노씨 좌파정권은 김정일의 가장 큰 후원자..

[좋은나라 펌도리]

타임誌 최신호 "김정일은 웃고 있다"

"한국내 이념교육 변화 주한미군 감축 한·미동맹 동요 등 승자는 北"

☞타임誌 아시아판 바로가기


“서울의 한 초등학교 4학년 교재로 쓰이는 이야기 책에는 강을 사이에 두고 있는 로미오와 줄리엣이 ‘악한 용’의 방해로 결혼하지 못한다는 내용이 실려 있다. 여기서 강은 비무장지대(DMZ)를 의미하는 것이고, ‘악한 용’은 미국을 상징한다.”

미국 시사주간지 타임은 21일자 아시아판 최신호 표지에 군복 차림의 김정일(金正日) 북한 국방위원장이 흡족한 웃음을 짓고 있는 모습을 싣고, ‘이 사람이 왜 웃고 있을까’라는 제목의 커버스토리를 게재했다.

타임은 50여년 전 한국전쟁 당시 250만명 희생자들의 피로 쓰였던 한반도의 현상유지(status quo)가 급속히 변화하고 있다고 전했다. 한국내 좌파 민족주의(leftist-nationalist) 대통령과 정당의 집권, 일본·중국 등 인접국들의 대북(對北) 태도 변화, 한·미 동맹관계의 동요, 한국내 이념 교육의 변질, 핵 개발에 따른 북한 체제의 입지 강화 등으로 주변 정세가 유리하게 전개되고 있어 김정일이 그 어느 때보다 강력해졌다는 것이다.

타임은 김정일이 외부세계를 이용하는 솜씨는 놀랍고도 일관되게 교묘하다고 평가했다. 김대중 전 대통령 때 취해진 ‘햇볕 정책’ 이후 한국이 대북관계를 냉전에서 화해 쪽으로 선회한 것은 북한이 붕괴할 경우 초래될 막대한 통일비용을 두려워했기 때문이라는 점도 김정일은 재빨리 간파했다는 것.

갑자기 한국은 김정일이 가장 절실히 원하고 있는 그의 생존을 바라는 입장이 됐다. 그리고 이 같은 현상은 한·미 관계에 쐐기를 박는 계기가 됐고, 미국측의 해외미군 재배치 검토(GPR)를 이유로 한 주한미군 감축 등 양국간 긴장관계까지 초래했다면서, 이동복(李東馥) 전 남북고위급회담 남측대표의 말을 빌려 “승자는 북한”이라고 타임은 평가했다.

타임은 한·미 동맹관계가 건강한 상태와는 거리가 있다고 전제, 한국의 반기문(潘基文) 외교통상부 장관의 북한 핵에 대한 평가는 “북한이 핵을 보유하고 있을 것”이라는 미국 관리들의 입장과 달리 “확실치 않다”는 식으로 적잖은 편차를 보이고 있다고 전했다.

타임은 또 “최근엔 한국 신문들도 북한의 어려운 실상을 전하던 과거와 달리 남북 경협 진전과 북한의 경제개혁 진척 등에만 많은 지면을 할애하고 있다”면서, 한국 내의 이러한 변화들이 한·미 동맹을 긴장관계로 몰아넣고 있다고 풀이했다.

‘적’에 대한 증오와 두려움을 가르치던 한국 초등학교 교과서에는 북한 상점들 사진이 실리고, “많은 북한 여성들이 경제활동에 참여하고 있다”는 사진설명이 실리고 있으며, 북한에선 한국 우편물 배달이 금지돼 있다는 언급은 전혀 없이 초등학생들에게 북한 어린이들에게 편지를 써보라고 권유하고 있다는 예도 들었다.

게다가 주변국들의 태도도 이해관계에 따라 변화하고 있어 김정일은 그들간의 평형이 어그러지도록 하는 이상의 수고를 할 필요가 없다면서, 김정일이 왜 웃는지 이젠 알겠느냐고 타임은 반문했다.

(윤희영기자 hyyoon@chosun.com">hyyoon@chosun.com )

입력 : 2004.06.16 05:35 55"

	DANGER ZONE  The Korean peninsula is one of the world"s most volatile flashpoints

FROM THE JUNE 21, 2004 ISSUE OF TIME MAGAZINE; POSTED MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2004

KOREA NEWS SERVICE/REUTERS

With Seoul and Washington at odds, will Kim come out the winner?

