The sun goes down on the Sunshine Policy

South Korea's Unification Ministry has officially pulled the plug on the so-called Sunshine Policy of active engagement begun in the late 1990s under then-President Kim Daejung and carried on, with nearly all carrot and no stick, by his successor Roh Moohyun.

From Voice of America:

The South Korean Unification Ministry's annual report calls the Sunshine Policy of peaceful engagement with North Korea a failure.

The ministry's white paper, issued Thursday, contends a decade of cooperation, cross-border exchanges and billions of dollars in aid did not change Pyongyang's behavior or improve the lives of North Korean citizens.

Lee Jong-joo, a ministry spokeswoman, says South Korea's goal is to see North Korea prosper, but Seoul must respond appropriately to any provocations from Pyongyang.

While I can understand the pendulum swinging completely the other way under the Lee Myungbak administration, I'm loath to call Sunshine a "failure." In fact, when Kim Daejung was president, it was probably wise to at least try it, because what we were doing before wasn't getting us anywhere.

Here's what I wrote about Sunshine upon KDJ's death:

When he became president, he decided that it was time to shift gears vis-à-vis North Korea. Some four decades of mutual hostility had not made North Korea less threatening, more democratic, or any friendlier, and he thought it was time to try killing with kindness. Reach out to the North, try to integrate them, get political and social change to come from economic integration. And so was born the "Sunshine Policy."

Critics of the Sunshine Policy complain that after ten years, Kim Jong-il's regime is still standing. They complain that Roh Moohyun kowtowed so much to Pyongyang that Seoul's back was broken. And while I've been a harsh critic of Roh Moohyun, it is not Kim Daejung's fault that RMH was all carrot and no stick; I don't think, had he been allowed a second term, that KDJ would have been the same toward North Korea as his successor was.

Although I think right now we should pursue what Joshua at One Free Korea calls "Plan B," I find it a bit ironic that anti-Sunshiners (one professor at Yonsei called them "Moonshiners") say that because Sunshine didn't work to change North Korea over the past ten years, we should return to a hardline policy, which failed to work for forty years. Well, they don't say that last part.

Another reason I am not inclined to say Sunshine didn't work is that the greatest benefit of that intensive engagement may not yet have occurred:

I do believe, though, that engagement is important for showing a human face of the enemy. No matter how much the North tries to demonize the South or the Americans, the food aid and now the daily presence of South Koreans in North Korea — even a hermetically sealed part — engagement erodes that demonization. It may seem laughable today, but prior to democratization in South Korea, kids in the ROK learned that the North Koreans had horns and would kill them just as soon as look at them. The North had learned as bad or worse, but that type of propaganda no longer is capable of packing the same punch. It’s a joke now, even in the North.

I don’t know if engagement will have a desired effect. I think it’s possible that if there were a sufficient shake-up in the ruling apparatus (e.g., the sudden death of the Dear Leader) that certain factions might now be more confident than before that they can work with the South and the US. And when/if the South ever does take administrative control over a collapsed North, the reduced level of demonization will make it easier.

I fully expect the DPRK to go into a tizzy about this, and possibly threaten to close down factories, stop family reunions, or do some other things that sorta underscore perfectly that Sunshine needs to fade because it has failed to stop Pyongyang from grabbing Seoul by the gingkos whenever it wants and then throwing a temper tantrum.

Plan B

Over at One Free Korea, Joshua seems quite pleased with the Obama administration's announcement of targeted sanctions against North Korea. Indeed, they seem to be following his must-read "Plan B" almost to the letter (no pun intended):

The order, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, authorizes the blocking of assets of “any person” providing what Treasury calls “material support” for North Korea’s WMD proliferation, money laundering, counterfeiting, trade in luxury goods, bulk cash smuggling, and pretty much everything North Korea does that violates UNSCR 1718 or 1874, or the U.S. Criminal Code.

In addition to the new order, Treasury also imposed new sanctions against several North Korean entities under the existing Executive Order 13382. Below the fold, I’ve pasted the text of the Executive Order, President Obama’s letter forwarding the EO to the Speaker of the House, two Treasury press releases, and some remarks by OFK favorite Stuart Levey, all of which I’ve archived here to aid your research and mine.

My initial reaction is that the new EO gets it just right. It’s narrowly targeted at North Korea’s illicit activities, but it’s also broad enough to cover the main ones — arms and drug trafficking, money laundering, currency and pharmaceutical counterfeiting, and the squandering of its resources on luxury goods while North Korean children starve in the streets. This is a tough-yet-refined version of the Plan B I’ve been advocating since its earliest draft in 2006.

And since I have become convinced that this is the right thing to do at this time, I'm pleased as well. I hope these are implemented effective and given a chance to work. (And note that the "Plan B" link toward the bottom of the last paragraph means that Obama is trying the very things Joshua Stanton wrote in April 2009 that Obama would never try.)

It fits in nicely with my own theory on what to do about North Korea (when I'm not bemoaning that nothing can be done about North Korea), which can be summed up thus:

For me the model is kill with kindness, don’t be a doormat, and be ready to smack ‘em down if they get out of line. How’s that for a North Korean policy?

I call that the hybrid Sunshine-plus-Kick-'em-Where-the-Sun-Don't-Shine Approach.