Being a "balancer" is so 2004

I am extremely terrified of Chinese people in Korea.

Over at The Atlantic (HT to Wangkon), Dartmouth Professor Jennifer Lind writes that South Koreans' desire to hedge their bets against China is the real reason politicos have scuttled Japan-born South Korean President Lee Myungbak's eagerness to enter an intelligence-sharing agreement with Tōkyō:

Still, there's something more behind the unraveling of the GSOMIA accord -- South Korean ambivalence about the country's role in the unfolding U.S.-China drama. Several defense and foreign policy analysts in Seoul told me, when I visited recently, that many of their countrymen shied away from GSOMIA because they saw it as part of a U.S.-led security architecture positioned against China. They added that many South Koreans are dismayed that, as they perceive it, the U.S. increasingly sees China as a military threat. A professor at the Korea National Defense University named Lee Byeong-Gu told me, "In particular, signing the GSOMIA agreement is worrying to Koreans in light of the recent U.S. 'pivot' or 'rebalancing' toward Asia, which many people fear represents an increased containment effort toward China. Some South Koreans are calling for their government to sign an intelligence-sharing agreement with Beijing as well as with Tokyo. South Korean legislator Shim Yoon-joe commented that signing such a pact with both Japan and China is important in order "to wipe out the allegation that the Korea-Japan military pact is a stepping stone to trilateral cooperation to check China."

South Korean analysts also emphasized to me that China is their country's top trading partner. As Aidan Foster-Carter put it, "South Korea can hardly afford to be seen as ganging up on the country whose growth largely drives its own." This year marks the tenth anniversary of the normalization of relations between South Korea and China. One researcher at a think tank in Seoul remarked to me that his institute has planned conferences and other events to commemorate the anniversary, and that South Korea's many other foreign policy institutes are all doing the same. At a time when the Americans appear to be orchestrating a coalition to balance against China, South Koreans are celebrating with it a milestone in productive and friendly relations.

Anyone who recalls how badly then-President Roh Moohyun and crew shredded good relations with Japan during 2005's Japan-Korea Friendship Year would scoff at the idea that Seoul doesn't have the cojones to upset Beijing as well during the diplomatic decennial.

And the idea that South Korea doesn't want to tick off its number-one trading partner? Well, I scoff at that. In the United States, top politicians want to burn Olympic uniforms because they were made in China! And yet, Chinese continue to buy American goods and ship their own to the States.

As with the US browbeating the Middle Kingdom, would South Korea's economic relationship with China change much at all were it to strengthen its longstanding military relationship with the Americans? Doubtful. I mean, look at how Beijing already uses South Korea as a whipping boy, egging on its Netizens to attack South Korea for all kinds of surreal and imagined things. Yet they continue to buy South Korea products and ship their own to the ROK.

You see, the other side of that don't-piss-off-China equation is that China needs the rest of the world to buy its stuff (as well as to send it stuff so it can make stuff).

Anyhoo, most observers would agree the primary reason South Korean politicians were up in arms over the miasmic GSOMIA is that it's Japan. And with Japan, there is a heightened sensitivity owing to, I don't know, maybe the sixty years prior to the Korean War. Japan's motives are more cautiously scrutinized, its leaders' utterances more closely parsed, their actions analyzed more carefully, etc., etc. Lee's supposed "secret treaty" with Tōkyō smacked of the 1965 normalization treaty that many South Koreans feel sold a lot of poor folks — including the so-called "Comfort Women" sex slaves — down the Han.

Even though I think South Korea and Japan should be natural allies at this point, not everyone agrees with me, and my cause is not helped by the idiotic right-wingers that think their own country was the victim during World War II and that everything Imperial Japan did in Korea was all for Korea's own good, etc., etc.

Nonetheless, there is some merit to Professor Lind's contention that a lot of South Koreans probably don't want to conspicuously position themselves against China. All except rabid chinboistas (who want the US out because they are actually pro-North Korean) are comfortable with the fact that South Korea is firmly in the US security camp, but some want (à la Roh Moohyun's "balancer of Northeast Asia" comments) for South Korea to use its unique position (i.e., that of not having invaded any of the others or being a threat to any of the others) to play mediator and make Northeast Asia a happy-go-lucky funland (which Autocorrect briefly changed to Finland... hmmm).

Back in the middle of the last decade, I asked a KBS news anchor about Roh's "balancer" declaration, and her remarks back up my suspicions about the real meaning behind the "balancer" comment. Roh wanted to be more Sweden than Switzerland, and if he'd said "mediator" or "hostage negotiator" instead of "balancer," that would have been much clearer (but inexperienced and poorly educated heads-of-state tend toward occasionally odd lexical choices... go figure).

