On Korea: Academic Paper Series 2007

After North Korea’s nuclear test on 9 October 2006, the fate of South Korea’s engagement policy with North Korea seemed to hang in the balance. To many, the nuclear test stood as a clear indictment of the Sunshine Policy and its successor, President Roh Moo-hyun’s Peace and Prosperity Policy. After years of investment and aid to the North under these policies, South Korea appeared to have received little in return. Conservative lawmakers charged that the nuclear test amounted to the “death penalty” for the Sunshine Policy, and former president Kim Young-sam proclaimed that the policy “should be thrown into a trash can.” Roh’s unification minister apologized to the National Assembly.

But others did not see the nuclear test as a verdict on South Korean engagement of the North. To more progressive forces, including the Roh administration, this is not a story of inter-Korean cause and effect; engagement represents a much larger inter-Korean effort, while the nuclear issue is rooted in problematic U.S.-DPRK relations. In their view, the nuclear test occurred because the Bush administration has taken a hard line with North Korea, creating an environment—featuring “regime change” rhetoric and the preemptive-strike doctrine—that spurred the North to pursue weapons considered the ultimate guarantee of security. The Sunshine Policy cannot be held to account for ruinous U.S.-DPRK relations, though such a circumstance can hinder inter-Korean engagement. While Roh offered a careful, politically calibrated suggestion to the public in the wake of the nuclear test, saying he “would like to suggest that we take time to figure out the causal relationship between the engagement policy and the nuclear test,”