(2부)인권은 어디에…총알받이 된 北 군인들 [ATL]

When you're describing the situation currently in North Korea, it makes me think of how my mother talked about the situation in Poland. What I mean is it seems like the near complete isolation that exists there is lighter. It's somewhere along the way. I remember my mother telling me how much she looked forward to these broadcasts from Radio Free Europe. And others always looking for basically something foreign, clothing styles, whatever it was. So is that analogous? Is this something like Europe now in the 80s or late 70s? Is that what North Korea is beginning to look more like? Jan, it is very interesting that you're asking that question. I often think that North Korea under Kim Jong-un today is beginning to look like Eastern Europe in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember listening to the radio, one of those big bulky radios, with my maternal grandfather listening to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, the BBC. That's how we got all credible information. We didn't trust official propaganda. We only trusted foreign radio stations, radio stations from the West, basically. North Korea, I sense, is somehow in a similar place. Half the population of North Korea is under 35 years of age, so 35 and under. In particular, young people in the urban areas, in particular, the sons and daughters of the North Korean elites who have the means to access information from the outside world. They have the devices, they have the players or the phones. By the way, they do have a cell phone system, but it cannot make international calls. It only works inside North Korea. So young men and women of means do have a certain degree of access to this information smuggled in from the outside world. Okay, 35 today, even if they're in government, even if they work for the regime, they're in obviously junior lower positions. However, 10, 15 years from now, many of them will be in key positions. Would I make a prediction? I know a few North Korean senior escapees, former diplomats, including Mr. Taeyong Ho, who was a National Assemblyman in South Korea, who was DCM at the North Korean Embassy in London when he defected. Now he's Secretary General of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council. He also agrees that perhaps somewhere between 15 and 20 years from now, we could be certain that there will be some type of transformation in North Korea. No dictatorship lasts forever. This one will not last forever. Change might come sooner in Eastern Europe. How many could have anticipated, and here I'm talking Sovietologists and experts in the region, how many anticipated that these regimes would fall in 1989? Almost nobody. Actually, that's something that Professor Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania has actually talked about when it comes to the Soviet Union. It was pretty much only the dissidents who were saying, it actually looks like it's going to fall, but the Sovietologists didn't want to listen to them. That's always something very interesting to me. There's much less of an interest in listening to the dissidents than it is to the experts. In our case, I think that one of the greatest developments over the past 25 years has been that the voices of North Korean escapees have been heard louder than before. Before this great, awful tragedy of the 1990s, the North Korean famine of the mid to late 1990s, just a handful of North Koreans had escaped. However, ever since, about 34,000 North Koreans managed to escape and resettle in South Korea. Others here in the United States, we have somewhere in the range of 250, 60 right now. Not too many in Canada, in the UK, in Germany, in other places. Many of them have written memoirs, books. Many of them have testified before the UN Commission of Inquiry that published a landmark report in February of 2014, finding that crimes against humanity were being perpetrated pursuant to policies established at the highest levels of the regime. By the way, the same UN COI report warned Chinese authorities that through their policy of forcibly repatriating North Korean refugees in direct violation of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1967 Additional Protocol, China was aiding and abetting a regime committing crimes against humanity. North Korean escapees played an absolutely critical role in informing the UN like-minded governments, the United States, the European Union on the atrocities perpetrated by the North Korean regime. In South Korea today, under the government of President Yun Song-yeol, several former North Koreans hold key positions. For example, Professor Ko Young-hwan, who defected from Francophone Africa in the 1990s, he was a diplomat, is now the president of the National Unification Education Institute. Tae Yong-ho was again DCM at the embassy in London. The North Korean embassy in London was a member of the South Korean National Assembly. Now he's Secretary General of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council of South Korea. That's a ministerial position. Of course, Chi Song-ho, who participated in the State of the Union Address during the first Trump administration, Trump 45, in 2018, was a member of the South Korean National Assembly. Now he's a governor in the shadow government that the South Koreans are running in the South, the North Korean shadow government. By the way, Chi Song-ho went from street child in North Korea to member of the National Assembly in South Korea. That's all I have to say about the differences between dictatorial communist North Korea, vassal, stooge, ally of China, and free, democratic, prosperous South Korea, staunch friend, ally, and partner of the United States of America. There's a few things you just mentioned. Actually, I absolutely do want to talk about what the Trump 47 administration might look like when it comes to North Korea or some of your hopes in terms of North Korea policy for that administration. But before we go there, you described a few elements of the complicated relationship between North Korea and China. I've heard from many experts that essentially if Chinese material support to North Korea ended, it just evaporated, the North Korean regime might collapse within weeks. I'm curious what your view of that is, because on the one hand, we have this huge moneymaking operation through weapons, through soldiers, and so forth. You're arguing this is part of his economic