So while I think that Professor Lind's comments have some merit, I think she is making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah, there was some questioning about how closely South Korea should follow the US when then-President George W. Bush was asking Roh to send ROK troops to Iraq, but that is so ten years ago. There was also a lot of pent-up frustration with the US that was let loose in 2002 and 2003 (when Dubya's "Axis of Evil" comment made a lot of South Koreans fear the US was going to unilaterally attack North Korea and spin the Peninsula into a state of war), so naturally that outdated meme tends to stick.

Do you notice I keep bringing up Roh? Maybe the problem here is that Professor Lind is walking through a time machine on her way to Incheon International Airport. Things are different from a decade earlier, and not just because Lee Myungbak is extremely pro-US or the Iraq War is over, but also because South Koreans have since been scared sh¡tless by Chinese belligerence, including support for North Korea's deadly attacks on the South, Chinese fish pirates attacking and killing South Korea Coast Guardsmen, and Chinese students showing their anger that South Koreans would be so brazen as to criticize China.

In fact, this is what I wrote in the comment section at The Atlantic:

Hear, hear! When I read that "many South Koreans are dismayed that... the U.S. increasingly sees China as a military threat," I can't help but note that many, many South Koreans themselves have come to see China as a belligerent bully.

Chinese students in Korea, organized by their government, waving giant PRC flags and attacking peaceful protestors (on North Korean human rights, Tibet, etc.) in the heart of Seoul went a long way toward burning that connection into people's brains.

And that's why I recycled the picture above (from here).

But if you don't want to take my word for it, let's ask Beijing how they feel. As if to underscore my point further, China essentially threatened South Korea if it were to go ahead with GSOMIA:

China has many means to influence South Korea. When domestic forces fail to stop Seoul’s unfriendly moves against China, China should implement means to exert pressure on the South Korean government.

China and South Korea are close neighbors, and China is also deeply involved in the Peninsula’s affairs. This determines that the relationship between Beijing and Seoul has to be friendly. If their strategic partnership is ruined, this will bring a lose-lose situation.

And this sentiment — "That's a nice country you've got there, South Korea... it would be a shame if something were to happen to it" — is why I have an ironically titled "Benevolent Big Brother China" label for many of my PRC-related posts. 

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The keyboard as a blunt instrument: Rise of the Chinese netizen machinery (plus Peresnorka Watch)

You may recall in February I briefly mentioned the case of Wu Ying (pictured above), a woman of humble origins in China who rose to be one of the richest females in all of China. For the crime of defaulting on $160 million in loans as her business collapsed, she was sentenced to death.

Long-time readers of Monster Island know my Catholic-influenced and logically concluded opposition to the death penalty in virtually all cases (except where a person kept alive continues to kill), but it holds doubly and triply so for those who have been sentenced to capital punishment even though their crime did not actually lead to someone's death.

Ms Wu Ying's case definitely falls into that category, just like those of virtually all the other white-collar criminals in China who've been given the death penalty. Apparently the Chinese netizenry agrees, and in that land where the closes thing to democracy is delivered through the Internet, the government was forced to sit up and take notice:

Wu Ying, once ranked as China’s sixth richest businesswoman, was sentenced to death with a two year reprieve on Monday evening; such sentences are almost always commuted to imprisonment after two years.

The Supreme Court had overturned an original death sentence in April, ordering the High Court in Zhejiang, Ms. Wu’s home province, to reconsider its judgment after a huge public outcry. The case has attracted attention as an example of how the Chinese legal system can be influenced by public sentiment.

“Public opinion played a very important role in this case,” wrote @Heyu Crisis on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like social media platform, which had registered more than 3.7 million tweets about Wu Ying by Tuesday afternoon. “This case proves once again that the people’s will is truth,” declared another user called @Shishi bear.

Good on you, Shishi bear (no relation). So often we hear in Korea about the rabid anti-Korea bashing of the netizenry, but it's good to see people taking an interest in responsible citizenship.

+ - + - +

In the wake of North Korea's detainment of nearly thirty Chinese fishermen and their vessels, this behavior also channels criticism onto the Beijing leadership for their support of the Pyongyang regime:

Many netizens have criticized the Chinese government's handling of the incident, some even calling Beijing "impotent".

"After such a shameful incident, why doesn't our government demand an explanation from North Korea?" a Weibo user said.

Some have accused Beijing of trying to play down the matter for fear of offending Pyongyang.

"[The government] criticizes Japan, America, the Philippines and Vietnam every day, but dare not utter a word against North Korea," You Yi, a Shenzhen-based commentator, wrote on his microblog.

