hankyoreh

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

Why my father visited China three times in a single year

We’ve gotten a little sidetracked here, so let’s get back to the point. Even after George W. Bush scrapped the Agreed Framework, my father did his best to improve our hostile relationship with the US.

The outcome was the Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks on September 19, 2015. The South Korean government under President Roh Moo-hyun and the Chinese government went to great effort to bridge the gap between the US and North Korea. My father really appreciated that, and I do, too.

Today, people assume that the Joint Statement is void, but it’s still really important. Experts called it a blueprint for bringing Northeast Asia out of the Cold War. It was supposed to first erect the “two pillars” of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and normalizing North Korea’s relations with the US and Japan and then use these to support the “one pillar” of establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula. Students of international relations praised the agreement as one that balanced the interests of all six of the parties who participated in the talks.

If the Joint Statement had been implemented properly, the situation on the Korean Peninsula would not be the way it is today. What my father regretted until his dying day was that the Joint Communique from 2000 and the Joint Statement from 2005 were not implemented and became useless scraps of paper. Just like what happened in the early 1990s, once again the mistake was yours.

Before the ink had even dried on the Sep. 19 Joint Statement, Bush, Jr. pulled the rug out from under North Korea, freezing US$25 million of its deposits at Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau. As financial sanctions go, this was more direct than the “secondary boycott” the knuckleheads have gone on about since the fourth nuclear test as some sort of grand strategy for bringing North Korea to its knees. Back then, we said we couldn’t go back to the six-party talks until we got our US$25 million back. My father showed everyone just how committed the North was with its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, 2006. The idiots love to make stuff up; this time, they went on as though the money was some secret political fund of my father’s. It wasn’t. What country can survive in this world nowadays without being able to do financial transactions? The same goes for when North Korea demanded that the freeze on the US$25 million be lifted. You need to fix this bad habit of always using a different yardstick for the North’s words and deeds. That’s the only way you’ll ever understand.

I know I’ve gone on for a while about history. And there’s a reason for that: I want to remind you that you won’t find the answers you’re looking for if you insist on looking at me as some random jackass who suddenly became leader of North Korea one day, or my form of policies as the “childish antics of an immature young leader.” I’m as bound by history as any of you. So if you don’t want to make mistakes, think twice. Demonizing me or North Korea isn’t going to bring any answers raining down from heaven. Try looking to history instead.

My father did what he could to foster an external environment that wasn’t hostile to North Korea. It didn’t do much good. Never mind fixing the hostilities with the US and Japan - they’ve only gotten worse, and relations with China aren’t what they used to be. That’s why my father visited China three times in the year before he died (May and Aug. 2010, May 2011).

What he left behind for me was the North’s nuclear deterrent. That’s all I had to start out with. Since becoming leader, I’ve had it stated in our Constitution that we’re a nuclear power (fifth meeting of the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly, Apr. 13, 2012), and I’ve formally adopted the parallel development course of economic and nuclear development (WPK Central Committee plenary session, Mar. 31, 2013). That got their tongues wagging. Xi Jinping and Obama both said they couldn’t recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, and that its parallel development course wouldn’t work (US-China summit meeting, Sept. 25, 2015). And I get it. What else are they going to say? But if they thought even a little bit about my position, or North Korea’s, they’d understand that the present situation doesn’t leave any more appealing options than the parallel development course.

Go back and read through the WPK Central Committee plenary session report from Mar. 31, 2013, where the parallel development course was listed as a “new strategic path.” Its goals were literally “developing the economy” and “developing nuclear weapons” simultaneously. But there’s another reason in addition to those two. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to come out and say, but I was lacking experience and preparation and I desperately needed to establish a stable and stronger power base right away.

I’ve already talked a lot about the historical origins behind developing nuclear weapons, and I won’t go into it again. To dispel any misunderstandings you might have, I do think a slightly lengthy explanation is in order for the relationship between the parallel development course and our urgent need to build our economy. Many experts have looked at the parallel development course and seen something like my grandfather’s own parallel development approach with the economy and defense. But while they do share the idea of stronger defense being a priority, the economic context is much different.

By Lee Je-hun, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

To be continued...