뉴욕타임즈  탈북시인 장진성 長文칼럼 대서특필!!

통전부 출신 경험살려 새로운 대북정책 방향제시하다!!

미국 뉴욕타임즈 신문이 27일 뉴포커스 장진성 대표가 쓴 장문의 칼럼을 게재했다. 미국의 대표적 신문 중 하나인 뉴욕타임즈는 평일 110만부, 주말 190만부로서 평일보다 주말에 더 많은 부수를 발행한다. 장 대표의 칼럼은 발행부수가 많은 주말(27일, 토요일)에 실렸다. 장 대표는 칼럼에서 "미국이 북핵문제를 대화로 풀려고 하는 것은 잘못된 시도이다. 이는 북한 정권을 제대로 읽지 못하는 것이고, 또 북한의 거짓을 합법화 해주는 꼴이다."며 자신이 경험한 통전부 업무 사례로 설명했다.

이어 칼럼에서는 "한 손으로 소리나는 박수란 있을 수가 없다. 물리적 제재를 통한 외부의 압박과 함께 내부의 동요를 일으킬 수 있는 심리적 제재도 병행해야 한다. 그 심리적 제재의 효과는 시장에 있다. 북한에는 김일성보다 더 위대한 인물이 있는데 바로 달러 속에 있는 미국의 역대 대통령들 얼굴이다. 김일성은 대를 이어 굶주리게 했지만 그 지폐 속의 미국 대통령들은 주민들에게 밥과 고기를 주고 출세도 시켜준다. 내가 말하자는 것은 북한 정권의 권력심리만 보며 대화를 하려 하지 말고 체제변화의 열쇠를 쥐고 있는 주민, 즉 시장심리를 이용한 새로운 정책을 모색하라는 것이다."고 했다.   

이 칼럼이 나간 후 댓글과 SNS들에서는 "왜 이때까지 우리 언론들에선 이런 이야기가 나오지 않았나? 전혀 처음 듣는 새롭고, 또 매우 흥미로운 방안이다." "지금껏 미국은 북한 정권만 보려고 했지 그 내부는 들여다 보려하지 않았다. 칼럼의 방향이 옳은 것 같다. 지금이라도 대화가 아니라 다른 정책으로 돌아서야 할 것이다." "북한 사람의 글에서 비로소 북한을 알게 됐다. 이런 칼럼들이 계속 나와야 할 것이다."며 칼럼에 대한 적극적 호응을 보였다.

뉴욕타임즈 칼럼 원문주소

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/opinion/global/The-Market-Shall-Set-North-Korea-Free.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

                                                   The Market Shall Set North Korea Free

I DEFECTED from North Korea in 2004. I decided to risk my life to leave my home country — where I worked as a psychological warfare officer for the government — when it finally sunk in that there are two North Koreas: one real and the other a fiction created by the regime.

Although in my job I had access to foreign media, books with passages containing criticism of our Dear Leader Kim Jong-il or his revered father, Kim Il-sung, had large sections blacked out. One day, out of deep curiosity, I made up an excuse to stay behind at work to decipher the redacted words of a history book.

I locked the office door and put the pages against a window. Light from outside made the words under the ink perfectly clear. I read voraciously. I stayed late at work again and again to learn my country’s real history — or at least another view of it.

Most shocking was what I discovered about the Korean War. We had been taught all of our lives how an invasion by the South had triggered the conflict. Yet now I was reading that not only South Korea but the rest of the world believed the North had started the war. Who was right?

It was after my harrowing defection — in which I bribed my way to a border crossing and escaped by running across a frozen river to China — that I recognized the existence of a third North Korea: a theoretical one. This is the North Korea constructed by the outside world, a piecemeal analysis of the regime and its propaganda that misses the political and economic realities of the country.

All of us at the United Front Department — also known as “the window into and out of North Korea” — learned three tenets of diplomacy by heart: 1. Pay no attention to South Korea. 2. Exploit Japan’s emotions. 3. Ply the United States with lies, but make sure they are logical ones.

Kim Jong-il stressed the importance of these three tenets as the framework within which we were required to implement his vision for Pyongyang’s foreign relations. North Korea’s dealings with South Korea, Japan and the United States always hewed closely to these principles.