engine. On the other hand, there's this significant, and I'm going to get you to tell me how significant, dependency on Chinese money. The argument is, the Chinese Communist Party basically gets to say, well, look at this pariah regime, look at the terrible things we do. We're much better than them, or something like that. Your thoughts? To China, North Korea continues to be a vassal, an ally, a vassal, a buffer zone between South Korea, the friend and ally of the United States and China, and also bargaining chip. There have been ups and downs in the relationship between China and North Korea. China has sometimes been extraordinarily annoyed with North Korea. When Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping met in China, Kim Jong-un pledged to consult with China when it came to important strategic decisions. Apparently, he didn't consult with China prior to launching the so-called satellite, and he didn't consult with China properly prior to providing ammunition, artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and even troops to Russia. Now, is this a deal breaker? Absolutely not. It's just like the nasty boy who goes to school, does some nasty things, North Korea, and the principal calls the parents to come to school. This is China. You know, the kid might get slapped around a little bit, get a little bit of a spanking, but fundamentally, he's still their kid. So this is not going to be a deal breaker. This close relationship that during the good times was described as the lips and teeth, a very close relationship between China and North Korea will continue. After all, to the south, North and South Korea are separated by the DMZ, the demilitarized zone. North Korea's northern border with Russia is just 17 kilometers long. Most of their northern border is with China. Prior to COVID, I would have agreed that China doesn't have the capability to transform North Korea. China has the capability to shut down North Korea. However, during COVID, Kim Jong-un shut down his border. This created great disruptions within North Korea, great humanitarian disruptions in terms of access to food, since they limited the amount of imports coming in from China. North Korea continues to be very dependent on China. However, there's an added element right now. Despite applicable UN, US, and other sanctions, North Korea is exporting massive amounts of ammunition to Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The UN sanctions regime is in deep, deep trouble. Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, used to be very good at playing this game, playing mommy against daddy. The PRC, Communist China against the Soviet Union, while extracting maximum benefits from both. Perhaps Kim Jong-un is engaged in playing a similar game. So North Korea continues to be very dependent on China. I fully agree. China continues to protect North Korea. I run into the Chinese at the UN all the time. They're their great protectors. The Cubans are their coaches, but that's a different story. China continues to forcibly repatriate North Korean refugees, falsely claiming that they're illegal economic migrants. They're not. The standard is a credible fear of persecution. If you face a credible fear of persecution upon return to the home country, you qualify to gain access to the process leading to acquiring political refugee status. We have thoroughly documented this, my organization, through satellite imagery, escapee testimony. These people, if returned to China, are tortured, beaten, harshly interrogated, imprisoned, even killed. Returned to North Korea? To North Korea. Yeah, right. In the case of women, North Korean women who became pregnant with Chinese men, we have had multiple, multiple reports of horrendous treatment, including forced abortions and infanticide. Of course, these North Koreans should receive political refugee status. So China continues to aid and abet this regime, even when they're annoyed with them. Are they still heavily dependent on China? Yes. Can China still shut them down? Yes. Now they have a little bit of an escape valve. They're making tremendous amounts of money out of exporting instability and violence, weapons, ammunition, and even soldiers to conflict zones, to Ukraine in particular, and also to Iran and its terrorist proxies. What do you make of Trump 45's relationship with Kim Jong-un? Multiple US presidential administrations have attempted to engage the North Koreans, to engage in diplomatic dialogue with the North Koreans. All of these attempts have failed. I would not blame us, the United States. I will blame the North Korean regime for having zero credibility, for having breached each and every promise they made through a negotiated deal. During the Clinton administration, there was the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework. They developed a clandestine uranium enrichment program that fell apart. During the Bush administration, we had the Six-Party Talks. They breached the terms of the agreement. It fell apart. The 2012 Leap Day Agreement, Ambassador Glyn Davis here, former special envoy for North Korea policy, the first vice minister of foreign affairs at the time, Kim Ki-gwan. No more nukes, no more tests, no more ballistic missile launches. Two weeks later, they announced a so-called satellite launch. They proceeded with the launch just ahead of the centennial anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birthday on the 15th of April 2012. The launch happened two days before that. They failed then, they succeeded later. So, President Trump tried something new. President Trump experimented with a tool in the diplomatic toolkit that had not been employed before. The summit meeting. It makes good logical sense. If this is a top-down system with a supreme leader at the top, what else can we try? A summit meeting, a meeting between the two leaders. After all, during Trump 45, we applied all four elements of national power. All four elements of the dime. Diplomatic, information, military and economic power. How? Diplomatic through the summit meetings in Hanoi, Vietnam. Well, in Singapore and then in Hanoi and then very briefly in Panmunjom on the Korean peninsula. We applied information to a certain extent through information campaigns, information sent into North Korea through funding organization endeavoring to do that. Military power, of course, through strengthening the US-South Korea alliance and the