Dispute over torture

Seoul, Beijing should seek cool-headed solution

The gruesome details of torture suffered by Korean activist Kim Young-hwan in China are shocking and infuriating. Any country that can put a foreigner through such unjustifiable physical and mental ordeals must be nothing more than a third-rate dictatorship. What astonishes and disappoints people all the more is that China is a G2 nation. Is the prison in the Sino-Korean border town of Dandong the Chinese equivalent of the detention camp at Guantanomo Bay Naval Base in Cuba?

We all know that China is hardly a model state for freedom and human rights, considering what Beijing has done to its own citizens of Chen Guangcheng and Ai Weiwei, recently. But it defies our understanding how the Chinese officials committed atrocities of beating, forced labor, sleep deprivation and electric torture on foreigners just because they worked for the human rights of refugees, even although the latter were illegal aliens from Beijing’s point of view.

Even harder to understand is the Seoul government’s initial response of seemingly playing down the harm suffered by its citizens. We don’t see why it took almost a month for a Korean consul to meet Kim and his colleagues. It doesn’t take more than a day for diplomats from the United States and Japan to interview their citizens if detained by host governments. What has kept Seoul from revising their consular accord to a level equivalent to that followed by other nations?

The Korean diplomats reportedly heard and knew about the torture when they first saw the victims but have since said and done nothing about it. If acquiescence was the condition for setting them free, Seoul should have not have agreed to this in the first place, however urgent securing their release was. We are afraid the Chinese government is flatly denying any acts of torture based on such informal accord, and a lack of physical evidence.

If Beijing is so confident of their officials’ innocence, there are no reasons why it should not reopen the case by allowing Kim, who said he remembers his torturers and all other details, such as the chronology of his ordeal, to meet them in person. The South Korean government is right to demand, albeit belatedly and pushed by public opinion, that China reinvestigate the case, punish those responsible, make an apology and promise to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents. Beijing is urged to show it is a civilized global leader by sincerely responding to it.

Cheong Wa Dae is vowing to do all it can to rectify China’s maltreatment of Korean nationals, saying it would help activists bring the case to international organizations and even interview all of about 620 Korean detainees in China.

Again, these are right moves but give the impression of doing too little, too late.

China’s treatment of the Korean activists is inexcusable, but its diplomatic viewpoint. For Seoul, North Korean refugees are an issue for human rights and protecting compatriots, but for Beijing, it is an issue of national security and inter-Korean relationships. They suspect, not without reason, that the Lee Myung-bak administration’s hard-line North Korea policy is aimed at triggering the collapse of the Pyongyang regime, resulting in a huge influx of refugees into its territory.

Beijing needs a more humane approach in dealing with the issue. What Seoul needs is a cool-headed, more fundamental diplomatic calculation. <The Korea Times>

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