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Seoul ShrugsWhy South Korea won't abandon its sunshine policy, even after the North's nuke test.

By Soyoung Ho
Posted Monday, Oct. 16, 2006, at 4:10 PM ET
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (left) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Click image to expand.

North Korea's alleged nuclear test has galvanized the U.N. Security Council into punishing the recalcitrant regime. President Bush declared, "This action by the United Nations, which was swift and tough, says that we are united in our determination to see to it that the Korea Peninsula is nuclear-weapons-free."

But Bush may be suffering from a severe case of wishful thinking. Analysts are already predicting that the compromise sanctions will not be effective. The garrisoned state thrives on isolation and has a record of becoming even more defiant when pressured. South Korea understands this and prefers a long-term solution that gradually coaxes Pyongyang out of seclusion. Seoul believes that genuine dialogue and confidence-building measures are needed, but the Bush administration has refused to talk to North Korea directly. In the week since North Korea's alleged underground test, commentators have focused on the role of the United States and China in solving the crisis—but what do South Koreans want, and what can their government do to achieve those policy aims?

China and South Korea have long been the North's biggest benefactors. Although China exercises the most leverage over North Korea, its influence is limited by both practicality and policy, especially concern that refugees will flood across the border if the Pyongyang regime falls. South Korea, a treaty ally of the United States with a flourishing democracy and the world's 11th-largest economy, also dreads instability but longs for reunification with the North. Seoul would bear the enormous cost—one estimate puts it at $600 billion—of a sudden merger, and even if resolution stops short of reunification, the South would pick up a big chunk of the tab for whatever concessions eventually settle the nuclear crisis. Beyond finances, the South has most to lose—an internecine war would wreck the peninsula and result in huge loss of life.

Since President Bush came to power in 2001, the South Korean-U.S. defense alliance has frayed. The Pentagon and Congress have increasingly come to see South Korea as a reluctant and ungrateful ally that no longer automatically heeds the United States' wishes, and rising anti-American sentiment on the peninsula certainly hasn't helped.

Although the latest North Korean move has forced South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's government to review its engagement with the North and to cooperate with the United States, Seoul will not abandon its "sunshine policy" altogether. "The nuclear test will bring the United States and South Korea closer. However, I don't know how far … it will go. In spite of the test, the Roh government will continue to look for excuses to maintain at least some transactions with Pyongyang," said Paik Jinhyun, associate dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University. He added, "Early polls taken after the test showed that … a sizable number of Koreans attributed what happened to the Bush administration's refusal to talk with North Korea rather than Kim Jong-il's nuclear ambition."

Indeed, after the initial shock and alarm, South Koreans' No. 1 priority was the economy. "All my friends are talking about their stock prices taking a hit and how there will be capital flight from foreign investors," said Kim Choung Ja, who lives just south of Seoul. On the day of the test, the Seoul stock market took a dive, though it started to recover the next day. "South Koreans are still taking trips to Mount Geumgang [in North Korea] and life goes on." Kim also blamed the United States for having divided Korea more than 50 years ago without taking the nation's wishes into account. In essence, she thinks the United States brought the North Korean nuclear pest upon itself and the world.

One reaction typical of young South Koreans came from Kim Min Jeong, a teacher at a Seoul language school who focused on the injustice of the balance of power: "I was quite surprised that North Korea really tested the nuclear bomb. But all the superpowers have nuclear weapons, so why not North Korea? Because Kim is a maniac? It doesn't make sense. All of them must stop developing nuclear weapons, not just North Korea. I think it's a more of a threat to greedy superpowers than to poor South Korea."

South Korea's top priority is to prevent war at any cost. The memory of devastation from the fighting during the Korean War between 1950 and 1953 lingers, especially for the 600,000 to 1.5 million people in the South who have family members in the North. These divided families plead with the South Korean government to do whatever it takes so that they can see aging relatives before it's too late. The South Korean government is sympathetic and also has political motivation to comply, since the elderly go to the polls in large numbers. Another big worry—though it is rarely discussed openly—is that North Korea will become a puppet state of China. All this drives South Korea to provide aid to the North to match Chinese largess and to keep quiet about human rights violations so as not to provoke Pyongyang.

Kim Jong-il isn't going away anytime soon, and he won't fall in line just because Bush is acting tough. Seoul's fate depends on the outcome of the superpower jostling, and while President Roh must realize that continued appeasement weakens the South's leverage over Kim, he has no real alternative in the short term.

