Park ditches 'trustpolitik' with N. Korea

By Kang Seung-woo

President Park Geun-hye has virtually scrapped her much-trumpeted initiatives aimed at building trust with North Korea due to the latter’s missile and nuclear threats, analysts said Wednesday.

To lay the groundwork for durable peace — and eventually unification — Park unveiled “trustpolitik” and other reconciliatory programs after taking office to boost dialogue and mutual exchanges.

However, following the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and a missile test in February, the Park government is seeking total isolation of North Korea from the international community through a sanctions-only policy.

In addition, she has repeatedly rejected the North’s dialogue offers, holding its denuclearization as a precondition for a resumption of any inter-Korean talks.

“The Park administration has not succeeded the joint declarations outlining inter-Korean reconciliation and economic cooperation from the two inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007. The initiative stressed the need for inter-Korean talks to overcome difficulties between the two sides, but the South is staying away from discussions with the North,” said Hong Hyun-ik, a senior researcher at the Sejoing Institute, a local think tank.

“In this respect, I think that the current government has practically scrapped the trust-building initiative.”

Analysts say that the trust-building initiative has failed to yield meaningful progress because it was established on an ill-advised premise.

“According to the initiative, South Korea would engage North Korea in dialogue should the latter show sincerity for building trust first, which is preposterous,” said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.

“In addition, the North Korean nuclear crisis has been raging since the former Lee Myung-bak administration, but the Park government unveiled the initiative calling for very low level inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation in the fields of the environment and education in order to address the nuclear issue and achieve unification. In other words, it was unrealistic.”

Cheong Seong-chang, another senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, echoed Chang’s view, saying, “The initiative just focused on low-level inter-Korean cooperation in which the North has little interest, so it fell through.”

Cheong added: “The initiative articulates no action plan and only rhetoric, merely stating its goal was to make the North abandon its nuclear program.”

However, the Ministry of Unification said that the initiative was still valid.

“The engagement policy is still focused on balancing national security on the one hand and inter-Korean exchange and cooperation on the other to change the North,” said spokesman Jeong Joon-hee.

Amid strained inter-Korean relations, analysts advise that the South Korean government should engage in talks with the Kim Jong-un regime at least to avoid unnecessary military tension on the peninsula.

“I think it is important to continue trying to build trust between the two Koreas. Maintaining some level of dialogue can be useful if for no other reason than to keep tension levels manageable,” said Terence Roehrig, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

“Dialogue does not mean giving in to North Korean demands or rewarding bad behavior. It is also important to remember that efforts have been made to reach out to North Korea but Pyongyang has not done much to demonstrate a willingness to work with Seoul and Washington. But it is important to keep trying, if only to avoid the spikes in tension that can lead to a crisis, miscalculation, and violence.”