What to expect from Clinton's "Summit"

And, Kim Jong Il Gets What He Wants... (Which is ? Scroll to the way bottom)

While former President Clinton goes to North Korea (as an unoffical guest, which is quite convenient for the U.S.), Kim Jong Il finally gets his one-on-one encounter with a (former, Democratic) U.S. president -- before he dies. It made all the headlines here in the U.K. as well, however I couldn't find an equivalent of the one they had at over at the Economist. I nabbed the picture below from "North Korea: Pictures from an exhibition" : The Economist.

At any rate, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il finally got the attention he so craved. While reading one of the U.K. dailies today, I came across this one part, which I thought was quite funny. These are insults that have been traded between the U.S. and the North Korean regime at one point or another:

Kim Jong-il may have been all smiles and handshakes with Bill, but just a few days ago his regime was in something of a slanging match with the other Clinton.

On a recent visit to New Delhi, Hillary, the Secretary of State, bemoaned the North Korean leadership's "constant demand for attention," before adding: "Maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers."

The North Koreans' response was firm. "We cannot but regard Mrs Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community," a spokesperson said. "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes like a pensioner going shopping."

The name-calling between Washington and Pyongyang is not new. George W Bush branded Kim Jong-il "a spoiled child at a dinner table". The North Koreans called Bush a "tyrannical imbecile" lacking "even an iota of elementary reason". And in 1968, North Korea's Major-General Pak Chung Kuk called Lyndon Johnson a "living corpse" ("Two U.S. journalists freed from Korean gulag" : The Independent).

At any rate, there was a lot of press coverage, but with expectations suddenly raised between North Korea and the U.S., although I feel I am a quite an optimist by nature, I cannot be more than a tad pessimistic about what may lay ahead. This "summit" has all the elements that the Koizumi-Kim summit had in 2002 when Koizumi suddenly and unexpectedly arrived in North Korea for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il for the release of Japanese abductees. Of course, none at the time and nobody more so than former Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi could have anticipated how adversely the Japanese public would consume the news that their citizens had indeed been abducted.

Personally, I believe what will drive North Korea-U.S. relations as well as with the other four parties from the six party framework, is how each party comes to accept the fact that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. This stands in stark and direct conflict with the fact that the United States will never accept North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power along the lines that the U.S. has with India -- and rightly so.

But, I do believe the U.S. would be content to see a steady-state where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but doesn't share/sell nuclear weapons or technology to other countries or non-state actors. Of course, this would hinge on North Korea not testing nuclear weapons (you can see this as the U.S. -- I'm thinking Department of Defense here, which has a different definition as to what constitutes a nuclear test than the U.S. State Department). And, of course, this action by the U.S. would in and of itself be a security guarantee for North Korea -- while not directly in the form of an alliance, the U.S. will do everything in its power to make sure a state with nuclear weapons does not collapse (think Pakistan).

But, pessimissm aside, I have a feeling that come one year -- and provided Kim Jong Il doesn't die, not much will have changed from how things were perhaps a couple years ago. If North Korea returns to a posture where it looks like it is going to negotiate, then South Korea can again start trading with North Korea and, well, unfortunately Japan looks like the odd man out (I'm quite concerned about what would happen if Japan's interests were not considered by the U.S., leading to Japan re-arming. Japan has quite a few greivances with all her neighbors: Kuril Islands/lack of peace treaty (Russia), Liancourt Rocks (Korea), No Peace Treaty (North Korea), and the Senkaku Islands (China/Republic of China(Taiwan)). I'm probably missing some others as well.

Anyways, I'm thinking that at best we can expect a return to the status quo and see what type of vocabulary each country uses to come up with a tacit acceptance of North Korea's nuclear weapons program as no country will go to war with North Korea to get rid of it.

(So, Kim Jong Il gets a de-facto security guarantee from the United States with the potential for much more).

China and Another Bankrupt Ideology

All the spare time recently has gone to sightseeing, studying, and just the general process of being overseas and stuff, so I haven't had an opportunity to update this blog. And, the stuff I did want to write about was about the trees here, or the awkward signs, or the language, or the castles, or the villages, you know some of the more pleasent stuff in life -- but the outrageous way in which Turks in Xinjiang(新疆, 신강) have been treated should be recognized as a serious threat to both the United States and Korea for we can now see Communist China for who she really is and why we as responsible citizens should care.

