Quotes of the Day:
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."
- Vince Lombardi
"There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded."
- Mark Twain
"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."
- Samuel Johnson
1. U.S., Japan and South Korea Present United Front on North Korea
2. In Hawaii, Blinken Aims for a United Front With Allies on North Korea
3. Seoul closely monitoring N. Korea's nuclear, missile activities: ministry
4. U.N. rapporteur on N.K. human rights to visit S. Korea this week
5. Natural quake hits near N. Korea's nuclear test site for 2nd time in less than week: KMA
6. North Korea orders expansion of trade with China following Supreme People’s Assembly meeting
7. World leaders, Trump administration officials congregate in Seoul at international summit
8. North Korea encourages more women to move to the countryside
9. S. Korea, US, Japan commit to aligning approaches on N. Korea, advancing security coordination
10. North Koreans struggle as government provokes world with missile tests
11. N. Korea to convene conference of party's primary committees this month.
12. Revisiting the 'Asian values' debate
13. Korean content’s global popularity reaches new heights: survey
14. Hanbok stealing?
1. U.S., Japan and South Korea Present United Front on North Korea
Good words but action is required.
Low hanging fruit: combined trilateral exercises.
U.S., Japan and South Korea Present United Front on North Korea
Allies condemn missile tests, push for diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang
WSJ · by Courtney McBride
“It is clear to all of us that the DPRK is in a phase of provocation,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, using shorthand for the country’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “We condemn the recent missile launches, violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
North Korea conducted seven weapons tests in the month of January alone—more than it had done all of last year. That includes an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Jan. 30, the most powerful weapon the Kim Jong Un regime has shown off in years. Pyongyang has signaled it could consider restarting nuclear tests or long-range missile launches.
U.S. officials say that the administration’s approach is the right one, despite North Korea’s escalatory posture. The Biden administration has repeatedly offered to meet Pyongyang without preconditions at any time and anywhere. But North Korea has remained disinterested. The two sides haven't held formal talks in more than two years.
Pointing to sanctions imposed in January against eight North Korea-linked individuals and entities, Mr. Blinken said the U.S. “will continue to hold the DPRK accountable, even as we seek to engage in diplomacy.”
South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong said the allies had reached a consensus on their condemnation of the tests, the need to deter further weapons activity by Pyongyang, and a push for diplomacy. He said continuing disagreement between South Korea and Japan over control of disputed islands and historical concerns wouldn’t affect their cooperation on North Korea.
“We are absolutely united in our approach, in our determination,” Mr. Blinken said. “And that unity of purpose is, I think, vitally important to dealing with the challenge posed by the DPRK, and also pursuing a more hopeful future.”
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said the three officials had held “a very fruitful discussion” on the challenges posed by North Korea.
While Mr. Chung said the allies had discussed specific measures with respect to North Korea, he declined to disclose any of them.
The Biden administration’s new Indo-Pacific strategy, released Friday, underscores the conviction that “more than any other part of the world, what happens in this region is going to shape the lives of Americans and people around the world,” Mr. Blinken said.
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WSJ · by Courtney McBride
2. In Hawaii, Blinken Aims for a United Front With Allies on North Korea
The new Indo-Pacific strategy in execution from day one.
In Hawaii, Blinken Aims for a United Front With Allies on North Korea
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his counterparts from South Korea and Japan denounced the North’s recent missile tests and called for a resumption of talks.
Alongside his counterparts from South Korea and Japan, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken condemned the North’s recent ballistic missile launches while also calling for a resumption of talks with Pyongyang.Credit...Pool photo by Kevin Lamarque
By
Feb. 13, 2022
HONOLULU — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan on Saturday presented a unified front against North Korea’s recent missile tests, which the country has been conducting at its fastest rate in years.
“I think it is clear to all of us that the D.P.R.K. is in a phase of provocation,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference in Honolulu after an afternoon of meetings. He said the three countries would “continue to hold the D.P.R.K. accountable,” using an abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
But all three officials said their governments were open to talks with the North, even as they condemned the recent tests. “We reaffirmed that diplomacy and dialogue with North Korea is more important than ever,” Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong of South Korea said.
Mr. Blinken’s appearance with Mr. Chung and Yoshimasa Hayashi, the foreign minister of Japan, was meant to be a signal moment in the Biden administration’s efforts to defuse a potential crisis with North Korea.
The governments of South Korea and Japan have recently had disagreements over how to deal with the North. Seoul wants to offer more diplomatic enticements to Pyongyang, while Tokyo advocates a harder line, veering more toward harsher United Nations sanctions.
Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, has suggested that he might end a self-imposed moratorium on testing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons. Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Korea News Service
So far this year, North Korea has conducted seven missile tests, more than in all of 2021.
Officials with the United States and its allies were particularly alarmed by the North’s Jan. 30 test, which they said was of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, the most powerful missile the country had tested since 2017. It raised the specter of a return to the tensions of President Donald J. Trump’s first year in office, when the North tested long-range missiles and a nuclear device, and Mr. Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” in return.
Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, recently suggested that he might end a self-imposed moratorium on testing such powerful weapons. Last month, North Korean state media said Mr. Kim had ordered officials to “promptly examine the issue of restarting all activities that had been temporarily suspended,” presumably a reference to the moratorium.
Some analysts said Mr. Kim and other officials might already have decided on a course of action, but that their intentions remained a mystery.
“We have data points. We have a bunch of bones, but we don’t know how the skeleton fits together or which way it’ll go,” said Robert Carlin, a former U.S. intelligence analyst on North Korea.
A photograph released by North Korean state media last month, showing what it said was a test of a long-range cruise missile.Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Korea News Service
The meetings in Honolulu were aimed not only at discussing North Korea, but at trying to smooth out tensions between Japan and South Korea, with the United States playing conciliator.
The two countries have longstanding disagreements over historical issues stemming from World War II and Japan’s onetime status as South Korea’s colonial ruler. In November, Mr. Blinken’s deputy Wendy Sherman met in Washington with her counterparts from both countries, but conflicts between the South Korean and Japanese officials resulted in her giving an awkward solo news conference afterward.
By that measure, the news conference in Honolulu on Saturday was an improvement, though the three officials said nothing substantial about the tensions between Japan and South Korea. They did discuss the rising friction in the region over China’s territorial claims and its economic coercion of smaller neighbors.
But the immediate issue was North Korea. Mr. Chung underscored President Moon Jae-in of South Korea’s belief in the importance of diplomatic outreach to the North. Mr. Moon, who helped to bring about the historic direct talks between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump, hopes to make reconciliation between the Koreas a centerpiece of his legacy.
South Korea has a presidential election in March, and Mr. Moon’s successor could take a different approach. American officials say they are keeping a close eye on the candidates’ positions toward North Korea.
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, center, with Mr. Kim and then-President Donald J. Trump in June 2019. Mr. Moon helped to bring about their historic direct talks. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr. Hayashi emphasized that Japan was also open to diplomacy, reiterating that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was ready to meet with Mr. Kim without preconditions — a position taken by all three nations’ leaders. But he said North Korea also had to address certain issues critical to Japan, including its past abductions of Japanese citizens.
The Significance of North Korea’s Missile Tests
Card 1 of 5
U.N. resolutions. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula started rising in 2017, when North Korea tested three intercontinental ballistic missiles and conducted a nuclear test. The United Nations imposed sanctions, and Pyongyang stopped testing nuclear and long-range missiles for a time.
Last month, after the North began its latest spate of missile tests, the State Department called on the United Nations to impose new sanctions on the country. But China and Russia blocked the proposal.
American officials say they have tried various ways of reaching out to North Korea in hopes of restarting diplomacy, which has stalled since a failed summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019. But they said they had heard nothing back from the North, which has closed itself off to the outside world even more than usual since the pandemic began.
“We have no hostile intent toward the D.P.R.K.,” Mr. Blinken said on Saturday. “We remain open to dialogue with no preconditions if Pyongyang chooses that path.”
Mr. Blinken’s stop in Hawaii was the last in a weeklong trip across the Asia-Pacific region, following visits to Australia and Fiji. The goal was to emphasize that Asia is at the center of President Biden’s foreign policy.
3. Seoul closely monitoring N. Korea's nuclear, missile activities: ministry
It should go without saying but if not said people might get the wrong idea.
Seoul closely monitoring N. Korea's nuclear, missile activities: ministry | Yonhap News Agency
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is keeping close tabs on North Korea's nuclear and missile activities, the unification ministry said Monday, following a news report that the secretive nation seems to be operating related facilities at its Yongbyon complex.
"With regard to North Korea's nuclear and missile activities, including Yongbyon, (we) have been closely tracking and monitoring (them) on the basis of close South Korea-U.S. coordination," ministry spokesperson Lee Jong-joo said at a press briefing.
Olli Heinonen, former deputy director-general at the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Voice of America (VOA) earlier that there are indications of the North having activated its plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities in Yongbyon, with snow on the roof of some of the facilities shown melting.
(END)
4. U.N. rapporteur on N.K. human rights to visit S. Korea this week
Human rights is a national security issue in addition to a moral imperative.
U.N. rapporteur on N.K. human rights to visit S. Korea this week | Yonhap News Agency
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Yonhap) -- The U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea's human rights situation is scheduled to visit South Korea this week to compile data and have discussions on the matter, the foreign ministry said Monday.
Tomas Ojea Quintana will visit Seoul from Feb. 15-23 to meet with South Korean government officials, politicians as well as civic groups and North Korean defectors to prepare for an annual report to be submitted to the Human Rights Council next month.
He plans to have a meeting with Second Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-moon on Wednesday, and discuss findings and recommendations during a press briefing on the last day of his visit, the ministry said.
It would be his seventh trip to South Korea since taking office in August 2016 and the last before his term ends in August.
(END)
5. Natural quake hits near N. Korea's nuclear test site for 2nd time in less than week: KMA
The location sure seems coincidental. For the geologists out there, have 6 nuclear tests in the area had an effect on the terrain making it more likely for earthquakes to occur? I honestly do not know the science here.
Natural quake hits near N. Korea's nuclear test site for 2nd time in less than week: KMA | Yonhap News Agency
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Yonhap) -- A 2.3 magnitude natural earthquake hit near North Korea's nuclear testing site Monday, the second tremor that has struck the region in recent days, South Korea's state weather agency said.
The quake occurred about 36 kilometers north-northwest of Kilju, North Hamgyong Province, at 2:33 p.m., according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).
It was the second tremor in the area since a 3.1 magnitude natural earthquake struck the region on Friday.
Kilju is where North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear testing site is located. Over 20 earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.0 or bigger have struck regions near Kilju since 1978, with a 3.2 magnitude quake that occurred Sept. 23, 2017, being the strongest.
The epicenter of Monday's quake was at a latitude of 41.27 degrees north and a longitude of 129.24 degrees east at a depth of 22 km. The KMA said the quake occurred naturally.
So far, seven quakes with a magnitude of 2.0 or bigger have been reported on the Korean Peninsula this year.
(END)
6. North Korea orders expansion of trade with China following Supreme People’s Assembly meeting
This has to be done. If the regime does not open trade with China the people are going to suffer even more.
North Korea orders expansion of trade with China following Supreme People’s Assembly meeting
Following the announcement, some trade organizations active in Yanggang or North Hamgyong provinces are trying to make new connections with traders in Sinuiju or Dandong
North Korean authorities issued a new order pertaining to the expansion of trade with China just after the Sixth Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly on Feb. 6–7.
The order allows organizations that have been unable to take part in trade since the closure of the nation’s borders to apply for new trade certificates, or waku. However, party-based restrictions on trade appear likely to continue.
According to a high-ranking Daily NK source on Friday, the Ministry of External Economic Relations issued an order to foreign trade organizations and related departments on Feb. 8. Essentially, the order allows the expansion of “state-led trade.”
