The Sunshine Policy And

The Sunshine Policy and Its Aftermath1

Youngho Kim (Sungshin Women’s University)

I. Introduction The Kim Dae-jung administration's Sunshine Policy signaled a paradigm shift in South Korea's approach towards North Korea. It replaced a policy of containment based on US-ROK defense alliance with proactive engagement to induce gradual change in the North through reconciliation and economic cooperation. Despite North Korea's 1999 and 2002 naval provocations and strains on US-ROK alliance created by US President Bush’s skepticism towards the Sunshine Policy and the Agreed Framework, Kim consistently pursued the policy throughout his presidency.2 Dispatch of a special envoy to peacefully resolve January 2003 nuclear standoff with North Korea represented his unflagging commitment to an engagement policy that President-elect Roh Moo-hyun is expected to carry forward.3 Critical assessment of the theoretical background and achievements of the Sunshine Policy will help the new administration devise and implement new policies towards North Korea. President Kim’s pursuit of the Sunshine Policy raised several theoretical questions,

1 This paper was supported by a Grant from Sungshin Women’s University in 2003. 2 George Perkovich, “Bush’s Nuclear Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar/Apr 2003), p. 5. 3 Korean Herald, December 20, 2002. one of the most important of which concerned its primary intention to dissolve the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula as a barrier to improved inter-Korean relations. Administration strategist Lim Dong-won enumerated the elements required to dismantle the Cold War structure: inter-Korean rapprochement, cross-recognition of North Korea by the US and Japan, and removal of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).4 Despite the historic June 2000 inter-Korean summit, North Korea continued its nuclear ambitions, as its secret uranium-based nuclear program and withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty revealed. While neglect of the North Korean nuclear issue impeded progress on cross-recognition, of greater concern is the Kim administration's failure to clarify the concept of the peninsular Cold War structure and devise specific strategies for policy objectives. This paper first analyzes the theoretical underpinnings of Sunshine Policy rhetoric so powerful as to impede critical analysis. It asks the extent to which Aesop's fable serves as an analogy to explicate North-South relations. Second, it explains why Kim’s policy toward North Korea—as his inaugural address signaled—abandoned unification by absorption, which implied that structural changes of the Cold War system—composed of actors and a structure—could dismantle it. This article demonstrates the theoretical and practical misconceptions underlying the focus on structure, particularly given that end of the Cold War on the global level occurred due to the demise of the USSR, an actor. It develops the concept of dual anarchy to define one of the most important elements of the peninsular Cold War structure and assess how accurately the Sunshine Policy conceptualized the reality of the Cold War system.5 The paper concludes by evaluating the impacts of the Sunshine Policy on regional security and providing policy proposals.

II. Critical Assessment of the Rhetoric of Sunshine and Its Policy Implications The analogy of sunshine derives from Aesop's "North Wind and the Sun" fable. The story’s gist is that the sun defeats the North wind in a dispute over which could first strip a traveling man of his clothes. While the cold wind drives him to fiercely wrap himself more tightly in his garments, the warm sun induces him to gradually disrobe.

4 Chosun Ilbo, June 13, 2000. 5 Youngho Kim, Tongil Hankuk ǔ Paradigm (A Paradigm of Reunified Korea) (Seoul: Pulbit Publications, 1999), p. 50.

2 By analogy, the traditional policy of containing the North to prevent it from initiating another Korean War only served to further alienate it; Kim’s policy of support and engagement stood to gently persuade it to open and reform its closed society. Through exchanges and economic cooperation, the Sunshine Policy aimed for North Korea’s gradual and peaceful relinquishment of its centralized command economy and aspiration to reunify Korea by force.6 The speed of reform would depend primarily on the intensity of engagement. The view was that traditional containment proved ineffective to reform the North such that it could join the international community and abandon its long-standing desire to communize the Korean peninsula, and only served further isolation. Traditional containment policy considered the North virtually impervious to cooperative incentives to change from the South or the international community due to the internal logic of a totalitarian political system with a personality cult of the father and son unprecedented in the history of communism. It averred that the best way to deal with a totalitarian regime permanently mobilized for war was through patient prevention of its deviation from stabilizing containing boundaries until it decayed from inside. Even on the verge of collapse the regime required wariness, as its death throes would be violent. Selective engagement, by contrast, optimistically sought a convergence of national interests that would defuse crisis and promote peaceful coexistence.7 Such was the design behind the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and 1994 Agreed Framework. Long pursuit of containment before the Kim administration had proven domestically burdensome and a growing source of dissatisfaction due to recurrent antagonistic interactions between the two Koreas. Intermittent and hostile inter-Korean exchanges and dialogue could not resolve the tragedy of separated families, curb North Korea's secret attempts to develop nuclear weapons programs, or address humanitarian concerns in the South due to widespread famine in the North. The Sunshine Policy’s proactive engagement was embraced as a hopeful alternative to containment’s benign neglect.

