Sunshine Policy Tilted South Korea Left

Since the Kim Dae-jung administration, the South Korean government’s policy toward North Korea has not changed Pyongyang because it was based on the existence of Kim Jong Il’s regime. Seoul’s policy was a total failure, even moving the entire South Korean society left, said the head of the Hansun Foundation for Freedom and Prosperity, a centralist think tank.

On February 5, Professor Park Se-il of the International Graduate School at Seoul National University, who leads the foundation, held a press conference at the Paichai Academic Support Center, located in Jeong-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul.

“We concluded that problems regarding North Korea and Korean unification, including the nuclear issue, couldn’t be resolved through the current policy toward North Korea.”

Major culprit for the failure is the Sunshine Policy-

“Since 1998, we have sent more than 800 billion won ($850 million) to Pyongyang annually and held more than 200 meetings with North Korea. But the Kim Jong Il regime has avoided normalization and further closed the country to the outside world,” said Park.

He pointed out that the Sunshine policy, based on the coexistence first-unification later principle, delayed the reform and opening of Pyongyang, bolstered North Korea’s authoritarian regime, and weakened South Korea’s security posture. “North Korea successfully conducted a nuclear test and now has sufficient destructive power to thwart South Korea’s conventional deterrence. South Korea’s security is in effect taken hostage to North Korea’s nuclear weapons.”

He also indicated that the Sunshine Policy has threatened the alliance between South Korea and the U.S., focusing only on representing Pyongyang rather than ensuring the coexistence of Seoul and Washington. As a result, South Korea lost its status as a strategic partner of the U.S. in dealing with peninsula issues. “South Korea’s policy toward North Korea has collided with the common efforts of the U.S. and others in the international community to thwart North Korea’s illegal activities in the world. Reckless assistance to Pyongyang is easing the International pressure of sanctions on North Korea.”

New foreign policy is needed-

On the same day, the Hansun Foundation also announced the ‘21st Century North Korean policy paradigm’ published by the Commission on Foreign Diplomacy, Security and Reunification established last October.

The foundation emphasized that the new paradigm for North Korean policy is to normalize the Pyongyang regime to improve the North Korean standard of living, and to promote free and democratic unification. The report suggested four principles for Seoul’s policy toward North Korea: Pursue a reciprocal relationship between the two Koreas; implement policies based on International cooperation; respect the universal value of civil societies; and implement policies based on social consensus.

“In the process of pursuing free and democratic unification, we need to endure temporary, and inevitable instability. We should also be prepared for the abrupt possibility of reunification due to rapid changes in North Korea,” emphasized the foundation.

Abolish the MOU-

The foundation grabbed the attention by proposing the abolishment of the Ministry of Unification (MOU), the major ministry in charge of North and South Korean relations. “As the MOU controls all negotiations regarding the Inter-Korean relationship, complacency prevails under the name of peaceful coexistence. With the selfishness of MOU, we are seeing compromises and assistance without any principle,” said an official of the organization.

“In this regard, the MOU should be reduced to a sub-organization tentatively called the “cooperative office for Inter-Korean exchange” under the prime minister. All unification-related issues should be dealt with by the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade,” said the foundation.