|
A government official on Sunday denounced the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz, accusing him of being "biased and interfering in our internal affairs." The attack came over an op-ed piece Lefkowitz wrote for the Wall Street Journal last Friday, in which he asserts that by channeling large amounts of unmonitored aid to North Korea, some governments are in fact propping up the North Korean regime, and that there is no guarantee that the less than US$2 South Korean firms pay their North Korean workers a day in the Kaesong Industrial Complex is delivered to the workers. In a separate statement, the Unification Ministry said, "To deny North Korea humanitarian aid is to turn a blind eye to the difficult situation the North Korean people face. It goes against humanitarian principle and human rights and represents a unilateral and single-track attitude."
Lefkowitz, thinking perhaps of the U.S. minimum daily wage of $40 for eight hours of work, regards the daily minimum of less than $2 North Koreans can earn in Kaesong as in itself inhumane. But the W4,500 those workers get at North Korea¡¯s official exchange rate far exceeds workers' average monthly wage of W3,000 elsewhere in the country. If Lefkowitz meant to imply that the workers at Kaeseong are exploited, he may well be accused of knowing too little about realities in the North.
But the whole rhetorical battery -- against humanitarian principle and human rights, unilateral, single-track and what have you -- that our officials poured out at Lefkowitz is usually reserved for enemies at war. Use them to describe an ally and you are in danger of making an enemy of them.
Worse, it is absurd for a government that has been so negligent about the human rights situation in North Korea to accuse others of offending against humanitarian principle. Everyone knows that South Korea and the U.S. have not seen eye to eye on the question, with Washington wanting to give priority to the North's human rights record and Seoul urging a softly-softly approach. Already the unification and foreign ministers for that reason declined to meet Lefkowitz when he visited Seoul late last year.
But there we have it. The relationship between Seoul and Washington has reached a point where one side openly criticizes the other in the press, whereupon the other side flies into a rage that unleashes an orgy of abuse. Whatever next?
|