6 Chung-in Moon, "Understanding the DJ Doctrine: The Sunshine Policy and the Korean Peninsula," Kim Dae- Jung Government and Sunshine Policy: Promises and Challenges, Chung-in Moon and David I. Steinberg, eds. (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1999), p. 37. 7 The distinction between containment policies and the Sunshine Policy is similar to that between the Riga and Yalta axioms in the tradition of US Cold War policies toward the USSR. The Sunshine Policy fits in with the Yalta axiom that underlies détente in the history of US foreign policy. See Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War (New York: Penguin, 1977), p. 11.

3 Though the Sunshine Policy was more rational than a rollback strategy, which would seek the North’s collapse regardless of the tragic consequences of another Korean War, the analogy of the North to a traveler was naïve. In contrast to the traveler who has limited means to cope with the cold wind and sunshine, North Korea had its own resources to withstand outside pressure, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) potential and vast conventional military forces. If total emasculation was impossible, second best was to render the North susceptible to outside influence by greatly constricting its room to maneuver. Even if prolonged exposure to sunshine could force the North to gradually abandon confrontational policies vis-à-vis the South and become a normal member of the international community, the Sunshine Policy failed to articulate specific policy measures to prevent the North from avoiding engagement—similar to a traveler who dodges into shadows and caves to escape wind and sun. Only strategy that prevented avoidance could make North Korea engage, as would lack of protective trees or caves compel a traveler to adjust his behavior to manage the elements. Despite its rhetorical appeal, therefore, analogical reasoning underlying the Sunshine Policy did not accurately reflect North-South relations so long as it neglected operational strategies to create conditions necessary to compel engagement. Kim used the analogy to justify and advocate unrealistic policies rather than to analyze and develop specific policy options.8 Unilateral concessions and financial aid for the North that assumed its benign intentions did not suffice to induce the Sunshine Policy’s intended changes. A delicate blend of sunshine and containment, of benevolence and restraint, was necessary.9 Containment was essential to corral the North into a position without escape, no trees or caves, so to speak. Thus, traditional deterrence and solid alliance stood to facilitate Sunshine Policy implementation. Yet the inter-Korean summit’s 15 June 2000 Joint Declaration failed to reflect US and Japanese concerns about North Korea's WMD and missiles. This omission stood to undermine alliance cohesion required to implement the Sunshine Policy. The September 2002 DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration, by

8 For critical analysis of analogical reasoning in international politics, see Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munish, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 6-8; Robert Jervis, “International History and International Politics: Whey Are They Studied Differently?” Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of International Relations, Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), p. 395. 9 See Victor D. Cha, “Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer 2002), pp. 70-74.

4 contrast, underscored the importance of nuclear and missile issues. The Hyundai Merchant Marine $200 million secret transfer to Pyongyang days ahead of the June summit was criticized as checkbook diplomacy to bribe the regime to attend and belied the transparency Sunshine Policy rhetoric so emphasized. More appropriate would have been financial aid in the form of governmental loans, a gesture Kim's Berlin March 2000 declaration had advocated. Recourse to private and hidden overtures demonstrated lack of confidence that domestic consensus for massive financial aid could be mobilized. The scandal also testified that increased North-South interdependence could only ameliorate antagonism between the two Koreas and domestically if properly managed. The secrecy and deed instead abetted South Korean political contention.10

III. Definition of the Peninsular Cold War Structure

The Sunshine Policy presented dismantling of the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula as crucial to change in the systemic parameters of North-South relations.11 The peninsula remained an isolated Cold War island despite the end of the Cold War on the global level upon demise of the USSR and its East European empire. Euphoric belief that imminent collapse of the North Korean regime and reunification were inevitable once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 was soon dashed as the regime proved unexpectedly durable even after Kim Il Sung died. The Sunshine Policy proactively sought to overcome this Cold War anomaly and break the impasse in both North-South relations and the North’s US and Japan relations. However, this would require specific, proactive measures to create an international environment conducive to reform. Previously, the Roh Tae-woo administration’s Nordpolitik sought to pressure the North by normalizing diplomatic relations with North Korea's communist allies. It induced North Korea to drop its long-standing “one Korea policy” and to agree to simultaneous UN admission of the two Koreas in 1991. Counterproductively, UN membership conferred on the regime an external recognition of sovereignty that bolstered its chance of survival.12

10 See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), pp. 106-107. 11 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p.426. 12 See Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Robert, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical Statehood,” World Politics, Vol. XXXV, No. 1 (October 1982), pp. 1-24.

