The Command Post Op-Ed Page

Why Won't the Media Tell the Truth About North Korea?

Recently, a reporter named Chris Nelson, since retired and gone into the consulting business, made the mistake of preparing a confidential report for the South Korean Embassy in Washington, and then erroneously sending that report to his entire list of hundreds of e-mail newsletter subscribers. Two different anonymous sources sent me copies of the report, and the Washington Post has since covered the story of its accidental disclosure.

I have decided that at least one section of the Nelson Report merits printing: the section Nelson wrote about other journalists and his advice to the Korean Embassy on how to deal with them. As you read this, bear in mind that Nelson is an ex-UPI reporter and a die-hard advocate of “engagement” with the North Korean government, very much in the Jack Pritchard mold. Whether you agree with that view or not, this section is a fascinating look at who is writing your news and what biases they bring to their stories. Even if you agree with him, you should be disturbed about so many journalists’ abandonment of objectivity and not-so-concealed desire to influence events and gain “player” status.

What’s truly striking here is that Chris Nelson wrote this for a foreign embassy whose policy goal—the preservation of the North Korean regime—is directly contrary to U.S. interests and reflected in the accelerating dissolution of the U.S.-ROK alliance. Even if Nelson is being truthful when he claims that he wrote this for free and on his own volition, his politics skim effortlessly past the water’s edge, and he has willingly made himself an undisclosed agent of a foreign nation whose interests diverge from our own. Those interests also differ from media consumers who don’t like their news flavored by foreign governments. Draw your own conclusions about what that means, even if you agree that this report doesn’t exactly contain state secrets. What it means to me is that Nelson shares the South Korean government’s culpability for trying to bury the story of the political cleansing of millions of North Koreans.

Finally, a disclaimer: While I have at least two different sources for this document, I don’t know if any of what Nelson is saying about anyone is actually true. Here, then, Section 7 of Nelson’s document with no redactions or deletions. All emphasis my own.

7. THE PRESS:

A very short list, again. No one in the influential national news media is a “Korea expert” per se, except Dan Sneider (mentioned below) and Don Oberdorfer, who no longer practices daily journalism. However, because of the non-proliferation, and China policy/Asia policy associations, certain reporters well known to you write all the time on aspects of Korea policy.

The best and most reliable “insider” is a genuine Korea expert, Dan Sneider, who is syndicated nationally through the San Jose (Ca.) Mercury News. Sneider is the son of the Carter-era Ambassador to South Korea, speaks Korean, and has a deep understanding and sympathy for the issues and the people involved. He is highly critical of Bush policy, but is a deliberate “player” who has managed to maintain good relations with the NSC’s Green and Cha, and virtually anyone mentioned in this Report.

Because he enjoys no Washington, D.C. or New York City outlet, however, Sneider’s written influence is indirect, via having his pieces sent around by email, or by influencing the writing of his friend David Sanger of The New York Times.

Sanger is a difficult case to analyze, since he is a tireless and often brilliant reporter, but who is deeply cynical about what is required to secure a coveted place on the front page of the world’s most important newspaper. Ever since his days in the Tokyo Bureau in the late 1980’s, Sanger has been notorious for catering to established power centers for the “official news”, and for not seeking alternate or critical sources who might contradict the officials, and this “kill” the story. On Korea policy, Sanger’s proclivity has produced an endless series of damaging and frequently false stories which, themselves, are “true”…it IS true that “senior Administration officials today said”…or that “US intelligence officials feel…” that the DPRK is ready to test a bomb, or to defy the US, or to…take your pick. Until or unless forced to by his editors (or peer pressure) what Sanger does not do is seek out Jonathan Pollack or Bob Carlin or Joel Wit, or Jack Pritchard…or any of the known “dissident experts” likely to shoot-down the story, or at least diminish its importance. This is a huge problem with major policy implications and the Embassy should forcefully address it.

Far more intellectually honest is The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, and a rising star is the Post’s defense reporter, (Ms.) Dafna Linzer. Neither are “Korea” experts, but they write constantly about Korea policy. Previously very interested, and still occasionally active on Korea is former Times reporter Barbara Slavin, of USA TODAY. Slavin is very tough minded, and makes no secret of her loathing of the Bush Administration. She no longer receives “special attention” from The White House, despite political chief Karl Rove’s view that USA TODAY is the most important national newspaper, due to its circulation in every small town in America.

More in the “bomb thrower” category is journalist Jasper Becker, who turns out fighly emotional, not partcularly balanced “OpEds” which are violently critical of N. Korea on human rights grounds. He is not wrong, obviously…but his influence on policy is to reinforce the hard-liners at the expense of the pro-engagement forces, to the exent they have survived in the Bush Administration.

Clearly a major “bomb thrower” is The Washington Times and its defense reporter, Bill Gertz. Gertz is the willing agent of The Blue Team…the coalition of dissident anti-communist hard-liners who work to oppose what they see as “soft” US policy on China and N. Korea. If David Sanger is dishonest by omission, Gertz is dishonest by deliberate commission…he is willing to print anything which is critical of communists and those in the US whom he and/or The Blue Team feel are “soft”. He is exceptionally dangerous for this reason and should be treated with extreme care by the Embassy.

Magazine reporters should not be ignored. A major player for now is The New Republic’s Joshua Kurlantzick, who has been both interested in, and concerned about problems with Bush Korea policy. He makes frequent trips to the region, and often seeks advice and introductions. A rising player of interest is The Washington Monthly’s Soyoung Ho, the daughter of a retired ROK diplomat. Ms. Ho is very active and very ambitious, and should be helped as appropriate.

