I wish to comment on the article, “55 Minutes of Reality” (on the documentary “Seoul Train” from the December 2004 issue). As a Korean American writing a letter to a magazine representing Korean Americans, I feel it is exceptionally important to provide an alternative perspective to the human rights situation in North Korea. There are very few informative pieces of journalism that represent North Korea in a fair-minded and unbiased approach. In the article, [“Seoul Train” producer Lisa] Sleeth even mentions this bias of journalism when she said that the New York Times television production company was interested in producing the film in order to purposefully “sensationalize” the story.

Well-intentioned people who continually comment on the North Korean human rights violations forget that their words are often used as fodder for hawkish elements in our country to promote regime change. In fact, one key member in the Bush administration supports an idea to build a camp for refugees not for humanitarian purposes, but to cause a mass exodus of North Koreans in order to cause a collapse of the North Korean regime. Those who support this idea of a regime collapse forget to see the dangers of it as evidenced in Germany’s reunification. It has been deemed economically impossible for the South to absorb the North in the result of a North Korean collapse. Furthermore, a collapse will, in fact, worsen the humanitarian crises in North Korea, as the government infrastructure to distribute food and supplies will inevitably collapse along with the regime.

Those who support going in there and taking out the next regime on the “Axis of Evil” hit list are obviously people who do not live in Korea. In 57 seconds, the largest city in South Korea, Seoul, can be attacked by North Korean artillery. An invasion would cost at least a million lives (many of them being U.S. soldiers stationed in Seoul and around South Korea) and a trillion dollars of damage.

I am not trying to justify the crimes of North Korea, but I am just trying to shed some much-needed light on North Korea to promote an effective policy towards peace. Kim Jong Il is not the crazy dictator dubbed “Dr. Evil” and “a radioactive lunatic” by popular periodicals, or a “pygmy” as described by President George W. Bush. In fact, when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Kim Jong Il face-to-face, she was surprised at his knowledge of all aspects of North Korean affairs and said, “I would describe [Kim] as a very good listener and a good interlocutor. He strikes me as very decisive and practical and serious.” What the public forgets is that the current nuclear crisis, which has significantly complicated the human rights issue, was solved in the 1994 framework under President Clinton. Mutual mistrust and bad diplomacy on both sides has allowed for this crisis to revert back to a precarious position reminiscent of the pre-1994 framework. North Korea has proven it can engage with America, and this path must be taken in order to promote peace and human rights in the North.