BENEDICT ROGERS, East Asia team leader at religious freedom advocacy Christian Solidarity Worldwide, reflects on last week’s summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and what “true peace” looks like…
Last week, the President of the United States Donald Trump and the leader of the world’s most repressive regime, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, met in an historic and extraordinary summit in Singapore. It was the first time a sitting US President and a North Korean leader had met, and it came less than a year after the two sides had appeared on the brink of war.
Superficially, the optics looked good. Both leaders smiled, appearing to have a personal chemistry. Broad rhetorical commitments to peace, denuclearisation and change were made. Such an initiative was surely better than the warmongering language both sides had exhibited just a few months ago.
Part of the statement released in the wake of Mr Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore.
“There is, of course, a place for diplomacy, for charm even, in dialogue with even the most ruthless dictators, if you want engagement to achieve something. But there is a difference between diplomacy, courtesy and charm, and unnecessary, obscene legitimisation of a cruel, barbaric, criminal regime.”
However, there are some significant concerns.
First and foremost, it would appear that, for now, the human rights crisis in North Korea was at best side-lined, at worst neglected. This has angered North Korean escapees, with one, Kim Yong-hwa, saying that it was like “stabbing the heart” of North Koreans. Jung Gwang-il, who met President Trump earlier this year, says he feels let down. Since the summit it has transpired that President Trump saluted a North Korean general, and expressed admiration for the fact that when Kim speaks, North Korean people sit up. “I want my people to do the same,” he said. Such remarks are truly appalling, even if, as President Trump subsequently claimed, they were said in jest. Gulags are no joking matter, Mr President.
There is, of course, a place for diplomacy, for charm even, in dialogue with even the most ruthless dictators, if you want engagement to achieve something. But there is a difference between diplomacy, courtesy and charm, and unnecessary, obscene legitimisation of a cruel, barbaric, criminal regime. Saluting a general implies respect. Yet how can one respect a regime that has incarcerated at least 100,000 people in prison camps that have been compared to Auschwitz? And doesn’t Mr Trump realise that North Koreans have no choice but to stand and applaud Kim Jong-Un, a ruler accused by the United Nations of running a regime “without parallel” in the world, committing crimes against humanity which should be tried at the International Criminal Court? Any North Korean even suspected of anything other than total devotion to the Kim family risks a lifetime in a gulag, or execution. Kim jokes are akin to Hitler jokes, and they aren’t funny.
Time will tell whether engagement with North Korea will pay off, and whether Kim’s promises of denuclearisation are realised. The initial impression is that Kim left Singapore the winner, able to return to North Korea and tell his people that the President of the United States respects and honours him. A propaganda coup if ever I saw one – and one achieved with very few substantial concessions.
It was interesting that the summit took place on 12th June, the 31st anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s famous Berlin Wall speech. That speech offers an example of how to negotiate with a ruthless dictatorship, by linking the security of the world with the basic human rights and freedoms of an oppressed people. “There stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion,” said President Reagan. “Freedom and security go together: the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.” President Trump’s message to Kim Jong-Un in Singapore should have been, to paraphrase his predecessor: “Mr Kim, if you seek peace, come to the gates of the prison camps. Mr Kim, open the gates of the prison camps. Mr Kim, tear down the walls of the prison camps!” If he didn’t deliver that message this time, he must do so soon.
The Helsinki Process which the West pursued with the Soviet Union provides a model of how engagement with North Korea might be pursued: with human rights and security both on the agenda. For as Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov said during his 1975 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “international confidence, mutual understanding, disarmament, and international security are inconceivable without an open society with freedom of information, freedom of conscience, the right to publish, and the right to travel.”
“It is right to try to talk to the North Korean leadership. It is right to try to convince Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear weapons. It is right to encourage him to open up his country to international investment in return. But alongside that should be placed questions about the human rights atrocities his regime has committed.”
North Korea is perhaps the world’s most closed country, ruled by the world’s most repressive regime. Every one of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ 30 articles is denied or violated – in particular Article 18: freedom of thought, conscience and religion. To be a Christian in North Korea is to risk your life. Christians can only worship in small gatherings, in secret, and if discovered, they face certain imprisonment in a prison camp, subjected to the worst forms of torture, slave labour, sexual violence and abuse. In some cases, Christians have been executed for possessing a Bible.
North Korea is slowly changing, but despite – not because of – the regime. Earlier this year CSW published a major new report, titled Movies, Markets and Mass Surveillance: Human Rights in North Korea after a Decade of Change. Through surveys and interviews with recent escapees from North Korea, we found that in the last decade increased flows of information, through radio broadcasts and smuggling of DVDs and USBs with South Korean dramas on them, awareness about the outside world has increased, and with it more understanding of human rights. That, combined with economic changes, has led to greater discontent with the regime, although of course that is never expressed openly.
Just before the summit, CSW joined over 300 other non-governmental organisations in sending a letter to Kim Jong-Un, urging him to make “lasting improvements to the dire human rights situation”. It is right to try to talk to the North Korean leadership. It is right to try to convince Kim Jong-Un to give up his nuclear weapons. It is right to encourage him to open up his country to international investment in return. But alongside that should be placed questions about the human rights atrocities his regime has committed. Any meaningful engagement must involve convincing him to open up his country not only to investment but to ideas, and with that to open up the gates of the prison camps and release political prisoners. True peace cannot be achieved unless the human rights and dignity of the people of North Korea are protected and upheld, impunity ends and crimes against humanity stopped. That is the goal for which we must continue to work, and pray.
Benedict Rogers is East Asia Team Leader at CSW.