US-Japan alliance and economic through sanctions. So, this was part of that. In my view, perhaps for President Trump, this is still unfinished business. Perhaps there will be some way to try once again to solve, let's say, one of the most serious security threats facing the United States and our allies. I talked to a lot of members of the European Parliament. My organization and I have built a lot of great transatlantic bridges. The Europeans are very worried. You know, we've been talking about nukes and missiles and human rights violations. Of course, they care. These issues are somehow remote. They're no longer remote. The North Korean threat has arrived on the doorstep of Europe. There are troops in Ukraine. Everybody realizes the urgency of this matter. So, while this is difficult, the greatest difficulty is the following. When we go to school and study our conflict resolution, we learn about the ZOPA, the zone of possible agreement. We learn about BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. The North Koreans don't go to the school of the ZOPA or the BATNA. The North Koreans go to the school of the zero-sum game. Your loss is my gain. What do they want? They want the so-called denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula. There have been no nuclear weapons in South Korea since 1991-1992. The tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea were removed at that time. What they mean by this is the removal of South Korea from the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, the dismantlement of the U.S.-South Korea strategic alliance. So, what do we want? We want CVID, complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. Where's the middle ground? There's no middle ground. There's no ZOPA. There's no zone of possible agreement. Where does human rights fall into this? There were some very high points during Trump 45, for example, and I had a hand in this. I'm the one who selected, recruited, and brought Chi Song-ho over to participate in the State of the Union Address. So, we had a disabled North Korean human rights activist, a former North Korean defector, participating in the State of the Union Address meeting with the president in the Oval Office together with seven others. I selected, recruited those seven others as well, good friends and colleagues. President Trump gave a great speech on the 7th of November 2017 in Seoul before the South Korean National Assembly. He had a very accurate statement. He made a very accurate statement on the state of North Korean human rights and the human rights security nexus. Of course, later on, as we were engaging the North Koreans in some diplomacy, he was criticized, for example, for not having appointed a U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights issues. I agree that perhaps we had and perhaps we still have too many special envoys, but this position is one that we really need. It's a position that we need. It's a position that needs full support. So, that's what you're hoping for in this future administration? That's what I'm hoping for, yes. Of course, the U.N. is no silver bullet. The U.N. has severe limitations. Yet, there are some good things done through the U.N. at the time. Trump 45, the first Trump administration, was somehow reluctant to place the North Korean human rights issue on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council for a few years, presumably because we were engaging them through summit diplomacy. But no empty promises were made. There was no arrangement bringing any kind of damage to U.S. national security or to the peace and security of the Northeast Asia region or South Korea. So, we'll have to see. I mean, fundamentally, over the long run, we'll have to keep doing what we've been doing. Basically, ensure deterrence. Deterrence is very important and, of course, extended deterrence. And the presence of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula in South Korea is very important. South Koreans are great soldiers, great war fighters. The presence of our armed forces, the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea is important because it provides a very powerful deterrent. It's not about fighting a war. It's about preventing a war. And that's the very important role played by the U.S.-South Korea alliance. So, we'll have to continue to deter and contain North Korea. They have developed tremendous, I have to say, long-range ballistic missile capabilities. By now, we are certain that they can reach the continental United States. According to the RAND Corporation, by the year 2025, which is upon us, they'll be in possession of 200 nuclear warheads. That's an arsenal compared to Great Britain's and France's. And France and Great Britain are no longer building nuclear weapons. So, of course, we'll have to work on improving our own missile defenses as well. In the meantime, we will have to concentrate on the human rights security nexus. And again, concentrate on very meaningful and effective information campaigns meant to empower the people of North Korea through information from the outside world, meant to induce eventual peaceful transformation of North Korea. So, you're speaking here about public diplomacy, basically communicating with the people as opposed to with the government or in different ways with both. One could see it as a version of public diplomacy. Of course, usually when we use this term public diplomacy, this is perfectly fine with the host government. It's perfectly fine for the embassy of the United States in a given country to organize a book festival, a film festival, to feature some music bands, whatever it is that you want to do, feature some authors, some actors and actresses. In this case, the North Korean regime is adamantly opposed to foreign influences entering the country. They've come up with new legislation, harsh punishment. They've executed teenagers for having watched South Korean material. So, this is very serious business. So, of course, in a way, this is public diplomacy. This is information sent into North Korea, inserted into North Korea, information smuggled into North Korea meant for the consumption of ordinary North Korean people or even the elites, but without the approval of the regime and against the regime's adamant opposition. And explain to me what you mean by security human rights nexus. There is a strong connection between North Korea's human rights