North Korea Updates and Hong Kong Travel

(Note: this post was drafted in late June). I returned last week from conferences, talks in San Diego, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Some brief thoughts and take-aways

I spent  24 hours in San Diego focused on North Korea. Much transpired in the two weeks afterwards, including the release and eventual death of American tourist Otto Warmbier which re-opened debates about engagement with North Korea, resulted in an expedited push for a tourist travel ban, and on the eve of  first the Trump-Moon summit, has created a lot of anxiety on the direction US-Korea policy will take. I weighed in on people-to-people engagement on the Peter Institute's Witness to Transformation blog, based on a longer academic study published in Asian Perspective. But the timing was (un)fortunate as it appeared the wee Warmbier was released. Here are a couple sides to the debate:

The case for engagement
- helps ordinary North Koreans, in the case of humanitarian oriented initatives
- permits contact between North Koreans and Americans for better understanding
- brings information to North Koreans about the outside which can have a trickle-down effect and longer term consequences (i.e. erode regime legitimacy)

The case for ending engagement and sanctions
- aids the regime
- engagement has not facilitated any meaningful change over twenty years
- signals displeasure at North Korea's actions and that bad behavior has consequences

Travel Ban
Otto Warmbier's death has sparked a debate about passing


Hong Kong was a somewhat of a disappointment and not what I had expected. This was partly a result of bad weather having arrived at the peak monsoon season which meant 100% rain and humidity. But at the risk of sounding like a colonial sympathizer, it was a lot less "Western" than I anticipated, meaning less English, having to rely more on cash, and feeling more of just another major city in China (like Shanghai) rather than a city controlled by the British for over a century. I couldn't help but wonder if this was partly a result of China's increasing perhaps inevitable reach into Hong Kong affairs despite the arrangement of relative Hong Kong autonomy reached with the British before the 1997 handover to China. Today's article in the WaPo summed my thoughts up perfectly:

What we are seeing now is the mainlandization of Hong Kong. It’s the gradual absorption of Hong Kong by the new sovereign. It’s the slow erosion of the separate culture and norms that have set it apart. And it’s the incremental marginalization of Hong Kong in the Chinese economy...Since the Occupy protests, China has shown an increasing propensity to meddle directly in Hong Kong’s affairs...What few predicted was Hong Kong’s slow-motion mainlandization. Hong Kong and China have been converging — just not in the direction many of us thought.

In a postscript to this, turned out many other observers had similar reactions in light of the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. The New York Times published a great piece, "Once a Model City, Hong Kong Is in Trouble." Here are a few other pieces:

• New York Times: Xi Delivers Tough Speech on Hong Kong, as Protests Mark Handover Anniversary
• New York Times op-ed by last governor of Hong Kong: Chris Patten: Did Beijing Betray Hong Kong?
• Victoria Hui  on WaPo MonkeyCage on an excellent run down of issues on Hong Kong at the 20th anniversary: 20 years ago, China promised Hong Kong ‘1 country, 2 systems.’ So much for promises.