[I find this idea — that China is afraid to offend North Korea even though it frequently pokes the eyes of Japan, the US, etc. — to be very interesting, sort of a mirror to South Korea's left (and even the right) taking shots at Tokyo and Washington (de facto allies) while avoiding criticism of Beijing and Pyongyang (an economic partner it's trying to woo and a crazy uncle in the attic, respectively).]

The Chinese media is following suit:

hina’s leadership is hitting a rough patch with ally North Korea under its new leader Kim Jong Un, as Beijing finds itself wrong-footed in episodes including Pyongyang’s rocket launch and the murky detention of Chinese fishing boats.

The testy state of China-North Korea affairs became public this week after Chinese media flashed images of the fishing crews, some of the 28 crew members stripped to their longjohns, returning home after 13 days in North Korean custody accused of illegal fishing. The reports quoted the fishermen as saying they were beaten and starved, and the coverage unleashed furious criticism in China’s blogosphere.

“The North Koreans are like bandits and robbers,” China’s Southern Metropolis Weekly newspaper quoted one fisherman as saying Tuesday. The story, shared thousands of times on China’s Sina Weibo social media website, said the hijackers ripped down the Chinese flag on one boat and used it “like a rag.”

Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen Chinese netizens criticize their government. In late 2010, in the wake of the North Korean attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do, which killed two South Korean civilians and two ROK military personnel, there was open questioning of China's support for the DPRK.

Anger toward North Korea has always been a bit subdued, however, in part because (as I have opined) Chinese are generally ignorant about the evil excesses of the government in North Korea.

But while there is ambivalence back then, the big difference now is that the Chinese netizenry sees their own country as the victim of North Korea's brinkmanship this time around (although I'm not so sure). At One Free Korea, Joshua suggests that their anger toward their own government over a lack of firmness befitting cooked pasta means little, but the fact that they were allowed to express their dismay is itself enlightening:

No, the Chinese government isn’t about to bow to the demands of Weibo commenters, but the other side of this cause-and-effect relationship is interesting. This outrage, as temporary as it’s sure to be, has to be a consequence of a deliberate decision by the Chinese government to make a public issue of this incident. China’s attitude here really isn’t all that different from what you’d expect had the arresting authorities been South Korean — this really seems to be a reflection of China’s insistence on the filial piety of its vassal states. China’s beef isn’t that North Korea is brutal, it’s that North Korea is rebellious.

I completely agree with him that this is largely about Benevolent Big Brother China being upset with its propped-up satellite state. Back in 2008, when protesters lined the route of the Olympic Torch in both Nagano and especially Seoul, Chinese were furious that their fellow Greater Sino-world Co-Prosperity Sphere members would stoop so low as to insult their historic masters. North Korea generally reacting like a junkyard dog has kept it immune from this treatment, but the recent fishermen incident may have been a game-changer.


And we have to wonder in what other ways it is a game-changer. In light of the past behavior of Chinese fish pirates in South Korean waters, I'm of the belief that North Korea may have been acting reasonably in detaining the Chinese (and we'll probably never know), but what was up with North Korean authorities actually going through with the capture and payment plan?

To cut to the chase: Is Kim Jong-un looking for ways to change direction from his father's in an effort to spin North Korea out of China's orbit? From inviting the world to see what could easily be a failed launch, to being upfront with the North Korean people that the celebrated achievement turned out to be a total muck-up, to openly criticizing the way the country has been run (at least on the periphery), we've seen some behavior that is very uncharacteristic of a North Korean leader.

Is the Western-educated Kim Jong-un seeing his country's future with South Korea, the US, and Japan, in some sort of Peresnorka? Is there some serious palace intrigue going on behind the scenes we don't know about, with the fishing boat incident a flare-up in this unseen war? If there really were changes, what would they look like and how would we know?

I don't know the answer, but it is an interesting question. To complicate matters, my readings of the KCNA news reports have chronicled a severe underreporting of Kim Jong-un's activities, which could be a sign of who knows what.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:
The Chosun Ilbo has an article on "welcome signs" that China's attitude toward North Korea is changing. It offers this advice for Beijing:

If China continues to deal with the North Korean defector issue simply from the perspective of a border treaty it signed with Pyongyang in 1998 and continues to ignore the human rights of defectors, it would seriously undermine Beijing's goal of becoming a global leader. The time has come for China to consider not only relations with long-time ally North Korea, but also to think about the standards that are expected from a leading global power.

