Wind, Sun or Clouds?
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By Stephen Costello
Several people have pointed out to me an error in symbolism in my last column, and a misinterpretation of the famous fable by the writer Aesop. I agree that the logical alternative to sunshine in the fable is the wind, not the dark clouds.
What ROK and US leaders have been doing could have been called the "Strong Wind" policy. However, had I done that, I would have to assume that Presidents Kim Dae Jung and Park GuenHye are aiming for the same result, taking off the coat. But I don’t think we can assume that. Maybe Presidents Park and Obama want the traveler to take off his coat, and then his shirt, and then his pants. He may be hiding something, so the pants had better go, too. In the warm sunshine he may think that's not such a bad idea. But in a strong wind, he might not like it. And if dark clouds are forming, he won’t like it at all.
Another writer suggested to me that President Park, rather than making the traveler take off his coat, wants to kill him. I don't know if Aesop wrote a fable telling that particular story. Instead, Aesop may have been wiser than many contemporary policymakers. He was said to be a Greek slave living between 620 and 560 BC, who was renowned for making wise and moral points by telling simple fables. The fables passed down and attributed to him now number over 600.
One reader pointed out the irony within both Kim’s Sunshine engagement of the late 1990s toward North Korea and Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (New Eastern Policy) of the 1960s toward East Germany. Both aimed to engage and overlap economic and development interests while ensuring security. Both were in some ways “engagement in order to defeat,” as this reader put it. But can the aim be “defeat” if the one engaged is made richer and stronger by the policy’s success? Probably not. After all, Kim and Brandtwere not expecting unconditional surrender asexperienced byJapan and Germany in World War II.President Park’s failure to acknowledge such a crucial difference – between engagement and surrender – underminedher Dresden speech in April 2014. Many read it more as an invitation to give up than as a realistic offer to merge common interests.
The North Korean regime is certainly inhumane and ruthless, as another writer said. But the planet is crawling with ugly regimes. China, Egypt, Russia, etc. We could go on and on. In this situation, if we have a chance to change an insecure and increasingly violent dynamic, and to improve humanitarian conditions, should we try, or not?
Since the fable was first used to describe Kim Dae Jung’s engagement toward North Korea I have disliked it. This was mainly because few would ever appreciate the fable’s point about the relative strength of wind vs sunshine when the object is to have the traveler relax, or feel comfortable, or feel secure enough to take off his coat. In English, and in the macho brotherhood of military/political strategy and policy, the term “sunshine” would overwhelm all other detailed or sophisticated analyses. Few who heard it would ever get to the finer points about strength, but would instead stop listening at the word “sunshine.” The same would happen with the word “peace.” Of course we are all for peace, and we all like sunshine, but when talking about hard matters of national interest, face-saving and state power, the culture of political/military matters does not easily accommodate those terms.
The underlying message in “The Wind and the Sun” is about the nature of strength. Kim Dae Jung meditated for decades about aspects of strength and weakness, of power.Right now there is a good debate going on, surrounding the US election, about which traits of character or intellectual habits and capabilities we should look for in a leader. Imagine the worldview and approach of a non-violent democracy activist, imprisoned and almost killed, who managed to maintain his democratic principles and become President. He was strong enough to make his would-be executioner his Prime Minister, and to bargain face-to-face with the North Korean leader. What if instead progress depends on a pampered real estate mogulwho blames everyoneelse and incites violence, just to pick an example out of the blue? It’s not hard to choose which one is more likely to succeed.
I’ll have to stand by my description of the Dark Cloud policy. It is no more likely to make the traveler take off his coat than the strong wind of Aesop’s fable. But unlike the wind, its aim is not to make the traveler remove the coat. Its aim is more radical, more reckless, and less realistic.
As I noted at the end of the previous article, policies employed for over ten years by South Korea and the US have not seemed to have that realistic objective, taking off the coat but leaving the traveler dressed and secure. And in the real world, as opposed to a fantasy world, the objective ought to be realistic. That’s why Ostpolitik and Sunshine worked so well, and why Dark Cloud, Strategic Incoherence or fantasy diplomacy are unlikely to pacify the Korean Peninsula.
Stephen Costello is a producer of AsiaEast, a
web and broadcast-based policy roundtable
focused on security, development and politics
in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington,
D.C. He can be reached at
scost55@gmail.com.