CONSIDER EFFORTS TO RESUME TIES
Closing of N. Korean embassy means losing contact, information between Pyongyang and KL
IT was a sad day in Malaysia’s diplomatic practice when the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced its decision to sever diplomatic ties with Malaysia recently.
We have been friends for almost 50 years. We were trading with them, selling palm oil and pulp, paper and chemical products, and buying their machinery and other equipment on an annual basis.
I came across a handful of the 80 or so North Koreans who worked in our construction and mining sector in Sarawak and they have acquired Bahasa Melayu rather fluently.
When I was based in Washington, the United States, in the late 1990s, I have been approached by those from the State Department and National Security Council as well as from the Capitol Hill to assist in coordinating bilateral relations talks between the United States and the DPRK.
Malaysia was asked to help because, in the Asian region, we were known for our non-aligned policy and we played host to both the DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK) embassies in Kuala Lumpur and the meetings would quietly be held in Kuala Lumpur.
I was approached when the Bill Clinton administration wanted to open up talks with North Korea. I was also approached by a US Congresswoman to help coordinate humanitarian assistance when North Korea suffered a severe drought in the late 1990s that led to mass starvation that put millions of North Korean children and the elderly at risk.
Establishing diplomatic ties is not just about dollars and cents. It has to do with a wide range of relations — economic, cultural or sports. In diplomacy, we must always keep our doors open because we never know when we need friends. It could be a vote that matters at the United Nations or a position that we hope to get support from.
The assassination of the Supreme leader’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, at KLIA2 in February 2017 adversely impacted our bilateral relations. Reading the media reports, I felt Malaysia could have done better at managing the crisis. The North Korean ambassador was somewhat slighted when he did not receive fair treatment when he asked for help.
When the incident happened, the police went directly to the Republic of Korea embassy to break the news. I would want to believe that this could be ignorance on our part as I was aware that even our own Foreign Ministry’s dispatch could sometime make the mistake of sending official correspondences to the ROK when it was actually meant for the DPRK.
We were also not sensitive that the DPRK never liked to be called “North Korea”, a term that is used by the United States to indicate the demarcation of the Korean peninsula.
The DPRK, like the military junta of Myanmar, has been following an isolationist policy for a long time. But through diplomatic persuasion, we were able to engage them and promoted economic relations that became mutually beneficial.
By hosting their embassy in Kuala Lumpur, we were able to show their diplomats the kind of society we live in and how despite the diversity, Malaysians are able to live together peacefully and benefit from a liberal and open economy, which the North Koreans cannot enjoy.
Today, there remains a small number of diplomatic missions in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK. Indonesia, Cambodia, China, India, Palestine, Brazil and the United Kingdom still maintain their embassy and benefit from bilateral exchanges.
Closing an embassy would mean losing of contact and valuable information about each other’s country. If relations are left unhealed for a long time, Malaysia would be an unknown country to them as much as they may be to us.
Efforts must be done to resume ties with DPRK. After all, we never went to war with them and they never ill-treated us in as far as we can remember or can account for.