The order calls for the continuation of the “fine-tuned” system of importing and exporting necessary supplies led by the party-state, while allowing trade solely through the city of Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province. The order also allows organizations not currently taking part in trade to apply for and receive waku.
That is to say, the order essentially allows more organizations to take part in trade, even as the authorities maintain the state-led trade system.
In fact, in his Cabinet report to the Supreme People’s Assembly, Premier Kim Tok Hun said the government would continue to promote efforts to restore the state’s “unitary trade system.”
Kim’s comments seem to indicate that North Korean authorities aim to revive North Korea’s past trading system, where organizations could take part in trading activities only through the state.
In short, trade-related organizations – previously free to trade on their own with little government intervention – would be back under state control.
The state would also tightly control both what gets traded and the income derived from these trade activities.
Photograph of downtown Sinuiju from Dandong taken in 2017. (Wikimedia Commons)
In related news, following the government announcement that it will be accepting applications for new trade permits, some trading organizations and individual traders previously active in Yanggang or North Hamgyong provinces are trying to make connections with traders based in Sinuiju or Dandong.
In order to receive a waku, North Korean trading organizations have to submit certificates and written trade plans for traders active in China’s Liaoning Province, where Dandong is located.
Because traders previously active in Yanggang or North Hamgyong provinces have been working with counterparts based in China’s Jilin Province, however, it is not easy for them to find new Chinese partners near Dandong.
Meanwhile, Chinese traders cannot easily move from region to region due to China’s COVID-19-related restrictions. Additionally, they suffer supply disruptions and increased transportation costs if they move outside their area of activity, so few Jilin Province-based traders are moving to Liaoning Province.
The source said that even if traders find new Chinese partners and import items into Sinuiju, they would need to pay the transportation costs to ship the goods to Yanggang or North Hamgyong provinces. Because of this, only large enterprises or wealthy individual traders are likely to participate in trade.
He further reported that expectations among traders are generally low despite the new trade measures, and that traders will have to wait to see how much trading the authorities will permit.
Seulkee Jang is one of Daily NK’s full-time journalists. Please direct any questions about her articles to [email protected].
7. World leaders, Trump administration officials congregate in Seoul at international summit
Quite a lineup of speakers.
World leaders, Trump administration officials congregate in Seoul at international summit
China bears the blame for the immeasurable suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years and the entire world must speak with a loud, unified voice in condemning Beijing’s human rights abuses and disdain for faith and freedom, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at an international rally over the weekend.
Speaking to world leaders and international dignitaries at the World Summit 2022, Mr. Pompeo offered a harsh critique of China’s leadership and the lengths to which it went to hide the COVID-19 outbreak, which subsequently spread around the globe, killing millions.
The former top U.S. diplomat sought to draw a link between Beijing’s handling of the health crisis and its fundamental opposition to the concepts of peace and freedom that eventually may lead to the reunification of North and South Korea.
“This virus was foisted upon the world by a Communist Party that refused to do the divinely right thing in the moment. It put its own citizens on planes knowing that they were contagious. … What conception of humanity finds this remotely decent or acceptable?” Mr. Pompeo asked.
“What vision of a higher power justifies such wanton diminution of the value of each human life? This is, ladies and gentlemen, not about the Chinese people. It’s about this entity and its leaders, the challenges it presents to those of us who seek peace and harmony in our world,” he said.
“This Communist Party can’t tolerate why we’re here today,” Mr. Pompeo said.
Mr. Pompeo delivered his powerful speech at an event created to promote world peace and mobilize hope behind efforts to end the North Korean nuclear crisis and the decades-old conflict between North and South Korea.
World Summit 2022 was organized by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and brought participants from every continent together, both virtually and at an in-person program in Seoul. Mr. Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and a host of other high-profile former officials were among the featured speakers.
‘Seeds of peace’
Former President Donald Trump delivered a recorded video message. He said his diplomacy with North Korea, including his three in-person meetings with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, helped lay the groundwork for eventual reunification.
“We have planted the seeds of peace and cooperation, and now we must let them bloom and grow just like a giant tree,” Mr. Trump said. “To waste that chance would be a profound tragedy.”
Mr. Trump blasted the Biden administration for its handling of North Korea. He said Pyongyang’s spate of major missile tests underscores its lack of respect for current leaders in Washington.
In his remarks in Seoul, Mr. Pence did not mention the Biden administration by name.
Still, he suggested that Washington is not responding aggressively enough to North Korea’s missile tests and said the Trump administration’s diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea proved that “peace follows strength.”
“Weakness arouses evil, and a resurgence of missile tests and provocations from Pyongyang, [including] this week’s promises to shake ‘the world,’ are a testament to this truth,” said Mr. Pence. He was referring to North Korea’s claim in recent days to be confronting the U.S. by “shaking the world” with missile tests.
The Trump administration’s historic diplomacy, however, ultimately failed to achieve a breakthrough denuclearization deal.
Mr. Trump walked away from a second summit with Mr. Kim in 2019. He said the North Korean side demanded sweeping sanctions relief in exchange for only a limited commitment to destroy part of the nuclear arsenal it had been building for decades in violation of repeated U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Attempts at diplomacy with the North Koreans have gone nowhere during the years since, and the Kim regime engages in increasingly brazen missile tests.
‘That day will come’
Hope for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula was a dominant theme at the World Summit. In his keynote address, Mr. Pompeo said China could play a constructive role in that effort but its leaders have chosen a different path.
“North Korea takes its cues from the [Chinese Communist Party]. We talk about Chinese conflict with Tibet, with Mongolia, with the people of Hong Kong and their efforts in Taiwan,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We should not forget the long border and the conflict between the Chinese Communist Party and the Korean people of the North.”
Mr. Pompeo made the sobering remarks during speeches from a range of prominent international figures. The World Summit was hosted by Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, a co-founder of UPF, and co-hosted by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Mrs. Moon, the widow of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, is the leader of the Unification movement, which grew from the Unification Church that Rev. Moon founded in 1954 — a year after a U.S.-backed armistice froze a war between North and South Korea.
She and her husband devoted their lives to the reunification of the Korean Peninsula and to the promotion of world peace. They founded The Washington Times in 1982.
A range of prominent political figures and current world leaders participated in the weekend summit, including Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Albanian President Ilir Meta, Senegalese President Macky Sall and former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
Mr. Pence and other speakers praised the work of Mrs. Moon on Friday.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also addressed the gathering in Seoul, praised participants for coming together in the name of peace for the world and for the Korean Peninsula.
“The human race will move forward to safety, to prosperity and to freedom only if good people take the time, show the courage and get involved,” Mr. Gingrich said.
“The human race is at one of those amazing turning points when the technology that brings us together can also be the technology that destroys us, and I think these efforts, this commitment to talk together, to bring together the kind of really remarkable groups that come from all over the world to this kind of conference, to make friendships, to go back home realizing that you have things in common that allow you to build a better future, I think all this is very, very vital,” he said.
Mr. Pence and Mr. Pompeo expressed optimism for the Korean Peninsula.
“Based on the progress that I saw under the Trump-Pence administration, I remain supremely confident that a brighter future is on the horizon for the United States, for the people of the Korean Peninsula, the Asia-Pacific and the world,” Mr. Pence said.
“No oppressive regime can last forever,” he said. “For inside every human heart is an unquenchable fire that burns to be free. Inside every human soul is an insatiable desire for freedom.”
A unified Korea, Mr. Pompeo said, is within reach.
“The moment for reunification will happen,” he said. “That day will come.”
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8. North Korea encourages more women to move to the countryside
"Encourages?"
Excerpts:
According to the source, the lecture announced women would have to submit petitions to move to rural communities after late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s birthday on Feb. 16. Ultimately, he claimed, women from poor, powerless backgrounds are set to be dragged off to rural villages.
During the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee late last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the ruling party’s policy of “building rural villages” was to turn all agricultural towns across the country into “ideal socialist villages” that are as wealthy and cultured as Samjiyon, a city North Korea claims is the “model” of rural development.
North Korea encourages more women to move to the countryside
A recent lecture in South Hamgyong Province told attendees that women will have to submit petitions to move to rural communities following Kim Jong Il’s birthday
North Korean authorities are demanding that young people, particularly young women, abandon their “prejudices” against rural villages, coercing them into making “petitions” to move to the countryside.
According to a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong Province, the authorities conducted a lecture at factories and enterprises in Hamhung on Feb. 5.
The lecture was titled, “Young People, Let’s Be Pioneers of the Rural Revolution.”
The lecture apparently emphasized that young women in their 20s must abandon their “outdated understanding” of rural areas.
North Korea’s urban-rural gap is, in fact, quite deep. The country has been trumpeting the “revolutionization of agricultural villages” to narrow this gap since the era of Kim Il Sung; however, little progress to narrow the gap has been made.
Accordingly, of the four songbun, or social statuses — be it soldier, office worker, laborer, or farmer — that North Korean citizens attain when they become active members of society, “farmer” is the one people most avoid. In a country that places great importance on “background” and “identity,” more and more people are avoiding becoming poor farmers.
According to the source, women are responding to the situation by fiercely refusing appeals to go to the countryside, with some going as far as to say they would “rather die than marry a farmer.”
For example, it has become trendy for women to break off engagements if their fiancés are transferred to agricultural villages, or submit a petition to move to one.
Farmland in Chongsan-ri, between Nampo and Pyongyang. (Flickr, Creative Commons)
A similar trend can be seen even among North Korea’s ruling class. Many women have chosen to remain in Pyongyang alone rather than follow their provincially born husbands home after they have been discharged from the army.
North Korean authorities seem aware of the situation, too. That the recent lecture in Hamhung focused on “women” is also noteworthy, with some North Koreans wondering if the authorities have altered their previous strategy of encouraging mostly men to submit petitions to move to the countryside. That is to say, they are trying to correct the gender imbalance in who is making the petitions.
According to the source, the lecture announced women would have to submit petitions to move to rural communities after late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s birthday on Feb. 16. Ultimately, he claimed, women from poor, powerless backgrounds are set to be dragged off to rural villages.
During the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee late last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the ruling party’s policy of “building rural villages” was to turn all agricultural towns across the country into “ideal socialist villages” that are as wealthy and cultured as Samjiyon, a city North Korea claims is the “model” of rural development.
9. S. Korea, US, Japan commit to aligning approaches on N. Korea, advancing security coordination
Again, a lot of good words. Can we put this into action and sustain this?
S. Korea, US, Japan commit to aligning approaches on N. Korea, advancing security coordination
Top diplomats condemn recent series of missile launches, urge Pyongyang to return to negotiating table
Published : Feb 13, 2022 - 17:25 Updated : Feb 13, 2022 - 17:53
South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong (L), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi pose for a photo during their trilateral foreign ministerial talks in Honolulu on Feb. 12, 2022, in this photo provided by the South Korean foreign ministry. (Yonhap)
The top diplomats of South Korea, the US, and Japan committed to aligning their diplomatic approaches to North Korea and advancing trilateral security coordination in maintaining regional peace and stability.
South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi on Saturday in Honolulu, Hawaii, that was followed by a joint statement.
“They committed to close trilateral cooperation to achieve complete denuclearization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula,” the English-language joint statement read.
The three top diplomats called on North Korea to “cease its unlawful activities and instead engage in dialogue, while condemning North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches and expressing “deep concern about the destabilizing nature of these actions.”
The high-level meeting came after Pyongyang fired off nine ballistic missiles, which are in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, and two land-attack cruise missiles in seven discrete launches in January alone.
“We discussed ways that we can deepen trilateral cooperation to deter the DPRK, limit the reach of its most dangerous weapons, defend against its provocations or use of force and above all, keep the American, Japanese and Korean people safe, which is our highest responsibility,” Blinken said during a joint press conference following the meeting.