In contrast, Sunshine Policy architect Lim Dong-won formulated temporary measures to create an international environment conducive to the policy’s implementation, dissolution of the Cold War structure, and ultimately, unification. They comprised inter- Korean rapprochement, cross-recognition, and North Korea's abandonment of nuclear weapons programs.13 Cross-recognition, it was hoped, would stabilize division of the peninsula through normalization of diplomacy among the two Koreas and neighboring major powers as preparation for ultimate unification. To fully implement the formula, the Kim Dae-jung administration encouraged the US and Japan to normalize relations with the North. However, cross-recognition would not suffice to dislodge the Cold War structure, as it was liable to the charge that it extended and strengthened the structure imposed on the peninsula by the two superpowers at the Cold War’s outset. The 2000 inter-Korean summit was a major landmark on the road to inter-Korean rapprochement that promised to help transform hostile inter-Korea interactions into benign and cooperative exchanges. Yet its Joint Declaration specified no measures to reduce tension and build confidence or to guarantee North Korea's compliance with inter-Korean and international agreements preventing WMD development. The regime sought to procure centrifuge-related materials in large quantities from Pakistan in 1999 to develop a secret uranium-based nuclear weapons program before the summit.14 Its possession of nuclear weapons stood to alter the peninsular Cold War structure in ways counter to Sunshine Policy goals, as it subverted South Korea's national interests. The North’s behavior cannot simply be dismissed as betrayal of the spirit of the summit. Structural constraints hindered the North from abandoning its nuclear weapons program.15 Despite characterizing dismantling of the Cold War structure as essential, Sunshine Policy strategists failed to define that structure and identify structural

13 Chosun Ilbo, June 13, 2000. 14 CIA, "Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions," 7 January 2003. 15 For analysis of the reasons for the spread of nuclear weapons, see Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 54-86; Daniel Deudney, “Dividing Realism,” Security Studies, Vol. 2, Nos. 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1993), pp. 7-36; John H. Herz, “Rise and Demise of the Territorial State,” World Politics, Vol. IX, No. 4 (July 1957), pp. 473-493; Ian Smart, “The Great Engines,” International Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 4 (October 1975), pp. 543-553; Victor D. Cha, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 117, No. 2 (Summer 2002), pp. 209-203; Hazel Smith, “Bad, Mad, Sad, or Rational Actor?” International Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 1(2000), pp. 111-132; James T. Laney and Jason T. Shaplen, “How to Deal with North Korea,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 2003), pp. 16-31; Phillip C. Sanders, “Confronting Ambiguity,” Arms Control Today (March 2003).

6 constraints.16 The Cold War structure was part of a peninsular Cold War system comprising actors whose interactions engineered a structure17 that in turn, once formed, constrained actors’ behavior. Central to the Cold War structure was dual anarchy, an outcome of antagonistic interactions between, first, the two Koreas, and second, the two Koreas and neighboring major powers.18 The first aspect derived from the two Koreas’ competition for sovereignty over the whole peninsula, a struggle exacerbated by the Korean War and subsequent hostile interactions. The perpetual contest resulted in no central governing authority over the two, a lack tantamount to anarchy as it generated insecurity that induced them to seek protection through either indigenous efforts or alliances. The USSR’s demise left North Korea little option but to fend for itself. Again, structural constraints due to the actors’ hostile interactions fueled the North’s lust for nuclear weapons and missiles.19 North Korean nuclear programs, though not originally intended as a bargaining chip, became so in the face of outside pressures that drove the North to require US and South Korean security assurances and economic benefits. They became a logical tool to enhance its security under the structural condition of dual anarchy. Possession of nuclear weapons would tilt the balance of power between the two Koreas in its favor and alter the peninsular Cold War structure in ways not envisioned by Sunshine Policy strategists. Far from peacefully dismantling the structure, after five years the Sunshine Policy abetted its destabilization by failing to specify strategies that would provide North Korea security and economic assurances through means other than clandestine nuclear programs. US assurances under the Geneva Agreement notwithstanding, North Korea remained concerned that other nations threatened its security, understandable given that US-ROK alliance entailed standing conventional US troops on the peninsula that served as deterrents only insofar as they could neutralize any aggression from the North by