Our department’s mission was to deceive our people and the world, doing what was necessary to keep our leader in power. We openly referred to talks with South Korea as “aid farming,” because while Seoul sought dialogue through its so-called Sunshine Policy, we saw it as an opening not for diplomatic progress but for extracting as much aid as possible. We also successfully bought time for our nuclear program through the endless marathon of the six-party talks.

Despite Pyongyang’s deceptive ways, many people in the outside world continue to believe in the theoretical North Korea in which dialogue with the regime is seen as the way to effect change. But I know from my years inside the government that talking will not get Pyongyang to turn any corners, not even with the North’s current leader, Kim Jong-un.

Dialogue will never entice the regime to give up its nuclear weapons the nuclear program is tightly linked to its survival. And talks will not lead to change over the long term the regime sees them only as a tool for extracting aid. High-level diplomacy is no strategy for getting the regime to make economic reforms. The key to change lies outside the sway of the regime — in the flourishing underground economy.

All North Koreans depended for their very survival on a state rationing system until it collapsed in the mid-1990s. Its demise was due in part to the regime’s concentrated investment of funds in a “party economy” that maintained the cult of the Kims and lavished luxuries on an elite instead of developing a normal economy based on domestic production and trade. Desperate people began to barter household goods for rice on the streets — and the underground economy was born. With thousands of people starving to death, the authorities had no option but to turn a blind eye to all the illegal markets that began to pop up.

Around this time, the nation’s workplaces were made responsible for feeding their employees. The only way they could do so was by setting up “trading companies,” which sold raw materials to China in exchange for rice. These businesses became part of the foundation of the underground economy, acting as import-export hubs that in time began to import from China consumer goods like refrigerators and radios.

Likewise, party officials started to take part in wheeling and dealing, profiting through bribe-collecting and prohibited financing activities. Nowadays the party is so deeply involved in the market economy that the “trading companies” are staffed by the children of party officials and openly operate on behalf of the party and military. In short, all of North Korea has come to rely on a market economy, and no place in the country is untouched by it.

The social effect of the rise of the market has been extraordinary: The umbilical cord between the individual and the state has been severed. In the people’s eyes, loyalty to the state has been replaced by the value of hard cash. And the U.S. greenback is the currency of choice.

Trading with their U.S. dollars (many of which are counterfeit) for Chinese products, North Koreans have come to recognize the existence of leaders greater even than the Kims. Who are these men gracing U.S. bank notes? North Koreans now see that loyalty to the supreme leader has brought no tangible benefits yet currency bearing the faces of American men is exchanged for many things: rice, meat, even a promotion at work.

Today, when North Koreans are ordered by their state employer to take part in political activities, they know their time is being wasted. Fewer North Koreans show up for their state jobs. This growing economic and psychological independence among regular people is becoming the greatest thorn in the regime’s side.

It is also the key to change. Instead of focusing on the regime and its agents as possible instigators of reform, we must recognize the power of the flourishing marketplace to slowly but definitively transform North Korea from the bottom up. This empowerment of the North Korean people is crucial not only for a positive transformation of the nation, but also for ensuring a stable transition to the new era after the regime eventually goes.

Increasing trade with China has made the North Korean border porous in many ways, facilitating a flow of information in and out of the country. Many North Koreans can now access South Korean television programs that are smuggled in on DVDs or memory sticks.

One way to accelerate change would be by continuing to broadcast into the country so that North Koreans can access outside radio programming on their illegal devices more easily. Another is to support the work of North Korean exiles, who are a conduit of goods and liberal ideas across the border.

Talks with Pyongyang can only offer temporary solutions to manufactured crises. And I can say from my experience, they encourage only more deception from the North. Looking at North Korea from below, building on the market realities on the ground, is the only effective way to make the regime reform — or go.

Jang Jin-sung, a former North Korean state official and poet laureate, is editor in chief of New Focus International, a Web site on North Korean affairs. This article was translated from the Korean by Shirley Lee.

요약

미국이  북한 독재권력의 의도와 심리만 읽고 대화하려는 것은 영토를 점유한 내란깡패집단을 합법화해주는 꼴이다.

북한의 주민은  겉으로는 김일성 일가에 충성하지만 실제로는 달러지폐에 있는 미국대통령을 은인으로 생각한다.

대화보다 대북제재와 장마당 주민의 시장심리를 통해 체제변화를 유도하는 새로운 대북정책이 필요하다.