exhibit #1 in the schizophrenic gallery of Christian morality! Please don’t ever study social science – it’s definitely not for you.
Joshua earned his chops a long time ago. I respect him and his better arguments when he backs them up with research. He’s the best in the K-Sphere. But, frankly, I’m in the minority here of people who have even heard a North Korean soldier or other official do his job, perhaps the only one. The way you twist language around, using criminality to connote what any state does, is offensive. It’s no more intelligible or proper than when South Koreans or even Americans tell me I’m a criminal because of my military service. The only way to put the DPRK back on a wise course to development is to drain the swamp of a very troubled region, and that includes the US.
“Admit”? It’s not a court of law, although I understand why Americans like to think of the world as a court of law. It’s a very serious game, and no one expects humans to be “good”, “moral”, or “holy” now after millennia of evolution. You just don’t like politics, do you? Admit it!
@Hume’s Bastard
I may not possess the writing skills of Pulitzer Prize winner, but at least I know that any attempt to normalize relations using the “incentives for prudent behavior” is just setting yourself up to get kicked in the pants. After receiving a sufficient enough beating, both South Korea and the United States have come to the realization that North Korea (and to an extent, China) simply gamed them for their own benefit. Why do you think both parties are highly reluctant to return to the six-party talks?
I guess you’re wondering why I would go so far as to portray the Kim clique as a “criminal organization” masquerading as a legitimate government? Maybe it has to do with the money-laundering, purchasing extravagant luxury items that are quite costly compared to budget, and violently subjugating any dissenting citizens in your country for actions that would appear quite rational in the remaining 99.96% of the world. If you’ve followed any North Korea related website for more than a year, you’d realize that these are standard operating procedures for Pyongyang.
Having lived in Southern California for more than decade, the similarities to organized street gangs is impeccable. Both groups are involved in the drug trade, both spend money without regard for actual finances, and both violently subjugate dissenters. Both attempt to counterfeit U.S. Dollars; North Korea is simply much better at it. I don’t know about you, but I consider organized street gangs to be at the top of my “criminal organizations” list.
I could go on and on about this, but; by this point, if you’re still questioning Pyongyang’s motives and trying to explain away the Kim clan’s criminal exploits by questioning human morality, you’re probably not going to figure this out any time soon. You can go twiddle your thumbs with Jimmy Carter, Margaret Chan, and Bruce Cumings. Pyongyang is simply doing business, and they’ve been in business for almost 60 years now.