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Soyoung Ho is an assistant editor at the Washington Monthly.
Photograph of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (left) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao by Getty.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I would take exception to the author's statement about Koreans being ungrateful to the US. The conservatives in Korea remember and honor the sacrifice that America made on the behalf of the Korean people. The most anti-American sentiment is from those my generation and younger that grew up in new model Korea made possible by the blood of American and ROK soldiers. However, we are not some backwards country that doesn't read newspapers or understand what is going on in the world. For years since, America makes policy that is geared rightly in the interests of America. Our sunshine policy is the Korean way of dealing with the North, that was dismissed and disregarded even ridiculed by Washington. The American soldiers stationed in Korea remain apart from Koreans. All the solutions on this board about "lighting up" North Korea disregards the lives of millions of South Koreans, who have sent troops to Vietnam and Iraq. Still Americans, regard the South Koreans with disdain and dismissal when the government takes an independent stance. Wonder why young South Koreans are anti-American? because it is apparent to us that when we long ignore stupid American policies towards N. Korea, we are seen as ungrateful or ignorant. We live with North Korea every day, many N. Koreans are innocents and family members. They are not the enemy. The dictatorship of N. Korea is the enemy.

Besides the N. Korean government has more to fear from the Chinese than it does from the Americans. N. Korea is at the mercy of China and South Korea, the nuclear test and threat of refugees is the only leverage that N. Korea has to ensure continued food and fuel aid. The nuclear test was done to ensure that China got the message that it couldn't control the North Korean government. What N. Korea wants is continued aid and continued power over the N. Korean people. N. Korea holds all the cards, in this one. It does maximum damage to South Korea and China if it collapses. Meaning the US doesn't pay for the reconstruction and revitalization of N. Korean infrastructure or face the prospect of feeding millions of refugees in need of aid, or the possibility of more than a million armed soldiers with nuclear/biochemical weapons with no leadership or control.

China is in a tighter bind than the US, it has tried to exert influence on the North, but it can't risk the North's collapse. Plus, the North's government is a continued sharp stick in the eye of the US. China wants the regime to continue but maybe without the nuclear wildcard. That is now a delicate balance.

Perhaps N. Korea and Washington in bi-lateral talks [could] work something out, yet Bush refuses to do this. N. Korea has all [the] cards right now. The only option is to talk to N. Korea and see what is up. Perhaps N. Korea fears China more than it does the US?

--seethru4008

(To reply, click here.)

The teacher who sees no distinction between N. Korea having a nuke and the U.S. having a nuke is astounding. The South Korean people have weakened more than I would have thought possible. They have bought into the moral equivalency of the left despite being in an ongoing war with a lunatic avowed enemy to their immediate north.

The world will soon see what moral-equivalent thought buys you. Everything from Seoul north will be evaporated, by conventional artillery, once the North goes to war. South Korea in any modern recognizable sense will be obliterated in about a day. An entire division of the American Army will go with them, along with about 300k S. Korean troops and millions of civilians.

That is the fruit of leftist thinking.

--hyperionred

(To reply, click here.)

Nations don't simplistically drive their foreign polices by nuclear proliferation questions alone. Maybe they should, but experience has shown that they don't. Rather, the nuclear issue is just one of many that may or may not come to the forefront. Proliferation can be overlooked if there are "other considerations."

If I were a Chinese leader considering "regime change" in North Korea I'd be taking a close gander at just how well that same strategy is working out for the U.S. in Iraq. The prospect of a million refugees flooding across the border is a concern to Chinese leaders (as well as US leaders) and leads to special accommodations for the neighboring state (though thank God Mexico is apparently not on a nuclear quest).

I do agree, China has more 'leverage' with North Korea. I doubt, however, that the Chinese are so confident that they can simply pull the appropriate levers and get the results they want. Even for the China, I don't think the North Korean situation has any easy solution.

--fozzy

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When the Israelis were found to be in possession of nukes, the U.S. did nothing about it. That is of course, they are our allies. Nevermind the fact that a nuclear armed Israel has given Iran and even Egypt a desire to start their own nuclear program. We could have leveraged our influence on Israel (we provide the defense, a la Japan) but we didn't.

If China chooses not to leverage their influence, we do sound like high hypocrites, but then again foreign policy is not about principles (contrary to the babblings of our leader), it's about power.

We can let our Israeli buddies do what they want, but we cannot stand for China to do the same with their own buddies? We lead by poor example. But we are the most powerful nation, so they will have to follow us, for now.

--mallardsballad

(To reply, click here.)

(10/17)

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