Blinken notably underscored that the importance of Saturday’s joint statement is that it shows the aligned and united approach of the US, South Korea, Japan to North Korea, pointing out that Pyongyang “is in a phase of provocation.”
“… We are absolutely united in our approach, in our determination. And that unity of purpose is, I think, vitally important for dealing with the challenges posed by the DPRK and also pursuing a more hopeful future.”
Blinken clarified the three countries’ readiness to engage with North Korea without preconditions and their coordination on taking steps to hold North Korea responsible for missile launches.
“We will continue to hold the DPRK accountable, even as we seek to engage in diplomacy.”
The three top diplomats also “emphasized they held no hostile intent towards the DPRK and underscored continued openness to meeting the DPRK without preconditions,” according to the joint statement.
Speaking at the press briefing, the US secretary of state expressed regret that North Korea has responded to the Biden administration’s overture for dialogue with a series of “provocative actions.”
But the joint statement notably lacks any concrete plans to push for diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang.
A South Korean official, who wished to remain anonymous, said Chung “proposed several ways” to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table during his separate, bilateral talks with Blinken.
Chung and Blinken had an “in-depth discussion” on the matter, the official underlined, adding Washington listened with great care to the suggestions by Seoul.
“We are not able to share the details at this time, but we expect to explain the details at an appropriate opportunity,” the official said, pointing to the necessity of continuing further consultation between South Korea and the US.
Enhancing, widening trilateral cooperation
Furthermore, Chung, Blinken and Hayashi on Saturday conspicuously “committed to advance trilateral security cooperation,” reaffirming that the “US-Japan and US-ROK alliances are essential to the maintenance of peace and stability in the region.”
The joint statement came after the announcement by the defense chiefs of the three countries last week. The leaders agreed during a phone call to “closely cooperate” against North Korean threat and hold their first in-person trilateral ministerial meeting under the Biden administration in the foreseeable future.
Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo have sought to enhance trilateral coordination on a wide range of regional and global issues.
The move is in line with the Biden administration’s newly announced Indo-Pacific engagement strategy that aims to align and coordinate the three countries’ regional strategies and handle North Korea issues through trilateral channels.
The goal of Saturday’s meeting was also to “reaffirm the critical importance of strong US-Japan-ROK trilateral cooperation” in seeking to “address the most pressing 21st Century challenges,” according to the joint statement.
The three top diplomats committed to “expand cooperation and collaboration across a range of regional and global security and economic priorities” including ensuring a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Notably, Chung, Blinken and Hayashi discussed Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine’s borders and “committed to work closely together to deter further Russian escalation.”
The other arenas for trilateral coordination cover the climate crisis, “critical supply chains,” global health security, information and cybersecurity, and “economic security including by promoting innovation of critical and emerging technologies based on democratic values and respect for universal human rights.”
“Reaffirming their commitment to US-ROK-Japan trilateral cooperation that is grounded in our shared values and desire for regional peace, stability, and prosperity, the Secretary and Foreign Ministers pledged to continue regular trilateral ministerial consultations,” the joint statement read.
First in-person meeting between Chung and Hayashi
Meanwhile, the top South Korean and Japanese diplomats on Saturday discussed “main pending issues and mutual concerns” during their first face-to-face meeting since Hayashi took office in November last year, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a press statement.
But Chung and Hayashi appeared to reconfirm their differences over the contentious historical issues, which have been the epicenter of their long-standing diplomatic feud and restated each government’s stance, during their separate bilateral meeting.
Chung underscored that the “correct understanding of history is the foundation of the future-oriented development of South Korea-Japan relations,” the ministry said in a statement.
The South Korean foreign minister went on to propose accelerating bilateral consultation to find solutions that the victims of wartime forced labor and “comfort women” -- a euphemism referring to Korean women forced to work at Japanese wartime brothels -- can accept.
Chung additionally “expressed deep disappointment and protested against Japan’s decision” to recommend the Sado gold mine in Niigata prefecture on the UNESCO World Heritage List as well as called for lifting export restrictions against South Korea.
In response, Hayashi “explained the Japanese government’s stance” on the matter.
But Seoul said the two foreign ministers committed to “close communication between the diplomatic authorities for the future-oriented development” of bilateral relations.
10. North Koreans struggle as government provokes world with missile tests
Opening trade with China is a good thing. However, the people will continue to suffer because Kim Jong-un still prioritizes nuclear weapons and missile development. As long as he sustains his priorities the peoples' lives will never improve.
North Koreans struggle as government provokes world with missile tests
A two-year ban on trade with China only recently ended, but the damage to the North Korea is deep.
2022.02.12
Runaway inflation and severe shortages of food and other necessities are posing the worst suffering in North Korea in a generation, but rather than focus on the economic crisis, Pyongyang has ramped up missile tests to challenge Seoul and Washington, sources in the country and analysts say.
The government last year told the nation of 25 million people to prepare for a depressed economy to rival the Arduous March, what North Koreans call the 1994-1998 famine which killed millions.
This time, however, the steep economic decline is not due to Pyongyang’s inability to quickly adjust to the collapse of a patron state in the Soviet Union. Rather, economic conditions grew worse and worse after Beijing and Pyongyang decided to close the Sino-Korean border and suspend all trade.
Already buffeted by international sanctions that curb trade to starve the country’s nuclear weapons and missile programs, North Korea’s nascent market economy came to a near-complete standstill without imported goods from China. Commerce in entire cities dried up, while idle ships rusted in harbors.
Prior to the pandemic, most people had to go into business for themselves as their government-assigned jobs paid too little to live on. But after the border closed, most lost the side jobs that were their chief source of income.
Shortages went from bad to terrible, but Pyongyang refused to let up, keeping the border closed by establishing a kill zone within 1-km (0.6-mile) of the 880-mile border, ordering special forces to bolster the ranks of the border guards and root out corruption among them, and even laying landmines to keep people from escaping the country.
All the while, the government funded an expensive missile development program it has once again started showing off with a flurry of short- and medium-range missile tests–seven in January alone.
Few actually believe that North Korea is virus-free, but Pyongyang still makes that claim, and points to its restrictive border policies for keeping the people “safe.”
Though China and North Korea resumed rail freight in mid-January, the two long years of the border closure has had a profound effect on the everyday lives of the people, with many still struggling in one of the world’s most oppressive societies.
The border closure has led to key staples in North Korea drastically increasing in price, sources in North Hwanghae and North Hamgong provinces told RFA in early January.
In this file photo, a fruit vendor waits for customers in an alleyway in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo: AFP
Staples hard to find
Tofu and alcohol have almost doubled in price, and napa cabbage, the key ingredient in kimchi, is so expensive that few can afford to eat Korean cuisine’s ubiquitous signature side dish.
Cooking oil and sugar prices depend heavily on imports, so their prices have skyrocketed also.
North Korean residents complain that store shelves lie barren as the authorities try in vain to meet demand for the most basic essentials with domestic production.
Those who can afford the luxury of eating rice are paying through the nose. Prices increased 8 percent from December to 4,750 won (U.S. $0.95) per kilogram, data from the Osaka-based Asia Press news outlet showed.
The common people who survive on a meager diet of corn were hit with an even steeper increase of 22 percent, as the price climbed to 2,500 won.
“My mother needs money again,” a North Korean refugee identified by the pseudonym Kim Hye Young, who now lives in Seoul, told RFA’s Korean Service.
Kim recently sent money to her octogenarian mother who lives in the North. She received a call Jan. 7 asking for more.
“My mother has no income because she is too old to run a business, and the cash I sent before is not enough because of the high inflation,” Kim said.
She said she spoke to a broker who facilitates communication between North Koreans and their relatives outside the country who told her that things like cooking oil and seasonings are difficult to find.
She also said people in North Korea have reduced their diet from two meals per day to just one. Authorities in some places recognize the situation and are providing free food, she said.
A view of the Friendship Bridge and Broken Bridge over the Yalu River, which separates North Korea's Sinuiju from China, during sunrise in Dandong, Liaoning province, China April 20, 2021. Photo: Reuters
Light rail freight
During the border closure there were limited supplies of Chinese goods coming into the country by sea, but selections were still very limited. RFA reported last month that maritime trade appeared to be picking up, with the biggest imports being construction materials, medicine and high-end commodities.
Domestic manufacturers stepped up to supplement the Chinese goods that were getting through. Since November 2021, prices for Chinese soybean oil dropped significantly after locally produced soybean oil started hitting the market. It once cost as much as 100,000 won ($20) per kilogram but now sells for about 30,000 won.
But many believe that inflation will not be controlled until the border is fully reopen. Although rail freight has officially resumed, it remains a fraction of what it was before the pandemic.
“There have been stories of freight trains passing through since the 15th of this month, but the North Korean traders in China are not expecting much from this,” a trader who deals with North Korea in Dandong, China, told RFA in January.
Another North Korean refugee, speaking under the pseudonym Jeong Mi Young, told RFA, “I recently received a call from my family but there’s no movement to open the border.”
A complete reopening cannot happen until both countries have satisfactorily dealt with their respective COVID-19 situations, a Chinese citizen resident of North Korea told RFA.
“Even if they were to reopen the border between North Korea and China right now, those who travel to China will have to be forcibly quarantined at state facilities for at least three weeks, and that means they would have to pay the quarantine costs of nearly $1,000 at their own expense,” she said.
“Opening the border would be meaningless in this situation,” she said.
The feasibility of a complete reopening will be reviewed following the Feb. 4-20 Beijing Winter Olympics if the pandemic situation improves, Troy Stangarone, senior director and fellow at the Washington-based Korea Economic Institute (KEI), told RFA on Jan. 10.
"So, we're not likely to see a full border opening but a partial opening that may be only for periods of time," he said.
A North Korean ship at the port in Panjin city, Liaoning province, China in November, 2021. Photo: RFA
Smugglers fill gaps
RFA has confirmed that smuggling between North Korea and China is occurring on the high seas.
A Chinese ship captain in November provided video footage to RFA showing that the ship he owned was loaded with goods from a warehouse in Panjin, on the border between China’s northeastern Liaoning and Hebei provinces.
In the video, the ship goes out to sea fully stocked. The captain told RFA that he engaged in smuggling by rendezvousing with a North Korean ship and transferring all the goods.
He explained that smuggling at sea has started to rise since September, and he and others are actively engaging in the activity.
A trader in Dandong, China, across the Yalu River border from North Korea’s Sinuiju, told RFA that most of the goods being smuggled over the seas are construction materials.
The trader said that food items such as cooking oil, sugar, seasonings and frozen beef are included among the smuggled goods, but only in small quantities, likely for privileged Pyongyangers, or high-ranking elites.
The effects of the runaway inflation and shortage of daily necessities have exacerbated the massive North Korean wealth gap.
Families that still have sources of income despite the dire economic situation are better able to weather price fluctuations.
Jeong, who lived close to the Sino-Korean border before escaping in 2020, told RFA that her family was among the privileged.
“When I contacted my family on New Year’s Day, they didn’t seem to be affected much by price increases. … They didn’t say anything about having a hard time. When I saw the picture of them having a meal, the quality of their food wasn’t any worse off,” she said.
Jiro Ishimaru, founder and chief editor of Asia Press told RFA that people with enough cash can deal with inflation.
“But others have to worry about starvation. The gap between rich and poor, and the polarization of North Korean society has drastically worsened during the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.
People in North Korea who are in the middle classes or higher can still afford to eat, Lim Eul Chul, an expert on the North Korean economy from South Korea’s Kyungnam University, told RFA.
“For ordinary people, the increased price itself is very burdensome, but for people in the middle or higher classes, it is not very expensive. The impact of rising prices on North Koreans should be seen as somewhat differentiated,” he said.
