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Immediately after his landslide victory in last December's presidential election, Lee made it clear that his government would not remain passive and soft when addressing the North Korean regime. He publicly expressed his government's willingness to criticize North Korea's human rights violations. This stance was clarified by the new government in its March 27 vote in favor of renewing the mandate for a U.N. human rights investigator on North Korea.
Lee also has become remarkably assertive in proposing a new economic aid scheme for North Korea. He has made South Korea's aid contingent on the progress that the North will make toward complying with a denuclearization plan agreed during the six-party talks. His newly proposed North Korean scheme, "Vision 3000," is an economic aid plan designed to boost North Korea's per capita annual national income to US$3,000 (currently it is estimated at $1,800). This plan will be implemented upon the North's denuclearization.
Both these positions represent a complete departure from his predecessors' Sunshine Policy, which pursued a compromise-seeking, engagement approach to the North. Initially moderate criticism arose out of concern that such an abrupt change in policy toward North Korea would bewilder or, more seriously, provoke the North.
In fact, it seems that consequences have already been detrimental. The North's harsh backlash has caused a notable chill in the countries' relationship, and has also clouded the prospect of reunification. The North has deported South Korean governmental officials from the Gaesung Industrial Complex located in North Korea, launched missiles in the Yellow Sea, and explicitly criticized the new South Korean president as a rebel -- all in the past month.
The two Koreas' icy relationship, however, has not provoked the North to abandon its participation in current nuclear negotiations with the United States. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the U.S. negotiator with the North, has announced that in a meeting in Singapore on April, 10 negotiators reached a common understanding of how to make a breakthrough in their current nuclear deal. The North Korea-U.S. breakthrough means that North Korea will hold to its promise of working on denuclearization in return for U.S. rewards, not caring about South Korea. It seems that the North no longer sees the South as its counterpart in the nuclear negotiations.
More seriously, according to Leonid Petrov, research associate in the Division of Pacific and Asian History at Australian National University, it is probable that the North can easily reject South Korea's "conditional economic aid" thanks to possible unconditional economic aid from China and Russia, accompanied by the gift of allowing Pyongyang to save face. It thus appears that South Korea is on the verge of isolation from the North.
Lee's new North Korea policy stance has not done anything to effectively urge North Korea to make further progress in denuclearization, and it also now could cost South Korea isolation and the loss of its leverage on the North, clouding the prospects for eventual reunification. If Lee's government cannot stop the current situation from dragging, it could possibly disconnect South Korea from the North.
Lee and his Grand National Party criticized the Sunshine Policy as an unduly expensive option. However, it is clear that that policy achieved pragmatic results, contributing to the two countries' economic cooperation and giving the South leverage over the North. No matter how reasonable his arguments sounded, Lee's pragmatic strategy toward North Korea does not sound wise when it has caused nothing but the loss of benefits in hand.
However, it remains unclear whether Lee's departure from the Sunshine Policy means a return to an adversarial policy toward the North, which Lee's conservative party has persistently advocated. Lee recently made an offer of a direct dialogue between South and North Korea. During his recent visit to Washington for summit talks with U.S. President George W. Bush, Lee announced his proposal to set up liaison offices in South and North Korea. It looked as if an engagement card was not completely off the table.
However, this gesture to Kim Jong-il apparently came too late. It may have been prompted by the demands of the South Korean people. Lee may have decided that he could no longer endure increasing domestic concern over South Korea's possible isolation, and made the offer to the North in an attempt to appease his own people. Or he may have finally come to see the need to engage with the North and, more desirably, to avoid Seoul's isolation.
If Lee's position is the second one, it was surely unwise for him to provoke the North prior to attempting to engage with it. North Korea, of course, snorted at the offer. Thus Lee's pragmatism remains a failure.
Despite all these failures hope might still be alive. On a recent visit to the Harvard Kennedy School, former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung expressed his positive outlook on the two Koreas' relationship. He still expects that, given Lee's stance and the remarks he made during his visit to Washington, he would in the end choose dialogue with North Korea. It seems that as the creator of the Sunshine Policy, Kim may hope that Lee's government will not undo all the effort that he and his successor, Roh Moo-hyun, put into giving South Korea leverage over North Korea.
It is too early now to conclude that South Korea is completely isolated in its relationship with the North and no longer holds any leverage against the North. However, if Lee's North Korean policy solidifies into a strictly reciprocity-based hard line, the aftermath will be obvious. No South Koreans would have expected that Lee's pragmatism would lead to Seoul's isolation.
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(Lee Jae Young is a freelance writer and citizen reporter for Ohmynews International. He has a master's degree from Cornell University Law School in Ithaca, New York. ©Copyright Lee Jae Young.)
