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N. Korean nuclear test as seen in India

Posted September. 30, 2016 07:33,   

Updated September. 30, 2016 07:40

한국어

When North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9, I was in New Delhi, India to attend an international journalists’ forum hosted by the East-West Center. Some 350 journalists from around the world were busy having discussions on the breaking news on the North Korean nuclear test. A symposium on North Korea as seen in the eye of foreign journalists deepened my interest in the issue.

However, foreign journalists were not interested in technological aspects such as the size of the nuclear test and the type of the nuclear warhead tested, even though India and neighboring Pakistan were nuclear possessing countries that carried out five to six nuclear tests.

My presentation focused on how the world did not know North Korea. Even though Korean journalists are the biggest producers of news on North Korea, they often have less direct information and experience about the North than foreign journalists. In reality, many Korean journalists failed to go any further than reporting on information given to them by “informed sources on North Korea” without verifying it.

A Singaporean journalist who also attended the forum handed me a collection of North Korean stamps exclusively for exporting to China. Although the stamps did not have much intelligence value, they were interesting materials providing a peek into the North Korean lifestyle and another side of the Pyongyang-Beijing relations. When I asked him if he was sure he wanted to give such materials to me, he said he had far more valuable North Korean things at his home, suggesting that I take it as a souvenir from the forum. The fact that a foreign journalist gives away what would take plenty of expenses and efforts to obtain in South Korea made me thankful but at the same time frustrated.

No one could say for sure exactly what North Korea’s current state is and what it will develop into. As a Chinese journalist argued that the North has become more dynamic and open since the current leader Kim Jong Un took power, it would be possible for foreign journalists to make totally different interpretations of a phenomenon from South Korean one.

What is clear is, however, we will see the North’s sixth nuclear test or an actually nuclear armed North Korea anytime soon.

If we do not want to witness nothing but progresses in the North’s nuclear development, we should remain calm. It is time that we go back to the starting point and review what went wrong and what we can do. Still, the South Korean government and the ruling party call for stronger sanctions on the North, while the opposition camps blame the situation on the government’s policy failure. Neither side admits that it failed accurately diagnose the situation in North Korea. Why has South Korea never been able to produce such bipartisan reports on the North as the Perry report or the Armitage report? Time is passing by as we feel frustrated.



조숭호기자 shcho@donga.com