 Former President Kim Dae-jung meets North Korean leader Kim Jong-il at Sunan Airport in Pyongyang on June 13, 2000. The two leaders had the first inter-Korean summit. / Korea Times file |
This is the 25th in a 60-part series featuring 60 major events in Korea's modern history from 1884 till now. The project is part of the 60th anniversary of The Korea Times, which falls on Nov. 1.By Michael Breen
Korea Times columnist
In June 2000, when the leaders of the two Koreas, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il, embraced at Sunan Airport, expectations that this first-ever summit would lead to reconciliation ran high in South Korea and around the world.
Koreans were glued to their TV sets, feeling the ghosts of ancestors run shivers up their back, hoping against hope that 50 years after the war, and after a decade of isolation in the post-communist world and a famine which claimed hundreds of thousands of victims, the North had finally seen the light.
"I feel a flood of pleasant emotions coming from inside," Kim Dae-jung told Kim Jong-il, in a simple phrase that said it all, as they sat and talked in the Baekhwawon guesthouse.
The South Korean president was entitled to his pleasant emotions. Nearly half way through his single five-year term, his daring "Sunshine" policy of engagement had overturned southern fear of the North and revolutionized attitudes. At the time it seemed to have been the right thing to do.
The generation that had been taught in school that North Koreans literally had horns on their heads could see a personable Kim Jong-il in action. And they liked him. He certainly seemed more chatty and sociable than their austere leader. Here he is commenting on the international reaction when he turned up unexpectedly at the airport to greet Kim Dae-jung:
Kim Jong-il: The people in Europe frequently ask why I live in seclusion and why I had appeared for the first time. But in the past I have been to China and Indonesia and many other countries without publicity. Still they say I am living in hiding. I was liberated from this because President Kim came. (laughs) … Is there any problem with your food?
Kim Dae-jung: The food is excellent.
Kim Jong-il: When I went to China last time, I was served kimchi, South Korean kimchi, so I thought the people of the South were great for making kimchi world famous. In Japan they call it "kimuchi," but there is no North Korean kimchi there. The only difference is that the North's is more watery and the South's more salty.
The two got on to more strategic topics. They discussed methods of reducing tension and bringing about rapprochement, and helping war-separated families meet. Kim Dae-jung told his counterpart that the world was now in the knowledge era and that, united, they would be at the forefront.
He also encouraged North Korea to normalize ties with the U.S. and Japan. The summit ended with a promise by Kim Jong-il to visit Seoul.
That, of course, never happened. In fact, while the tourism initiative at Mt. Geumang and the business project at Gaeseong did get underway, no other steps promised by the summit materialized.
That was because nothing had really changed. There had been no power shift. The North Koreans may have by some definitions economically collapsed. But this had not threatened the leadership.
There was no alternative to Kim Jong-il. There was no Nelson Mandela for Kim Dae-jung to ask to visit in jail.
The northern leadership may have known they could not reunify the peninsula by forceful means. But still there had been no necessary first step for significant rapprochement -- the rejection of the legacy of Kim Il-sung and prioritizing of the economy over defense. Six years after his father's death, there was no reason to believe Kim Jong-il would ever do this.
In fact, as it came out later, after Kim Dae-jung (but not Kim Jong-il) received the Nobel Peace Prize, the summit had been bought. South Koreans had slipped $ 500 million under the table for it. While Kim Dae-jung was looking to change history, Kim Jong-il was fundraising.
That is not to say that the Sunshine policy itself was all failure. An engagement approach to North Korea was long overdue if for no other reason than to tie the belligerent state down in talks and exchanges to reduce the threat of war.
In achieving this, it was necessary to avoid the usual tit-for-tat dealing with North Korea and give more than was received.
The failure was in the over-expectation. This was down to a lack of understanding of North Korea and the willingness to be seduced by the allure of reunification into believing the unbelievable -- that Kim Jong-il would go along with it.
At the heart of such failure was the customary fallacy among well-meaning democrats that opponents behave the way they do because our side had not been nice to them. There was complete failure to appreciate that North Korea actually viewed engagement as an admission of weakness and exploited it.
The Sunshine policy, nevertheless, led to very important attitude changes in the South about North Korea. By allowing South Koreans to be exposed to previously forbidden images and information about the North, the advocates of Sunshine ironically created a new generation that now doesn't care.
Despite the historical reality that their country was unified for 1,300 years before being split into North and South in their grandparents' day, young Koreans today are not interested.
The two countries have had nothing positive to do with each other for all of their life and their parents' lives.
The few contacts that have taken place have confirmed for South Koreans that there's nothing very interesting about North Korea.
It remains in the grip of a regime that doesn't look like loosening things up any time soon, and certainly not enough for them to drive across the border up to Pyongyang. Not that North Korea sounds that attractive for more than one visit.
Young southerners now take their honeymoons in New Zealand and summer holidays in Prague.
South Korea is a rapidly changing, highly competitive society. With the average price of an apartment in Seoul the equivalent of half a million dollars and the average annual household income $42,000, there's a lot to worry about. North Korea, in this private picture, has receded into irrelevance for Koreans in their 20s and early 30s.
