[imText1]Our task in 2007 must be to accomplish the following four goals: (1) to understand Kim Jong Il regime correctly. (2) To realize the fault of the current North Korean policy in Seoul. (3) To establish a new and feasible alternative policy. (4) To create new strategy under the direction of that new policy.
In the case of a change in South Korean leadership this year, dramatic reversal in North Korea policy is inevitable.
The current Sunshine policy originally aimed at leading North Korea’s reform to a market economy and an open democratic society. Policymakers in the Kim Dae Jung administration argued for the Sunshine policy as the only choice available.
Whatever the intention of South Korean leaders might have been for a decade, Kim Jong Il exploited the benign objective of his counterparts in Seoul by strengthening the so-called “military-first policy” and distancing himself from any sort of reform. This was directly opposite too what Sunshine-policy-advocates expected and hoped would happen. Disappointment peaked at Kim’s detonation of a nuclear bomb.
The reason of such policy failure is obvious: they misread Kim Jong Il’s mind. South Korean leadership confused their hope (of North Korea undertaking reform under sunshine) with reality (North Korea is inevitable to reform under sunshine).
Then, what is the “reality” of Kim Jong Il’s regime? To answer the question, three points must be clarified: (1) Whether Kim Jong Il could eventually give up his nuclear ambition eventually. (2) Whether Kim Jong Il lead his country to reform and democracy. (3) What is the job of South Korea and the international society if Kim Jong Il fails to initiate the above?
These three points are fundamental to comprehend Kim Jong Il regime’s behavior correctly. The next South Korean government’s NK policy must be based on them
1) Whether Kim Jong Il could give up his nuclear ambition
North Korea’s strategy so far gives answer to the first question.
Since the first nuclear crisis in the early 90s, the Kim regime has been repeating a cycle of creating tension in the peninsula of negotiation and receiving economic aid as compensation. This has been a key to the regime’s survival for a decade and half. Kim Jong Il’s regime cannot live on without a strong-enough military tool to make Northeast Asia unstable. In other words, Kim desperately needs nuclear weapons as leverage for the regime’s survival, although he might pretend to give up nukes in order to acquire as much economic aid as possible.
2) Whether Kim Jong Il lead his country to reform and democracy
This question does not need a long and complicated answer. Kim Jong Il is unlikely to perform any reform on policy as China, Russia, and the other eastern European countries previously carried out in 80s and early 90s. The incorrect presumption that North Korea will change like them is based on history.
There have been at least three opportunities for North Korea to change the direction of its policy toward market economy: first in 70s when China gave up communist economy, second during Soviet Union’s fall and marketization of whole Eastern Europe in early 90s, and third since the Sunshine policy in 2000. North Korea refused to change all three times.
In 1978 as Deng Xiaoping embarked on “reform and openness” policy, Kim Jong Il fiercely criticized China as being revisionist. He did not even visit a Chinese embassy to make a call of condolence when Deng died in 1997.
Reactionary Kim Jong Il became even more stubborn in the wave of the communist regimes’ fall in Eastern Europe, instead of following the trend of market-friendly reform.
The last change was last in 2000. The South Korean government pursed a one-sided love of the Sunshine policy from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, President Kim Dae Jung made a historic summit with KJI in Pyongyang in an effort to persuade North Korea to reform. US Secretary of State Albright visited Pyongyang that year and President Clinton invited Kim in return. The invitation letter, which if accepted, could have resulted in normalization of US-NK relationship. However, it was turned down along with the request of reform by Kim Jong Il. (continue…)
