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The Sunshine Policy and Its Aftermath

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The Sunshine Policy and Its Aftermath The Sunshine Policy and its Aftermath Youngho Kim (Department of Political Science, Sungshin Women's University) I. Introduction The Kim Dae-jung administration's sunshine policy represents a paradigm shift in South Korea's policy toward North Korea. The traditional paradigm was the containment of North Korea based on the defense alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea. During his presidency the containment policy was replaced by the proactive engagement policy to induce gradual changes of the North Korean regime through reconciliation and economic cooperation. His presidency experienced the North Korea's naval provocations in 1999 and 2002. The emergence of the Bush administration with reservations on the sunshine policy and suspicion of the Agreed Framework created strains on US-ROK alliance. Yet the sunshine policy was pursued without interruption until the end of his presidency. The dispatch of the special envoy to find a peaceful solution for the North Korea's nuclear standoff in January 2003 represents last-minute efforts to rescue the engagement policy. The next administration cannot be free from the legacies of the sunshine policy. Indeed, President-elect Roh Moo-hyun is expected to carry on the former administration's engagement policy toward North Korea.1 Critical assessments of the theoretical backgrounds and the achievements of the sunshine policy will help the Roh Moo-hyun administration to devise and implement its new policies toward North Korea. The Kim Dae-jung administration also raises theoretical questions in pursuit of the sunshine policy. One of the most important issues is the announcement of the policy to dissolve the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula the administration considers one of the barriers to improving inter-Korean relations. The dismantling of the structure can be identified as one of the primary objectives of the sunshine policy. Lim Dong-won, one of the strategists of the administration, enumerates the contributing factors for dismantling the Cold War structure: inter-Korean rapprochement, 1 Korean Herald, December 20, 2002. 2 cross-recognition of North Korea by the US and Japan, and a removal of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction.2 Despite the historic inter-Korean summit of June 2000, the administration has failed to make North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program as testified by North Korea's pursuit of the secret uranium-based nuclear program and its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The failure to address the North Korean nuclear issue becomes a barrier to the realization of the cross-recognition formula. The more important problem lies in the administration's failure to articulate the concept of the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula and devise specific strategies to achieve policy objectives. This paper begins by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings beneath the powerful rhetoric of the sunshine policy. We are hindered in critical analysis of the policy by being overpowered by the rhetoric. Critical analysis will be made to see to what extent the Aesop's parable can be applicable as an analogy in explaining the reality of North-South Korean relations. Secondly, the paper will explain why the Kim Dae-jung administration focuses on the dismantling of the Cold War structure in its policy toward North Korea. The Cold War structure is part of the Cold War system which consists of actors and structure. In the inaugural speech President Kim announced the abandonment2 of the policy of unification by absorption. The logical conclusion is that the Cold War system on the Korean peninsula has to be dissolved by the changes in the structure. Yet the end of the Cold War on the global level took place as a result of the demise of the Soviet Union. This paper will argue that there exist theoretical and practical misconceptions in the administration's policy of the dismantling of the Cold War structure. The paper will develop the concept of dual anarchy to define one of the most important elements of the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula.3 The concept will be used to assess how accurately the sunshine policy conceptualizes the reality of the Cold War system on the Korean peninsula. The paper will conclude by evaluating the impacts of the sunshine policy on the regional security environment and providing some policy proposals. 2 Chosun Ilbo, June 13, 2000. 3 Youngho Kim, Tongil Hankuk u Paradigm (A Paradigm of Reunified Korea: A Great Power Theory of Peaceful Reunification) (Seoul: Pulbit, 1999), p. 50. 3 II. Critical Assessments of the Rhetoric of Sunshine and its Policy Implications The analogy of sunshine takes a cue from the famous Aesop's fable on "the North Wind and the Sun." The gist of the story is that the sun wins the North wind in the dispute about who could first strip a traveling man of his clothes. While the cold wind makes the traveler more tightly wrap his garment than before, the warmth of the sun makes him take off one clothe after another. In the analogy the sun represents the Kim Dae-jung administration's policy of embracing and engaging the North to open and reform its closed society. The wind represents the traditional policy of containing the North to prevent it from initiating another Korean War. The sunshine policy is an attempt to achieve gradual and peaceful change of the North Korean regime through exchanges and economic cooperation.4 The policy derives from the premise that the traditional containment policy proved to be an ineffective way to reform the North isolated from international society as the cold wind failed to make the traveler take off his colthes. The exposure of the North to sunshine is expected to change its centralized command economy and throw away its aspiration to reunify the country by force of arms. Although the speed of reform of the North Korean regime depends on the intensity of sunshine, the ultimate aim of the sunshine policy is to3 induce North Korea's openness to international society and the abandonment of its long-standing desire to communize the Korean peninsula. The traditional containment strategy was predicated on the belief that it is very difficult to induce the changes of the North Korean regime by means of outside influences or cooperative incentives from the South or international society. The external behavior of North Korea is motivated by the internal logic of the totalitarian political system with the personality cult of the father and the son unprecedented in the history of Communism. The regime is permanently mobilized for war. The best way to deal with the regime is a patient and long-standing effort to prevent it from deviating from the intended courses of the containment strategy until the totalitarian system decays and mellows from inside. Even when the regime is at the last stage of its collapse watchful eyes cannot be relaxed because the regime does not die with its body lying in bed. The selective engagement policy can be pursued only when the 4 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. 4 convergence of mutual national interests dictates to promote peaceful coexistence and defuse a crisis. Cases in point are the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula of 1992 and the Agreed Framework of 1994. The differences between the containment and sunshine policies are salient in that the latter is optimistic in promoting the change of the regime by using cooperative measures.5 The long pursuit of the containment policy before the Kim Dae-jung administration has prescribed a back-breaking assignment for the nation and become a source of dissatisfactions because of the recurrent antagonistic interactions between the two Koreas. Intermittent inter-Korean exchanges are not successful in solving the tragedy of separated families. The widespread famine in the North aroused humanitarian concerns in the South, forcing the administration to pursue a proactive engagement policy. The benign neglect of the containment policy failed to curve the North Korea's secret attempt to develop nuclear weapons programs. These factors contributed to the emergence of the sunshine policy. The sunshine policy is more rational than the rollback strategy which seeks to precipitate the collapse of the North Korean regime regardless of the tragic consequences of another Korean War. Yet the analogy of the North to a traveler is too4 naive and idealistic. In contrast to the traveler who has limited means to cope with the cold wind and sunshine, North Korea has its own capabilities to defend itself against outside pressures. It possesses huge conventional military forces and the potential capabilities for the weapons of mass destruction. If total emasculation of North Korean power resources is impossible, the second best strategy is to make the North susceptible to outside influences by greatly limiting rooms to maneuver. The long-standing exposure to sunshine may force the North to gradually change its confrontational policies against the South and become a normal member of international society. The sunshine policy is lacking in articulating specific policy measures to prevent the North from hiding under the shadows of the trees and into the caves. As the traveler is forced to walk along the roads without any protection like trees and caves, strategic conditions need to be created to make the North to be exposed to sunshine. 5 The distinction between the containment and sunshine policies is similar to that between the Riga and Yalta axioms in the tradition of US policies toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War period.
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