A tactical guided missile is launched, according to state media, at an undisclosed location in North Korea, in this photo released January 17, 2022 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency. Photo: KCNA via Reuters.
Pricey arms programs
Though much of the North Korean populace suffers under the extremely poor economic conditions, Pyongyang spends hundreds of millions of dollars on its nuclear and missile programs.
In a June 2020 report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, estimated that North Korea spent $667 million on nuclear weapons and missile programs in 2019 alone.
That figure was about 2.3 percent of the North Korean GDP in 2020 of $29 billion, reported Statistics Korea, South Korea’s Census Bureau.
Each missile launch costs between $1 million and $1.5 million, Markus Schiller, a North Korean missile expert from Germany-based ST Analytics, told RFA in 2019.
Though the North Korean economy shrunk by 4.5 percent in 2020, the worst since 1997, in the thick of the Arduous March, it continues to test missiles in rapid succession in 2021.
Schiller also said that although missile development program costs depend on the size of the missile, it can be estimated to be roughly $1 billion for the development of a complete weapon system, including support vehicles, engines/motors, guidance systems, airframes and warheads. This figure does not include the cost for developing new technology.
Schiller said that the development of new missiles would be a huge burden for an economy the size of North Korea’s.
The country grabbed U.S. attention at the start of 2022 with splashy tests of new weapons systems, including a long-range cruise missile capable of hitting most of Japan and a hypersonic ballistic missile that traveled at Mach-10.
Experts have said that North Korea’s recent frequent missile tests, as well as its recent hint through stte media that it might end a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), are moves meant to test the reactions of South Korea and the United States.
Pyongyang and Washington failed to iron out a denuclearization for sanctions relief agreement during two summits in 2018 and 2019 between Kim Jong Un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump.
Experts say that as negotiations have stalled, North Korea is returning to its strategy of brinkmanship — engaging in provocations to get something from the U.S. or South Korea.
“It's always part of the North Korean playbook to use these missile tests knowing that they will be viewed in Seoul and Washington as provocations and to try to use it as leverage to get American concessions for perhaps a renewal or restarting of nuclear diplomacy,” the Atlantic Council’s Robert Manning said.
Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
11. N. Korea to convene conference of party's primary committees this month
The regime is on a roll. But any problem can be insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.
N. Korea to convene conference of party's primary committees this month | Yonhap News Agency
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Yonhap) -- North Korea plans to convene a conference of the ruling party's primary committee officials this month to push ahead with decisions made at a major party congress last year, according to Pyongyang's state media Monday.
The 2nd Conference of Secretaries of Primary Committees of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) will be held in Pyongyang "during the last ten days of February," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.
"The WPK Central Committee decided to convene the conference in order to review the work for implementing the tasks set forth at the 1st Conference of Chairpersons of Primary Party Committees and thoroughly carry out the tasks set forth at the 8th Party Congress," it reported.
In January last year, the North unveiled a new five-year economic development plan at the eighth party congress and revised the party rules to convene the primary committees conference every five years.
During the first such conference held in 2016, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over the meeting and criticized "administrative bureaucracy" as the "root cause of influence-peddling, corruption and other misbehaviors" that could undermine the party.
(END)
12. Revisiting the 'Asian values' debate
I agree with the author that this debate is very much worth revisiting. I had a lot of disagreement with Kim Dae Jung's policies toward north Korea but I agreed with his analysis in his essay.
Excerpts:
Lee held that it was necessary to restrict individual rights to preserve social and political harmony. Against Western individualism, he pitted the institution of the family as the essential "building brick" of society. He argued that political regimes come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but throughout these upheavals, the family serves as the "life raft" for preserving civilization.
...
Against Lee's defense of collective well-being, the future president of Korea, countered that Asian cultures themselves contain the roots for sustaining freedom and democracy. The philosophy of Meng-tzu, the teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism, and the "Tonghak" movement of the late Joseon period all stress the need for the government to be accountable to the people.
Permitting social mobility and equality of opportunity, symbolized by the civil service examination, was recognized by emperors and kings as indispensable to the legitimacy of their rule. In Confucian philosophy, criticizing the sovereign whenever he acts wrongly constitutes a "paramount duty" of the scholar-official. The aspirations of the people of Asia for freedom and equality are genuine, and find ample support in their philosophical traditions.
I have pasted both articles below which are very much worth rereading.
Is Culture Destiny?
The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values
November/December 1994
A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew
By Fareed Zakaria
March/April 1994
Revisiting the 'Asian values' debate
gettyimagesbankBy Peter Y. Paik
In light of the rise of China and the severe divisions ― political and social ― afflicting the United States, it is instructive to reflect back on the "Asian values" debate of the mid-1990s.
That debate pitted Lee Kuan Yew, who had just stepped down as the prime minister of Singapore, against Kim Dae-jung, who, four years later, would be elected president of Korea. It was sparked by an interview given by Lee in 1994 where he defended the "soft" authoritarian regime he had established in Singapore against calls for greater freedom and democracy.
Lee held that it was necessary to restrict individual rights to preserve social and political harmony. Against Western individualism, he pitted the institution of the family as the essential "building brick" of society. He argued that political regimes come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but throughout these upheavals, the family serves as the "life raft" for preserving civilization.
The founder of Singapore thus reproached the West for adopting a worldview that he characterized as both naive and destructive. Western individualism is based on a fundamentally faulty philosophical premise, namely the illusion that society can thrive without a shared view of what is right and wrong. "There is a certain thing called evil," Lee observed, "and it is not the result of being the victim of society."
The severity of crime, illegal drug use, homelessness, and social disintegration in American society can be traced back to the decision of Westerners to "abandon an ethical basis for society" and to allow the individual to behave as he pleases, without regard for the common good, Lee argued.
Against Lee's defense of collective well-being, the future president of Korea, countered that Asian cultures themselves contain the roots for sustaining freedom and democracy. The philosophy of Meng-tzu, the teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism, and the "Tonghak" movement of the late Joseon period all stress the need for the government to be accountable to the people.
Permitting social mobility and equality of opportunity, symbolized by the civil service examination, was recognized by emperors and kings as indispensable to the legitimacy of their rule. In Confucian philosophy, criticizing the sovereign whenever he acts wrongly constitutes a "paramount duty" of the scholar-official. The aspirations of the people of Asia for freedom and equality are genuine, and find ample support in their philosophical traditions.
This debate unfolded against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War, when there was widespread confidence that democratization would be the wave of the future. The majority of Asian countries had then become democracies. Lee and Singapore struck many as being outliers on the wrong side of history. A regime based on invasive social engineering, where chewing gum was illegal, seemed an eccentric oddity when individual freedom appeared to be advancing everywhere, now that communism had fallen.
But what are we to take from this debate today, when an authoritarian state, China, is poised to overtake the U.S. as the world's top economy by 2030, when democracy has failed to take hold across the Middle East, and when the social disintegration Lee decried in the U.S. has grown so much worse?
Kim appears to have been correct in his view that Asian nations can become successful democracies. Indeed, in certain respects, democracy appears to be healthier in (South) Korea than in the U.S. There is an active culture of protest and a certain degree of respect for freedom of speech. While political differences evoke strong emotions among Koreans, the belief that it is necessary to censor views with which one disagrees is becoming less widespread among the public.
Thus, Lee appears to have been prescient in questioning the view that democracy, cultural diversity, political stability and economic prosperity automatically go together. When the differences in culture and viewpoint become too great, a society may well decide to sacrifice freedom for the sake of peace. Its economic well-being becomes curtailed as well, as more of its wealth must go towards providing security to the people.
But there is one area in which both Lee, the founder of an economically successful and ethnically and religiously diverse city-state, and Kim, the longtime fighter for democracy, would find themselves on the same side. Both espouse a basic moral principle that would make them targets of cancel culture if they had been Americans living today.
For Lee and Kim base their differing political views on the Confucian maxim, "Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia," according to which, good government follows from the individual keeping himself and his household in order. But liberals in the West today reject any call for individual responsibility, insisting that it can only be a devious trick aimed at preventing the political changes that will save the oppressed.
One thus discovers what I argue is a sharp fault line between Asian culture and contemporary Western liberalism. Asians will wonder, how could developing a greater sense of individual responsibility and personal discipline ever be a bad thing, no matter what regime is in power? Would not cultivating moral and political virtue enable the oppressed to gain power and exercise it responsibly? Such common sense, however, is threatened in the West by what can only be considered a cultural revolution, which will be the subject of a future article.
Peter Y. Paik ([email protected]) is a professor in the English Department at Yonsei University. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
Is Culture Destiny?
The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values
By Kim Dae Jung
November/December 1994
In his interview with Foreign Affairs (March/April 1994), Singapore's former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, presents interesting ideas about cultural differences between Western and East Asian societies and the political implications of those differences. Although he does not explicitly say so, his statements throughout the interview and his track record make it obvious that his admonition to Americans "not to foist their system indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work" implies that Western-style democracy is not applicable to East Asia. Considering the esteem in which he is held among world leaders and the prestige of this journal, this kind of argument is likely to have considerable impact and therefore deserves a careful reply.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, socialism has been in retreat. Some people conclude that the Soviet demise was the result of the victory of capitalism over socialism. But I believe it represented the triumph of democracy over dictatorship. Without democracy, capitalism in Prussian Germany and Meiji Japan eventually met its tragic end. The many Latin American states that in recent decades embraced capitalism while rejecting democracy failed miserably. On the other hand, countries practicing democratic capitalism or democratic socialism, despite temporary setbacks, have prospered.
In spite of these trends, lingering doubts remain about the applicability of and prospects for democracy in Asia. Such doubts have been raised mainly by Asia's authoritarian leaders, Lee being the most articulate among them. They have long maintained that cultural differences make the "Western concept" of democracy and human rights inapplicable to East Asia. Does Asia have the philosophical and historical underpinnings suitable for democracy? Is democracy achievable there?
SELF-SERVING SELF-RELIANCE
Lee stresses cultural factors throughout his interview. I too believe in the importance of culture, but I do not think it alone determines a society's fate, nor is it immutable. Moreover, Lee's view of Asian cultures is not only unsupportable but self-serving. He argues that Eastern societies, unlike Western ones, "believe that the individual exists in the context of his family" and that the family is "the building brick of society." However, as an inevitable consequence of industrialization, the family-centered East Asian societies are also rapidly moving toward self-centered individualism. Nothing in human history is permanent.
Lee asserts that, in the East, "the ruler or the government does not try to provide for a person what the family best provides." He cites this ostensibly self-reliant, family-oriented culture as the main cause of East Asia's economic successes and ridicules Western governments for allegedly trying to solve all of society's problems, even as he worries about the moral breakdown of Western societies due to too much democracy and too many individual rights. Consequently, according to Lee, the Western political system, with its intrusive government, is not suited to family-oriented East Asia. He rejects Westernization while embracing modernization and its attendant changes in lifestyle - again strongly implying that democracy will not work in Asia.
FAMILY VALUES (REQUIRED HERE)
But the facts demonstrate just the opposite. It is not true, as Lee alleges, that Asian governments shy away from intervening in private matters and taking on all of society's problems. Asian governments intrude much more than Western governments into the daily affairs of individuals and families. In Korea, for example, each household is required to attend monthly neighborhood meetings to receive government directives and discuss local affairs. Japan's powerful government constantly intrudes into the business world to protect perceived national interests, to the point of causing disputes with the United States and other trading partners. In Lee's Singapore, the government stringently regulates individuals' actions - such as chewing bubble-gum, spitting, smoking, littering, and so on - to an Orwellian extreme of social engineering. Such facts fly in the face of his assertion that East Asia's governments are minimalist. Lee makes these false claims to justify his rejection of Western-style democracy. He even dislikes the one man, one vote principle, so fundamental to modern democracy, saying that he is not "intellectually convinced" it is best.
