Stuck

I'm incredibly restless right now. I have been sitting in the LG-POSCO "global lounge" for the last three hours, surrounded by other tired looking KU students studying for their midterms under the dim lamp light. My mind is wandering back and forth from having to write my article at Yonhap about the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act and studying for my flagship midterms.

Most people, if they get stuck on one task, would move onto the next task of importance until they feel they are ready to return to the first one. Unfortunately, I'm completely uncapable of doing this, which means I spend hours dwindling unproductively on one assignment until it's time to do something that doesn't require thinking, like eating, or sleeping. Then, when I lay down in bed, I hit myself on the head for not at least getting half of my other responsbilities completed. Why I can't get myself to fix this problem despite my complete awareness of it is a mystery to me. They say where there is a will, there is way. But I think willpower is only the prerequisite to getting started. If your abilities don't follow, all you do is sit around worrying, like I do.

Why can't I make progress on my article about the NKHR Reauthorization Act? Well, for one, I'm trying to make it too perfect. It's the first article that Yonhap is letting me write on my own, so although I know I'm only in the process of training, there is an unspoken pressure that this piece will determine people's perception of my writing skill for the rest of the time I am there. Even as I am typing that statement, I know it's not true. To tell you the truth, though, I'm not as much worried about the English North Korean team's evaluation of me as much as I care about what the English-speaking copy editors think of me. It's a complex about language I've had for my entire life. As a Korean American who has always been noted for my difference from mainstream America, I feel like I have to prove myself to other Americans of my English ability. It may sound ridiculous, but try growing up in Louisiana, where the color of your skin and the shape of your eyes automatically elicits taunting from those around you. Then, you'd perhaps understand where this conscious effort to master English comes from. While it would be easy for me to write an article tracing the facts about the reauthorization act, I know that without some deeper analysis or thought-provoking argument, people are going to read my article and chuck it away in the trash. I can't stand the thought of that.

The second thing that's stopping me from completing this article is the fact that I know too much. It's too complex. The way the U.S. uses human rights as a political tool is a much more complex issue that what it seems at first glance. Although many human rights groups and activists lauded the reauthorization act as a step closer to freeing the oppressive state, I see it as lip service to appease the neoconservatives who are criticizing Bush for being too soft on North Korea. So behind the rhetoric of freeing the North Koreans from human rights abuses is an even stronger political motive to uphold the image of a righteous America using soft power to change the world. In multiple cases, the U.S. has used the human rights discourse as a red line in the sand to prevent nondemocratic countries from having the moral authority to challenge the U.S.'s hegemonic position.

However, we've seen from history that bringing up human rights on a national level serves more as rhetoric than actual change. Take, for example, China. The U.S. has criticized China on several occassions, including right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, about their human rights violations. China, as always, replied to the U.S.'s outcry with the same message they've been saying over and over again: that meddling with domestic issues is a violation of China's sovereignty. In the midst of rapid economic growth and compressed modernization, the last thing China wants is domestic instability due to complaints about human rights violations. It is also interesting to note that despite China's attempt to grasp an iron fist over the country's domestic problems, the people have been demanding basic rights for themselves, not because democratic countries such as the U.S. have criticized China, but because the economic development has created a middle class able to protest the restriction of their freedoms.

Now, how to articulate this opinion in a noncontroversial and organized way is the problem. I know what I want to say and it's all in my head, but I can't figure out the "right way" to do it.