Implosion - I got this

Implosion - I got this story from Vodkapundit, and I think it's great news. The Senate has ratified a plan to allow North Korean refugees into the US.

The plan has some strange bedfellows:

"The US Senate recently passed a measure that would allow North Korean asylum seekers to apply for refugee status in the US, a move that is expected to be supported soon by the full Congress.

Some US officials are concerned that North Korean advocate groups are pushing the change as a way of 'imploding' Kim Jong-il's regime. The advocate groups draw parallels with the fall of communist Europeafter huge refugee movements out of eastern bloc countries destablised the regimes there.

But accepting North Korean refugees received strong support across the political spectrum in the US Senate. It was sponsored by senators Sam Brownback, a Republican, and Ted Kennedy, a Democrat."

Vodkapundit points out that, while the idea has its downsides (read his piece), it has some hopeful historical precedents:

If you'll recall, after Soviet Premier Gorbachev declared an end to the Brezhnev Doctrine, Czechoslovakia and Hungary started to freely hand out travel visas for points west -- even to East Germans. The floodgates were opened, and, before long, East Germany looked on the weekends like a Old West ghost town made of bad concrete. Not long after that, of course, the Wall came down and we had a single Germany.

It's hard for a totalitarian state to allow just a little freedom, as China and Iran are also discovering.

Naturally, the idea has opponents:

Previous attempts by Congress to encourage refugees from North Korea have been blocked by successive US governments concerned about opposition from China and South Korea. Legally, North Koreans are considered citizens of South Korea and not entitled to refugee status in the US.

But since the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, North Korean human rights organisations and refugee advocates are winning enormous influence in Washington.

Vodkapundit, by way of mild disagreement with the plan, writes:

South Korea has fewer than 50 million people, and while they've made great strides, their per capita income is still only up to that of modern Poland. They aren't poor, but they aren't nearly as rich as West Germany was. In addition, their economy isn't as mature or robust, as the Asian Financial Crisis of a couple years back showed.

Up north are 22 million of their starving brethren. Before the Communist dictatorship, they lived a brutal existence as virtual slaves of Japan. "Chosen," as Tokyo called Korea, was annexed by the Japanese Empire 93 years ago. It's safe to say that there is no one in North Korea with any experience living in a politically modern, free, democratic, or tolerant state. Travel is forbidden. Only a small handful of South Koreans are allowed north. There is only one radio station, and it runs nothing but the foulest sort of propaganda. And according to a story in US News & World Report a few weeks ago, North Korea even has concentration camps bigger than the District of Columbia.

Through no fault of their own, the people of North Korea simply aren't ready to enter the modern world, and South Korea can't afford to feed, house, re-educate, and re-civilize them all.

Whether or not there's a war, when North Korea collapses there's going to be a humanitarian crisis on a scale the world has never seen -- 22 million scared, hungry, and desperate people left without any semblance of anything familiar.

Much worth a read, here, including some great comments to Vodkapundit's article.

Posted by Mitch at July 31, 2003 06:52 PM