Opinions like Lee's hold considerable sway not only in Asia but among some Westerners because of the moral breakdown of many advanced democratic societies. Many Americans thought, for example, that the U.S. citizen Michael Fay deserved the caning he received from Singaporean authorities for his act of vandalism. However, moral breakdown is attributable not to inherent shortcomings of Western cultures but to those of industrial societies; a similar phenomenon is now spreading through Asia's newly industrializing societies. The fact that Lee's Singapore, a small city-state, needs a near-totalitarian police state to assert control over its citizens contradicts his assertion that everything would be all right if governments would refrain from interfering in the private affairs of the family. The proper way to cure the ills of industrial societies is not to impose the terror of a police state but to emphasize ethical education, give high regard to spiritual values, and promote high standards in culture and the arts.
LONG BEFORE LOCKE
No one can argue with Lee's objection to "foisting" an alien system "indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work." The question is whether democracy is a system so alien to Asian cultures that it will not work. Moreover, considering Lee's record of absolute intolerance of dissent and the continued crackdown on dissidents in many other Asian countries, one is also compelled to ask whether democracy has been given a chance in places like Singapore.
A thorough analysis makes it clear that Asia has a rich heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions. Asia has already made great strides toward democratization and possesses the necessary conditions to develop democracy even beyond the level of the West.
Democratic Ideals. It is widely accepted that English political philosopher John Locke laid the foundation for modern democracy. According to Locke, sovereign rights reside with the people and, based on a contract with the people, leaders are given a mandate to govern, which the people can withdraw. But almost two millennia before Locke, Chinese philosopher Meng-tzu preached similar ideas. According to his "Politics of Royal Ways," the king is the "Son of Heaven," and heaven bestowed on its son a mandate to provide good government, that is, to provide good for the people. If he did not govern righteously, the people had the right to rise up and overthrow his government in the name of heaven. Meng-tzu even justified regicide, saying that once a king loses the mandate of heaven he is no longer worthy of his subjects' loyalty. The people came first, Meng-tzu said, the country second, and the king third. The ancient Chinese philosophy of Minben Zhengchi, or "people-based politics," teaches that "the will of the people is the will of heaven" and that one should "respect the people as heaven" itself.
A native religion of Korea, Tonghak, went even further, advocating that "man is heaven" and that one must serve man as one does heaven. These ideas inspired and motivated nearly half a million peasants in 1894 to revolt against exploitation by feudalistic government internally and imperialistic forces externally. There are no ideas more fundamental to democracy than the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Tonghak. Clearly, Asia has democratic philosophies as profound as those of the West.
Democratic Institutions. Asia also has many democratic traditions. When Western societies were still being ruled by a succession of feudal lords, China and Korea had already sustained county prefecture systems for about 2,000 years. The government of the Chin Dynasty, founded by Chin-shih huang-ti (literally, the founder of Chin), practiced the rule of law and saw to it that everyone, regardless of class, was treated fairly. For nearly 1,000 years in China and Korea, even the sons of high-ranking officials were not appointed to important official positions unless they passed civil service examinations. These stringent tests were administered to members of the aristocratic class, who constituted over ten percent of the population, thus guaranteeing equal opportunity and social mobility, which are so central to popular democracy. This practice sharply contrasted with that of European fiefdoms of that time, where pedigree more or less determined one's official position. In China and Korea powerful boards of censors acted as a check against imperial misrule and abuses by government officials. Freedom of speech was highly valued, based on the understanding that the nation's fate depended on it. Confucian scholars were taught that remonstration against an erring monarch was a paramount duty. Many civil servants and promising political elites gave their lives to protect the right to free speech.
The fundamental ideas and traditions necessary for democracy existed in both Europe and Asia. Although Asians developed these ideas long before the Europeans did, Europeans formalized comprehensive and effective electoral democracy first. The invention of the electoral system is Europe's greatest accomplishment. The fact that this system was developed elsewhere does not mean that "it will not work" in Asia. Many Asian countries, including Singapore, have become prosperous after adopting a "Western" free-market economy, which is such an integral part of a democracy. Incidentally, in countries where economic development preceded political advancement - Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain - it was only a matter of time before democracy followed.
The State of Democracy in Asia. The best proof that democracy can work in Asia is the fact that, despite the stubborn resistance of authoritarian rulers like Lee, Asia has made great strides toward democracy. In fact, Asia has achieved the most remarkable record of democratization of any region since 1974. By 1990 a majority of Asian countries were democracies, compared to a 45 percent democratization rate worldwide.[1] This achievement has been overshadowed by Asia's tremendous economic success. I believe democracy will take root throughout Asia around the start of the next century. By the end of its first quarter, Asia will witness an era not only of economic prosperity, but also of flourishing democracy.
I am optimistic for several reasons. The Asian economies are moving from a capital- and labor-intensive industrial phase into an information- and technology-intensive one. Many experts have acknowledged that this new economic world order requires guaranteed freedom of information and creativity. These things are possible only in a democratic society. Thus Asia has no practical alternative to democracy; it is a matter of survival in an age of intensifying global economic competition. The world economy's changes have already meant a greater and easier flow of information, which has helped Asia's democratization process.
Democracy has been consistently practiced in Japan and India since the end of World War II. In Korea, Burma, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other countries, democracy has been frustrated at times, even suspended. Nevertheless, most of these countries have democratized, and in all of them, a resilient "people power" has been demonstrated through elections and popular movements. Even in Thailand, after ten military governments, a civilian government has finally emerged. The Mongolian government, after a long period of one-party dictatorship, has also voluntarily accepted democracy. The fundamental reason for my optimism is this increasing awareness of the importance of democracy and human rights among Asians themselves and their willingness to make the necessary efforts to realize these goals. Despite many tribulations, the torch of democracy continues to burn in Asia because of the aspirations of its people.
WE ARE THE WORLD
As Asians increasingly embrace democratic values, they have the opportunity and obligation to learn from older democracies. The West has experienced many problems in realizing its democratic systems. It is instructive, for example, to remember that Europeans practiced democracy within the boundaries of their nation-states but not outside. Until recently, the Western democracies coddled the interests of a small propertied class. The democracies that benefited much broader majorities through socioeconomic investments were mostly established after World War II. Today, we must start with a rebirth of democracy that promotes freedom, prosperity, and justice both within each country and among nations, including the less-developed countries: a global democracy.
Instead of making Western culture the scapegoat for the disruptions of rapid economic change, it is more appropriate to look at how the traditional strengths of Asian society can provide for a better democracy. In Asia, democracy can encourage greater self-reliance while respecting cultural values. Such a democracy is the only true expression of a people, but it requires the full participation of all elements of society. Only then will it have legitimacy and reflect a country's vision.
Asian authoritarians misunderstand the relationship between the rules of effective governance and the concept of legitimacy. Policies that try to protect people from the bad elements of economic and social change will never be effective if imposed without consent; the same policies, arrived at through public debate, will have the strength of Asia's proud and self-reliant people.
A global democracy will recognize the connection between how we treat each other and how we treat nature, and it will pursue policies that benefit future generations. Today we are threatening the survival of our environment through wholesale destruction and endangerment of all species. Our democracy must become global in the sense that it extends to the skies, the earth, and all things with brotherly affection.
The Confucian maxim Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia, which offers counsel toward the ideal of "great peace under heaven," shows an appreciation for judicious government. The ultimate goal in Confucian political philosophy, as stated in this aphorism, is to bring peace under heaven (pingtianxia). To do so, one must first be able to keep one's own household in order (qijia), which in turn requires that one cultivate "self" (xiushen). This teaching is a political philosophy that emphasizes the role of government and stresses the ruling elite's moral obligation to strive to bring about peace under heaven. Public safety, national security, and water and forest management are deemed critical. This concept of peace under heaven should be interpreted to include peaceful living and existence for all things under heaven. Such an understanding can also be derived from Gautama Buddha's teaching that all creatures and things possess a Buddha-like quality.
Since the fifth century B.C., the world has witnessed a series of revolutions in thought. Chinese, Indian, Greek, and Jewish thinkers have led great revolutions in ideas, and we are still living under the influence of their insights. However, for the past several hundred years, the world has been dominated by Greek and Judeo-Christian ideas and traditions. Now it is time for the world to turn to China, India, and the rest of Asia for another revolution in ideas. We need to strive for a new democracy that guarantees the right of personal development for all human beings and the wholesome existence of all living things.
A natural first step toward realizing such a new democracy would be full adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. This international document reflects basic respect for the dignity of people, and Asian nations should take the lead in implementing it.
The movement for democracy in Asia has been carried forward mainly by Asia's small but effective army of dedicated people in and out of political parties, encouraged by nongovernmental and quasi-governmental organizations for democratic development from around the world. These are hopeful signs for Asia's democratic future. Such groups are gaining in their ability to force governments to listen to the concerns of their people, and they should be supported.
Asia should lose no time in firmly establishing democracy and strengthening human rights. The biggest obstacle is not its cultural heritage but the resistance of authoritarian rulers and their apologists. Asia has much to offer the rest of the world; its rich heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions can make a significant contribution to the evolution of global democracy. Culture is not necessarily our destiny. Democracy is.
FOOTNOTE
[1] Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew
MEETING THE MINISTER
"One of the asymmetries of history," wrote Henry Kissinger of Singapore’s patriarch Lee Kuan Yew, "is the lack of correspondence between the abilities of some leaders and the power of their countries." Kissinger’s one time boss, Richard Nixon, was even more flattering. He speculated that, had Lee lived in another time and another place, he might have "attained the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone." This tag line of a big man on a small stage has been attached to Lee since the 1970s. Today, however, his stage does not look quite so small. Singapore’s per capita GNP is now higher than that of its erstwhile colonizer, Great Britain. It has the world’s busiest port, is the third-largest oil refiner and a major center of global manufacturing and service industries. And this move from poverty to plenty has taken place within one generation. In 1965 Singapore ranked economically with Chile, Argentina and Mexico; today its per capita GNP is four or five times theirs.
Lee managed this miraculous transformation in Singapore’s economy while maintaining tight political control over the country; Singapore’s government can best be described as a "soft" authoritarian regime, and at times it has not been so soft. He was prime minister of Singapore from its independence in 1959 (it became part of a federation with Malaysia in 1963 but was expelled in 1965) until 1990, when he allowed his deputy to succeed him. He is now "Senior Minister" and still commands enormous influence and power in the country. Since his retirement, Lee has embarked on another career of sorts as a world-class pundit, speaking his mind with impolitic frankness. And what is often on his mind is American-style democracy and its perils. He travels often to East Asian capitals from Beijing to Hanoi to Manila dispensing advice on how to achieve economic growth while retaining political stability and control. It is a formula that the governing elites of these countries are anxious to learn.
The rulers of former British colonies have been spared the embarrassment of building grandiose monuments to house their offices; they simply occupy the ones that the British built. So it is with Singapore. The president, prime minister and senior minister work out of Istana (palace), the old colonial governor’s house, a gleaming white bungalow surrounded by luxuriant lawns. The interior is modern, light wood paneling and leather sofas. The atmosphere is hushed. I waited in a large anteroom for the "SM," which is how everybody refers to Lee. I did not wait long. The SM was standing in the middle of a large, sparsely furnished office. He is of medium build. His once-compact physique is now slightly shrunken. Still, he does not look 70.
Lee Kuan Yew is unlike any politician I have met. There were no smiles, no jokes, no bonhomie. He looked straight at me, he has an inexpressive face but an intense gaze, shook hands and motioned toward one of the room’s pale blue leather sofas (I had already been told by his press secretary on which one to sit). After 30 awkward seconds, I realized that there would be no small talk. I pressed the record button on my machine.
