Great drama engulfs Korea

In the second of two articles, our Asia correspondent, Harvey Stockwin, paints a broad brush picture of the many current developments in and between the two Koreas. In the first article he analyzed the aftermath of South Korea's "trial of the century" which finally ended in the Supreme Court upholding the severe punishment of two former Presidents, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo.

HONG KONG (JP): The Great Korean Drama continues to unfold, breathtaking in its scope and complexity.

Famine increasingly takes North Korea in its grasp and bitter factionalism rears its foolish head in South Korea. But those are merely the main themes. There are plenty of sub-plots.

For most nations it would be enough, in one week, for two former Presidents to have their heavy prison sentences, for multiple abuse of power, confirmed by the South Korean Supreme Court. Time is needed by the South Koreans, surely, to ruminate on what it means, now that the courts have "sent a clear message that no individual stands above the law, and that all political leaders and public servants are to be held accountable for their actions".

So said the Korea Herald in an April 19 editorial, adding that "while putting previous chief executives on trial served as a troubling precedent for some, this episode should be accepted as one of the growing pains Korea will experience in its quest to become a truly modern state".

Plenty to reflect upon, even in those two sentences, but some South Korean politicians are already off and running, trying to explore the extent to which the second son of the current President Kim Young Sam, and even the President himself, should be held accountable for the financial hanky-panky behind the recent collapse of the Hanbo steel company.

That, too, is merely a part of the overall drama as South Korean politicians indulge the folly of factionalism in the run- up to the December presidential election. Leading the pack, as always, is the enduring rivalry between the Three Kims -- President Kim (YS), veteran oppositionist Kim Dae Jung repeat Kim Dae Jung (DJ), and former Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil repeat Kim Jong Pil (JP).

DJ, anxious for one last shot at being President himself, after three failed attempts, draws attention to the huge funds which YS used to get himself elected president in 1992, and hints that Hanbo Steel may have been one of YS's providers. JP, anxious to get the nod as the conservative candidate for president, demands that Hwang Jang Yop should be asked to formally apologize to the South Korean people for his role in the Korean War and as North Korea's chief ideologue.

This is a reminder of another sensational aspect of the Great Korean Drama -- sometime soon, probably in the next few days, Hwang, by far the highest-ranking comrade ever to defect from North Korea, is due to finally arrive in South Korea from the Philippines.

Hwang defected in Beijing in mid-February, and was taken, amidst cloak and dagger secrecy, to the Philippines in mid-March. His arrival in Seoul this week testifies to South Korea's reluctant acceptance of China's preference for two Koreas.

In securing Hwang's exit from the South Korean Embassy in Beijing, the South made two promises -- to keep Hwang in a third country for at least a month, and not to use Hwang politically against North Korea.

Precisely how this last promise can be kept will provide an interesting side-drama in the next few months. It is almost inconceivable that the South Koreans can keep Hwang under wraps at home in the same way as they have done in the Philippines. Yet, as JP's remarks indicate, anything Hwang says will be controversial in the South, while the North is bound to take umbrage.

To give only one example -- Hwang is in a good position to tell his interlocutors about the chain of cause and effect behind North Korea's economic decline. Judged by letters Hwang is said to have written prior to his actual defection, famine was already a creeping reality in the North long before the threat was clearly perceived outside North Korea.

The evidence accrues that the glib assertion by outsiders that North Korea's woes were brought on merely by two disastrous floods in 1995 and 1996 has been, at best, a half-truth. According to one United Nations calculation, out of North Korea's urgent need for 2.4 million tons of grain, only 300,000 tons is required because of the floods.

If Hwang says that the pervasive North Korean shortage of food and fuel, the closure of many factories and farms, represents a failure of a system, rather than a mere calamity, that will offend China and North Korea as well as South Korea's student radicals -- as they all cling onto communism.

But the extraordinary aspect of the Great Korean Drama is that the North Korean regime seems concerned with other things even as the evidence mounts that its people are in dire straits. (Just how dire has become a little more obvious recently as reporters from the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post set about interviewing those Koreans and Chinese who are allowed to cross the China-North Korean border, and who have seen the grim conditions at first hand.)

On April 13th North Korean commander-in-chief Kim Jong IL rpt Kim Jong IL promoted a further 123 officers of, and to, general rank. It is calculated that there are now 1,220 generals in the 1.2 million-strong North Korean armed forces. This means that, after this sixth round of promotions since Kim became commander- in-chief six years ago, there is one North Korean general to every 984 soldiers, undoubtedly something of a record.

Then, on April 15th, North Korea put on a typical totalitarian extravaganza to celebrate the late Great Leader Kim IL Sung's birthday. According to TV pictures, famine or no, there was a massive display in a Pyongyang stadium of youths waving scarfs, while another segment of the crowd was organized in such a way as to display Kim IL Sung's portrait. Not surprisingly, an official of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted as commenting that "outrageously, the North poured a massive amount of money into birthday festivities for the dead, while appealing for aid from the international community". An equally outrageous possibility is that the TV footage may have been a celebration from a bygone year, resurrected to show that things were "normal" after all.

"Outrageous" was scarcely the right word as there was one more almost unbelievable twist to the drama. On April 18th, a North Korean ship was caught by the Japanese police trying to smuggle US$100 million worth of illegal amphetamines. The seizure of 70 kilograms of the drugs came just as the Japanese government was seeking to place humanitarian food aid ahead of widespread Japanese anger over past kidnappings of Japanese citizens in Japan by North Korean agents. There is also Japanese anger over reports of famine-stricken North Korea moving towards tests of a ballistic missile which would be capable of hitting most parts of Japan.

This does not exhaust the full range of the Drama. In Seoul, shouts of "you imperialists, stop dirty maneuvering" were to be heard, also on April 18th, but these were South Koreans demonstrating against a Coca-cola takeover of a Korean soft drinks bottler, Bum Yang. President Kim Young Sam was extremely upset at yet another economic scandal -- as American consultants discovered an unsatisfactory number of faults in a 60-mile stretch of South Korea's high-speed railway which is being built between Pusan and Seoul.

Meanwhile suspense was acute in the most crucial part of the Great Korean Drama -- as North Korean negotiators, having delayed negotiations for two days, failed to turn up as promised on April 18th to deliver their government's decision on whether or not those peace talks would now proceed between North and South Korea, China and the United States. Maybe, just maybe, the North Koreans needed more time to catch up with all the dramatic developments -- the final ending to which it is as yet impossible to foresee.

Window: But the extraordinary aspect of the Great Korean Drama is that the North Korean regime seems concerned with other things even as the evidence mounts that its people are in dire straits.