After North Korea’s third nuclear test, the tensions between South and North Korea have intensified so much that it raises the question of whether the countries have reached the point of no return. It is time for us to review what has gone wrong.

Historically, South Korea has become more conciliatory toward North Korea, but North Korea has responded sometimes cooperatively and at other times provocatively with a varied degree of intensity. The Syngman Rhee government and the first half of the Park Chung-hee government adopted a confrontation policy toward the North because they believed the North did not abandon its goal of communizing the entire peninsula by all means, and Northeast Asia was at the very center of the Cold War.

The Park Chung-hee government in its second half of rule switched to a conditional engagement policy toward the North, believing that the North also desired peaceful coexistence, mainly because the U.S. and China formed a de facto alliance; the U.S. and the Soviet Union sought peaceful coexistence, and both Koreas felt they had to deal with this unexpected change together. The Chun Doo-hwan government initially pursued the same policy but switched to a kind of “congagement” policy (a combination of engagement and containment) after North Korea’s failed attempt to assassinate him in Burma.

The Roh Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam governments both returned to the conditional engagement policy because the international political order and the Northeast Asian security environment went through a tectonic change from the Cold War to the post-Cold War system. The Roh Tae-woo government concluded four milestone agreements with the North for peaceful coexistence between the two sides. The Kim Young-sam government gradually leaned toward a containment policy when North Korea’s nuclear development program surfaced and enraged both South Korea and the U.S.

The Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments adopted an engagement policy (the Sunshine Policy) and tried to change the paradigm of South Korea’s North Korea policy. The new paradigm is based on the premise that the best way to make North Korea more peace-loving and conciliatory is to bring it into the open world by increasing exchange and cooperation between the two. This premise is again based on the assumption that the North Korean system can be changed.

The Lee Myung-bak government returned to the conditional engagement policy but it was more rigid than any other previous government. It believed that North Korea could not be trusted and the North Korean system could not be changed no matter how conciliatory the South and the U.S. became, in view of North Korea’s behavior in the nuclear negotiations.

The above review shows that the South Korean governments have generally become more conciliatory toward North Korea, but the latter has never abandoned its hostile policy toward South Korea and the U.S. Why? In South Korea, opinions are divided into two.

The conservatives hold that the North Korean regime has never changed despite the tectonic changes in the global and Northeast Asian environments. The North’s unchanging goal is to preserve the one-man totalitarian system and the communization of the entire Korean peninsula by all means. It may change its strategies and tactics but never its goal.

In contrast, the progressives are convinced that North Korea is bound to change because the Northeast Asian security environment has changed from the Cold War to post-Cold War system and is in transition to a multipolar system; and North Korean society is being exposed to the outside world due to rapid globalization. More important is that the anti-regime mood in North Korean society is growing fast because of extreme poverty and exposure to the outside world.

On the basis of their respective perceptions of North Korea, both ideological forces propagate different opinions on the North Korean nuclear issue. The conservatives argue that North Korea has been developing its WMD programs as a means of deterrence against the South Korea-U.S. combined forces and as bargaining cards with the U.S. and for export purposes, and therefore it will never give up them until the U.S. and South Korea meet its demands.

The demands it has made throughout the nuclear negations since 1992 include a North Korea-U.S. peace treaty, end to the U.S. sanctions against North Korea, and abandonment of the first-use-of-nuclear-weapons strategy. They further argue that in view of the above, North Korea has had no intention to give up its nuclear program from the beginning and has been using the six-party talks to buy time to complete it.

The progressives believe that North Korea is developing its nuclear weapons to protect itself from the overwhelming military forces of the U.S. and it would be willing to abandon its nuclear program if the U.S. meets its demands. In their view, the U.S. is more responsible for the stalemate of the nuclear negotiations than North Korea.

Because of their perceptions of North Korea, both ideological forces put forward different solutions. The conservatives advocate a strong containment policy to accelerate the collapse of the North Korean regime, while the progressives believe that the engagement policy is the best way to open up North Korea and build trust between the two Koreas.

South Korea’s North Korea policy should be based on the following considerations: peaceful coexistence as the goal until reunification; the conservative and progressive views of North Korea influenced by their respective ideological and emotional bias that are often based on unconfirmed information; South Korea’s highly limited influence on U.S. foreign policymaking; the close ties between China and North Korea; and dynamics of the four-way power relations in Northeast Asia. In view of these constraints, South Korea should pursue the following policies:

First, it should abandon any ideologically tainted doctrine, hard or soft, and pursue a flexible strategy based on pragmatic thinking.

Second, it should treat North Korea as a hostile foreign power and its North Korea policy should not be influenced by the idea of “uriminjokkiri” (Koreans for Koreans).

Third, it should prioritize the pending issues: denuclearization, the South-North Korean exchange and cooperation, avoidance of military confrontation, and trust building. Exchange and cooperation may contribute to denuclearization but cannot solve the nuclear issue, but denuclearization will definitely accelerate exchange and cooperation. South Korea should deal with North Korea’s military provocations based on the flexible strategy, because North Korea’s provocations are multipurpose and take varied forms.

Fourth, as far as South-North Korean relations are concerned, South Korea should not lose its key role. It should exert its influence on the U.S. policy toward North Korea, using all available leverage. It is time for all Koreans to become cool-headed and see things clearly.

By Park Sang-seek

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