Dancing on the Pinhead

Dancing on the pinhead
March 12, 2000

The soi-disant Berlin Declaration, DJ Kim theatrically proclaimed in Germany as a new initiative to advance his Sunshine Policy, is nothing more than a head-line grabbing ante-ups before the April election, hoping that the North Korean would not snub and ignore the South’s status as the legitimate and valuable counterpart, so he would be able to garner the majority votes in the coming election.
The Declaration was coincided, by American design and instruction, with the resumption of US-North Korea talks in New York, and DJ Kim spruced up his aid packages in order for the North to acknowledge the legitimacy of South Korean government in which the North adamantly has refused since the Korean War to have one-on-one basis talk with the South without US presence.

As I have emphatically noted in my February article (the Sunshine policy and South Korean illusion) in this forum, there has been the basic problem for most of the South Koreans vis-à-vis North-South conflicts…few South Koreans have accepted the fact that:
1. The South Korean government, as a vassal state of the United States like Philippines and Turkey, could not have executed the independent foreign policy since independence without the interference from their master.
2. The North constantly has rebuffed the South’s approach to have ministerial level conference between the North and the South without the US presence. No one wants to have a serious talk with a clown who could not naysay to his boss.
3. The Sunshine policy, DJ’s engagement policy toward the North, is of no significance without US sanction, and the US would pull the plug on any deal whenever they consider it against their hegemonic interests. For example, the US engagement with the North was not originated in love affairs but a Hobson’s choice after the North’s nuclear club membership.

When the South Koreans would come to terms with the above facts, then they would be able to look at the realistic situation where DJ Kim attempts to lead them to.

What DJ Kim wants is to sit down with the North’s leader on an equal basis in the inter-Korean conference and to exchange the special envoy leading to the eventual summit meeting in order to show the Koreans that his government finally forces the North to acknowledge the legitimacy of the South, of which the North always and adamantly terms as a puppet regime for the imperialist USA.
He knows very well that the unified Korea would not be possible to achieve during his presidency because it goes against the imperial policy of US presence in the region, and that the inter-Korean ballroom he wants to dance with the North is guarded by his master who can shut it down in any moment when the music in the room plays too wild and loud.

However, DJ Kim has anted up his carrot this time that the North is too desperate to reject his packages of economic aid that I am not privy to know what it would be.
One of his ministers has boasted that the North will not be able to reject the South’s proposal this time and predicted that the North will respond in about 10 days, that is, before the parliamentarian election.
I can only guess that the South has offered one million tons of chemical fertilizer in return for at least the official level of family reunion talk that the North can afford to accept it and DJ Kim may claim votes from the separate family members in the South.

In addition, DJ Kim took off his mask of a good Samaritan to help famine-stricken North Koreans, hastily adding that the proposed government-level investment in the North was not a form of aid but a business venture and the South would be able to earn the substantial profit from this project, when the opposition party accused him of spending the tax-payers’ money with no reciprocity.
He also has highlighted his engagement policy hoping that a war on the peninsula can be avoided through inter-Korean economic cooperation that he promises to offer.

The world knows that DJ Kim and his policies are not a determinant factor in preventing the war on the Korean peninsular, but it is solely dependent on his master’s discretion whether the master would behave in judicious manner in the region or he would become a reckless and overbearing cowboy as in Vietnam war, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, and Kosova conflict under the guise of the humanitarian rescue operation.

DJ Kim is nothing but an itsy-bitsy factotum dancing on the capitalist pinhead choreographed and conducted by the United States, no matter how vaingloriously South Korean media want to cloth him at the Berlin Wall as a John F Kennedy who visited there during the blockade.