South Korea’s new president has opened the door to renewed dialogue and co-operation with North Korea. But Kim Jong-un is not biting.
A new Sunshine Policy for Korea?
After a protracted tussle between South Korea’s foreign ministry and unification ministry over how to deal with North Korea, President Lee Jae Myung last Friday made clear which side he was on. At a joint briefing in Seoul with both ministries, Lee blamed his conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol for allowing cross-border relations to deteriorate to an unprecedented level of hostility.
“When I look at inter-Korean relations these days, it feels as though we have truly become enemies,” he said.
“In the past, it sometimes felt like we were pretending to be enemies, but now it seems we are actually becoming real ones.”
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last year officially renounced the goal of reunification with the south, declaring the two Koreas to be hostile states. This was partly a consequence of the collapse of negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington during the first Trump administration but also a response to the relentlessly hawkish approach taken by conservative administrations in Seoul.
Yoon, who was impeached after he attempted a self-coup last year, scaled back the unification ministry and boosted the role of the more hawkish foreign ministry. Lee, who earlier this year silenced the loudspeakers along the border that broadcast propaganda into North Korea, has come down firmly on the side of the unification ministry.
“Even if we set aside ideas like a national community, from a purely practical standpoint there is no need for such intense confrontation,” he said.
“When hostility deepens, it translates directly into economic losses. But unnecessary hard-line, confrontational policies have pushed both sides toward genuine animosity.”
Lee’s approach has echoes of the Sunshine Policy introduced by Kim Dae-jung in 1998 and aimed to foster reconciliation and eventual reunification through dialogue and co-operation. The policy was formally abandoned in 2010 and subsequent conservative South Korean presidents took a more confrontational stance.
The unification ministry wants to ease some of the sanctions imposed on North Korea, which ban most inter-Korean trade and travel, arguing that they are ineffective and counterproductive. Easing sanctions would allow for the restoration of joint industrial and tourism projects with the North and connecting a rail link from Seoul to Beijing through North Korea.
Pyongyang has not indicated any willingness to engage with Seoul and there is no plan for a resumption of talks between North Korea and the US. But Donald Trump has expressed an interest in reigniting his dialogue with Kim, which saw the two leaders exchanging dozens of letters and meeting four times before negotiations collapsed.
“If he’d like to meet, I’m around,” Trump said when he visited South Korea last October.
“I would love to see him if he wants to, if he even gets this message.”
Kim has made clear that he is no longer willing to allow North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability to be a bargaining chip in negotiations with Trump. He insists instead that the international community should acknowledge his country’s status as a nuclear-armed state, despite nine major UN Security Council sanctions resolutions in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear activities.
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