Since his election to the South Korean presidency in May of 2017, Moon Jae-in has steadfastly remained committed to a policy of engagement with North Korea. His administration’s emphasis on dialogue and reconciliation has evoked comparisons with the “sunshine policy” of previous progressive administrations of Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun from 1998 to 2009. In Moon’s prioritization of discourse with the North Korean regime, the rebirth of the sunshine policy has diverged sharply from the approach taken by Moon’s two conservative predecessors, Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye. While Moon’s iteration of the sunshine policy has culminated in an unprecedented number of interactions with North Korea’s head of state Kim Jong-un, critics argue that such communication efforts have produced minimal tangible outcomes and breakthroughs in inter-Korean relations. This paper will provide an overview of President Moon’s sunshine policy in three elements. First, it will compare the first iteration of the sunshine policy under the progressive administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Second, it will explore the decline of the policy under the successive conservative administrations under Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye. Finally, the paper will examine the rhetoric employed by the incumbent President Moon Jae-in’s administration toward North Korea, in its revival of his past predecessors’ progressive policies of engagement.
In observing the history of inter-Korean relations following the Korean War, the desire to adopt a dialogue-focused approach to North Korea emerged first in South Korea under the Kim Dae-Jung administration in 1998. The shift towards dialogue and reduced hostilities was largely influenced by South Korea’s economic struggles during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.[1] With the re-structuring policies of the International Monetary Fund demanding the implementation of austerity measures, the military was one of the sectors in which the South Korean state was forced to dramatically reduce spending.[2] As a result of such rollbacks to the nation’s defence budget, the Kim administration saw incentives to consider a new policy toward North Korea, one which was not as heavily reliant upon arms to deter North Korean aggression. The subsequent adoption of the sunshine policy by the Kim administration in 1998 immediately displayed results. In 2000, President Kim met North Korea’s head of state Kim Jong-Il in Pyeongyang for the first ever Inter-Korean Summit.[3] The summit produced several key agreements between the two states, such as the reunification of families that were separated during the Korean War as well as the construction of a new industrial complex in Kaesong that would employ North Korean workers in factories operated by South Korean conglomerates.[4] Beyond the historic 2000 summit, Kim’s policy of peace also entailed humanitarian aid to the North, with deliveries of goods such as rice and fertilizers to North Korea.[5] The state also promoted economic solidarity, approving business projects from South Korean conglomerates to take place within North Korean borders.[6]
These policies of engagement continued under the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which succeeded the Kim administration in 2003. Its implementation reaffirmed the benefits of inter-Korean engagement, continuing South Korea’s humanitarian aid to the North, along with its projects of economic collaboration.[7] For instance, the Kaesong industrial complex commenced operations at the end of 2004, employing hundreds of North Korean labourers in factories that produced South Korean goods.[8] The Roh administration also oversaw the second inter-Korean summit, which was held once again in Pyeongyang in 2007. The summit culminated in the 2007 Peace Declaration signed between President Roh and Chairman Kim. It stipulated continued solidarity and cooperation, and the agreement to create another industrial complex similar to the model constructed in Kaesong.[9] Following the Roh administration, two successive conservative administrations followed, under presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye. Under these respective administrations, the sunshine policy was abandoned in favour of a more traditional method of military-based deterrence, with little attempts at dialogue. Both Lee and Park’s administrations prioritized the North’s denuclearization over dialogue and emphasized the notion of reciprocity, in which aid and favours from the South would only occur under the condition that the North would respond in kind, with favours of their own.[10] Thus, following a decade of sunshine policy under the Kim and Roh presidencies from 1998 to 2008, the South Korean state reverted to its conventional approaches of general hostilities and alienation of its North Korean neighbors for the next nine years, from 2008 to President Park’s impeachment and removal from office in 2017.