FZ: With the end of the Cold War, many Americans were surprised to hear growing criticism of their political and economic and social system from elites in East Asia, who were considered staunchly pro-American. What, in your view, is wrong with the American system?
LKY: It is not my business to tell people what’s wrong with their system. It is my business to tell people not to foist their system indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work.
FZ: But you do not view the United States as a model for other countries?
LKY: As an East Asian looking at America, I find attractive and unattractive features. I like, for example, the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity or religion. And the things that I have always admired about America, as against the communist system, I still do: a certain openness in argument about what is good or bad for society; the accountability of public officials; none of the secrecy and terror that’s part and parcel of communist government.
But as a total system, I find parts of it totally unacceptable: guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy, unbecoming behavior in public, in sum the breakdown of civil society. The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.
Let me give you an example that encapsulates the whole difference between America and Singapore. America has a vicious drug problem. How does it solve it? It goes around the world helping other anti-narcotic agencies to try and stop the suppliers. It pays for helicopters, defoliating agents and so on. And when it is provoked, it captures the president of Panama and brings him to trial in Florida. Singapore does not have that option. We can’t go to Burma and capture warlords there. What we can do is to pass a law which says that any customs officer or policeman who sees anybody in Singapore behaving suspiciously, leading him to suspect the person is under the influence of drugs, can require that man to have his urine tested. If the sample is found to contain drugs, the man immediately goes for treatment. In America if you did that it would be an invasion of the individual’s rights and you would be sued.
I was interested to read Colin Powell, when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that the military followed our approach because when a recruit signs up he agrees that he can be tested. Now, I would have thought this kind of approach would be quite an effective way to deal with the terrible drug problem you have. But the idea of the inviolability of the individual has been turned into dogma. And yet nobody minds when the army goes and captures the president of another state and brings him to Florida and puts him in jail. I find that incomprehensible. And in any case this approach will not solve America’s drug problem. Whereas Singapore’s way, we may not solve it, but we will lessen it considerably, as we have done.
FZ: Would it be fair to say that you admired America more 25 years ago? What, in your view, went wrong?
LKY: Yes, things have changed. I would hazard a guess that it has a lot to do with the erosion of the moral underpinnings of a society and the diminution of personal responsibility. The liberal, intellectual tradition that developed after World War II claimed that human beings had arrived at this perfect state where everybody would be better off if they were allowed to do their own thing and flourish. It has not worked out, and I doubt if it will. Certain basics about human nature do not change. Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing called evil, and it is not the result of being a victim of society. You are just an evil man, prone to do evil things, and you have to be stopped from doing them. Westerners have abandoned an ethical basis for society, believing that all problems are solvable by a good government, which we in the East never believed possible.
FZ: Is such a fundamental shift in culture irreversible?
LKY: No, it is a swing of the pendulum. I think it will swing back. I don’t know how long it will take, but there’s already a backlash in America against failed social policies that have resulted in people urinating in public, in aggressive begging in the streets, in social breakdown.
THE ASIAN MODEL
FZ: You say that your real concern is that this system not be foisted on other societies because it will not work there. Is there another viable model for political and economic development? Is there an "Asian model"?
LKY: I don’t think there is an Asian model as such. But Asian societies are unlike Western ones. The fundamental difference between Western concepts of society and government and East Asian concepts, when I say East Asians, I mean Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, as distinct from Southeast Asia, which is a mix between the Sinic and the Indian, though Indian culture also emphasizes similar values, is that Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family. He is not pristine and separate. The family is part of the extended family, and then friends and the wider society. The ruler or the government does not try to provide for a person what the family best provides.
In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family. This approach encouraged alternative families, single mothers for instance, believing that government could provide the support to make up for the absent father. This is a bold, Huxleyan view of life, but one from which I as an East Asian shy away. I would be afraid to experiment with it. I’m not sure what the consequences are, and I don’t like the consequences that I see in the West. You will find this view widely shared in East Asia. It’s not that we don’t have single mothers here. We are also caught in the same social problems of change when we educate our women and they become independent financially and no longer need to put up with unhappy marriages. But there is grave disquiet when we break away from tested norms, and the tested norm is the family unit. It is the building brick of society.
There is a little Chinese aphorism which encapsulates this idea: Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia. Xiushen means look after yourself, cultivate yourself, do everything to make yourself useful; Qijia, look after the family; Zhiguo, look after your country; Pingtianxia, all is peaceful under heaven. We have a whole people immersed in these beliefs. My granddaughter has the name Xiu-qi. My son picked out the first two words, instructing his daughter to cultivate herself and look after her family. It is the basic concept of our civilization. Governments will come, governments will go, but this endures. We start with self-reliance. In the West today it is the opposite. The government says give me a popular mandate and I will solve all society’s problems.
FZ: What would you do instead to address America’s problems?
LKY: What would I do if I were an American? First, you must have order in society. Guns, drugs and violent crime all go together, threatening social order. Then the schools; when you have violence in schools, you are not going to have education, so you’ve got to put that right. Then you have to educate rigorously and train a whole generation of skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable people who can be productive. I would start off with basics, working on the individual, looking at him within the context of his family, his friends, his society. But the Westerner says I’ll fix things at the top. One magic formula, one grand plan. I will wave a wand and everything will work out. It’s an interesting theory but not a proven method.
BACK TO BASICS
FZ: You are very skeptical of government’s ability to solve deeper social issues. But you’re more confident, certainly than many Americans are, in the government’s ability to promote economic growth and technological advancement. Isn’t this a contradiction?
LKY: No. We have focused on basics in Singapore. We used the family to push economic growth, factoring the ambitions of a person and his family into our planning. We have tried, for example, to improve the lot of children through education. The government can create a setting in which people can live happily and succeed and express themselves, but finally it is what people do with their lives that determines economic success or failure. Again, we were fortunate we had this cultural backdrop, the belief in thrift, hard work, filial piety and loyalty in the extended family, and, most of all, the respect for scholarship and learning.
There is, of course, another reason for our success. We have been able to create economic growth because we facilitated certain changes while we moved from an agricultural society to an industrial society. We had the advantage of knowing what the end result should be by looking at the West and later Japan. We knew where we were, and we knew where we had to go. We said to ourselves, "Let’s hasten, let’s see if we can get there faster." But soon we will face a different situation. In the near future, all of us will get to the stage of Japan. Where do we go next? How do we hasten getting there when we don’t know where we’re going? That will be a new situation.
FZ: Some people say that the Asian model is too rigid to adapt well to change. The sociologist Mancur Olson argues that national decline is caused most fundamentally by sclerosis, the rigidity of interest groups, firms, labor, capital and the state. An American-type system that is very flexible, laissez-faire and constantly adapting is better suited to the emerging era of rapid change than a government-directed economic policy and a Confucian value system.
LKY: That is an optimistic and attractive philosophy of life, and I hope it will come true. But if you look at societies over the millennia you find certain basic patterns. American civilization from the Pilgrim fathers on is one of optimism and the growth of orderly government. History in China is of dynasties which have risen and fallen, of the waxing and waning of societies. And through all that turbulence, the family, the extended family, the clan, has provided a kind of survival raft for the individual. Civilizations have collapsed, dynasties have been swept away by conquering hordes, but this life raft enables the civilization to carry on and get to its next phase.
Nobody here really believes that the government can provide in all circumstances. The government itself does not believe it. In the ultimate crisis, even in earthquakes and typhoons, it is your human relationships that will see you through. So the thesis you quote, that the government is always capable of reinventing itself in new shapes and forms, has not been proven in history. But the family and the way human relationships are structured, do increase the survival chances of its members. That has been tested over thousands of years in many different situations.
THE CULTURE OF SUCCESS
FZ: A key ingredient of national economic success in the past has been a culture of innovation and experimentation. During their rise to great wealth and power the centers of growth, Venice, Holland, Britain, the United States, all had an atmosphere of intellectual freedom in which new ideas, technologies, methods and products could emerge. In East Asian countries, however, the government frowns upon an open and free wheeling intellectual climate. Leaving aside any kind of human rights questions this raises, does it create a productivity problem?
LKY: Intellectually that sounds like a reasonable conclusion, but I’m not sure things will work out this way. The Japanese, for instance, have not been all that disadvantaged in creating new products. I think that if governments are aware of your thesis and of the need to test out new areas, to break out of existing formats, they can counter the trend. East Asians, who all share a tradition of strict discipline, respect for the teacher, no talking back to the teacher and rote learning, must make sure that there is this random intellectual search for new technologies and products. In any case, in a world where electronic communications are instantaneous, I do not see anyone lagging behind. Anything new that happens spreads quickly, whether it’s superconductivity or some new life-style.
FZ: Would you agree with the World Bank report on East Asian economic success, which I interpret to have concluded that all the governments that succeeded got fundamentals right, encouraging savings and investment, keeping inflation low, providing high-quality education. The tinkering of industrial policies here and targeting sectors there was not as crucial an element in explaining these countries’ extraordinary economic growth as were these basic factors.
LKY: I think the World Bank had a very difficult job. It had to write up these very, very complex series of situations. But there are cultural factors which have been lightly touched over, which deserved more weightage. This would have made it a more complex study and of less universal application, but it would have been more accurate, explaining the differences, for example, between the Philippines and Taiwan.
FZ: If culture is so important, then countries with very different cultures may not, in fact, succeed in the way that East Asia did by getting economic fundamentals right. Are you not hopeful for the countries around the world that are liberalizing their economies?
LKY: Getting the fundamentals right would help, but these societies will not succeed in the same way as East Asia did because certain driving forces will be absent. If you have a culture that doesn’t place much value in learning and scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain, the going will be much slower.
But, you know, the World Bank report’s conclusions are part of the culture of America and, by extension, of international institutions. It had to present its findings in a bland and universalizable way, which I find unsatisfying because it doesn’t grapple with the real problems. It makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not. Groups of people develop different characteristics when they have evolved for thousands of years separately. Genetics and history interact. The Native American Indian is genetically of the same stock as the Mongoloids of East Asia, the Chinese, the Koreans and the Japanese. But one group got cut off after the Bering Straits melted away. Without that land bridge they were totally isolated in America for thousands of years. The other, in East Asia, met successive invading forces from Central Asia and interacted with waves of people moving back and forth. The two groups may share certain characteristics, for instance if you measure the shape of their skulls and so on, but if you start testing them you find that they are different, most particularly in their neurological development, and their cultural values.
Now if you gloss over these kinds of issues because it is politically incorrect to study them, then you have laid a land mine for yourself. This is what leads to the disappointments with social policies, embarked upon in America with great enthusiasm and expectations, but which yield such meager results. There isn’t a willingness to see things in their stark reality. But then I am not being politically correct.
FZ: Culture may be important, but it does change. The Asian "model" may prove to be a transitional phenomenon. After all, Western countries also went through a period in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they were capitalist and had limited participatory democracy. Elites then worried, as you do today, that "too much" democracy and "too many" individual rights would destabilize social order. But as these societies modernized and as economic growth spread to all sections of society, things changed. Isn’t East Asia changing because of a growing middle class that demands a say in its own future?
LKY: There is acute change in East Asia. We are agricultural societies that have industrialized within one or two generations. What happened in the West over 200 years or more is happening here in about 50 years or less. It is all crammed and crushed into a very tight time frame, so there are bound to be dislocations and malfunctions. If you look at the fast-growing countries, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore, there’s been one remarkable phenomenon: the rise of religion. Koreans have taken to Christianity in large numbers, I think some 25 percent. This is a country that was never colonized by a Christian nation. The old customs and religions, ancestor worship, shamanism, no longer completely satisfy. There is a quest for some higher explanations about man’s purpose, about why we are here. This is associated with periods of great stress in society. You will find in Japan that every time it goes through a period of stress new sects crop up and new religions proliferate. In Taiwan, and also in Hong Kong and Singapore, you see a rise in the number of new temples; Confucianist temples, Taoist temples and many Christian sects.
