Robert Park Challenges S. Koreans

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Michael Breen

Robert Park Challenges S. Koreans

Posted : 2010-03-25 18:43

Updated : 2010-03-25 18:43

By Michael Breen

When he crossed the frozen Tumen River and illegally entered North Korea on Christmas Day, Robert Park was clear about his motives and the fate that awaited him.

The American human rights activist claimed to have received a vision from God of a liberated North Korea. As he prayed at the border, he told a colleague God had said not to be afraid. Then he walked boldly across the ice, his shoulders squared, shouting, ``I am an American citizen. I brought God's love. God loves you and God bless you."

So that the authorities were under no delusion as to his purpose, he carried a letter for Kim Jong-il, asking him to step down and let his people go.

``I am going in for the sake of the lives of the North Korean people," Park told Reuters in an interview in Seoul shortly before leaving for China. ``And if he (Kim Jong-il) kills me, in a sense, I realize this is better. Then the governments of the world will become more prone to say something, and more embarrassed and more forced to make a statement."

He said he did not want people to focus on rescuing him. ``I don't want President Obama to come and pay to get me out," he said. ``I want the North Korean people to be free. Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will."

In fact, he was expelled six weeks later. Since then, friends, family and colleagues have indicated that he has been suicidal or otherwise under extreme mental anguish. It is not known if this is a result of torture, as some claim, or whether in fact Park is delusionary and that the initial crossing he made was in keeping with a disturbed mental state.

From his own words before entering North Korea, it is apparent that Park wanted to sacrifice himself to prompt South Korean society into action.

South Korean Christians, he said, should ``repent" for their selfishness and indifference to the suffering of North Koreans; human rights groups should stop competing with one another and focus on united action; more broadly, he asked South Koreans to recognize the seriousness of the ``holocaust" in North Korea and demonstrate against it.

If taken seriously, his action and comments amount to a harsh indictment of the failure of South Korean people to concern themselves with North Korea.

Certainly, his potentially suicidal act, allegedly made at God's instructions, may be difficult to understand, harder, in fact, than those committed over the past decade by would-be Muslim martyrs.

But, while his action is extreme, it is in perfect keeping with the Christian faith. The mass appeal of the religion may be selfish - believe in a man who sacrificed himself and you will be saved - but the deeper impulse is for adherents to follow those footsteps and suffer for others, even if it means putting themselves in harm's way.

It is also tempting to diagnose him as suffering from grandiosity. But people who know him disagree. A friend of mine in Britain who knows Park described him as a ``deep and genuine" man. ``Of all the people who might really hear from God, he was right at the top of the list," he told me.

Perhaps we should accept that Park had a vision of a liberated North Korea, heard the call and acted on it with courage. If so, what is our response to his criticism of South Korean society?

Korean social and political activists need to appreciate that the feature of their popular protest agenda that most puzzles outsiders like Park ― he is from Tucson, Arizona, but ethnically Korean (his Korean name is Park Dong-hoon) ― is the prioritizing of issues.

As Park told Reuters, ``There were hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea demonstrating for this ridiculous thing about the kind of beef we were getting in South Korea. There was nothing to it. What does it say about our generation that we can be mobilized to demonstrate about the kind of beef we are getting and we cannot demonstrate for people who are our own kin who are dying by the thousands every day for no reason at all?"

What, to take another example, makes Dokdo so important? Why does this minor territorial dispute with Japan, a close ally, over some rocks that Korea already controls, inflame people? Why, in contrast, does the murder of citizens and testing of nuclear weapons by an enemy country, North Korea, which claims ownership of all of South Korea, barely raise any interest?

Of course, these questions can be answered and the protest agenda explained. But can it be justified?

Surely those Koreans who value democracy and human rights for themselves should come out in support of the same for their neighbors? If the answer to that is no, then they should at least applaud the foreigners who do it on their behalf.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.