Tale of Two Doctors

First Quarter 2004

by Michael Choi

In August, 2003, a widely publicized brawl broke out in Daegu, South Korea during the World University Games. North Korean reporters clashed with human rights protesters on the streets near the media center. This fight occurred only days before the Beijing talks were held among North and South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. The incident not only threatened North Korea's participation in the games but cast a worrying shadow over the Beijing negotiations. Among the protesters was Dr. Norbert Vollersten.

Vollersten is a German medical doctor who vociferously demands the overthrow of the Communist regime of Kim Jong Il in North Korea. Both American and international media feature his diatribes against the regime. Last February, CBS's 60 Minutes featured Vollersten in a report on North Korea. He recounted his travels in the country, likening the conditions there to those of the Nazi camps of Dachau and Auschwitz. He said to Mike Wallace, "We Germans were accused that we kept silent during Hitler's Nazi regime, that there was nobody who, who spoke out. I saw those children and I gave a promise. That I will not keep silent." Yet how effective are Vollersten's protestations?

Controversy surrounds Vollersten, and many have criticized his publicity campaign. He encourages and assists North Koreans hiding in China to break into western embassies in order to obtain political asylum. After the incident at the World University Games, Vollersten alleged political censorship of the press and called for regime change in South Korea as well (Wall Street Journal, 8/27/03). Thomas McCarthy, an agricultural development consultant who has visited North Korea, criticized Vollersten's attempts to politicize the issue of North Korean refugees in China. McCarthy claimed that those efforts could backfire, leading China to expel missionaries and aid organizations who are helping the refugees. Is vitriolic criticism and antagonism toward the Kim Jong Il regime the best way to respond to North Korea's plight?

Another doctor involved in North Korea is Stephen W. Linton. Raised in Korea as the son of American missionaries, Linton studied North Korea for his doctoral studies. He helped arrange Billy Graham's visit to North Korea and later established the Eugene Bell Foundation, which he chairs. The foundation coordinated food shipments during North Korea's famine in the mid-90s and currently assists with the tuberculosis epidemic there. Because of his humanitarian work, Linton has visited every province in North Korea. Although often consulted by the media, Linton keeps a much lower public profile than Vollersten. More notably, Linton differs from Vollersten in his determination to continue to provide humanitarian assistance despite the harsh political conditions.

The desperate realities of North Korea have evoked compassion rather than disgust from Linton. His current work on tuberculosis is all the more touching because he struggled with the disease himself as a child. The rationale for providing unconditional humanitarian aid has been that it not only alleviates suffering in the short term, but helps provide a basis of trust for the long term. In his testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs on June 5, 2003, Linton commented, "Thanks to humanitarian aid programs, North Koreans are far more relaxed in their dealings with foreigners today than they were several years ago."

The political oppression and suffering of North Koreans should never be ignored. Both those who criticize and those who aid North Korea share the same long-term goal: a North Korea where its people no longer suffer oppression, poverty, malnutrition, and disease, but enjoy health, opportunity, and just governance.

Koreans have a saying that "when whales fight, the backs of shrimps are broken." Kim Jong Il views North Korea as this proverbial shrimp, stuck among the major Pacific powers of China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S. He fears that those powers would put their own strategic and economic interests ahead of the long-term prospects of North Korea's political and economic development. Legitimate criticism of the violence and oppression of Kim Jong Il's dictatorship, which has roots in his (and his father's) megalomania and paranoia, should not overlook the element of truth in the proverb.

Calls today for an overthrow of the North Korean regime exacerbate the situation by increasing the regime's reluctance to accept desperately needed aid as well as political and economic reforms. Instead, the message of enduring commitment to the well being of the North Korean people must be communicated and demonstrated in order to help them prepare for their eventual release from oppression into a more justly governed society which can participate openly in the global society of states.

[Michael Choi, M.A., is studying Eastern Classics at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Born and raised in the New York City area, he has worked and studied in South Korea.]