Last and perhaps least, for better or for worse, The Nelson Report, prepared daily by yours truly (who began with UPI in New York in 1967), has established a position of influence by sheer persistence and focus, and the reach of its information sources throughout the Asia policy and trade community…in and out of the Administration, and across the world. God bless e-mail. Nelson was on the HIRC Asia Subcommittee from 1977 to 1981, and a frequent visitor to Korea, and the region, and later served on the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Since 1983 he has produced what is now called The Nelson Report. “Everyone” talks to him, even, sometimes, still, Mike Green.

A few comments.

Several people thought I had Tourette’s Syndrome when I read Nelson call the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler “intellectually honest.” Neither he nor Dafna Lizner can seems able to write an entire paragraph without an extraneous editorial comment, but those comments invariably fit Nelson’s own biases nicely, thus earning his praise. This is in spite of Nelson’s concession that neither speaks Korean nor knows much about Korea (no news there; I seldom get through a report on the Iraq war without seeing some verbal evidence that the reporter never served).

Contrast Nelson’s adulation of Kessler—exceeded only by Nelson’s adulation of Nelson—with his resentment of David Sanger for actually getting quotes from the people who occupy the White House (the comment on Sanger’s failure to quote critical sources is demonstrably false). Sanger is well known in Washington for his good contacts within the administration, and since journalists are human, there’s probably a mixture of professional envy and resentment of Sanger’s strike-breaking refusal to simply print what comes across the Selig Harrison Intercom Network. Agree with Sanger’s politics or not; his sources are well-placed, and his reporting is detailed and rigorous.

On the “bomb-thrower” Jasper Becker, I can only say that I’m sixty pages into his new book, Rogue Regime, and it’s already looking like the best book about North Korea I’ve read—and I’ve read most of the non-Bruce Cummings stuff by now.

They Will Say They Did Not Know: South Korea's Shameful Abstention on on Human Rights for the North Korean People

As it did in 2004, the Korean government will abstain from this year’s U.N. Resolution condemning the deplorable state of human rights in North Korea. South Korea failed to vote on a similar resolution in 2003. This year’s resolution will express concern about abuses such as concentration camps for political prisoners. Among the resolution’s points which are apparently unworthy of Seoul’s support:

It calls on Pyongyang to ratify the Convention Against Torture and guarantee that the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea is allowed to operate freely. The special rapporteur was created by last year’s resolution.

You can read the Rapporteur’s full report here. It tells us plenty about the situation in North Korea that we already knew: its declining economy and mass starvation; diversion of food aid from the hungry; imprisonment without trial; pervasive political repression; hereditary class discrimination; public executions; concentration camps; torture; forced labor; repression and killing of repatriated defectors; infanticide; the imprisonment of entire families; the trafficking of women; and most recently, the cancellation of U.N. food aid programs while millions of North Koreans still depend on the food they provide (more on that here). For all of its U.N. gobbledygook, imprecise language, and straining to find “positive” aspects to the North Korean situation, the report calls North Korean refugees “refugees” for the first time. This directly confronts China’s assertion (and South Korea’s developing inclination) that they are in fact “economic migrants” undeserving of the protection of the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees.

One cannot say that this report dramatically alters the factual landscape of North Korea’s deplorable human rights record. It merely puts an official imprimatur on a myriad of reports that exclude the possibility of South Korea’s absolution in the eyes of history. For years, we have read published reports that the North Korean regime orders the murder of babies; the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, including children; the gassing of whole families; and the starvation of millions. This has never affected South Korea’s willingness to tolerate these horrors in culpably acquiescent silence.

While half of the Korean nation and a third of its population are enslaved in such a condition, South Korea chooses to focus its moral outrage on its friends. It has severed a 60-year alliance with the world’s greatest power over a traffic accident and severed fingers and declared “diplomatic war” against Japan over two Godforsaken, guano-encrusted islands where no one even lives. Yet in spite of eight years of endlessly patient South Korean appeasement—some would say, because of it—North Korea has never been more ruthless toward its own people or intransigent toward the outside world.

But isn’t it unfair to say that the rights of the North Korean people are not important to the South Korean government? Not if you take former Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun at his word, as The Marmot reminds us:

The official refusal to speak out about the human-rights abuses of Kim Jong Il’s regime was on full display last week during an interview with the South’s minister of unification, whom I met on the day the gulag report was released. For North Koreans, Minister Jeong Se Hyun said, “political freedom is a luxury, like pearls for a pig. The improvement of economic conditions for the North Korean people is the most important issue right now.”

It’s not Monty Python, but he’s really saying, “Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who. . . .” Contrast this bit of accidental low burlesque with South Korea’s sense of moral indignation on an issue that South Korea does consider to be urgent business for the Human Rights Commission:

“If we don’t learn the lessons from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them.”

What urgent matter is stirring South Korea’s righteous anger? Japanese history textbooks. I’m the first to agree that Japan needs to drop its ambivalence about its own culpability for its actions in the 1930’s and 40’s, but this isn’t killing people now. Nor can one take seriously the idea that Japan represents a military threat to its neighbors. Indeed, Korea’s actions this week are a perfect illustration of how provincial grievances keep the U.N. from protecting human rights effectively, a failure that even Kofi Annan and some voices from the left are finally admitting.

* * * * *

The South Korean government is on full notice of the suffering of the North Korean people; yet for reasons that are almost certainly related to domestic politics, it chooses to focus its attention elsewhere. History will record this as a betrayal. The forgiveness of the North Korean people will be neither warranted nor forthcoming. Their anger at this refusal to acknowledge their suffering with so much as one intangible gesture will exacerbate the already formidable psychological barriers to reunification. Generations of Koreans will ask themselves how they elected men who could be so ruthlessly cowardly, but the question will not be asked while it is still possible to save some of those who will be dead by next spring.

They know. May shame be upon on them for a hundred generations.