Page 2 of
2 South Korea's Sunshine policy
strikes back By Sunny
Lee
had based itself on a market economy."
Hwang also criticized that Seoul's economic aid to
Pyongyang had actually prevented the collapse of
the North regime that had been already undergoing
internal disintegration. The Sunshine team retorts
that such criticism is short-sighted because an
economically desperate North Korea might easily
resort to military provocation, greatly
destabilizing the Korean Peninsula.
Supporters of the Sunshine policy see the
year 2002 as North Korea's first year of launching
an opening-up policy. In that year, it opened a
few cities to South Koreans, including Sinuiju
in
September, Mount Kumgang in
October and Kaesong in November. In fact, the
supporters of the Sunshine policy say North Korea
has a "real" intention to change but it is the US
that isn't giving the North a chance.
Importantly, they also feel wrongly
accused for North Korea's nuclear test in 2006,
which, as they see it, Pyongyang conducted to
raise its bargaining chip in negotiating with
Washington, not because of the Sunshine policy. On
this aspect, the architect of the Sunshine policy,
Kim Dae-jung, perhaps revealed his most personal
and unreserved view when he delivered a speech at
a university in his political home turf of
southern Cholla province:
I hear a strange theory that North
Korea's nuclear experiment means the failure of
the Sunshine policy. People say we should stop
our engagement policy with North Korea, stop
tours to Mount Kumgang and Kaesong. Did North
Korea ever say it developed the nuclear programs
because of the Sunshine policy?
Kim
exploded in a lecture at Chonnam National
University, adding:
North Korea is developing nuclear
programs because the US is refusing to enter
into a dialogue with it and impose economic
sanctions without giving it an exit to find a
way to live otherwise. Why are people pestering
the Sunshine policy? Don't even think that the
Sunshine policy is your easiest punching bag on
which you can place any blame [for whatever goes
wrong in North Korea].
Advocates of
the Sunshine policy also point out the fact that
Kim Yong-sun, the late secretary of the North's
ruling Workers' Party, once proposed to the US to
establish diplomatic relations, even volunteering
to say that if the US agreed, Pyongyang would even
tolerate the continued presence of US troops in a
unified Korean Peninsula. Washington rejected the
offer.
The ex-minister Chung said, "In a
sense, I frankly feel that it's the US that
engineers a new problem in the North Korean issue
that had once almost reached a breakthrough."
At Harvard, Kim Dae-jung criticized the
George W Bush administration's hardline policy,
saying it "reversed the age of warm sunshine back
to the age of cold wind". As a consequence, he
said, for the past six years, North Korea broke
away from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,
ousted International Atomic Energy Agency
inspectors, fired long-range missiles, while the
tension ultimately climaxed with the October 2006
nuclear experiment. "Since then, the nuclear issue
has not seen its solution," Kim said in the
speech.
The new conservative government in
South Korea has repeatedly said it will focus on
improving the nation's economy. The North-South
Korea relationship is a big factor in business
sentiment and the assessment of national credit
ratings. In this sense, a stable Korean Peninsula
is good for attracting investment and business
opportunities. And the Sunshine policy is
ultimately good for the nation's economy,
supporters argue. "But so far the Seoul government
has been drifting in a direction that is not
helpful for the two Koreas' relationship and that
will eventually also hurt its economy," Chung
said.
Critics of Lee Myung-bak's approach
to North Korea also contend his tough "pragmatic"
policy on Pyongyang is actually not pragmatic
since it is too much molded by business
philosophy. They argue that expecting reciprocity
in dealing with North Korea is the wrong approach
because the ultimate goal is unification, not
economic gain. Gong Tieying, a Chinese analyst on
Korean affairs, points out that doing politics is
different from doing business. "Politics needs a
long-term vision. If a political leader still
conducts himself mainly using the logic of a
businessman, then trouble is bound to occur."
Still, conservatives in South Korea don't
see any sunlight in the Sunshine policy. Yang
Un-chul, a researcher with the Sejong Institute
who supports Lee's hard-nosed approach on North
Korea, says: "What is clear is that the past
policy of engaging North Korea not only failed in
preventing Pyongyang from going nuclear but it
also didn't improve the North Korean economy in
real terms. If we take a confident and consistent
attitude and carry out policy based on
reciprocity, North Korea's attitude will change
eventually."
Interestingly, the Sunshine
team believes that Lee's idea that a tough policy
on North Korea will actually work is naive at
best. After all, they say, the Sunshine policy
started because a prior confrontational policy
against North Korea for 40 years didn't work.
Former unification minister Chung says the
Lee Myung-bak administration seems to need some
"study time" to figure it out themselves before
arriving at the same conclusion, reasoning that
Lee will eventually come to appreciate the
Sunshine policy. Kim Dae-jung is even more
confident about what the Sunshine policy can do.
In the second half of his speech at Harvard, he
argued that the US should adopt a Sunshine policy
in its dealings with China to further integrate it
into the international community.
With
both camps confident about their own political
philosophy of dealing with North Korea, the ball
is now in Lee Myung-bak's court to prove it. Lee
has five years for the test. And the clock is
already ticking.
Sunny Lee is a
writer. A native of South Korea, Lee is a graduate
of Harvard University and Beijing Foreign Studies
University. He can be reached at
boston.sunny@gmail.com
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