Yeah. I'm sure the Chinese will agree. Now where's the "eye rolling" emoticon? (Seriously, one of the big problems South Koreans have in dealing with China is that they are used to their biggest ally, the US, actually responding to bad press and bad impressions, at least some of the time. China, seeing itself as Benevolent Big Brother and the natural leader of a Sinocentric East Asia behind which countries like the Koreas, Japan, Vietnam, etc., will fall in line, simply doesn't give a rat's arse.)

Did Kim Jong-un (inside circle, center back) learn about the virtues of democratic rule and freedom during his years in Switzerland, or did classmates in the back left and front center teach him that choking and other forms of violence are the way to solve conflict?

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Biting the hand that feeds their fish to someone else

North Korea versus China... Who to root for? Or rather, who to root against?

This week we've had that rarest of situations where the Democratic People's Republic of the Kim Dynasty (DPRK) seems to be biting the proverbial hand that feeds them, the People's Republic of Crony Capitalists (PRC).

It seems that the North Koreans have taken over a Chinese fishing vessel and are holding the twenty-nine-member crew ransom until Beijing hands 1.2 million yuan (US$190K) over to Pyongyang. Much of the Western media are depicting this as a case of piracy, casting the Norks as the new Somalis. From the Associated Press:

A North Korean boat hijacked three boats with 29 Chinese fishermen on board and demanded 1.2 million yuan ($190,000) for their release, Chinese media reported Thursday.

It was unclear if a territorial dispute or piracy was behind the incident involving boats from the two communist-led nations. China is the North’s biggest diplomatic ally and source of economic assistance.

The fishing boats were hijacked in a Chinese section of the Yellow Sea on May 8 and moved to North Korean waters, the Beijing News reported. The paper said the North Korean boat was manned by armed men in blue hats and uniforms but didn’t otherwise identify them.

Border police in northeastern China’s coastal Liaoning province told the state newspaper they were in contact with the North Korean captors but declined to comment further.

One might think the AP is itself trying to show how tough it can be when reporting on North Korea, given the scrutiny it's been getting from those critical of the effusive reports from its freshly minted Pyongyang bureau, but a similar pro-Beijing perspective can be found at the Washington Post, AFP, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Guardian, etc. Although they're stating that the news is "according to Chinese reports," they're using terms like kidnapped at sea, ransom, and captors.

But just a doggone minute there. Those of us who pay closer attention to China because it's a quick boat ride away may have a different perspective on things, enough that we know it's unwise to accept Beijing's reports prima facie, even if the other party is Pyongyang, whose utterings should never be accepted prima facie.

See, those of us in the ROK know all about the Chinese fish pirates. We're used to reading about Chinese vessels illegally fishing in South Korea's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Yellow Sea or East China Sea and then attacking or even murdering ROK Coast Guard personnel who try to stop them.

To put it bluntly: If this is what Chinese fishing vessels do to the South Koreans in ROK waters or its EEZ, while Beijing fully denies it, why should we believe the Chinese fishermen are innocents when the North Koreans detain their boat? Angered by Pyongyang's plans for missile and nuke tests, and knowing full well how the rest of the world sees North Korea, it would be perfectly natural for Chinese officials to depict those poor Chinese fishermen as victims rather than thieves. The rest of the world is certainly lapping it up.

But think about something. North Korea may love brinkmanship, but in recent years it also follows a pattern when it detains foreign nationals. I'm probably going to get flak for saying this, but back when everyone assumed CurrentTV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were innocent travelers who had been kidnapped from the Chinese border region, I asserted the likelihood that the two Stupogants had actually entered North Korean territory. And I was right. Laura Ling claims that they were nonetheless captured after running back to Chinese territory, but it is highly doubtful that they would have been pursued and captured at all had they not entered North Korea illegally. And all along, the North Korean media was being truthful that the team had violated DPRK borders.

I'm still waiting to see what Pyongyang's Korea Central News Agency says about the Chinese fishing boats. Given the track record of the Chinese fish pirates and the not-so-inscrutible way one can discern fact from fiction in North Korean news media, I will be more inclined to believe that the Chinese had gone into North Korean waters or its EEZ if the North Korean media says they did.

My conclusion also stems in part from the realization that North Korea would have to have cojones the size of beach balls to capture and detain a Chinese fishing boat and then demand restitution unless they had cause.

Nevertheless, one also has to wonder about the Pyongyang regime's end game. As the title here suggests, Beijing is the hand that feeds Pyongyang (to a degree). Maybe this is just a way to let China know that it can never really control North Korea. Despite frequent claims of socialistic brotherhood, the North Koreans aren't particularly fond of the Chinese, regarding them in much the same way as those who made the 19th-century American cartoon below.

