Begging for China aid
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is visiting China again, accompanied by his top economic officials. It is the reclusive and ailing leader’s third visit to China in a short span of one year, with the previous two visits made in May and August last year.
Kim’s frequent visits to China indicate Pyongyang has made little progress in tackling its deepening economic, political and social problems. The pariah regime has been isolated from the international community since 2009 as the United Nations imposed sanctions for its nuclear and missile tests.
Furthermore, Seoul and Washington cut off economic and food aid to the North after it torpedoed the South’s Cheonan corvette in March last year, killing 46 sailors on board.
To overcome isolation, the North has dramatically increased economic cooperation with China, its only ally in the world. Yet economic cooperation with China alone is not enough to ease the North’s chronic economic problems. The impoverished state needs to rebuild the economy from the ground up. But China is not in a position to do it. All it can do is to provide a small amount of assistance to the needy neighbor each time its frail leader visits asking for help.
For Kim, the need to secure economic aid from China has become all the greater as the process of transferring his power to his youngest son has been not as smooth as he expected. He needs rice and other essential commodities to win support for his inexperienced and unpopular heir from the increasingly restless public.
Furthermore, Kim has less than a year left to fulfill his promise to make North Korea a “strong and prosperous” nation by the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth, which falls on April 15 next year. As things stand, it appears difficult for Kim to even maintain his fragile regime by then, let alone make it a prosperous nation.
In this regard, securing economic aid from China is the most urgent task for Kim. Therefore, he must have put it at the top of his agenda for talks with Chinese leaders. But nothing is for free. To curry favor with the leaders in Beijing, he might have told them what they wanted to hear ― a willingness to resume the stalled six-party talks.
To restart the multilateral talks, Seoul has proposed a three-stage formula ― inter-Korean talks, Pyongyang-Washington talks, then six-party talks. Washington, Beijing and Tokyo have all agreed to push this proposal and, according to Chinese officials, Pyongyang has also responded positively to it.
But the North has yet to respond to Seoul’s call for inter-Korean talks, which was made in January.
Given the growing regime instability in the North, Kim has little to gain by delaying Seoul’s offer for talks. But to restart inter-Korean dialogue, the North must apologize for the atrocities it committed against the South last year. An apology costs nothing for the North. But the reward it can get from the South will be much more than the economic aid it is seeking from China.
Kim’s frequent visits to China indicate Pyongyang has made little progress in tackling its deepening economic, political and social problems. The pariah regime has been isolated from the international community since 2009 as the United Nations imposed sanctions for its nuclear and missile tests.
Furthermore, Seoul and Washington cut off economic and food aid to the North after it torpedoed the South’s Cheonan corvette in March last year, killing 46 sailors on board.
To overcome isolation, the North has dramatically increased economic cooperation with China, its only ally in the world. Yet economic cooperation with China alone is not enough to ease the North’s chronic economic problems. The impoverished state needs to rebuild the economy from the ground up. But China is not in a position to do it. All it can do is to provide a small amount of assistance to the needy neighbor each time its frail leader visits asking for help.
For Kim, the need to secure economic aid from China has become all the greater as the process of transferring his power to his youngest son has been not as smooth as he expected. He needs rice and other essential commodities to win support for his inexperienced and unpopular heir from the increasingly restless public.
Furthermore, Kim has less than a year left to fulfill his promise to make North Korea a “strong and prosperous” nation by the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth, which falls on April 15 next year. As things stand, it appears difficult for Kim to even maintain his fragile regime by then, let alone make it a prosperous nation.
In this regard, securing economic aid from China is the most urgent task for Kim. Therefore, he must have put it at the top of his agenda for talks with Chinese leaders. But nothing is for free. To curry favor with the leaders in Beijing, he might have told them what they wanted to hear ― a willingness to resume the stalled six-party talks.
To restart the multilateral talks, Seoul has proposed a three-stage formula ― inter-Korean talks, Pyongyang-Washington talks, then six-party talks. Washington, Beijing and Tokyo have all agreed to push this proposal and, according to Chinese officials, Pyongyang has also responded positively to it.
But the North has yet to respond to Seoul’s call for inter-Korean talks, which was made in January.
