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A massive
gas find in Burma by a South Korean company points up the hypocrisy
of doing business with a pariah state.
 The
announcement Wednesday that South Korean engineers had found a record
natural gas field in Burma could hardly come at a worse time for
Seoul, if it bothers to consider the irony.
A day
earlier, a Seoul court recalled a time when South Korea’s human
rights record was among the worst in the world by awarding a record
US$26 million in damages to the families of eight men who were
arrested for treason and summarily executed in a hasty proceeding in
1975. The courts in Seoul have called the hangings, done during a
time of anti-communist hysteria whipped up by then-dictator President
Park Chung Hee, one of the darkest days in the nation’s modern
history.
Meanwhile,
in Rangoon a handful of key activists were arrested this week for
protesting against Burma’s military government and a massive
hike in fuel prices. In the first public manifestation of dissent
against the pariah government in 10 years, people have taken to the
streets in persistent numbers throughout the city this week, fanning
hopes that a democracy movement may be reborn in the long-suffering
country.
What is
especially significant is that the protests are led by members of the
so-called 88 Generation Students group, made up of former student
leaders who led the massive pro-democracy uprising that very nearly
overthrew military rule in 1988, only to be suppressed in a hail of
bullets.
Among
those arrested was Min Ko Naing, who next to Aung San Suu Kyi is
considered to be the nation’s most prominent pro-democracy
leader. Min Ko Naing spent 16 years in prison following his arrest
after the 1988 movement was put down, with certainly hundreds, and
perhaps thousands, of dead, according to Burma analysts. The victims
are believed to have been cremated.
In the
midst of the new protests, Daewoo International Corp., which holds 60
percent of three natural gas fields in Burma, announced that it had
found as much as 219.2 billion cubic meters of exploitable gas, the
biggest gas reserve that a Korean company has ever discovered.
The
extraordinary sensitivity to the human rights of its people, also
exacerbated by the plight of 23 South Korean Christian aid workers
kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan last month, is a tribute to
South Korea’s own democracy uprising of 20 years ago.
Almost
exactly one year before the Rangoon protests, tens of thousands of
South Korean students brought that country’s long period of
military rule to an end by forcing then-President Chun Doo Hwan to
agree to direct presidential elections.
Again the
ironies here are striking. The military in South Korea seized power
in Park Chung Hee’s coup of 1960. After he was assassinated by
his own intelligence chief in 1979, Chun seized power. In Burma, the
coup came in 1962 when General Ne Win took over and became absolute
ruler. He was succeeded by the current junta after the bloodbath of
1988.
This year,
South Korea celebrated the 20th anniversary of its
successful democracy movement. In remarks in June President Roh
Moo-hyun, himself a democracy activist from the period, said, “The
people finally pulled off the victory. Justice prevailed and
democracy triumphed. It was truly an emotional victory in history. Up
until that victory, however, numerous people suffered and even
sacrificed themselves. I pay tribute to the noble sacrifices of those
who died for this proud history and pray for the repose of their
souls.”
In Burma
in 1988 the example of South Korea was fresh on the minds of the
students, who were also inspired by the 1986 “people power”
movement in the Philippines. But in Rangoon, of course, there has
been no celebration.
The
government in Burma, isolated and reviled by the west, survives
largely because its Asian neighbors, principally China but also India
and South Korea, strike lucrative deals for its abundant natural
resources. Needless to say, that money rarely trickles down to the
people, who are among the poorest in the region.
The New
York-based Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about proposed
pipeline construction, urging companies with interests in Burma’s
oil and gas deposits to suspend their activities until there is a
change in government. The US energy company Unocal, now a unit of
Chevron, has faced unceasing protest because of its interests in the
Yadana pipeline project in southern Burma. It was hauled into a
California court and accused of benefiting from human rights
violations in the pipeline deal. It later settled the case out of
court.
Daewoo in
particular is in a sensitive situation. Human Rights Watch in an
earlier press release pointed out that Daewoo’s former
president and chief executive, Lee Tae-yong, went on trial in March
on charges of illegally exporting weapons equipment and technology to
Burma to build an arms factory in the central part of the country.
Lee was arrested late last year for being behind a contract
prosecutors said was worth $133 million. The companies, prosecutors
said at the time of the arrest, received 90 percent of the payment
for the contract and the plant was 90 percent complete.
The Korean
government has barred the export of defense material to Burma, but
gas exported from Burma is another matter. Korea Gas, a
state-owned company, holds a 10 percent stake in the gas field
project (two Indian oil companies hold the remaining 30 percent) and
The Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy has expressed a
desire to see the gas liquefied and sent to Korea. The amount found,
219.2 billion cubic meters (7.7 trillion cubic feet), is equal to
Korea’s gas consumption for about seven years.
Daewoo
International, which was formed out of the detritus of the Daewoo
Group’s collapse during the Asian financial crisis in the late
1990s, is also considering selling the gas by pipeline to China and
Thailand.
Meanwhile,
Seoul has been silent on the fate of protesters in Burma. On
Thursday, eyewitnesses said some 300 protesters aligned with Burma’s
opposition National League for Democracy, which overwhelmingly won
elections in 1990 that were nullified by the junta, attempted to walk
to their party headquarters from the outskirts of Rangoon. A number
of protesters were thrown into trucks and carted off. Among those
arrested was former National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition
member Naw Ohn Hla, once a close aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, the
long-detained Nobel laureate.
Debbie
Stothard of the ALTSEAN-Burma pressure group, told Agence France
Presse, “The economy is no longer deteriorating. It's
decaying." Stothard added that residents appeared willing to
take greater risks to demand change from the government. "People
feel they don't have very much to lose," she told AFP.
It isn’t
known what the Korean government will do, but it’s likely not
much. Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told a Burmese reporter at the
Asia Europe Meeting in 2006 that there are no globally agreed
principles regarding sanctions on human rights. Korea has not joined
sanctions on Burma, although other Asian governments are showing
increased impatience with the isolated dictatorship.
The
foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
which admitted Burma as a member, agreed in early August to establish
a regional human rights commission, a direct slap in the face for
Burma, which resisted the move. The ASEAN foreign ministers said they
had expressed concern to Burma about its slow pace of change and
urged it to show tangible progress that would lead to a peaceful
transition to democracy in the near future.
In the
meantime, Daewoo announced Wednesday that it could supply 600 million
cubic feet of gas per day, or 3.7 million tonnes of liquefied natural
gas per year for the next 20 to 25 years from its lucrative field.
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