Kim"s Great Game
	The U.S. can"t seem to stop him. Asia doesn"t know if it loves or hates him. So the position of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il looks stronger than ever
	By mail@timeasia.com?subject=Subject">Anthony Spaeth

Posted Monday, June 14, 2004; 20:00 HKT
Lee Myong Sok grew up in the town of Dongducheon, just 20 km south of Korea"s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the grotesquely fortified no-man"s-land rimmed with razor wire, heavy military hardware and tens of thousands of soldiers.

When he was a boy, Lee lived on "army-base stew": leftover meals from U.S. military canteens, which he would throw into a pot with cabbage and water after discarding the stray cigarette butts. Today, as an operator of a bar in which Russian girls serve the drinks, Lee is still living off the American troops who serve as a "trip wire": if North Korea attacks, these soldiers will come under attack, guaranteeing U.S. involvement in the conflict.

 But now Lee is deeply upset at the news that Washington wants to pull out 12,500 soldiers, or one-third of the American armed presence in Korea, after 50 years of peacekeeping. The plan is to remove all the troops now stationed on the front line. "This is devastating," says Lee. Fifteen of Dongducheon"s leaders shaved their heads last week and went to Seoul to hoist a protest banner outside the National Assembly building. The banner was written in their own blood.

For the elders of Dongducheon, the departure of American soldiers is a pocketbook issue: the town survives by providing Yankee grunts with Pringles, Budweiser and raunchy nighttime entertainment. For the rest of the region, it"s something far more significant: another indication that the status quo on the Korean peninsula for more than half a century, written in the blood of the Korean War"s more than 2.5 million victims, is rapidly evolving.

North Korea is no longer the region"s pariah, a hermetically sealed place with whose leaders no others wanted to deal. On the contrary, South Korea is now dominated by a leftist-nationalist President and a political party whose members often see the North as a potential friend or partner, and only sometimes as an enemy that vows to invade and conquer them in a "sea of fire." (The two countries are still technically at war.)

 Last week, Japan"s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gave an astonishingly positive account of his recent meeting with North Korea"s leader, Kim Jong Il, saying that "I personally felt that North Korea was interested in moving forward in a positive way." (See following story.) Beijing said last week that it did not share Washington"s assessment of the north"s nuclear programs.

 These changes in attitude toward Pyongyang are being played out against the backdrop of a revised American military posture on the peninsula and strains in the U.S.-South Korea alliance. Echoing the famous complaint about Washington"s China policy in the late 1940s, South Korean conservatives are already starting to ask: "Who lost the U.S.?"

Hovering above all this, doing one of the great geopolitical levitation acts of our time, is Kim Jong Il. The world has consistently underestimated North Korea"s "Dear Leader." Of his potential to cause a bloody war on the peninsula there is little doubt, even if such a war concluded, as it almost certainly would, with the collapse of his own regime.

Kim has vast arsenals of biological and chemical weapons, along with the rocket launchers and missiles needed to lob them over the DMZ, onto South Korean cities and even as far as Japan. The North is trumpeting its ability to make nuclear bombs; according to U.S. intelligence, Kim may have at least eight nuclear devices by now, up from only a couple before the latest nuclear crisis. But the policy of South Korea"s President Roh Moo Hyun is not to confront Kim but to engage with him.

Roh is keen on sending tourists across the border to help the North"s economy and on building rail and road links that may someday zip through the DMZ. Japan"s change in approach to Kim is even more marked. In 2002, the Japanese public was outraged when North Korea admitted it had abducted 13 Japanese.

But Koizumi flew to Pyongyang last month, met with Kim, and got some of their families back to Tokyo—while his government promised the North 250,000 tons of food and $10 million worth of medical supplies, staunchly denying it was a quid pro quo.

It might be a stretch to label Kim the Teflon Dictator, but so far, he"s looking mighty unscratched. His government is still engaged in talks with the U.S., Japan, China, South Korea and Russia on ways to dismantle his nuclear program, and all sides insist they"re united on that goal, although little headway has been made.

And the U.S. is hardly pulling its boys in fear. "You can be a trip-wire force with 5,000 troops," says one U.S. Air Force officer in Washington, "as well as with 37,000." That"s especially the case given the parlous state of Kim"s own infantry and air force, which work with equipment designed and built in the 1960s.

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[angel]

올려주셔서 감사합니다. 외국인들이 한국어 하는 이나라 정치가들 보다 더 예리하고 정확합니다. 한숨나오는 아침입니다.

[suhkyung]

맞습니다 맞고요 이북 김정일 권력을 만천하에 홍보대사 및 조달청장 놈현