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The Lee Myung-bak administration will not veer from its principles-based approach to North Korea even as it searches for ways to bring the communist state back to the negotiating table, the head of a state-run unification think tank said Thursday.
The forecast by Kim Tae-woo, the recently-appointed president of the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), comes amid vigorous public discussion over Lee’s policy as it explores ways to be “flexible” toward Pyongyang amid a recent warming trend.
Some welcome the early signs of engagement it has pursued while hard-liners say it is too early to extend any olive branch. Still others call for a return to full engagement espoused by past administrations.
“An increasing number of people inside and outside government believe that it is time to show more flexibility to induce North Korea into dialogue,” Kim, the former head of Seoul’s defense institute, said in an interview. “But this does not mean any shift on the strategic level.”
Tensions have been high since Lee took office in 2008 and linked the provision of aid to denuclearization steps by the North. They plunged to their lowest point in decades last year after Pyongyang sank a South Korean warship and shelled a border island, killing 50, incidents Seoul still wants apologies for.
But interactions between the two Koreas have increased in recent weeks in the wake of denuclearization talks that aim to resume six-party negotiations. The signs of flexibility include increased cultural exchanges and a recent trip by Rep. Hong Joon-pyo, chairman of the ruling Grand National Party, to the joint Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC) in the North.
The moves have coincided with domestic calls for further engagement led by Hong ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections next year. While newly-appointed unification minster Yu Woo-ik has echoed such sentiment, little has been forthcoming as to what further measures flexibility entails.
“There is some ambiguity involved there, I should admit that,” Kim, a conservative, said. “There is no clear-cut borderline…where we can say ‘this is a strategic change and this is a tactical change.’”
What won’t change, the expert stressed, are four basic tenets: Progress in the North’s denuclearization, the safety of South Koreans who travel to the North, the implementation of international norms in inter-Korean relations and transparency in the distribution of aid.
“If you believe these four principles are unacceptable, then responsibility can go to our government. If they are universally acceptable, then the responsibility is in Pyongyang. I don’t think this position will be changed,” he said, adding the policy had begun to bear fruit.
“We can see an attitude change. Before North Korea behaved with arrogance, saying ‘We can destroy or protect you.’ They have realized by now that if they continue this, they would not get anything from the South.”
The hints of flexibility have been accompanied by talk of cooperative projects. Minister Yu has floated the idea of expanding the GIC, while President Lee has been bullish on a Russian proposal to pipe gas to the South via the North.
It also comes as Lee ups efforts to build consensus on the need for unification, bolstering domestic and international awareness programs and proposing a tax to prepare for the countries eventually uniting.
Kim said economic cooperation was a positive tool for regional stability and hoped for robust cooperation in the future especially in manufacturing, and infrastructure and resources development. But he warned such was not necessarily related to eventual unification.
“Even if there were an explosive expansion of economic exchange and the North Korean quality of life was as high as the South’s, it still wouldn’t mean that it would lead to unification. As long as the North Korean government has control of its people and wants to keep its privileges, there will be no unification.”
In this light, the expert has been calling for a gradual approach to unification that allows time for Pyongyang to change its system rather than dwelling on the possibility of “absorbing” the troubled state. Efforts such as delivering food aid, meanwhile, could allow for North Koreans to learn more about the South’s system.
Kim said that while the South had “nothing to learn” from the North’s political and economic system, it should remain open to the North’s ways in other areas including tradition and language.
“We should give North Korea more time and space to guarantee their safety. And if there are good things in North Korea we should accommodate them. What I am arguing for is gradual, mutual assimilation,” he said.