Those of us in South Korea are used to the Pyongyang regime b¡tch-slapping its ROK sponsors, so the Norks sticking it to the Chinese really isn't that unsurprising: North Korea's long-term strategy of pitting one economic/military/political power against another has involved begging for alms with one hand and then sucker-punching the benefactor with the other. During the Cold War, when Kim Ilsung was Moscow's and Beijing's headache, it was Russia-versus-China. Now it's a triangulation of Seoul, Beijing, and Washington (and occasionally a rectangulation or that includes Tokyo and/or Moscow).

And maybe China doesn't really have all that much control over North Korea to begin with. It can nudge the DPRK toward reform, it can promote socialism with Chinese characteristics, it can scold North Korea, it can huff and puff, but it's a mistaken calculus if you think that benefits of the PRC-DPRK relationship flow only one way. China wants to maintain its port presence in Rajin/Najin, and if it pisses off the Norks a bit too much, Beijing knows that Pyongyang can kick them out, like they've done or threatened to do to South Korean businesses and developers in Kŭmgangsan National Park or Kaesŏng Industrial Park.

So for now enjoy the show from the sidelines (and wonder just a bit if this is not part of a long-term strategy by Kim Jong-un or his handlers to move away from China and toward South Korea and/or its allies). In the meantime, I'm glad someone is standing up to the Chinese fish pirates. It looks like China is learning they messed with the wrong Korea.

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RE-UPDATED: Shots fired at Chinese consulate in Los Angeles

You just know this place is filled with lead paint.

UPDATE 2:
AFP is reporting that the person arrested was not Korean but, in fact, a Chinese-born activist:

A Chinese-born activist has been booked for attempted murder over a shooting at China's consulate in Los Angeles after a human rights protest there, police said Friday.

Jeff Baoliang Zhang, a 67-year-old originally from Shanghai, turned himself in to police a few hours after Thursday's shooting, which left a number of bullet holes in the front of the diplomatic building.

"A lone gunman fired several shots at the local Chinese consulate after participating in a protest at the location earlier in the day," the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement.

"Acting independently from the other protesters, he opened fire on the consulate building and then drove away in his car."

The LAPD said it appeared the suspect was acting alone.

So the possibility I mentioned turned out not to be the case. And for that, I'm glad. It would be very, very, very bad if South Koreans or Korean-Americans are avenging someone's death by attacking or trying to kill random people who have nothing to do with the murder.

Don't get me wrong, the ROK Coast Guard and the ROK Navy need to use adequate force to patrol and protect South Korean waters and South Korean people, but shooting up the consulate has nothing to do with that. We must take the high road, and I'm glad we can still do that.

UPDATE 1:

LAlate.com is reporting that the person who turned himself in is "a 65-year-old Chinese man with grey or white hair." Frankly, I don't know if they wrote Chinese because they know his specific ethnicity or if they are assuming so because the police description was of an "Asian" man and there have been ongoing protests involving mostly Chinese people. Having been in journalism for a while, I'm skeptical: we hope it would be the former but it is, more often than not, something like the latter.

I'm not saying I'm right, that it is a Korean angered by the Coast Guardsman's murder; I think it is equally possible that it's a Falun Gong protester or even a random drive-by. But the timing with the recent Korean-Chinese tension makes it quite a coincidence. Frankly, though, despite having written this post, I'm hoping it's not a kyopo or KoKo.

ORIGINAL POST:
Though I haven't seen the person identified yet, reports are saying a white-haired Asian in his 50s or 60s is being sought was arrested after turning himself in (for earlier pre-arrest reports, see here, here, here, and here). He had apparently been protesting in front of the building before shooting at a consulate security guard named Cipriano Gutierrez. Nine shots were reportedly fired.

Given the escalation of tension* between Beijing and Seoul over the murder of a ROK Coast Guardsman by Chinese fish pirates, including something being fired at the ROK embassy in Beijing and someone trying to ram the PRC embassy in Seoul with his car, one can't help but wonder if this is related to all that.

Seriously, if this is the case, this is getting out of hand. China has behaved badly when it comes to this whole issue of Chinese boats behaving violently when they're caught illegally fishing in ROK waters or the South Korean EEZ, but none of that warrants shooting at the consulate. The folks at the PRC consulate in L.A. have nothing to do with any of this.

* Tensions include a Chinese protester peeing on a flag, though I'm not convinced that wasn't just a coincidence that the flag happened to be where he was peeing. I mean, in Seoul there are flags everywhere, and that's exactly where Chinese pee. Ha ha! I keed! I keed! I keed because I love... to keed!

South Koreans protesting in front of Chinese embassy in Seoul.
Their signs read, "Forget Dorothy... Surrender Toto!"
There, no one can accuse me of not providing
equal time on the whole national mockery thing. 

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