We are all in the midst of very rapid change and at the same time we are all groping towards a destination which we hope will be identifiable with our past. We have left the past behind and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is part of the old. The Japanese have solved this problem to some extent. Japan has become an industrial society, while remaining essentially Japanese in its human relations. They have industrialized and shed some of their feudal values. The Taiwanese and the Koreans are trying to do the same. But whether these societies can preserve their core values and make this transition is a problem which they alone can solve. It is not something Americans can solve for them. Therefore, you will find people unreceptive to the idea that they be Westernized. Modernized, yes, in the sense that they have accepted the inevitability of science and technology and the change in the life-styles they bring.
FZ: But won’t these economic and technological changes produce changes in the mind-sets of people?
LKY: It is not just mind-sets that would have to change but value systems. Let me give anecdotal evidence of this. Many Chinese families in Malaysia migrated in periods of stress, when there were race riots in Malaysia in the 1960s, and they settled in Australia and Canada. They did this for the sake of their children so that they would get a better education in the English language because then Malaysia was switching to Malay as its primary language. The children grew up, reached their late teens and left home. And suddenly the parents discovered the emptiness of the whole exercise. They had given their children a modern education in the English language and in the process lost their children altogether. That was a very sobering experience. Something less dramatic is happening in Singapore now because we are not bringing up our children in the same circumstances in which we grew up.
FZ: But these children are absorbing influences different from your generation. You say that knowledge, life-styles, culture all spread rapidly in this world. Will not the idea of democracy and individual rights also spread?
LKY: Let’s not get into a debate on semantics. The system of government in China will change. It will change in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam. It is changing in Singapore. But it will not end up like the American or British or French or German systems. What are we all seeking? A form of government that will be comfortable, because it meets our needs, is not oppressive, and maximizes our opportunities. And whether you have one-man, one-vote or some-men, one vote or other men, two votes, those are forms which should be worked out. I’m not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practice it because that’s what the British bequeathed us and we haven’t really found a need to challenge that. But I’m convinced, personally, that we would have a better system if we gave every man over the age of 40 who has a family two votes because he’s likely to be more careful, voting also for his children. He is more likely to vote in a serious way than a capricious young man under 30. But we haven’t found it necessary yet. If it became necessary we should do it. At the same time, once a person gets beyond 65, then it is a problem. Between the ages of 40 and 60 is ideal, and at 60 they should go back to one vote, but that will be difficult to arrange.
MULTICULTURAL SCHISMS
FZ: Change is often most threatening when it occurs in multiethnic societies. You have been part of both a multiethnic state that failed and one that has succeeded. Malaysia was unwilling to allow what it saw as a Chinese city-state to be part of it and expelled Singapore from its federation in 1965. Singapore itself, however, exists peacefully as a multiethnic state. Is there a solution for those states that have ethnic and religious groups mixed within them?
LKY: Each state faces a different set of problems and I would be most reluctant to dish out general solutions. From my own experience, I would say, make haste slowly. Nobody likes to lose his ethnic, cultural, religious, even linguistic identity. To exist as one state you need to share certain attributes, have things in common. If you pressure-cook you are in for problems. If you go gently, but steadily, the logic of events will bring about not assimilation, but integration. If I had tried to foist the English language on the people of Singapore I would have faced rebellion all around. If I had tried to foist the Chinese language, I’d have had immediate revolt and disaster. But I offered every parent a choice of English and their mother tongue, in whatever order they chose. By their free choice, plus the rewards of the marketplace over a period of 30 years, we have ended up with English first and the mother tongue second. We have switched one university already established in the Chinese language from Chinese into English. Had this change been forced in five or ten years instead of being done over 30 years, and by free choice, it would have been a disaster.
FZ: This sounds like a live-and-let-live kind of approach. Many Western countries, particularly the United States and France, respectively, have traditionally attempted to assimilate people toward a national mainstream, with English and French as the national language, respectively. Today this approach is being questioned, as you know, with some minority groups in the United States and France arguing for "multiculturalism," which would allow distinct and unassimilated minority groups to coexist within the nation. How does this debate strike you as you read about it in Singapore?
LKY: You cannot have too many distinct components and be one nation. It makes interchangeability difficult. If you want complete separateness then you should not come to live in the host country. But there are circumstances where it is wise to leave things be. For instance, all races in Singapore are eligible for jobs and for many other things. But we put the Muslims in a slightly different category because they are extremely sensitive about their customs, especially diet. In such matters one has to find a middle path between uniformity and a certain freedom to be somewhat different. I think it is wise to leave alone questions of fundamental beliefs and give time to sort matters out.
FZ: So you would look at the French handling of their Muslim minorities and say "Go slow, don’t push these people so hard."
LKY: I would not want to say that because the French having ruled Algeria for many years know the kind of problems that they are faced with. My approach would be, if some Muslim girl insists on coming to school with her headdress on and is prepared to put up with that discomfort, we should be prepared to put up with the strangeness. But if she joined the customs or immigration department where it would be confusing to the millions of people who stream through to have some customs officer looking different, she must wear the uniform. That approach has worked in Singapore so far.
IS EUROPE’S PAST ASIA’S FUTURE?
FZ: Let me shift gears somewhat and ask you some questions about the international climate in East Asia. The part of the world you live in is experiencing the kind of growth that the West has experienced for the last 400 years. The West has not only been the world’s great producer of wealth for four centuries, it has also been the world’s great producer of war. Today East Asia is the locus of great and unsettling growth, with several newly rising powers close to each other, many with different political systems, historical animosities, border disputes, and all with ever-increasing quantities of arms. Should one look at this and ask whether Europe’s past will be East Asia’s future?
LKY: No, it’s too simplistic. One reason why growth is likely to last for many years in East Asia, and this is just a guess, is that the peoples and the governments of East Asia have learned some powerful lessons about the viciousness and destructiveness of wars. Not only full-scale wars like in Korea, but guerrilla wars as in Vietnam, in Cambodia and in the jungles of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. We all know that the more you engage in conflict, the poorer and the more desperate you become. Visit Cambodia and Vietnam; the world just passed them by. That lesson will live for a very long time, at least as long as this generation is alive.
FZ: The most unsettling change in an international system is the rise of a new great power. Can the rise of China be accommodated into the East Asian order? Isn’t that kind of growth inevitably destabilizing?
LKY: I don’t think we can speak in terms of just the East Asian order. The question is: Can the world develop a system in which a country the size of China becomes part of the management of international peace and stability? Sometime in the next 20 or 30 years the world, by which I mean the major powers, will have to agree among themselves how to manage peace and stability, how to create a system that is both viable and fair. Wars between small countries won’t destroy the whole world, but will only destroy themselves. But big conflicts between big powers will destroy the world many times over. That’s just too disastrous to contemplate.
At the end of the last war what they could foresee was the United Nations. The hope was that the permanent five would maintain the rule of law or gradually spread the rule of law in international relations. It did not come off because of Stalin and the Cold War. This is now a new phase. The great powers, by which I mean America, Western Europe as a group if they become a union, Japan, China and, in 20 to 30 years time, the Russian republic, have got to find a balance between themselves. I think the best way forward is through the United Nations. It already has 48 years of experience. It is imperfect, but what is the alternative? You can not have a consortium of five big powers lording it over the rest of mankind. They will not have the moral authority or legitimacy to do it. Are they going to divide the world into five spheres of influence? So they have to fall back on some multilateral framework and work out a set of rules that makes it viable. There may be conflicts of a minor nature, for instance between two Latin American countries or two small Southeast Asian countries; that doesn’t really matter. Now if you have two big countries in South Asia like India and Pakistan and both with nuclear capabilities, then something has to be done. It is in that context that we have to find a place for China when it becomes a major economic and military power.
FZ: Is the Chinese regime stable? Is the growth that’s going on there sustainable? Is the balancing act between economic reform and political control that Deng Xiaoping is trying to keep going sustainable after his death?
LKY: The regime in Beijing is more stable than any alternative government that can be formed in China. Let us assume that the students had carried the day at Tiananmen and they had formed a government. The same students who were at Tiananmen went to France and America. They’ve been quarreling with each other ever since. What kind of China would they have today? Something worse than the Soviet Union. China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power.
FZ: Do you worry that the kind of rapid and unequal growth taking place in China might cause the country to break up?
LKY: First, the economy is growing everywhere, even in Sichuan, in the heart of the interior. Disparate growth rates are inevitable. It is the difference between, say, California before the recession and the Rust Belt. There will be enormous stresses because of the size of the country and the intractable nature of the problems, the poor infrastructure, the weak institutions, the wrong systems that they have installed, modeling themselves upon the Soviet system in Stalin’s time. Given all those handicaps, I am amazed that they have got so far.
FZ: What about the other great East Asian power? If Japan continues on the current trajectory, should the world encourage the expansion of its political and military responsibilities and power?
LKY: No. I know that the present generation of Japanese leaders do not want to project power. I’m not sure what follows when leaders born after the war take charge. I doubt if there will be a sudden change. If Japan can carry on with its current policy, leaving security to the Americans and concentrating on the economic and the political, the world will be better off. And the Japanese are quite happy to do this. It is when America feels that it’s too burdensome and not worth the candle to be present in East Asia to protect Japan that it will have to look after its own security. When Japan becomes a separate player, it is an extra joker in the pack of cards.
FZ: You’ve said recently that allowing Japan to send its forces abroad is like giving liquor to an alcoholic.
LKY: The Japanese have always had this cultural trait, that whatever they do they carry it to the nth degree. I think they know this. I have Japanese friends who have told me this. They admit that this is a problem with them.
FZ: What if Japan did follow the trajectory that most great powers have; that it was not content simply to be an economic superpower, "a bank with a flag" in a writer’s phrase? What if they decided they wanted to have the ultimate mark of a great power, nuclear weapons? What should the world do?
LKY: If they decided on that the world will not be able to stop them. You are unable to stop North Korea. Nobody believes that an American government that could not sustain its mission in Somalia because of an ambush and one television snippet of a dead American pulled through the streets in Mogadishu could contemplate a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities like the Israeli strike on Iraq. Therefore it can only be sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. That requires that there be no vetoes. Similarly, if the Japanese decide to go nuclear, I don’t believe you will be able to stop them. But they know that they face a nuclear power in China and in Russia, and so they would have to posture themselves in such a way as not to invite a preemptive strike. If they can avoid a preemptive strike then a balance will be established. Each will deter the others.
FZ: So it’s the transition period that you are worried about.
LKY: I would prefer that the matter never arises and I believe so does the world. Whether the Japanese go down the military path will depend largely on America’s strength and its willingness to be engaged.
VIVE LA DIFFERENCE
FZ: Is there some contradiction here between your role as a politician and your new role as an intellectual, speaking out on all matters? As a politician you want America as a strong balancer in the region, a country that is feared and respected all over the world. As an intellectual, however, you choose to speak out forcefully against the American model in a way that has to undermine America’s credibility abroad.
LKY: That’s preposterous. The last thing I would want to do is to undermine her credibility. America has been unusual in the history of the world, being the sole possessor of power, the nuclear weapon, and the one and only government in the world unaffected by war damage whilst the others were in ruins. Any old and established nation would have ensured its supremacy for as long as it could. But America set out to put her defeated enemies on their feet, to ward off an evil force, the Soviet Union, brought about technological change by transferring technology generously and freely to Europeans and to Japanese, and enabled them to become her challengers within 30 years. By 1975 they were at her heels. That’s unprecedented in history. There was a certain greatness of spirit born out of the fear of communism plus American idealism that brought that about. But that does not mean that we all admire everything about America.
