Where Listening Is Better Than Talking
A former European Parliament legislator, Glyn
Ford has made 50 visits to North Korea and has been talking to senior officials there for decades.
This volume is the fruit of that long effort offered as food for thought in this moment of potential transformation. The title is a misnomer — Ford’s strength is his ability to listen and put North Korean positions in context for outsiders. Nearly half of this book is thus a historical tale, going back to the late 19th century’s great power struggles — explaining that North Korea is still trying to wake from the nightmare of history.
Ford’s empathetic (yet still critically informed) retelling of the story from the Korean War to the Six-party Talks goes a long way to explaining Pyongyang’s mindset going into the current, renewed bout of diplomacy with Seoul and Washington. He argues that Trump is “misreading” Kim by offering the vague promise of “condos on the beach,” when what Kim wants is serious security guarantees and room to grow his nation’s economy.
The lurking danger, Ford fears, is the two sides’ profound mutual ignorance: “Unknowing and unaware of the art of the attainable, they will ask the impossible, demand the undeliverable, and seek the unfindable.” While dedicated to dialogue and negotiated settlement, there is nothing Pollyannaish in Ford’s analysis—quite the contrary, the book concludes with a grim reminder of the fate of Iraq and Libya.