violations and the threats it poses to international peace and security. Why? In order to stay in power, the Kim family regime needs to do two things. Number one, develop its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The regime regards its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles as essential to its survival. Number two, the regime needs to keep its core elites happy through access to hard currency and goods imported from the outside world despite applicable sanctions. How does the regime procure the hard currency it needs to keep the elites happy and produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles? By oppressing and exploiting its own people at home and abroad. Prior to COVID, there are about 100,000 North Korean workers officially dispatched by the North Korean regime to about 40 countries all over the world, primarily China, the Russian Far East, and the Middle East. Construction workers, textile workers, loggers in the Russian Far East. And hackers, I'm recalling. Yeah, there is a core of about 3,000 North Korean hackers who work day jobs in China, Singapore, Malaysia, and other places. Of course, much of their salary is confiscated by the North Korean regime. At night, they work as hackers for the North Korean regime. So cybercrime is a very serious issue. Crypto theft is another serious issue. They're very good at this. It's not a large core. It's a relatively small core, but highly trained and highly loyal to the Kim family regime. These 3,000 hackers are people who are in a position to experience the outside world. They know very well what's going on. On the other hand, they're Songbun, loyalty-based. Background check was likely perfect. They still have relatives at home. Their families are still home. Spouses, children, parents, other relatives. If they decide to defect, their entire family will be punished, pursuant to the Yeonja-je system of guilt by association, going up to three generations of the same family. Generally, most of the workers sent overseas are men, except for women who are sent abroad as waitresses, working at North Korean restaurants, textile workers, or seafood processors. They're sent mostly to Chinese seafood processing plants, but it's mostly men, married men. They must have at least one child at home, if not two children. So this is the regime's way of keeping the family hostage in order to ensure the loyalty of those who are officially dispatched overseas, in order to ensure that they don't defect. Every time somebody defects, this creates great embarrassment for the Kim family regime. So bringing back to this human rights security nexus, essentially, it's the exploitation of these people that's funding all of the regime's activities and creating the security problem in the first place. That's what you're arguing. There are multiple layers to the human rights security nexus. Throughout North Korea's unlawful detention system, throughout North Korea's political prison camps, re-education through labor camps, the Gulag, the political prison camp, the detention facilities, forced labor is part of daily life. This is slave labor. This is slave labor that fuels North Korea's extractive industry, its coal extraction in particular, but all kinds of extractive operations. The regime pretty much relies on slave labor, prison labor, forced labor, in order to extract the resources it needs to develop its weapons, its tools of death. Those sent overseas are basically shipped overseas as merchandise in order to procure hard currency for the regime. My organization has also documented a very interesting situation at Camp 16. This is a political prison camp that's very close to the Punggye-ri nuclear testing facility. If you go around the mountain, you go along a rather long road, but there is a shortcut, a switchback, leading directly from the political prison camp to the nuclear testing facility. There are, of course, multiple explanations as to why this switchback was built, was dug into the mountain. One of these possible explanations is that they use forced labor, prison labor, slave labor from the camp at these nuclear testing facilities. There are reports that have been drafted and published in South Korea documenting the impact that the nuclear program has on the health and human rights of North Koreans. My organization submitted to the UPR, the Universal Periodic Review, this year our submission related to the negative side effects of the nuclear weapons program on the health and human rights of North Korean women. The people of North Korea are paying a very heavy price for the regime's development of nukes and ballistic missiles. On your point of this extraction of money for the Russia-Ukraine war, President Trump has promised to try to finish that war in one way or another as quickly as possible. So it's likely that that cash stream will run out. Greg, this has been a fascinating conversation. Any final thoughts as we finish? It is very important to remember that North Korea is no longer just a Korean peninsula issue. North Korea is no longer just a security threat to the Northeast Asia region, to the Asia-Pacific region. The North Korean proliferation of instability and violence, North Korean weapons, ammunition, even soldiers have been deployed against our allies in Israel. They've been deployed against Ukraine. They've proliferated to state sponsors of terror. Of course, they're a state sponsor of terror themselves. They proliferated to terrorist groups that are attacking, invading, killing, assassinating our own friends and allies. North Korea has become a global threat. North Korea has become an increasingly important member of the axis of tyranny. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and their allies, these are basically powers that are trying very hard to go against the status quo. They're trying to dismantle the international order as we know it, their revisionist powers. We must pay very close attention to the security threats that North Korea poses. We must understand that there's an inextricable connection between North Korea's human rights violations and crimes against humanity and the grave security threat it poses to international peace and security. Well, Greg Scarlatoiu, such a pleasure to have had you on. Sir, Jan, the pleasure has been all mine. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Greg Scarlatoiu and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.