Why Korea's North Korea Policy Is Difficult to Succeed [Walking Together with Reporter Ahn Jeong-shik in Pyongyang]

Regardless of their political orientation, few will object to the serious political division within our society.

Now, in Korea, so-called progress and conservatives are intensified enough to be called de facto'enemies'.

As the hostile division intensified, the consistency of policy in the Republic of Korea became truly difficult to keep.

Progressives and conservatives confronted each other in the single-legged battle of the presidential election and took power, but there is no way to succeed the loser's policy.

Looking at the recent Korean politics, whenever the ruling and opposition regimes are replaced and a new government is established, the main task is to'clear the former regime', and this trend will not change easily in the future.

North Korea policy also suffered a severe twist amid these political ups and downs.

As policy toward North Korea is a field in which the color of the regime is clearly revealed, there was no way the previous regime's policy toward North Korea could be inherited in the context of'erasing the former regime'.

during the Kim Dae-jung administration that the North Korean policy began to be promoted in earnest in South Korea, out of the Cold War era.

The Sunshine Policy of the Kim Dae-jung administration is a policy that gradually induces change in North Korea through exchanges and cooperation with North Korea, and Aesop's allegory that warm sunlight rather than strong winds is more effective in removing the coat of a traveler was presented as an appropriate example.

Sunshine policy can be referred to as an inclusion policy in a more generic term.

With a policy of engagement with North Korea from the Kim Dae-jung administration to the Roh Moo-hyun administration, inter-Korean relations seemed to enter the institutionalized stage of exchange and cooperation.

At the government level, ministerial-level talks and economic cooperation promotion committee meetings are held regularly, and the two pillars of inter-Korean economic cooperation have been formed: annual family reunions and social and cultural exchanges in each field, and Kumgangsan tourism to the east and the Kaesong Industrial Complex to the west. .

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we had already achieved, we had to move on to the next stage based on the results we had already achieved if our government's policy toward North Korea was to move further away from the issue of progression and conservatism.

However, in a few years after the regime change between the opposition parties, all relations between the South and North Korean authorities were cut off and the Kaesong Industrial Complex was closed, and inter-Korean relations returned to almost zero.

Since the inter-Korean relations, which had been active after the inter-Korean summit in 2000, returned to zero due to a total suspension of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in 2016, Korea's policy toward North Korea has been in vain for 16 years.

Of course, there are considerable causes for North Korea to cause this situation.

If there was a regime change between the opposition parties in South Korea, North Korea would have to adapt accordingly, but North Korea started to tame the South Korean government in an attempt to return the South Korean policy toward North Korea as it used to be, and this was also the reason for worsening inter-Korean relations.

Also, it is true that the Cheonan incident and continued nuclear and missile development have acted as bad news for inter-Korean relations.

However, if we look at our internal problems before looking for a cause from the outside, it is compelling to point out the part where the policy toward North Korea goes back and forth whenever the liberal-conservative regime changes.

In the midst of hostile divisions within our society, North Korea policy did not guarantee consistency.

These hostile confrontations have resulted in serious flaws for both the progressive and conservative regimes.

Even if the liberal regime tries to induce change in North Korea through an engagement policy, North Korea cannot try to change how the policy toward North Korea will change if the regime changes in South Korea.

No matter how much the conservative regime drives the international community to intensify the pressure on North Korea, North Korea, who believes that if the South Korean regime changes, will change its policy toward North Korea again, will endure, saying,'Let's endure a little more.'

The policy toward North Korea that changes every few years, whether it is an engagement policy or a pressure policy, does not drive changes in North Korea, but only fosters North Korea's resistance by making North Korea think about how to use South Korea's variable North Korea policy.

Although the Korean peninsula exists in a geopolitical position where the powers of the world's powers collide, there are certainly areas in which we can exert our own capacity for the North Korean issue.

This is because we, as direct parties to the issue of the Korean Peninsula, have different roles and weights from those of neighboring countries.

Moreover, in places where the balance of power is sharp, such as on the Korean Peninsula, it is difficult for any one neighboring country to wield the battle because each other checks each other.

But, unfortunately, we have exhausted our own assets that will allow us to exercise such subjective capabilities.

With the hostile division between liberal and conservative, each time the ruling and opposition regimes change, they have been leaping out with different policies toward North Korea, and have exhausted their capacity to lead the change in North Korea through South Korea's policy toward North Korea and move on to unification.

Each regime was confident that they could achieve something within their term of office, but there is no policy toward North Korea that can achieve results within a term of ten years at most, even if the government is re-created for five years.

As long as the political divide continues as it is now, it seems unlikely that any government policy toward North Korea, either progressive or conservative, will succeed in South Korean society.

(Photo = Yonhap News)