What Does It Mean To Be Chinese?

You see the Chinese flag has five stars. Each of the five stars represents an ethnic group that is supposed to compose the Chinese nation. These five stars represent the Han Chinese, the Turks of Xinjiang, Tibetans, Manchurians, and Mongolians. I was in fact referring to the older flag of the KMT (the pro-mainland party in Taiwan) during 1912-1928:

"五族共和" (Five ethnic groups together in harmony) -- Thank you Gudong.

Nonetheless, it is still indeed the ideology of the current communist regime in China that ethnicity has nothing do with nationality (Hence, Tibetans are Chinese according to this thought).

The ideology is so that just like you have Chinese-Americans in the United States, you have a Chinese nation of multiple ethnic groups, including Koreans. But, they don't get a star (But, of course, the crucial difference would be that Chinese-Americans willingly migrated to the United States whereas those five groups outside of Manchurians, who for all practical purposes no longer exist as a distinct ethnic group, were either physically conquered and/or culturally assimilated by the Han).

This should be of particular importance to Koreans as this was the main reason given by the Chinese government as to why the Chinese government claims Goguryeo as a kingdom in Northeast China as a minority Chinese kingdom. The logic being that since China is not a nation of a single ethnic group -- as in an Israel or Korea -- then it is possible for those people of Goguryeo or even Koreans to be ethnically Korean, but their nationality to be Chinese.

Of course, with uprisings in Tibet last year (and comparisons with Native Americans by Han Chinese) and Xinjiang this year, we all now know that just like communism, this concept or ideology of Chinese nationality is, well, bankrupt. China is a nation of Han Chinese who are systematically taking advantage of her ethnic minorities and continuing a ten-thousand year history of absorbing smaller, neighboring countries and ethnic groups one-by-one. Interestingly, the first character, "Xin" (新,신), Xinjiang, represents new as if it's some new land for the Chinese to settle.

This process of conquest and assimilation is not just a communist thing, you see. The Republic of China (Taiwan), even claims what is left of Mongolia. And, this I believe is more of a Chinese thing. This has been going on for hundreds and hundreds, no thousands, of years (Think about the initial assimilation of the Cantonese civilization). But, the easiest way to look at it is by looking at something none other than where the Great Wall of China is.

You see, for most of history, well, up until 1644 (when the barbarians conquered China for good), the Great Wall was meant to protect civilization (China) from the uncivilized or not as civilized (the rest of the world, pretty much). China was pretty much "contained" to the east coast with tributary states to the northeast (Korea, Japan) and to the south (Dai Viet, though, this state was directly ruled by the Chinese as late as during the Ming period), but did at times directly rule over states in the west. Nonetheless, even as late as the 19th century, when Manchurian rulers finally allowed the Han to settle in Manchuria (those areas northeast of the Great Wall), most of Manchuria was scarcely populated and the region was devoid of Han Chinese, which certainly is not the case today. Much of the lands that were occupied by barbarians are now part of China proper and the barbarians there speak Mandarin.

I remember a few years ago the term that China kept using was the "peaceful rise of China" or so, as if, to tell the world that you know what, the middle kingdom -- literally (中國), is returning to it's proper place as the center of the world and will do so in a very peaceful way. By the way, I'm sorry to tell you Sinophiles out there, but I doubt this will ever happen again, for you see, the United States is now here and by geography and ideology (and, perhaps, even destiny) the country sits right in the middle -- between the West and the Far East.

The last time the Han Chinese tried to conquer Korea (7th century C.E.) when the Tang turned on Silla, the Tang were much bigger than Silla, but nowhere near the proportions that either one of the Koreas today faces (This is one of the reasons why I believe North Korea has a nuclear weapons program and why I believe a unified Korea will need either a nuclear weapons program or an iron tight alliance with the United States for perpetuity). Do you think Korea could have survived up until today had the Chinese borders been like how it is today for the past couple thousand years?

I'm not disputing the territorial claims that Communist China makes with respect to Tibet nor Xinjiang (though Taiwan is a whole another matter, but that's for another day), but I'm pretty sure nobody believes the Chinese government's definition of what it means to be Chinese now.