SPEAKING FREELY Grand bargaining reloaded?
By Bernhard Seliger
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This week finally saw the replacement of South Korea's Unification Minister
Hyun In-taek by Yu Woo-ik, a close confidant of President Lee Myung-Bak and a
former ambassador to China.
In the years since he took office in 2009, there have been numerous rumors that
his demission was imminent, due to the alleged hardline stance of the former
professor of Korea University.
Two different criticisms were mounted against him. The stronger critics held
Hyun, implicitly or explicitly, responsible for the
gradual break-down of inter-Korean relations since 2008. Others, including many
ruling Grand National Party members and in particular party chief Hong
Joon-pyo, while omitting to blame the inter-Korean ice age on him, criticized
him for simply being not successful with his hardline stance and called for a
new approach.
The first, more comprehensive criticism ignores the history of North Korean
provocations throughout the past three years, starting with the shooting of an
innocent tourist at Mount Geumgang in 2008, an abduction of an employee of
Hyundai Asan in the inter-Korean business complex in Gaesong and then the
deadly attacks on the South Korean corvette Cheonan and the shelling of
Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea (West Sea of Korea) in 2011.
This violent recent history of inter-Korean relations was accompanied by an
equally aggressive military policy, with the second nuclear test of 2009,
missile tests and numerous outrageous threats to South Korea and the world
community, including a verbal withdrawal from the armistice agreement of 1953
that was struck at the end of the Korean War.
Those who disregard these causes of chilly inter-Korean relations are mainly
followers of the politics of late president Roh Moo-hyun, who developed his
vision of peaceful inter-Korean relations based on generous and unconditional
aid in full regard of the nuclear and weapons of mass destruction armament of
North Korea, including its first-ever nuclear test in 2006.
Only a hefty dose of ignorance of reality can explain such a stance. No wonder
that it has been accompanied and applauded by Pyongyang media, that used to
call Hyun In-taek routinely "human scum" or "traitor".
But, what about the second criticism, namely, that Hyun's North Korea policy
simply was not successful? This argument deserves consideration. Were not
people-to-people contacts the greatest achievement of the "Sunshine" policy?
And, was this not clearly superior to the current stalemate, where Seoul
helplessly has to accept that conditions of renewed nuclear talks are set by
others and that North Korea quite successfully continues its policy towards the
neighboring states of China and Russia?
However, think twice before calling the South Korean policy unsuccessful.
First, in the field of people-to-people contacts, the more glamorous
unification meetings, peace festivals and "jointly-we-achieve-unification"
events might have stopped. But at the same time, slowly the number of North
Koreans working in Gaesong climbed to a record number of 47,000 workers.
And, while the aforementioned meetings were largely attended by a carefully
pre-selected small North Korean elite, these 47.000 workers are exposed,
day-by-day, month-by-month, to modern South Korean management and production
methods. While admittedly this sounds duller than lofty visions of peace and
unity, the impact on the mindset of this truly large number, which by sheer
size cannot be composed only by loyalists to the regime in a more narrow sense,
might be much greater than expected.
There is another consideration to be taken into account, and that is time.
South Korean politics, due to the one-time-presidency, is extremely short-term
oriented. If a policy is not successful within a current presidency, it is
deemed unsuccessful. This was the curse of the "Sunshine" policy with its many
positive features: to make it work, late president Roh in the end had to accept
completely unrealistic terms to come to any agreement with the North, in a
quite obvious maneuver to reap the benefits of rapprochement before the
election of late 2007. And it is, ironically, likewise the problem for the
current so-called hardline stance, the real impact of which might only be
visible in a couple of years.
When in Germany the enthusiastic ostpolitik of Social-Democratic
chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt in 1981 was substituted by a more
somber, reciprocity-oriented policy of the new Christian-Democratic chancellor
Helmut Kohl, a measurement of its achievements after three or four years could
well also have resulted in an assessment that many things got worse, but none
better.
That this policy, in conjunction with the hardline stance of Ronald Reagan's
United States policy, contributed to the downfall of Eastern European socialist
regimes, nobody would have forecast. And today, with hindsight, as well the
merits of rapprochement as those of a hardline, firm stance are considered as
stepping stones for transformation and unification in Germany.
In this sense, it can be hoped that the replacement of unification minister
Hyun does not result in a complete policy reversal, in a kind of desperate,
short-term attempt to cater to alleged voter sentiments ahead of presidential
elections in 2012, but that principles as well as offers for rapprochement are
deserving of reasonable attention in a balanced way.
The new minister-appointee, Yu Woo-ik, has worked already for Lee's
presidential campaign, and also worked as chief of staff on policy guidelines,
including those for policy on North Korea.
As an ambassador in Beijing, he maintained a discrete channel of communication
with Pyongyang. This might put him in a position to combine principled policy
and flexibility. Whether this would be enough to escape from short-termism in
policy is quite another matter.
Dr Bernhard Seliger is resident representative of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation
Korea, carrying out capacity-building projects in North Korea since 2003. Among
his latest books is The Survival of North Korea, McFarland (Jefferson,
NC) 2011, co-edited with Suk-Hi Kim and Terence Roehring. You can reach the
author at: bjseliger@yahoo.de
(Copyright 2011 Bernhard Seliger.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say.
Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
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