On Monday, journalist Don Oberdorfer spoke to the Oberlin community about the politics of the Korean peninsula focusing on the United States’ relationship with North Korea, which has beome strained under the Bush administration. Oberdorfer is a former correspondent for The Washington Post in East Asia who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s Nietze School of Advanced International Studies.
North Korea, a country of 22 million people, has suffered widespread famine and a totalitarian government with a long human rights abuse record.
After giving a brief history of the region, Oberdorfer explained that Bush’s abandonment of diplomatic relations will only hinder democratic progress in North Korea. “Nobody trusts Kim Jong Il, but it’s not the kind of thing you say if you want to get negotiations going.” Oberdorfer said. Citing lack of trust, Bush limited relations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, which had improved under the Clinton administration.
Obderdorfer speculated that President Bush’s reasons for disregarding North Korea and describing the country as part of an “axis of evil” stem from the administration’s desire to take military action against Iraq. According to Oberdorfer, leaders feel hesitant to single out the Iraqi government in public criticism, and as a result the president criticized other military regimes in his state of the union address.
Oberdorfer emphasized that the United States was unlikely to take military action against the country. However, he cautioned the audience that anything could happen in the region, which he said has a history of surprising observers. Oberdorfer explained that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s drift toward capitalism, North Korea has become increasingly isolated. South Korea, which was divided from North Korea at the end of the Second World War, has been trying to forge a better relationship with its neighbor to the North, though to do so it needs the support of its close trade partner the United States.
“A lot of people in South Korea see their destiny as somehow being able to unify the peninsula again, so they don’t like anything the U.S. might do to prevent that,” Oberdorfer said.
Though China has encouraged North Korea to open their economy to more foreign trade, the country has been suspicious of South Korea, which it sees as a puppet of the United States, Oberdorfer explained.
“The best thing that would happen is something to get the negotiations going again,” Oberdorfer said. Although few people expect the dictatorship in North Korea to lose power in the near future, the best hope for improving the living conditions of North Koreans is closer diplomatic relations with other nations.