Tag: Sunshine Policy

It looks like the Moon administration has found another way to evade UN sanctions on North Korea, paying to use North Korea’s ski resort and restarting Mt. Geumgang Tours:

While the Koreas will discuss further details through document exchanges at Panmunjeom, there are several aspects of the plans that may clash with the sanctions placed on Pyongyang.

U.N. Security Council sanctions ban the direct provision of cash to North Korea, but South Korean skiers may have to pay to use the ski resort for training.

Meanwhile, tours to Mount Geumgang, which began in 1998, have been suspended since 2008 when a South Korean tourist was shot dead by the North Korean military there due to a violation of tourist zone regulations.

Hosting a joint-cultural event may signal that the Koreas are open to the idea of resuming tours to the North’s scenic mountain, despite the sanctions.

Furthering the dispute is the fact that the South first proposed these plans to the North, which could send a message that Seoul is not complying with the international community’s hard-line stance toward Pyongyang over its nuclear program.

“We proposed these plans to the North in the high-level talks on Jan. 9,” Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung said in a briefing Wednesday.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this was all very predictable considering President Moon is a big believer in the failed Sunshine Policy.  The original Sunshine Policy was bought and paid for initially with a huge $500 million bribe to the Kim regime.  Follow on bribes described as humanitarian and economic aid continued under the Sunshine Policy.  The aid would total to about a $1 billion a year.  To put this into context the South Koreans were paying more money to the Kim regime annually then what they were contributing to the US-ROK alliance.  The election of the conservative President Lee Myung-Bak changed this dynamic.

The current liberal Moon administration wants to go back to the days of paying off the Kim regime under the Sunshine Policy and the current talks over Winter Olympic participation is just the start.

Can someone please explain to me what the success of the Sunshine Policy was that warrants it to be reimplemented?:

To mediate two volatile partners ― Washington and Pyongyang ― Kim called for Seoul to revisit the 20-year-old Sunshine Policy. “Some people blast the policy, saying it’s only devoted to showering North Korea with rice. However, the essence of the Sunshine Policy is constantly making efforts to take the helm in shaping the nation’s future.

“Given the characteristics of the incumbent U.S. administration, Seoul should be more proactive in addressing its needs. For example, the U.S. has urged its allies to maximize pressure toward Pyongyang while it’s maintaining unofficial contact with the North.”

He cited former President George Bush’s message of peace at the Dorasan train station near the inter-Korean border in 2002 as fruit from the Sunshine Policy. Only a month after the hawkish president blasted North Korea by calling it the “axis of evil,” the older Kim successfully persuaded his U.S. counterpart to promise to talk with North Korea.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but a return to the Sunshine Policy means is that the Kim regime will arm themselves with nuclear weapons and ICBMs quicker.

This is an example of how the ROK government during the Sunshine Policy years helped to fund North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and the leftists running the country at the time thought the North Koreans would actually pay them back.  Despite all this the current Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea wants to give them even more money they will likely never pay back:

North Korea seems unwilling to repay loans it received from South Korea when inter-Korean relations were good in the 2000s, an opposition lawmaker claimed Thursday.

Citing data from the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank) and the National Assembly Budget Office, Rep. Shim Jae-cheol of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) said the North’s outstanding liabilities are 161.4 billion won ($142.5 million) as of July, out of accumulated loans of 1.05 trillion won ($932 million).

“North Korea has not paid back a penny since 2012 but the government has yet to come up with any countermeasure,” Shim said.

“The amount of redemption must have been used in nuclear and missile development. The government should do its utmost not to lose the entire 1.05 trillion won, which is the people’s tax money.”

According to the National Assembly data, the Kim Dae-jung government offered loans worth 369 billion won ($327 million) and the Roh Moo-hyun administration provided as much as 683.7 billion won ($650 million) in the form of food, material and equipment.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Moon Jae-in begins long, arduous task of rebuilding the Sunsh … and never mind. https://t.co/thOeOUA539

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) May 30, 2017

I could have just as easily titled this posting as being “Moon Jae-in Vows To Help North Korea Build Nuclear Weapons and Missiles” because that is what the Sunshine Policy allowed North Korea to do:

Moon pledged that South Korea will play a bigger role in efforts to denuclearize the North and push for denuclearization based on simultaneous actions by stakeholders instead of demanding the North first show its resolve to give up atomic weapons.