Let me be frank; if we did not have the good points of the West to guide us, we wouldn’t have got out of our backwardness. We would have been a backward economy with a backward society. But we do not want all of the West.
A CODA ON CULTURE
The dominant theme throughout our conversation was culture. Lee returned again and again to his views on the importance of culture and the differences between Confucianism and Western values. In this respect, Lee is very much part of a trend. Culture is in. From business consultants to military strategists, people talk about culture as the deepest and most determinative aspect of human life.
I remain skeptical. If culture is destiny, what explains a culture’s failure in one era and success in another? If Confucianism explains the economic boom in East Asia today, does it not also explain that region’s stagnation for four centuries? In fact, when East Asia seemed immutably poor, many scholars, most famously Max Weber, made precisely that case, arguing that Confucian-based cultures discouraged all the attributes necessary for success in capitalism. Today scholars explain how Confucianism emphasizes the essential traits for economic dynamism. Were Latin American countries to succeed in the next few decades, we shall surely read encomiums to Latin culture. I suspect that since we cannot find one simple answer to why certain societies succeed at certain times, we examine successful societies and search within their cultures for the seeds of success. Cultures being complex, one finds in them what one wants.
What explains Lee Kuan Yew’s fascination with culture? It is not something he was born with. Until his thirties he was called "Harry" Lee (and still is by family and friends). In the 1960s the British foreign secretary could say to him, "Harry, you’re the best bloody Englishman east of the Suez." This is not a man untouched by the West. Part of his interest in cultural differences is surely that they provide a coherent defense against what he sees as Western democratic imperialism. But a deeper reason is revealed in something he said in our conversation: "We have left the past behind, and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is part of the old."
Cultures change. Under the impact of economic growth, technological change and social transformation, no culture has remained the same. Most of the attributes that Lee sees in Eastern cultures were once part of the West. Four hundred years of economic growth changed things. From the very beginning of England’s economic boom, many Englishmen worried that as their country became rich it was losing its moral and ethical base. "Wealth accumulates and men decay," wrote Oliver Goldsmith in 1770. It is this "decay" that Lee is trying to stave off. He speaks of the anxious search for religion in East Asia today, and while he never says this, his own quest for a Confucian alternative to the West is part of this search.
But to be modern without becoming more Western is difficult; the two are not wholly separable. The West has left a mark on "the rest," and it is not simply a legacy of technology and material products. It is, perhaps most profoundly, in the realm of ideas. At the close of the interview Lee handed me three pages. This was, he explained, to emphasize how alien Confucian culture is to the West. The pages were from the book East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, by John Fairbank, an American scholar.
13. Korean content’s global popularity reaches new heights: survey
Korean content’s global popularity reaches new heights: survey
Published : Feb 14, 2022 - 16:32 Updated : Feb 14, 2022 - 18:36
A scene from the Netflix original “Squid Game” (Netflix)
Korean cultural contents, led by the rise of K-pop and K-dramas, continued to gain global popularity in the past year, a survey showed on Monday.
An annual report jointly released by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, revealed consumption of Korean cultural contents rose in all categories -- beauty, drama, fashion, entertainment show, game, animation, publication -- in 2021.
Some 61.1 percent of all respondents who said they enjoyed Korean content said they consumed more Korean dramas, movies, entertainment TV shows and games in the last year compared to the previous year. In the 2020 report, some 58.5 percent said they consumed more Korean content over the previous year.
The respondents said online platforms were the main media through which they consumed K-drama, K-pop and other TV shows. However, Netflix dominated the streaming of movies.
“Online consumption of contents has become more common, which served as a major factor leading to global consumption of Korean contents, but this is a result that cannot be achieved without the competitiveness of the content itself,” Choi Kyung-hee, the head of the research team at the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, said.
The report also provides an insight into how Korean cultural content has been perceived over the last several years. When asked what comes to mind when thinking about Korea, 14 percent of of the respondents said K-pop topped their list. That was followed by Korean food (11.4%), K-dramas (7.5%), Korean celebrities (7.0%) and IT brands/products (6.85%). In the previous survey in 2020, IT brands/products ranked third while K-drama came in fifth. Before 2017, Korean War or North Korea were almost always included in the top five answers to the same question. The annual report began in 2012.
BTS(HYBE Entertainment)
Among the many K-pop artists, BTS, which has been the most popular music group in the past five years, continued to prove undefeatable. Some 26.7 percent of the respondents said BTS is their favorite, while 10.4 percent picked Blackpink.
The most enjoyed drama was Netflix original “Squid Game,” backed by 21.2 percent of the 4,850 Korean drama fans, followed by “Crash Landing on You” with 2.2 percent.
Along with the rallying of Hallyu, anti-hallyu sentiment also rose by 6.3 percentage points from the previous year to reach 30.7 percent. One of the main reasons for the negative sentiment, the respondents said, is the “excessive commercialization” of Korean cultural content. The respondents also cited the need to protect their country’s cultural products against Korean cultural content as a reason for anti-hallyu sentiment.
This year’s report surveyed 8,500 people in 18 countries -- China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Australia, the US, Brazil, Argentina, France, the UK, Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa between Nov. 5 and Dec. 8 last year. ([email protected])
14. Hanbok stealing?
Hanbok stealing?
The Korea Times · by 2022-02-12 12:01 | Foreign Affairs · February 12, 2022
A performer dressed in the traditional Korean attire of hanbok waves during the opening ceremony for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics at the National Stadium in Beijing, Feb. 4. YonhapBy Scott Shepherd
Nearly everyone in Korea is furious, it seems, because a Chinese national woman in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony wore the traditional Korean dress, hanbok. Numerous editorials and opinions have been published in condemnation, calling it another item in the long list of aggressive Chinese actions toward Korea. Last year it was kimchi, the argument goes; this year it's hanbok. Get your hands off our culture!
Usually I'm pretty much as outraged as anyone else in these situations. This time, however, I find myself unable really to get riled up. I just don't think the criticism is actually justified: I've been reading as much as I can find on the issue, but none of the complaints really seem to stick.
To start with, the day after the ceremony took place, Korean Culture Minister Hwang Hee said that the depiction of Koreans as a minority within China could lead to misunderstanding. He rather strangely added that when "you refer to people as a minority, it often means they haven't evolved into a sovereign country." This claim is absurd in any context, but especially in China's case. Among the 56 ethnic groups (the majority Han Chinese plus 55 minorities) officially recognized by the China government, we find not just Koreans but also Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Russians, Uzbeks and Vietnamese ― groups who all have their own countries. As far as I can see, no one else has complained because they think China is suggesting they don't really have independent states.
Hwang said that he did not think it was necessary to lodge an official complaint with the Chinese government ― and this remark itself, as The Korea Times reported, led to a group "filing a complaint with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office against Hwang, claiming that the minister was neglecting his duties." What a demonstration of the sense of anger in Korea right now.
To be sure, Hwang's statement was a weird one, seeming to show defiance to China but not really getting at the reason everyone is so mad. Presumably he was cautious of offending a government which has shown time and again that it is willing to take disproportionate measures against its critics.
But others, who have less to fear and more to gain from reproaching China, were more ready to attack. The main accusation, and the one taken up with the greatest gusto, is that China is committing the crime of cultural appropriation.
News sites across the world reported on it, from The Indian Express and Britain's Guardian to China's own Global Times. At the time of writing, I've found at least eight articles on the issue in The Korea Times alone, including an editorial from Feb. 7 arguing that the inclusion of the hanbok-clad woman "was inappropriate as it might give the impression to global audiences that the hanbok is part of China's unique culture despite Korea's own sovereignty." Again, this argument just makes no sense in the light of the 54 minorities represented in the ceremony.
The day following The Korea Times editorial, the highest-ranked diplomat in the American embassy in Seoul, Chris Del Corso, implicitly weighed in on the matter in a tweet in Korean and English asking the question, "What comes to mind when you think of Korea?" and then answering it, "Kimchi, K-Pop, K-dramas…and of course Hanbok," signing off with the hashtag #OriginalHanbokFromKorea.
His tweet was accompanied by a photo of him wearing hanbok. Ironically, in the West, when Westerners wear outfits from different cultures, there are usually outcries over cultural appropriation, but this is rarely the case with Westerners wearing Korea's national dress. To the contrary, the South Korean government actively encourages visitors to wear hanbok, offering free entry to its palaces for anyone sporting the traditional garb. Indeed, I've donned hanbok myself on a number of occasions, most notably during part of my wedding. When foreign nationals wear hanbok, it's generally seen in Korea as great ― but these acts are always, quite rightly, with the understanding that those wearing them acknowledge that the clothes are part of Korean culture and heritage.
So the diplomat's move was smart. It generated positive reactions here while further driving in the wedge between China and Korea ― a perfect political move: he was acknowledging the Koreanness of the hanbok both visually and textually, but also implying that Koreanness equates to South Koreanness. In fact, considerations of Koreanness in the English language are always muddied, because the English word "Korean" does not only mean the culture and language of Korean people, it is also often used to signify something specifically from South Korea.
So when Del Corso tweeted that hanbok is Korean, he referred to K-pop and K-drama ― two things from the South ― in the same breath as kimchi and hanbok, which are shared by all Koreans. He thus conflates the two issues and implies that all four things are uniquely South Korean, which is obviously not the case.
Obviously, it's a logical impossibility for a Korean to "culturally appropriate" something from Korean culture. After all, the Chinese embassy has stated that the woman in the ceremony was a Joseonjok, or Korean of Chinese nationality. To suggest that the Koreans living in China have no claim to kimchi or to the hanbok is obviously wrong, which is why no one does so directly. Something's really going wrong when South Koreans are criticizing an ethnic Korean for wearing hanbok.
Of course, it would be easy to ask whether the Chinese government has the right to co-opt its minorities into the opening ceremony for its own political purposes (of showing an imaginary perfect unity among China's ethnic groups), and it would be even easier to call it propaganda, but all of this is disingenuous. Every Olympics is an opportunity for the host country to show an idealized image of itself to the world. This reality is just as true now as it was four years ago in PyeongChang. And the celebration of diversity we saw in Beijing is the kind of cheesy photo-op that every organizer for this kind of event loves.
The hanbok is truly a thing of beauty. It is something to be proud of, something to admire, and it is Korean. No one can take that away. But while it's vital to acknowledge China's past actions encroaching on Korea's culture and independence, it's equally important to accept that South Korea is not the only place where Koreans live. There are something like 2.5 million ethnic Koreans living in China: it's actually one of the largest minorities in the country, albeit with a small number compared to the overall population. Imagine the righteous fury if Koreans had potentially been left out of the ceremony. Fundamentally, China was celebrating the Korean culture of some of its citizens, not appropriating it.
Both of the main presidential candidates have been trying their best to monopolize on the anti-China sentiment that the Olympics is stirring up, just as the American diplomat did. There will always be politicians willing to pander to nationalism and xenophobia for their own gains. Indeed, when I said this to my wife, she remarked sardonically that that's their job. But it's up to the rest of us to accept that the mob mentality isn't always right, up to us to stand up for truth no matter how inconvenient, and up to us not to grab our pitchforks at the slightest provocation.
That's not to say there's nothing wrong with the Chinese government's actions. They have in the past made implicit claims to Korean culture and I fully condemn those, but I don't see this performance as one of those claims. The Chinese government and Communist Party are doing enough terrifying things right now without looking for new causes for offence. Even this week we saw the Orwellian interview with tennis star Peng Shuai apparently backtracking on her claims against a senior Chinese politician. If we're going to criticize China, let's do it for the many real atrocities there and not because they celebrated the Koreans living in their country.
Dr. Scott Shepherd is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
The Korea Times · by 2022-02-12 12:01 | Foreign Affairs · February 12, 2022
15.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