The incumbent President Moon Jae-in’s agenda on North Korea has largely been a continuation of the policies implemented under the Kim and Roh administrations. Shortly after his inauguration, at the Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity, Moon articulated its focus on reconciliation and building from previous joint statements and declarations from the 1970s and 1990s.[11] It emphasized collaboration and cooperation with the North in fighting collective issues, naming joint issues such as the reunification of separated families, the use of water reserves in the border region at the 38th parallel, and efforts of both states in combatting malaria.[12] Another key component of Moon’s revival of the sunshine policy focused on sports diplomacy, inviting North Korea to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.[13] These talks proved successful, with the North sending a distinguished delegation to Pyeongchang’s opening ceremony and the North and South Korean teams appearing as a unified Korean team in the opening ceremony.[14] North Korea’s participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics proved a successful foundation for subsequent interactions between the two Korean states, with three inter-Korean summits being held throughout 2018.[15] In these summits, several symbolic outcomes were achieved. For instance, in the April summit in Panmunjeom, Kim Jong-Un became the first ever North Korean head of state to cross the inter-Korean border into South Korea.[16] Beyond the symbolic depiction of reconciliation, the same summit also resulted in the Panmunjeom Declaration, in which both states expressed the need for non-violence and hopes for transforming the post-Korean war armistice into a peace treaty, officially concluding the war.[17] Furthermore, prior to the third inter-Korean summit in September of 2018, the North Korean party congress released a statement that announced that it would suspend all nuclear tests, along with its test launchings of all intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). However, despite Moon’s desire for dialogue with North Korea, his administration has identified its stance to be one that supported both sanctions and dialogues.[18] It expressed its support of sanctions on the grounds that they encouraged North Korea to engage in dialogue with the South.[19] Despite this claim, however, the Moon administration’s stance on North Korea has overwhelmingly been one of unilateral favours and support. Such resumption of humanitarian aid was observed in the South Korean state’s provision of $800 million USD to North Korea through both the institutions of the World Food Program and UNICEF.[20]
Critics have argued that such monetary aid to North Korea has only enriched the ruling elite, and have alleged that they have only enabled the North Korean regime to fund its projects of nuclear proliferation.[21] Although there has been minimal progress in terms of denuclearization or economic reforms in North Korea, the historical context of inter-Korean relations must be considered. The Moon administration began its implementation of the sunshine policy following nearly a decade of hostilities and little dialogue. Given this context, when the key outcomes of Moon’s sunshine policy are observed – the 2018 Olympics, the three inter-Korean summits, and the historic 2018 North Korea-US Summit in Singapore – Moon’s stance of engagement with North Korea has resulted in foundational steps to be built upon by subsequent presidential administrations.
Chan-Min Roh is a second-year undergraduate pursuing a major in Contemporary Asian Studies and a double minor in South Asian Studies and Asian Canadian Studies. His research interests include citizenship, development, and the history of pro-democracy movements. As a contributor to Synergy, he hopes to promote discourse on the socio-political challenges faced by East Asia in the twenty-first century.
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[1] Simon H. Malevich, “Moonshine: How a Return to the Sunshine Policy under President Moon Jae- In will bring Stability to the Korean Peninsula,” Glendon Journal of International Studies 11, no. 1 (2020): 5.
[2] Simon H. Malevich, “Moonshine: How a Return to the Sunshine Policy under President Moon Jae- In will bring Stability to the Korean Peninsula,” Glendon Journal of International Studies 11, no. 1 (2020): 5.
[3] Inhan Kim, “No More Sunshine: The Limits of Engagement with North Korea,” The Washington Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2017): 167.
[4] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 167.
[5] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 166.
[6] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 166.
[7] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 167.
[8] Inhan Kim, “No More Sunshine: The Limits of Engagement with North Korea,” The Washington Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2017): 167.
[9] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 167.
[10] Simon H. Malevich, “Moonshine: How a Return to the Sunshine Policy under President Moon Jae- In will bring Stability to the Korean Peninsula,” Glendon Journal of International Studies 11, no. 1 (2020): 9.
[11] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 167.
[12] Hannes B. Mosler, “President Moon Jae-in − The Right Choice for South Korea,” Asia PolicyBrief, 2017, 10.
[13] Mosler, “President Moon Jae-in,” 10.
[14] Leif-Eric Easley, “Doubling Down on the U.S.-South Korea Alliance: Olympics Diplomacy Did Not Breach Trust, but Trump-Moon Confidence Is in Jeopardy,” in A Whirlwind of Change in East Asia: Assessing Shifts in Strategy, Trade, and the Role of North Korea, ed. Gilbert Rozman (Washington, D.C.: Korea Economic Institute, 2018), 35.
[15] Deuk Hahm Sung and Uk Heo, “President Moon Jae-in at Midterm: What Affects Public Support for Moon Jae-in?” Journal of Asian And African Studies 55, no. 8 (2020): 1138.
[16] Nilüfer Rüzgar, “Moon Jae In: A Contemporary Strategic and Visionary Leader.” The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention 6, no. 2 (2019): 5292.
[17] Kwang Kyu Nam, “The Moon Jae-in administration’s North Korea policy and Korea–US relations.” Asian Education and Development Studies 8, no. 1 (2019): 64.
[18] Inhan Kim, “No More Sunshine: The Limits of Engagement with North Korea,” The Washington Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2017): 167.
[19] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 167.
[20] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 168.
[21] Kim, “No More Sunshine,” 171.