Signals are coming from those close to President Lee Myung-bak that he is considering changing his anti-North Korea policy in favor of improving relations with the communist state. If he is really considering such a shift in policy, he will have to think about a backlash from his conservative support base as well.

President Lee has been adamant in withholding dialogue with and economic aid for North Korea until it offers an apology for the torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the shelling of a South Korean island last year. But a shift in his policy was hinted at when Kim Tae-woo, new president of the state-funded Korea Institute fro National Unification, said on Tuesday that, should North Korea’s pseudo-government agency offer an apology, South Korea could accept it as a formal apology.

On the same day, Rep. Hong Joon-pyo, chairman of the ruling Grand National Party, said the two Koreas and Russia will start talks in November on the construction of a pipeline through which Russia wants to export Siberian natural gas to South Korea. The proposed pipeline passing through North Korea, on which Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed last month, needs an endorsement from South Korea as well.

Another signal about a change in President Lee’s policy came the next day, this time from Unification Minister-designate Yu Woo-ik, who said he would maintain consistency in the Lee administration’s policy on North Korea. Then he added that he would “think about where flexibility can be made if it is needed to advance inter-Korean relations.” But he should know consistency and flexibility are not mutually inclusive. Flexibility in policy can be adopted only at the expense of its consistency.

President Lee may be tempted to make a breakthrough in the impasse on inter-Korean relations, as his predecessors were. But a turn in his North Korea policy would undoubtedly invite severe criticism from his conservative supporters, who believe North Korea diverted massive economic aid it received from South Korea’s two previous liberal administrations for the development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

One of the leading conservative commentators, who denounced the pipeline project, raises a question about President Lee’s replacement of a hawkish unification minister with a more dovish protg of Lee’s. Conservative news outlets are also voicing opposition to a change in what they regard as a principled policy on North Korea.