16 For an attempt to define the structure, see Chung-in Moon, “The Sunshine Policy and Ending the Cold War Structure: Assessing Impacts of the Korean Summit,” Ending the Cold War in Korea: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 2001), pp. 302-305. 17 For the definition of international political systems, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, ch. 5. 18 Youngho Kim, Tongil Hankuk ǔ Paradigm (A Paradigm of Reunified Korea), p. 50.

19 The second aspect of dual anarchy is the anarchical structure on the global level that is shaped by interactions between the two Koreas and neighboring major powers, that is, anarchy with reference to international politics.

7 annihilating it. The North’s perennial demand for US troop pullout only intensified with signing of the Agreed Framework.20 Though reportedly Chairman Kim Jong Il verbally assured President Kim during the June 2000 summit that US troops could remain until Korean reunification—a concession President Kim reiterated in the 2001 New Year’s conference and a televised national broadcast as a major Sunshine Policy accomplishment—optimism proved premature. In the eight-point joint declaration of the 4 August 2001 Russo-North Korean summit Chairman Kim stressed US troop withdrawal as requisite for regional peace and reunification talks. The Kim administration's attempt to dismantle the Cold War structure also failed to calculate which side suffered and which benefited under dual anarchy—a grave error given that the loser would proactively seek to revise or dissolve the structure, and the beneficiary would defend the status quo. North Korea appeared to suffer more economically and politically, as its economy stagnated and the USSR no longer stood as an ally. Attendant isolation threatened its security, to which its focus on WMD and demand for US troop withdrawal testified. South Korea had less reason to revise existing security arrangements. They supported its political democratization and economic prosperity by providing saving access to the international community, as the financial crisis of 1997 illustrated. Liquidating the Cold War structure would remove the two pillars of its security. Pursuit of Sunshine Policy programs to join with the North to change the structure without preparation for the inevitable destabilization could prove ruinous for the South. Indeed, strains in US-ROK alliance at the end of Kim’s administration resulted from Sunshine Policy strategists’ theoretical misunderstanding of the Cold War structure, which led them blindly to endorse destabilizing measures of the policy and created negative consequences for all parties. The Cold War system on the global level collapsed when the USSR could sustain no longer the competition with the US that the anarchical structure imposed. The system’s collapse on the peninsula will entail either demise of one of the two Koreas or resolution of its anarchical structure. President Kim renounced reunification by absorption and accordingly stressed changing the structural aspect of the Cold War system. The inter-Korean anarchical structure would significantly change if the two

20 On this point, see Patrick M. Morgan, “U.S. Extended Deterrence in East Asia,” The United States and the Two Koreas: A New Triangle, Tong Whan Park, ed. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 58.

8 Koreas agreed to pool and share sovereignty as a confederation and to form a security community. However, as forming a confederacy comprising heterogeneous political systems is almost impossible, structural change of the Cold War system is unlikely as long as the North remains totalitarian. Systemic reform will require either the regime’s change or collapse. Once systemic change on the peninsula occurs, a reunified Korea must yet craft new measures in unaccustomed circumstances to ensure its survival and security as it encounters the anarchical structure at the international level.

IV. Conclusion Policy innovations do not automatically signal progress, though incoming political administrations almost invariably propose new policies they expect to heighten public support and their leader’s and nation’s international stature almost by virtue of being new. The Sunshine Policy was one such experiment to advance the national interest through new policies, as it embraced theoretical assumptions regarding North Korea that radically departed from those of the former administration. The experiment failed because it lacked clearly defined concepts and implementation contradicted description —as when policy architect Lim Dong Won neglected to insert a nuclear issue clause in the summit’s Joint Declaration though aware that dismantling the Cold War structure depended on neutralizing North Korea’s WMD threat.

