Abstract
Park Guen Hye’s Trustpolitik was a bold initiative that seeks to improve relations with North Korea. It was a policy departure from the flawed strategies of her predecessors who were either too lenient or hardline towards Pyongyang. However, the fact that the trust-based policy was a conditional form of engagement meant that the North Korean leadership had a little incentive in supporting the policy. Given that Seoul and Washington wanted Pyongyang to denuclearize as a sine qua non for reciprocal concessions, the Trustpolitik failed to induce any significant progress in inter-Korean relations. Kim Jong Un’s adoption of the Byungjin policy, which envisioned parallel undertaking of the North Korean nuclear program alongside economic reforms, pointed to the ominous scenario that he had no interest in accommodating Park’s Trustpolitik. Further, South Korean domestic response to Truspolitik was also far from positive, especially when Park’s conservative Saenuri Party failed to obtain a majority in the 2016 parliamentary elections and after a legislative impeachment vote in 2017 which removed Park Guen Hye from the Blue House.
Highlights
Developments on the Korean Peninsula since 2012 posed significant challenges for Republic of Korea (ROK) under President Park Geun Hye in addressing the increasingly erratic conduct of the Pyongyang regime since the succession of Kim Jong Un as Supreme Leader of North Korea in 2011
The fact that the trust-based policy was a conditional form of engagement meant that the North Korean leadership had little incentive in supporting the policy
The earlier set of actions were accompanied by a temporary closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC); in response to North Korea’s provocations, Park indefinitely suspended any further South Korean involvement in the KIC
Summary
Developments on the Korean Peninsula since 2012 posed significant challenges for Republic of Korea (ROK) under President Park Geun Hye in addressing the increasingly erratic conduct of the Pyongyang regime since the succession of Kim Jong Un as Supreme Leader of North Korea in 2011. To a further round of the escalating vicious circle in inter-Korean hostility, as reflected in the North Korean bombardment of Yeongpyong Island (causing 4 fatalities) in November 2010, and an increasing number of missile and nuclear tests since 2012.4 Given the extent of South Korean outrage over the casualties sustained in the Cheonan sinking and the Yeongpyong Island bombardment, punitive measures against the DPRK continued to find much support amongst hardline conservatives in South Korea, despite calls from opposition lawmakers to lift these sanctions Set against this backdrop, Park Geun Hye’s Trustpolitik sought to balance between the hardline coercive diplomacy adopted by Lee Myung Bak, whilst simultaneously avoiding the series of one—sided concessions by Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun. The conditional nature of engagement, in linking any further ROK concessions to Pyongyang to the denuclearisation of North Korea, was clearly a non-starter for Kim Jong Un
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