THE CRUSADE MOVES EAST:

North Korea Human Rights Act a 'Miracle': Michael Horowitz credits evangelicals with big role in passage. (Interview by Stan Guthrie, 10/04/2004, Christianity Today)

On September 28, the United States Senate unanimously passed the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004. The bill, which must now pass the House of Representatives, authorizes the naming of a human-rights envoy and allows the release of humanitarian funds to nongovernmental organizations that aid North Korean refugees. Human-rights advocate Michael Horowitz, senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, discussed the meaning of the legislation with Associate News Editor Stan Guthrie.

What is the significance of the passage of this act?

Here's an abused term, but in this case, I have come to feel that it is literally correct to call this success a miracle. The odds couldn't have been heavier. Here was a bill that had to come before the United States Senate in the closing days of the congressional session, under circumstances where a single Senate objection would kill the bill. It had to operate under a unanimous consent procedure, and where the bill was being bitterly opposed by the South Korean government. The North Korean regime was claiming the passage of the bill would be provocative and lead to every apocalyptic threat they could issue. Many in the State Department were absolutely hostile to the bill's purposes. There were a number of Democratic leaders who had every reason to find in the bill real barriers to their preferred approach for dealing with North Korea. What the bill did was elevate the status of human rights in North Korea and make it a necessary element of any bargaining process and relationship that the United States and [North] Korea had. And of course this ran directly contrary to the views of people who want to resuscitate the so-called "framework agreement" that the Clinton administration, had where we gave them legitimacy and billions of dollars in exchange for WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction] promises. And it ran directly contrary to the Sunshine Policy, so called, of the South Korean government, which had repeatedly said, had literally said, that a high policy priority the South Korean government, indeed its highest policy priority, was to keep the Pyongyang regime in business because the economic consequences to South Korea of the collapse of the North would be too troublesome, too grave.

And not only was it passed, but remarkably, the final Senate version was considerably stronger than the House bill, that all of these forces tried to block.

What were the key elements of strengthening?

There were two powerful additions, and there were others as well. The first was that the Helsinki model was explicitly set out as the model that the United States ought to follow in its dealings with North Korea. The Helsinki model involved negotiations with the Soviet Union during the Nixon years where bluster and threat from the Soviet Union—just as it's coming from North Korea—and the threat of nuclear war unless the security needs of the Soviet Union were satisfied by the West was backed by the United States with a willingness to deal with those issues, provided that the entire basket of human rights issues within the Soviet Union itself would be on the table. The Soviets agreed to that—and of course, in the process, wound up swallowing the poison pill. That was the first, and in many ways the critical, step in the implosion of the Soviet Union, letting that genie out of the bottle of making the issue of human rights central and … having the Soviet Union acknowledge the legitimacy of those issues.

The second, in a practical way, was just an astonishing change. The Senate bill calls for the appointment of a special envoy for human rights to be designated by the President. And the legislation further provides that this person must be a person of recognized international stature in the field of human rights.

It's all based on the Danforth model for Sudan, where now UN [United Nations] Ambassador [John] Danforth, a former senator, was named as the special envoy for Sudan. He then became the focus of U.S. policy towards Sudan and raised the issue to a much higher priority level than it would otherwise have had. [...]

What was the role of evangelicals in seeing the legislation get passed?

Oh, they played the central role here. I think it was this powerful evangelical coalition that was working with Senator [Sam] Brownback and Senator [Evan] Bayh, and this is the same coalition that worked with Senator Brownback on the trafficking bill and had worked on the religious freedom bill and worked on the Sudan legislation when it was first introduced, obviously the critical first step.

It was then the coalition, working with key Senate aides, in particular, that played this extraordinary difference in moving matters forward. There is a process in the Senate where bills get so-called "hot-wired." That means that the Senate leadership says, "We want this bill to be adopted," and they give a 24-hour period for all senators to indicate whether they object to the bill. And the bill cleared all the Senate Republicans. … It had Republicans and Democrats in the House and all Republicans in the Senate unanimously approving the bill. Then it was up to the Senate Democrats, and Senate Democrats began registering objections to the bill.

At that point, there was a coalition led by the National Association of Evangelicals that prepared and drafted a letter that went to Senator [Joe] Biden, [ranking Democratic Party member of] the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator [Tom] Daschle, the Senate majority leader, and Senator [John] Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President, indicating that any one of them had the power, if they so chose, to ensure that the bill got a Senate vote—and making it very clear that those three men would be held accountable if the Senate buried the vote. And there was a readiness on the part of evangelical groups to go to churches throughout critical [voting] states showing films of gulags and gas chambers. You'd better be sure that that played a role in the ultimate willingness of members of the Senate to negotiate, which they did in honor and good faith, for legislation. And then there was another element in there, which was the Korean-American [Church Coalition, KCC, which met last week in Los Angeles]. That [KCC meeting] was an amazing event. I'm still shaking.

Jewish groups played an important role. While all this was going on, the Simon Wiesenthal Center held an all-day conference on North Korea on persecution.

There were a handful of critical proponents. As always, Senator Brownback, who at least to this non-Christian is a model of Christianity in action, was the chief proponent.

The last time a presidential election offered such a stark choice between a morality-based foreign policy and Realpolitik was probably the Reagan vs. Ford primary fight in '76.

MORE:
Hindering the helpers: Pyongyang's growing suspicion of external aid shows it is retreating further into its shell despite growing pressure to open up. (Jonathan Watts, October 1, 2004, The Guardian)

Recent reports that North Korea is trying to reduce the presence of foreign aid agencies in Pyongyang have highlighted the growing pressure on the isolated regime to open up.

The pressure comes from two directions - inside-out and outside-in - that have come to reflect the differences between radical and cautious proponents of change.

Hawkish inside-outers, who include US neo-conservatives and South Korean Christians, want to bring down the "great leader", Kim Jong-il, as quickly as possible. Their preferred method is to "squeeze" North Korea in order to encourage a mass exodus of refugees similar to that which led to the fall of the Berlin wall.

Their recent successes have included the passage of a new bill through the US congress, aiming to provide financial support for refugees, and the growing number of North Korean asylum seekers flooding into embassies, consulates and international schools in China.

Dovish outside-inners, on the other hand, fear that a sudden destabilisation will lead to starvation, war and economic chaos in north-east Asia.

In other words, the doves support Kim Jong-il.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 4, 2004 7:38 PM