The front-runner candidate said he will carry out former President Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” to engage with the North to ultimately persuade Pyongyang to change. [Yonhap]

I wonder what Moon means by simultaneous actions?  Is that code for giving North Korea billions of dollars in aid for them to pretend they are not building nuclear weapons and missiles and then have them tear up the deal at a time of their choosing, launch provocations, and then demand a new deal?  That is what historically the Sunshine Policy has been.

Here is another interesting read from the former Prime Minister of South Korea Kim Jong-pil.  This time he discusses his views on the Sunshine Policy and why it was never going to work.  History has shown he was correct:

After his return to Seoul, Kim invited me and my wife Young-ok for a dinner at the Blue House on June 20, which was my first encounter with him in five months. Welcoming me, Kim said with a smile, “I felt pretty lonely without you.”

I replied, “You pulled off a major feat this time.”

Kim told me in greater detail of the progress he had made with Kim Jong-il during his stay in Pyongyang.

I told him, “I hope that agreement could lay down a path for the two sides toward an era of reconciliation.”

But in fact, I disagreed with the second clause of the agreement. If the two Koreas are reunified with different political systems, the problems in such a dual system would be enormous. I was firm in my belief that reunification would be complete only under one form of government as Italy had done in the 19th century.

The pursuit of reunification is a matter that calls for thorough contemplation and a long view. It should not be tackled with simple optimism or the illusion that the North could simply open up to the South and the outside world after a prolonged period of engagement. We need to be patient in waiting for change within the Pyongyang regime over the long run. Suppose we have a day of reunification suddenly and have to live with 20 million fellow citizens in the North. It wouldn’t be stretch to say half of our national income would be spent on assisting the North in a reunified Korea. I wonder how people would react to a government decision to take away half of their incomes just to nurture the North’s basket case of an economy.

A president should not be in a hurry to complete his or her North Korea policy during a single five-year term. We should wait and see what changes occur in the North as time goes by. For a considerable period of time, Seoul must spend its energy on strengthening our national power. West Germany achieved a peaceful reunification because it had the capacity to embrace East Germany. And West Germans were not hesitant to pour their money into reinvigorating the moribund economy of the East and elevating the standard of living of East Germans.

Former President Kim Dae-jung prided himself on moving the country a step closer to reunification. In fact, nothing has changed much since his summit 16 years ago. But Kim had the honor of winning the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2000. That was the real fruit of his tireless efforts to engage North Korea.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the whole thing at the link.

"Ordinary young South Koreans just do not want to talk about Sunshine any more." https://t.co/d3L9C7rjIu @Dest_Pyongyang vs. @StevenDenney86

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) January 21, 2016

The Sunshiners are back and they just cannot bring themselves to admit that they wrong.  All the Sunshine Policy did was keep one of the world’s worst governments in power with money and food aid that in turn was used to develop ballistic missiles and a nuclear program that are now a threat to the rest of the world:

At symposium, participants argue that if conciliatory policies had been continued, inter-Korean relations wouldn’t have deteriorated

At an academic conference to mark the eighth anniversary of the October 4 North-South Declaration, several voices called for a restoration of the Sunshine Policy and other initiatives to improve inter-Korean relations. On Oct. 2, the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, Korea Peace Forum and Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) co-hosted an international symposium for the eighth anniversary of the October 4 declaration at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in central Seoul.

At the symposium, James Hoare, a Chatham House fellow who was charge d’affaires and HM Consul-General at the British Embassy in Pyongyang, said that what South and North need right now is a return to the Sunshine Policy initiatives enacted by Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun from 1997 to 2007. He added that if Lee Myung-bak had continued such initiatives instead of abandoning the October 4 Declaration, it would have helped inter-Korean relations immensely.　Moon Jae-in, leader of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, claimed that if the initiatives of the October 4 declaration had continued, the lives of 70 million people would now be “brimming with hope and prosperity,” while the Korean Peninsula “reached out to the international community as a whole.” “The past eight years of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, however, have thrown inter-Korean relations back to the dark ages,” he added, adding that if measures such as the special zone of peace and cooperation in the West (Yellow) Sea and economic reunification had been properly implemented, the nation could have focused its efforts on conquering problems like stagnant growth, the decline of the middle class, and youth unemployment. The October 4 declaration included agreements to establish a “special zone of peace and cooperation” in the West Sea, including the city of Haeju and the surrounding maritime region, as well as the launch of joint fishing areas and peace districts.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link.