Given the growing regime instability in the North, Kim has little to gain by delaying Seoul’s offer for talks. But to restart inter-Korean dialogue, the North must apologize for the atrocities it committed against the South last year. An apology costs nothing for the North. But the reward it can get from the South will be much more than the economic aid it is seeking from China.
Agent Orange probe
The government has launched an investigation into the allegations that U.S. Forces Korea buried tons of Agent Orange at Camp Carrol in Waegwan, about 30 km north of Daegu, in 1978. The Ministry of Environment sent an inspection team to the camp area Friday to verify whether the claims, put forward by three U.S. veterans who served at the military base, are true.
The three veterans told a U.S. TV station last week that they had dug a ditch, nearly the length of a city block, on the premises of the base and buried about 250 drums of the defoliant. The whistleblowers said they have since developed health problems ― chronic arthritis, hearing loss and diabetes ― which they attributed to their exposure to the chemical.
Agent Orange is a highly toxic herbicide that was used during the Vietnam War. The U.S. military sprayed it to clear jungles. The defoliant was found to be contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound. Dioxins are known carcinogens.
The whistle blowers’ revelation has sparked safety concerns among residents not just in Waegwan but in other parts of Gyeongsang provinces as the U.S. military base is just less than 1 km away from the Nakdong River, the water source for major cities in the southeastern part of the nation.
If the drums containing the defoliant were buried 33 years ago, they could have already been eroded. If so, the toxic chemical could have contaminated the soil and underground water near the military base. If the underground water has been polluted, the poisonous substance could have flowed into the Nakdong River, getting into the drinking water supply. If people used the water for irrigation, the harmful substance could have found its way into the food supply as well.
Given the grave implications, the government needs to hurry to determine whether the defoliant was really dumped at the U.S. base. In tracing the dump site, the government needs to secure cooperation from the U.S. government. The U.S. military said it has opened its own investigation into the case and is willing to conduct a joint inspection with Korea. The two sides should waste no time in launching a joint probe.
If the dumping allegations turn out to be true and contamination has occurred, the government will have to take follow-up measures promptly, including checking the health of the residents in and around Waegwan and assessing the damage to the environment.
For its part, the U.S. government will have to bear full responsibility for the recovery of the polluted areas and compensate for the environmental damage caused by the defoliant dumping. It should remember that a failure to act promptly to deal with the mess could reignite anti-U.S. sentiment in Korea.
The three veterans told a U.S. TV station last week that they had dug a ditch, nearly the length of a city block, on the premises of the base and buried about 250 drums of the defoliant. The whistleblowers said they have since developed health problems ― chronic arthritis, hearing loss and diabetes ― which they attributed to their exposure to the chemical.
Agent Orange is a highly toxic herbicide that was used during the Vietnam War. The U.S. military sprayed it to clear jungles. The defoliant was found to be contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound. Dioxins are known carcinogens.
The whistle blowers’ revelation has sparked safety concerns among residents not just in Waegwan but in other parts of Gyeongsang provinces as the U.S. military base is just less than 1 km away from the Nakdong River, the water source for major cities in the southeastern part of the nation.
If the drums containing the defoliant were buried 33 years ago, they could have already been eroded. If so, the toxic chemical could have contaminated the soil and underground water near the military base. If the underground water has been polluted, the poisonous substance could have flowed into the Nakdong River, getting into the drinking water supply. If people used the water for irrigation, the harmful substance could have found its way into the food supply as well.
Given the grave implications, the government needs to hurry to determine whether the defoliant was really dumped at the U.S. base. In tracing the dump site, the government needs to secure cooperation from the U.S. government. The U.S. military said it has opened its own investigation into the case and is willing to conduct a joint inspection with Korea. The two sides should waste no time in launching a joint probe.
If the dumping allegations turn out to be true and contamination has occurred, the government will have to take follow-up measures promptly, including checking the health of the residents in and around Waegwan and assessing the damage to the environment.
For its part, the U.S. government will have to bear full responsibility for the recovery of the polluted areas and compensate for the environmental damage caused by the defoliant dumping. It should remember that a failure to act promptly to deal with the mess could reignite anti-U.S. sentiment in Korea.
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