8 Responses to Seven Years Ago Today: The North-South Summit

1. Mark
   June 15th, 2007 at 7:28 am

   Doppelgänger.

2. Jonas
   June 15th, 2007 at 10:39 am

   What makes you think that?

3. Richardson
   June 15th, 2007 at 11:49 am

   Jonas,
   Assuming you meant the line in the post, there are many sources available on this (use terms from below to Google), here is one;

   According to OyMyNews (”‘장사꾼’과 계약에 ‘국정원 담보’ 못믿겠다”), The Korean National Intelligence Agency and Kim Dae Jung were intimately involved in the Hyundai-North Korea business deal made on March 17, 2000.
   [. . .]

   The historic summit joint statement was made on June 15, 2000. The summit was announced on April 10 of that year after Park Jin Won (South Korean minister of culture) and Song Ho Gyong met in Beijing two days earlier.

   [. . .]

   It is significant that the summit agreement was made public days before the general election of April 13th. The date of the summit was pushed back one day from 12th to 13th of June on North Korea’s request made on June 10th. The reason for the delay was that North Korea had received only $400 million and $100 million was still outstanding. It turned out that the payment had been made but the North Korean top leaders were not informed of it due to faulty communication.

   Strictly speaking, Minister Park Ji Won’s claim that Seoul paid North Korea not a single penny is correct. But North Korean officials do not understand that Hyundai and Seoul government are not one and the same, and may have considered Hyundai’s $500 million earnest money a bonus payment from the Seoul government for the summit meeting.

   This info did not come out until much later, and not knowing that the summit was bought and paid for greatly altered public sentiment both in Korea and around the world. Eventually, Kim Dae-jung was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his Sunshine Policy efforts, and especially achieving the summit. But that was before it was known that the summit was in realty a fraud.

4. Jonas
   June 15th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

   Wow Ridchardson thanks for the info, but I meant Marks’comment about the Doppelgänger (body double). Does Kim Jong-Il use body doubles? It would not surprise me.

   I know that Saddam had body doubles:
   http://www.amazon.com/Was-Saddams-Son-Latif-Yahia/dp/1559703733

5. Gerry
   June 15th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

   Reminds me of after the opening bombing in the Iraqi war the joke was that they called all of Sadams doubles in and said “we have good news, and we have bad news. The good news is Sadam is alive. The bad news is he lost an arm.”

6. Won Joon Choe
   June 17th, 2007 at 11:10 am

   Jonas,

   Doppelgänger is a good description of “His Excellency” the former RoK President Kim Dae Jung.

   To be succinct:

   Kim is a two-faced politico who swindled the West into believing that he is a genuine liberal democrat with his duplicitous “human rights” rhetoric when he is a venal, corrupt politician.

   Of course, the problem lies with Western simplicity as much as Kim’s duplicity. Until Western media and intelligentsia abandon its puerile and Manichean democrat “good”–autocrat “bad” dichotomy, the West will always fall for the Kim Dae Jungs of the world and demonize great men like Park Chung Hee or Lee Kuan Yew.

   What the West needs is a re-education, a reintroduction to the prudence of Aristotle (or at least of Weber or Niebuhr) not the moral absolutism of a Kant.

7. Richardson
   June 18th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

   Of course, the problem lies with Western simplicity as much as Kim’s duplicity.

   Or maybe buying Nobel prizes and being oppressive is just… bad?

8. Won Joon Choe
   June 20th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

   Richardson,

   I am not denying that “buying” a Nobel Peace prize is bad. In fact, I would not be too surprised if DJ bought the Nobel prize in the literal sense–i.e., paying off the Nobel committee. As you likely know, the South Korean “street” was pregnant with rumors of such a payoff in the aftermath of Kim’s winning the award. By temperament I am not in the habit of giving credence to popular rumors–esp. if they generate from the Korean populace–but given DJ’s own ethics (or the lack thereof), the Nobel committee’s past penchant for being influenced by money (there is an interesting account of how Japanese corporate contributions pressured the Nobel committee to pick Kawabata in the original Wallechinsky & Wallace edition of the People’s Alamanac, if I recall correctly), and the overall South Korean bribery culture, this rumor is not unreasonable.

   But my point is simply that DJ is in many sense an American created-Frankenstein, a creature that America nurtured for decades–albeit in fits and often indirectly (i.e., through its at times unreasonable and merciless critique of Park Chung Hee–e.g. Carter), because it was misled by his ingratiating, false democratic rhetoric.

   P.S. A few years ago, Richard V. Allen, the former Reagan National Security Advisor, once published a long e-mail dialogue with a conservative Korean pundit on the Wolgan Chosun, where he volunteered to head an American effort to pressure the Nobel prize to rescind its award to DJ precisely due to the issues we touched on this thread. Do you, Richardson, or anyone else, know what–if anything–came out of this affair? I was warmed by Allen’s seeming resolve, but I suppose it was a quixotic effort to begin with.

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