| 11 October 2006 Autographed Basketballs That's it. I have had it. The last straw cam in the press brief on Monday. The Administration ran out press Secretary Tony Snow and blasted the Clinton Administration and my iconic favorite government official, Bill Richardson, for the renegade Korean nuclear program. Snow stood behind that podium and patronized Mr. Clinton's policy of direct engagement with North Korea. Then he said that Bill Richardson, Congressman, United Nations Ambassador and Energy Secretary under Clinton, "went with flowers and chocolates, and he went with light-water nuclear reactors. (He took) a basketball signed by Michael Jordan and many other inducements for the 'dear leader' to try to agree not to develop nuclear weapons, and it failed." Apparently they don't, and I shouldn't have expected it anyway. This is making my status as a registered member of any political party increasingly untenable. The latest spin from the White House about the North Korean nuclear test is that it wasn't their fault, they have only been on the job for six years, and besides, it was the Clinton Agreed Framework nuclear agreement that is the problem, not anything Mr. Bush and his merry men have done since. Well, they clearly have not been hot-boxed in the Presidential Guest Palace in Pyongyang, and they have not looked the North Koreans directly in the eyes. I think we knew they were lying. At least I did. I thought that the survival of the regime was the most important thing on their minds. We were convincing enough that they gave us Great Leader lapel pins, nice porcelain identical to the ones they wear, and which of course do not show the enormous goiter on the side of Mr. Kim's neck. The goiter was a painful issue for all the Northerners, since it was a sort of visible referendum on their system. The growths are usually caused by the absence of iodine in the diet, and the subsequent swelling of the thyroid gland. They can grow to become quite disfiguring in some cases. The Great Leader probably did not have a balanced diet running around in the hills during his long struggle with the Japanese occupiers. Everyone in the South knew about the goiter, including me, when I was working in the Alert Center of the US Forces Headquarters in Seoul. One summer night in 1980, I was on the evening shift in the bunker of an old Japanese blockhouse when one of those shouting matches commenced across the Demilitarized Zone, fifty clicks to the north. We were on watch for a bunch of things. Infiltrators, of course, and other hi-jinks, which is one reason I never got over my distrust of the North. Long before they embarked on the nuclear program, they began to tunnel under the DMZ, coincident with the first peace talks in 1974. The Great Leader apparently told his military leadership that “one tunnel would be more effective than ten atomic bombs,” in terms of getting past the heavily fortified front lines. He had a way with his imagery, and we had to take him at his word. We emplaced sensitive microphones near the DMZ, and used to react to sounds of tunneling, rushing a special team to the border. Sometimes it came to blows, or at least shots. If there was a firefight, we were expected to dutifully report the number of rounds to the string of Generals who would visit us in the morning. As it happened, the trooper in the North yelled something unflattering about President Chun Tu-Hwan, who had just competed his successful transition from General to President of the Republic. Not to be outdone, the ROK Lieutenant yelled back that he hoped the goiter on Kim Il-Sung's neck would burst, and his brains would run out on his uniform. Well, you can imagine the consequences. I think it was at least a hundred and forty round discussion. Most goiters are benign, causing only cosmetic disfigurement, and I did not mind if the Northerners chose to ignore it officially. I think it might have contributed to the chip on their shoulders, though. So years later, in Pyongyang in Mr. Richardson' entourage, I carried no basketballs, signed or otherwise. There might have been one on the his first mission, but that one was about the release of a helicopter crew, not nuclear weapons. Whether it was Michael Jordan's autograph or not that did it, the Koreans regarded him as a man they could trust to lie to, and I don't think anyone had any expectations to the contrary. I always assumed one of them was going to tunnel up behind me anyway. We just hoped that somehow we could channel the energy in some other direction than the production of hydrogen weapons and rockets. But as to the disparaging reference to the basketball, Mr. Snow should know that the Dear Leader is a huge fan of the Chicago Bulls, and Michael Jordan in particular. It is not like Bill asked me to pack a Presidentially-signed copy of the Bible in our luggage to Pyongyang, or carry a chocolate cake baked in the shape of a key. When it comes to loony gifts and curious failed diplomatic initiatives, the Agreed Framework in Korea doesn't come close to the craziest. That would be the Reagan administration, and the recipient would have been the Ayatollah Khomeini. Like I said, “Mr. Snow, have you no decency?” Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |