What strategy?

Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party emphasises trust building between the Koreas and a balanced policy approach. Moon Jae-in of the opposition Democratic United Party advocates the building of trust and the foundation of peace through inter-Korean economic exchange and cooperation. On the other hand, the independent Ahn Cheol-soo propounds trust building and peace building through a northward economic strategy (massive inter-Korean economic development cooperation).

Through its history South Korea has adopted its North Korea strategy based on its perception of the North Korean leadership and the security environment in NE Asia, and its relationship with the US.

The Syngman Rhee government and first half of the Park Chung-hee government, from 1948 to 1971, perceived North Korea as the greatest threat to South Korea and therefore decided to build military capabilities and the ROK-US defence alliance. It was a kind of confrontational policy. The Cold War was at its peak.

When the US sought detente with the Soviet Union and China in 1972, the second half of the Park Chung-hee government and the Chun Doo-hwan government, 1972 to 1987, switched its North Korea policy to a moderate containment (detente) policy. During the Roh Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam governments, from 1988 to 1997, South Korea became conciliatory and adopted a conditional engagement (tit-for-tat) policy.

Under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moon-hyun, 1998 to 2007, the South became more conciliatory, thinking the North would also, suffering immense economic difficulties and alienated from its traditional allies under the post-Cold War environment. Their policies were called the “Sunshine Policy”.

But the Lee Myung-bak government has pursued a rigid conditional engagement policy, demanding North Korea’s denuclearisation as a precondition for reconciliation and economic cooperation.

Moon’s North Korea policy is close to Kim Dae-jung’s engagement policy; Park’s is a kind of soft conditional engagement policy with some elements of the “Sunshine Policy”; and Ahn’s is a proactive engagement policy. However, they have not talked about how to deal with the North Korean nuclear issue yet.

The next president will have to concentrate on the North’s nuclear issue, because unless it is solved first, not only will peaceful coexistence be impossible, nor will inter-Korean economic cooperation and a peace treaty between the two, South Korea’s balanced four-power strategy, and the building of a Northeast Asian security community be successfully realised. A denuclearised North will expedite inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation but the latter cannot guarantee the former. 

It should be noted that throughout the nuclear negotiations, North Korea had insisted that its nuclear weapons can only be exchanged for a complete guarantee of the security of the North Korean regime (not North Korea). It maintains that a complete security guarantee can only be evidenced by a US-North Korea peace treaty, the establishment of diplomatic relations between them, and the lifting of UN sanctions and US obstruction of economic transactions between North Korea and other nations.

All these indicate that aside from inter-Korean economic cooperation, North Korea is not so much interested in the peace treaty between the two Koreas and the Northeast Asian security regime.

In view of this, South Korea should lead the six-party denuclearisation talks by emphasising its willingness to expand South-North economic cooperation and by urging the US to accommodate North Korea’s demand for the peace treaty and to moderate other US containment policies toward North Korea. South Korea can also use the six-party talk process as a means for its balanced four-power diplomacy.

The basic principle of South Korea’s North Korea policy should be flexible reciprocity. Three components – contingency, equivalence and simultaneity – should be interpreted and applied flexibly not only in the nuclear negotiations but also in South-North Korean interactions. In the past the conditional engagement policy has applied the principle of reciprocity too rigidly and strictly. Mutual trust, which all three candidates are committed to, can be built with flexible reciprocity.

 

Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University.