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With two-and-a-half years left in its term, President Lee’s administration has to offer active plans for the progress of inter-Korean relations, renouncing its passive attitude of looking for a change, such as denuclearization, from North Korea. On the North Korean nuclear issue, 5 nations in the six-party talks, with the exception of the North, have been consistently for denuclearization. Particularly China, the chairman of the six-parties, is the closest country to the North and wishes to inspire it with denuclearization, reform and an open-door policy. As denuclearization and the development of North-South Korea relations by cooperation between the South and the U.S. alone has its limits, the South needs to use China’s leverage. Therefore, the North should be approached on the
so-called two-track basis that the North Korean nuclear issue is separate from economic cooperation. The North’s deepening reliance on China following vitalization of the North-China economic cooperation is never desirable to the South and it may keep the South from being in a good position. China’s economic growth without democratization can be an impediment to the dynamics of the unification of the Korean peninsula. Because of this, with expanding markets achieved by activating South-North economic cooperation, North Korea’s reform and open-door policy should be promoted. Market expansion can provide a breakthrough for North Koreans to overcome poverty that so threatens their survival. The extreme survival situation of North Koreans on the verge of starvation should bring them to the reality that they cannot keep sitting on their hands with respect to political exhaustion and the hereditary autocracy which is almost tyranny.
In such a context it is time to have flexible standpoints with respect to the North and view the still pending Cheonan ship case flexibly as well.
Inter Korean relations cannot but be ambiguous and complex with conflict and
cooperation coexisting for a substantial length of time. It is not easy to change North Korea by (military) power or sanction, which has been tamed in absolute dictatorships and politically customized for ages. The engagement policy towards the North for the past 10 years caused controversy such as unconditional grant and South-South conflict, and yet it gradually improved the North and contributed to getting rid of the nature of the Cold War. The ‘Wandel durch Annaeherung (Change through Rapprochement)’ of Egon Bahr, the creator of New Ostpolitik, seems very appropriate.
With the possibility of Kim Jung-il’s sudden death or natural death posing, the North has accelerated to name Kim Jung-eun as successor, and China has acknowledged the hereditary change. Since North Korean leader Kim Jung-il’s ill health has made the elites surrounding him anxious, the schedule of nominating successor is being condensed.
However, establishing a succession regime amid no prospect of economic recovery is uncertain. Even if the hereditary succession is achieved, the soft landing of the succeeding administration is not likely.
The interest of South Korean nationals is in the hope that the North’s power succession will not act as a new factor to raise tensions on the Korean peninsula and things will continue peacefully. Keeping an eye on changes in North Korea’s power structure, South Korea has to make preparations for it working positively; whoever or what forces succeed to power.
Thus, aggressive policies towards the North should be propelled to cope with the
rapidly changing situations of a Kim Jung-eun regime, the third generation hereditary regime, and superintend progressive South-North Korean relations to prepare for the peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula in the future.