Casting American Sunshine on North Korea

Abstract

IntroductionSouth Korea's of creative engagement with North Korea, designed to bolster a reconciliation process between the two Korean states on the divided peninsula, has been subjected to much criticism because of North Korea's pursuit of its nuclear weapons agenda. The original Policy was launched by South Korea's previous president, Dae-jung, and was subsequently modified as a Policy of Peace and Prosperity by the current president, Roh Moo-hyun. President Roh's already declining domestic poll ratings have been pulled lower by North Korea's provocative actions and American criticism of the Sunshine engagement paradigm as a form of failed appeasement.Given the increased questioning of the salience of the Policy's legacy, the Roh administration continues to adapt its engagement posture to greater realism. South Korean conservative critics of Roh's liberalism clearly doubt his administration's ability to be realistic. Signals emanating from these conservatives unambiguously indicate they would not stay the engagement course defined by Presidents and Roh. Despite their advocacy of changing that course and consideration of tougher minded alternatives, it is doubtful that a successor conservative government in Seoul would be able to totally abandon the legacy of the Kim-Roh approaches to inter-Korean engagement and reconciliation.A South Korean conservative leader in Seoul's Blue House probably would retain some of the sunshine paradigm for several reasons. The most visible reason is the way the ROK has cooperated with China in encouraging North Korea to pursue improved socio-economic policies modeled on some variant of a Sino-South Korean system. Beyond that major factor the costs and risks of a less accommodating South Korean approach to North Korea could easily be formidable in terms of causing a collapse of the North Korean state or a decision by North Korea to retaliate with hawkish aggression. In short, South Korea has ample reason to want to avoid paying the heavy costs of picking up the pieces of a fallen rival regime or the devastating costs of a new Korean War.Sinic SunshineIn this context it is important to note that the ways in which the PRC interacts with North Korea clearly is influenced by South Korea's mixture of a sunshine engagement policy and strategic deterrence designed to encourage North Korea to be flexible about socio-economic institutions and prudent about the risks associated with brinkmanship. The closer China and the ROK become as economic partners the more Beijing and Seoul share a desire to persuade Pyongyang to avoid pursuing a nuclear agenda that might cause the United States to take preemptive military measures against North Korea. In a sense China is adapting a combination of South Korea's sunshine paradigm and what some U.S. security analysts characterize- using a phrase rooted in the Rand Institute-as congagement (a blend of containment and engagement).Both of these approaches are designed to encourage North Korea to be a more reliable and cooperative neighbor between China and South Korea. They also would help induce North Korea's leaders to shift away from their political reliance on the so-called cult of Kim and its ethnocentric nationalism. China's national interests would be endangered if an extremist North Korea became an economically failed state or if North Korea's brinkmanship were to go far over the brink in ways that would cause the United States to take military actions against the DPRK that could entangle the PRC. As positive as that set of PRC policies can be, when they are coupled with its Sino-centric historical legacy that can cause anxiety among its Korean neighbors (North and South), the notion of sunshine emanating from Beijing can cause Koreans to want to avoid getting a Sinic sunburn.Rising SunshineThat positive sunshine metaphor would be even more foreboding were Japan to learn some lessons from what South Korea and China are doing vis-a-vis socioeconomic engagement with North Korea. …