By Michael Breen
President Moon's proposal that North and South Korea field a joint team at the Winter Olympics next year raises a question: would it be okay to use the occasion to protest against North Korea?
What I have in mind is a few tents in Gangwon Province. Such occupy Wall Street-type temporary homes have been all the rage in Seoul for a few years now and would get a lot of media attention if set up at the right strategic spots.
As my national orientation is foreign, I hasten to add that the tents should be manned and womanned by South Koreans and North Korean defectors. You don't want aliens spoiling the photos.
As for the message, I would recommend humor over serious politics. I know Gangwon is the only divided province in the world, but you don't want the Gangwon People's Liberation Front waving placards that say, "Set our people free" or "What about the gulag, then?" That would be crass.
And you don't want to taunt North Korean athletes and officials by advertising underground escape routes. That kind of thing will get any of them who saw the posters slung in jail or worse.
And you certainly don't want vulgarity, like "F*** North Korea" or "Kim is a C***." This is not a frat boy game. It's serious.
Now, if you've read this far, I know what you're thinking: I thought our columnist was a pinko. What's got into him?
Actually, I'm not sure. But when I read that President Moon had suggested it, the protest fantasy was the first thing that came into my head. This reaction took me so by surprise _ because I am indeed quite a limp-wristed liberal when it comes to engaging North Korea _ that it took a while to figure where it came from.
It's this: I'm afraid we are headed down delusion avenue again.
Twenty-five years ago, I had a chat with then-opposition leader Kim Dae-jung about unification _ such was the foreign correspondent's access in those days. It was on the eve of his departure to study unification politics at Cambridge. He had just lost his third presidential election and had announced his retirement from politics. He invited me round because we had a North Korea bond. I used to show him my slides and chat each time I came back from a reporting trip to North Korea. On this occasion, I did something that you might think, if you're a reader of this column, I do all the time, but actually it was rare for me because I was a reporter then and listened to people. I gave him some advice. Or, I should say, I tried to.
"If I were you, I would stop using the word unification," I said. "It's too aggressive." He looked at me with a punctured expression and said nothing. "I don't think it will happen if we try to make it happen. What we need to consider is reconciliation and let unification happen when it happens."
He didn't agree. He believed two things that I didn't. One was that North Koreans could come to trust us if we behaved better towards them. The other was that unification was more likely under the leadership of Kim Il-sung's family. He thought regime change would lead to harmful collapse and be worse for unification.
When he did return from the U.K., re-entered politics, and became the president, he launched the famous Sunshine Policy of engagement with North Korea. This was a good thing to do. But for a reason that went unsaid _ South Koreans stopped being afraid of the North Korean bogeyman.
As for changing North Korea and nudging us towards unification, it achieved nothing. In fact, there's an argument that it set things back by strengthening the regime.
What I fear now is that we are about to be led, albeit by nice, well-meaning people, down this same route. I'm all for engagement, but it needs to be done realistically, i.e., with low expectations. What we're waiting for is internally-driven regime change. That should be the goal of the Olympic protestors.
Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
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What I have in mind is a few tents in Gangwon Province. Such occupy Wall Street-type temporary homes have been all the rage in Seoul for a few years now and would get a lot of media attention if set up at the right strategic spots.
As my national orientation is foreign, I hasten to add that the tents should be manned and womanned by South Koreans and North Korean defectors. You don't want aliens spoiling the photos.
As for the message, I would recommend humor over serious politics. I know Gangwon is the only divided province in the world, but you don't want the Gangwon People's Liberation Front waving placards that say, "Set our people free" or "What about the gulag, then?" That would be crass.
And you don't want to taunt North Korean athletes and officials by advertising underground escape routes. That kind of thing will get any of them who saw the posters slung in jail or worse.
And you certainly don't want vulgarity, like "F*** North Korea" or "Kim is a C***." This is not a frat boy game. It's serious.
Now, if you've read this far, I know what you're thinking: I thought our columnist was a pinko. What's got into him?
Actually, I'm not sure. But when I read that President Moon had suggested it, the protest fantasy was the first thing that came into my head. This reaction took me so by surprise _ because I am indeed quite a limp-wristed liberal when it comes to engaging North Korea _ that it took a while to figure where it came from.
It's this: I'm afraid we are headed down delusion avenue again.
Twenty-five years ago, I had a chat with then-opposition leader Kim Dae-jung about unification _ such was the foreign correspondent's access in those days. It was on the eve of his departure to study unification politics at Cambridge. He had just lost his third presidential election and had announced his retirement from politics. He invited me round because we had a North Korea bond. I used to show him my slides and chat each time I came back from a reporting trip to North Korea. On this occasion, I did something that you might think, if you're a reader of this column, I do all the time, but actually it was rare for me because I was a reporter then and listened to people. I gave him some advice. Or, I should say, I tried to.
"If I were you, I would stop using the word unification," I said. "It's too aggressive." He looked at me with a punctured expression and said nothing. "I don't think it will happen if we try to make it happen. What we need to consider is reconciliation and let unification happen when it happens."
He didn't agree. He believed two things that I didn't. One was that North Koreans could come to trust us if we behaved better towards them. The other was that unification was more likely under the leadership of Kim Il-sung's family. He thought regime change would lead to harmful collapse and be worse for unification.
When he did return from the U.K., re-entered politics, and became the president, he launched the famous Sunshine Policy of engagement with North Korea. This was a good thing to do. But for a reason that went unsaid _ South Koreans stopped being afraid of the North Korean bogeyman.
As for changing North Korea and nudging us towards unification, it achieved nothing. In fact, there's an argument that it set things back by strengthening the regime.
What I fear now is that we are about to be led, albeit by nice, well-meaning people, down this same route. I'm all for engagement, but it needs to be done realistically, i.e., with low expectations. What we're waiting for is internally-driven regime change. That should be the goal of the Olympic protestors.
Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
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