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For some time Walter Keats at Asia Pacific Travel has been organizing trips to North Korea; recently he has teamed up with Columbia historian Charles Armstrong. As Marc Noland noted in an earlier post, this team will not send you to juche study hall and we heartily endorse their effort to increase understanding of the country. Indeed, Haggard is thinking of taking his 15 year-old son next summer.
But now a dilemma has arisen, and it is worth airing. Should foreigners visit Kumgang? Keats has what appears to be a balanced approach to this problem, and it is worth quoting from an email he has circulated seeking to clarify the issue:
“To be clear, we are only offering Kumgang as another destination in North Korea…
It is not correct to say we are offering "Kumgang tours," if the implication is that we are offering a replacement to the Hyundai Asan tours that operated successfully for over a decade. (Note that I first visited Kumgang in 2000 with Hyundai Asan, using their ship from Donghae, and have visited various additional times individually or with groups when it was possible to visit via land, all with Hyundai Asan.) What we are doing now is adding a "stop" in some of our North Korea tours that will include one or more nights in Kumgang (as opposed to overnighting in Wonsan and commuting 1.5-2 hours each way to Kumgang). We have no "contract" or "investment" in Kumgang. We are only using the facilities, i.e., the Kumgangsan Hotel, that, at present at least, the North Koreans control, and which were there prior to November, 1998 when the arrangement with Hyundai Asan was begun.”
This did not sound right to us, but then Keats revealed that he had in fact been in touch with Hyundai Asan on the issue and they did not object:
“In addition when we use facilities in Kumgang (the first time will be next week on Monday, September 12th) we will pay a fee to Hyundai Asan, in addition to what we pay to North Korea, reflecting our support for Hyundai Asan and its pioneering work in North Korea.”
We were almost swayed by Keats’ contact with Hyundai Asan, but in the end believe that the company may not be acting in either South Korea’s—or the company’s—best interest. This is exactly the kind of divide and conquer tactics that the North Koreans are hoping will open the door to wider use of the Kumgang site, with or without Hyundai Asan.
The South Korean government apparently agrees; it announced this week that it is asking for a boycott of Kumgang investment and tours, and Hyundai Asan may seek international arbitration. For us, the issue is now definitively closed: “no” to any participation in Kumgang until the legitimate interests of South Korea and Hyundai Asan are addressed, including security arrangements at the site. We hope Keats and Asia Pacific Travel agree.
