Words across an impenetrable border

Press, 6 February 1982, Page 12

Words across an impenetrable border

From

“The Economist,”

London

The four-kilometre-wide demilitarised zone between the two Koreas might as well be higher than the Berlin Wall and deeper than the Taiwan Strait. It is the world’s most impenetrable dividing line across a divided country. Even China and Taiwan have more to do with one another — through indirect trade, private visits and perhaps even secret political contacts — than the communist and capitalist halves of the former hermit kingdom. Communication across the 38th parallel takes only two forms: mutual abuse (mostly verbal but sometimes military); and utopian proposals for reunifying the country. The latest of these plans was offered up last month by the President of capitalist South Korea, Chun Doo Hwan. It was predictably dismissed shortly afterwards by the North Korean vice-president as “a split-tist proposal veiled with reunification.” Which is what it was. Since reunification would mean one dictator or the other giving up both his personal power and his political system, it is about as likely to happen as the north’s holy Mount Paektu is to move down to Seoul. Still, within the limits of the impossible President Chun’s new scheme is an intelligent move. It calls for a convention, with representatives from both sides, to prepare a draft consti-

tution which would then be approved Lv a popular referendum throug. out the peninsula. Until a unified government is elected under the constitution, the two sides would agree to abjure the use of force, to respect each other’s political systems and foreign alliances, and to open the border to free travel and exchanges of every sort. The Korean war armistice would also remain in force, which implies that American troops, under their United Nations banner, would stay on as a vital tripwire in the South. The main point of President Chun’s plan, as of all previous proposals from both sides, is to seize the diplomatic initiative and the sweet reasonableness prize. For South Korea, this prize is awarded in Washington. A year ago, just before his self-appointment as President was rubber-stamped by ah electoral college, Mr Chun suggested a summit meeting with North Korea’s President Kim Il Sung (he repeated this idea last June and again last month). This gesture, plus his reprieve from the gallows for the opposition leader, Mr Kin Dae Jung, helped Mr Chun win an invitation as the second foreign visitor to the Reagan White House. Grand gestures also tend to distract from petty oppression. On the very day last month that Mr Chun was making his

pitch to Pyongyang, a South Korean publisher, Mr Lee Tae Bok. was sentenced to life imprisonment in Seoul for publishing dangerous Marxist books by such people as G. D. H. Cole and Herbert Marcuse. The trial had received no publicity in the censored Korean press but relatives told reporters that Mr Lee had been tortured. Mr Chun’s reunification proposal seems to have been coordinated with the Americans. It was followed the next day by an American offer to the North Koreans and the Chinese to observe the joint exercises of 100,000 American and South Korean troops this northern spring. The invitation was put forward at the world’s longestrunning truce talks, at Panmunjom. It was met by something resembling a guffaw. The withdrawal of America’s nearly 40,000 troops from South Korea is the North’s standard precondition for any stalematebreaking movement on the peninsula. (China's Prime Minister endorsed this call during a visit in December.) North Korea’s second demand is that the “fascist” South must “democratise.” There is no evidence of conscious irony when the iron-fisted dictatorship in Pyongyang insists that the people of the South be assured freedom of speech, the press, assembly and the right to demonstrate.

This demand comes from the same wonderful people who have pioneered the first hereditary monarchy in a communist State. Last month a North Korean radio revealed that the president’s son, "the dear leader, Kim Chong 11, an ideological and theoretical master, has clearly pointed out for the first time in history the im-

portance of inheriting the leader's revolutionary cause." Kim the Son has now been firmly identified as "the sole successor to the great leader, Kim II Sung.” Kim the Elder turns 70 this spring and may conceivably be preparing to hand over power. South Korean envoys who have been explaining their

President's new formula say that he sees 1988 as a suitable starting date for reunification. That happens to be when he is committed to step down from office at the end of his sevenyear- term. A convenient time to move over to a job with a wider sway. But what to do about the dear theoretical master? _____________