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| What If Kim Jong-il Shows Up at the Olympics? |
| [Opinion] His appearance at the Games would show the world that he's not a 'warmonger' |
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Lee Byong-chul (merrycow)  |
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Published 2008-07-23 14:51 (KST) |
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Public discussions related to North Korean head of state Kim Jong-il are strictly controlled within North Korea. There are very few who get access to his enigmatic life maliciously known to the outside world and at the same time it still becomes impossible to find his exact locations. Everyone is hush-hush about his movements. Although Kim's radius of action is useful for parsing North Korea's one-man-ruling affairs of state, it goes without saying that this provides some crude shorthand for the closed society.
When Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping asked Kim, on June 18 while visiting Pyongyang, to attend the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the South Korean government kept a seemingly insouciant silence but soon began to analyze its possibility.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| Kim might join the group of world leaders in Beijing if he finds that his appearance at the world sports feast would be useful, and China-mediated talks with US President George W. Bush could generate the atmosphere and dramatic momentum for terminating the Communist state's diplomatic isolation. In addition, Kim's short encounters with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda may lead to direct talks immediately. In other words, it means that North Korea is no longer alone in the world and that the grave decision Kim makes toward reform and openness will certainly save North Koreans from suffering a recurrent tragic famine. The Games can be used to hedge Kim's political risks by joining them. These gambles can be tremendously lucrative.
Many North Korea experts here in Seoul, however, point out that Kim, who is 68, is unlikely to make such a high-risk political and diplomatic gambit due to his paranoid fear about security. Their analysis might be more correct than my passion for the North Korean leader's participation in the ceremony.
Kim's last overseas travel was officially made in January 2006. He visited China under watertight surveillance. In September 2004, there was a massive explosion in Yongcheon, Ryanggang Province, near North Korea's border with China. Kim's train passed through the border village in the North en route from China, just hours before the explosion blew away the railroad station and its nearby buildings. Whatever the root causes of the explosion, it is not difficult to assume that since then Kim has felt more threatened than ever over the possibility of assassination.
Much has changed since the two inter-Korean summits under the governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, respectively. Different political environments serve different functions. In particular, the overwhelming majority of South Koreans chose a conservative leader in one decade. But a basic truism holds: when the two Koreas work at cross-purposes, as in the shooting killing of a tourist in Mount Geumgang, diplomatic tension ensues. When they work together, as they may do over the Dokdo islets against shameless Japan, good things happen.
No better symbolic event of this exists than the Beijing Olympic Games this summer, which is why Kim should make an appearance at the Games to make the global people believe that he is not a "warmonger." I am convinced that Kim will be well received when he waves to the spectators at the opening ceremony broadcast to billions of television viewers around the world. Again, he can come into the spotlight of the world in Beijing, as he dramatically directed himself in the previous inter-Korean summit talks in Pyongyang. Joining a host of world leaders at the Olympics must be a better starting point for both Kim and his regime than anything else. Kim's "appearance money" would be offered in one way or another.
There was a report, on cue, that the Bush administration was considering establishing a representative office in Teheran for the first time since the 1979 revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, and subsequent hostage crisis of Teheran-based US Embassy personnel. And US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is supposed to meet her North Korean counterpart, Park Ui-chun, for the first time in Singapore on Thursday on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum.
For the present, the probability of Kim's appearance seems to be multilayered and complex, but one useful perspective is that both China and North Korea are likely to continue to consider Kim's participation in the ceremony on Aug. 8 and to assess the relative importance of the variable to the last resort. The success of the Games can guarantee the hallmark of a longer political stability. Whether to "bring" Kim to Beijing is thus a litmus test for Chinese President Hu Jintao's leadership to take advantage of the Olympics as a hopeful venue for the peace of all humankind.
Kim's participation is likely to provide a point of the second departure for upgrading the relationship between China and North Korea, reflecting a shift in China's North Korea policy from Beijing's leverage as a balancer on the Korean peninsula to a proactive ally in the rapidly changing Northeast Asia politics. North Korean defector Hwang Jang-yop already looked forward to a day when North Korea would yield to China. He remarked, "The most frightening prospect is not that North Korea will collapse. What I fear most is that Kim Jong-il will bow down to China to get the help he needs, and North Korea will slip into the Chinese orbit."
Now, I have no idea whether Kim is going to show up at the opening ceremony, because North Korea already announced that Kim Young-nam, the chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly, would participate in it. I would have thought it would be in the interest of Chinese political leaders for the successful holding of the Olympics to be an eye-catching event on the crest of the relative expansion of its geopolitical influence now acknowledged by almost everyone and which even America will be unable to reverse.
Obviously, the Chinese leadership wants to show the world that the Beijing of today is not like what it was 19 years ago, when over 100,000 young students gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest against the world's largest autocratic regime. And Kim is a principal invited guest. His RSVP has not yet been confirmed but his presence will surely send a strong signal to the world that North Korea is ready to accept any proposal seriously only if the member states of the six-party talks -- particularly, the United States -- are full partners and think of North Korea's future in a positive manner.
Then, what is your take on that?
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©2008 OhmyNews
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