Time and circumstances do not favor North Korea. The US will not meet the North’s demand for a non-aggression pact, as it has no such treaty with any other nation. The Bush administration’s adamant refusal to countenance the North’s brinkmanship and violations of international agreements renders protracted nuclear standoff counter to its national interest. Though the North’s posturing might precipitate a crisis that brings the US to the negotiating table, the Sunshine Policy has no provisions that would restore the North’s initiative. Kim Dae-jung’s repeated insistence that the nuclear issue must resolve peacefully prior to unification belied Sunshine Policy theory that the North could, with support, so reform from within that it would willingly forsake WMD and thereby become an accepted member of the international community. A nuclear North Korea would upset the Northeast Asian, peninsular, and global military balance. Suspecting its particular vulnerability, Japan would likely acquire

9 nuclear weapons and therewith ignite a full-scale nuclear arms race with the Republic of China and reverse global non-proliferation. Thus, both regional and international players have major stakes in cooperatively resolving the WMD issue and cultivating an environment for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia. The summit increased personal exchanges and cooperation between the two Koreas. Five sets of reunions of separated families transpired, the overland route through the demilitarized zone to Mt. Kumkang was opened, and nine rounds of ministerial and other channels of dialogue explored trade and investment and restoring the severed Soul-Shinuiju railroad system. Despite these increased contacts, Chairman Kim Jong Il's summit promise of a return visit to Seoul did not materialize. Such a visit and repeated summits would help institutionalize inter-Korean cooperation, but Chairman Kim betrays no eagerness despite Roh Moo-hyun’s entreaties. The Roh Moo-hyun administration must revise the Joint Declaration to include a clause on the nuclear issue when the next summit occurs. The Rho Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam administrations secured the North’s commitment to non-nuclearization of the peninsula in both the Joint Declaration of 1992 and the Geneva Agreement of 1994. However, because North Korea considers the summit declaration Chairman Kim Jong Il’s premiere achievement, it fiercely resists amendment. The declaration also serves as its pretext for insisting on direct negotiations with the US to the exclusion of South Korea. In sum, the Sunshine Policy left a problematic legacy difficult for the new administration to challenge. The concept of dual anarchy suggests that peninsular structural conditions cannot be casually subverted by either of the two Koreas because change would directly impact neighboring major powers’ national interests. Prudence counsels that South Korea adapt to structural constraints and that gradual structural change based on US-ROK alliance and international cooperation be pursued. The inter-Korean structure involves uncertainties that greatly increased with North Korea’s revisionist policies. The new administration’s strategists confront the strategic challenge to devise policies for peaceful coexistence and reunification between the two Koreas despite these uncertain realities.

10 References

Cha, Victor D., “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 117, No. 2 (Summer 2002). ______, “Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer 2002). CIA, "Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions," 7 January 2003, www.cia.gov, accessed June 30, 2003. Deudney, Daniel, “Dividing Realism,” Security Studies, Vol. 2, Nos. 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1993). Herz, John H., “Rise and Demise of the Territorial State,” World Politics, Vol. IX, No. 4 (July 1957). Jackson, Robert H. and Carl G. Robert, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical Statehood,” World Politics, Vol. XXXV, No. 1 (October 1982).

11 Jervis, Robert, “International History and International Politics: Whey Are They Studied Differently?” Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of International Relations, Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds., Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Khong, Yuen Foong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munish, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Laney, James T. and Jason T. Shaplen, “How to Deal with North Korea,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 2003). Moon, Chung-in, "Understanding the DJ Doctrine: The Sunshine Policy and the Korean Peninsula," Kim Dae-Jung Government and Sunshine Policy: Promises and Challenges, Chung-in Moon and David I. Steinberg, eds., Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1999. ______, “The Sunshine Policy and Ending the Cold War Structure: Assessing Impacts of the Korean Summit,” Ending the Cold War in Korea: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives, Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 2001. Morgan, Patrick M., “U.S. Extended Deterrence in East Asia,” The United States and the Two Koreas: A New Triangle, Tong Whan Park, ed., Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998. Oberdorfer, Don, The Two Koreas, rev. ed., New York: Basic Books, 2001. Perkovich, George, “Bush’s Nuclear Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar/Apr 2003). Sagan, Scott D., “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97). Sanders, Phillip C., “Confronting Ambiguity,” Arms Control Today (March 2003). Smart, Ian, “The Great Engines,” International Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 4 (October 1975). Smith, Hazel, “Bad, Mad, Sad, or Rational Actor?” International Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 1(2000). Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics, New York: McGrow-Hill, 1979. Yergin, Daniel, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War, New York: Penguin, 1977. Chosun Ilbo Korean Herald