Executive Summary
A strong majority of South Koreans agree on the need to engage North Korea but there is no consensus on the most effective means. As the debate over how to deal with the northern brother intensifies, deep fissures are forming among the public. Significant generational and political shifts have transformed views in ways that could undermine U.S. policy in the region unless Washington develops a better understanding of the situation in Seoul.
The generation that lived through the Korean War is being supplanted by the generation that led the fight for democratisation in the 1980s. Younger South Koreans are less easily swayed by appeals to anti-communism and less reflexively pro-American.
They are more accustomed to prosperity and less fearful of North Korea, and thus more willing to shake up their country's system in the name of economic and social justice. They are more progressive and nationalistic in their views, although few are true followers of Pyongyang's ideology. This generation, now in its 30s and 40s, will dominate South Korean politics for years to come.
As a result of this generational shift, there has been a change in both the style and substance of South Korea's approach to North Korea. While the vast majority still view the North as a threat, confrontation has been replaced by an emphasis on cooperation and reconciliation. The removal of government restrictions on inter-Korean exchanges has led to an explosion of contacts, helping to demystify the North in South Koreans' eyes. Moreover, students are no longer being taught to fear Pyongyang as their parents were. A majority of citizens now see North Korea more as an object for dialogue and assistance.
While engagement of North Korea remains controversial, there is an emerging consensus that:
North-South economic cooperation can be mutually beneficial;
gradual reunification is preferable to sudden collapse and absorption;
war on the Korean Peninsula is unthinkable;
North Korea's nuclear program is undesirable and should be negotiated away if possible, but it is not directed at South Korea and is not in itself reason to end engagement; and
it is necessary to help the people of North Korea overcome their economic hardships.
At the same time, there is a growing divergence about:
the capacity of the Kim Jong-il regime to change;
the desirability of dealing directly with the North Korean government;
the proper way to approach North Korean human rights problems;
whether to reduce legal restrictions on information about and contact with North Korea; and
the degree of reciprocity that should be demanded from North Korea.
The changes in South Korea's perceptions of North Korea intensify the debate about the future of the alliance with the U.S. A clear majority of South Koreans still regard North Korea as a potential threat, even though they consider an invasion unlikely. Most do not want U.S. troops to leave the peninsula, although some seem to regard the alliance as necessary, as much to restrain Washington as to deter Pyongyang. A clear majority is uneasy with what it sees as the Bush administration's hard-line stance toward the North. Few support regime change. Most instead favour gradual reconciliation and reunification. This split is exacerbated by the lack of close ties between South Korea's new political leadership and the ascendant Republicans in Washington. Two separate U.S.-South Korean dialogues are taking place: the people out of power in Seoul are talking to the people in power in Washington, and vice versa.
It is not true, as alarmists on the right sometimes claim that South Korea is being taken down the path of socialism. Today's young people have a dual mindset about North Korea: they are more accepting of dialogue with the regime but do not embrace the system. However, as moderates are being drowned out by the more vocal extremes, these subtle distinctions are being lost. In a country and culture that has never been adept at accommodating diversity of opinion, the crucial question is whether it will be possible to overcome the "South-South conflict" (nam-nam galdeung) and develop a coherent approach to the North Korean problem.
Seoul/Brussels, 14 December 2004
Crisis Group Asia Report N°89 14 December 2004
Author
Peter Beck is the North East Asia Project Director of International Crisis Group.
This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.
While the Korean Peninsula is at times called the last bastion of the Cold War, profound changes have taken place over the last twenty years. The end of the superpower confrontation had vastly different effects on the two Koreas. In the North, the end of Soviet subsidies led to almost complete economic collapse, but with little discernible change in internal or external politics. During the same period, the South moved from dictatorship to democracy, and from a developing country to the world's twelfth largest trading nation. As a result, there is a newer generation of South Korean leaders with very different ideas than their elders about how to deal with their northern sibling. While North Korea's attempts to open to the outside world have had some impact on attitudes, domestic political and social changes in South Korea play a much greater role in explaining the shift in perspective.
Traditionally, the two Koreas have been locked in a struggle for legitimacy, with each claiming to represent the true government of the peninsula. North Korea based its legitimacy on anti-imperialistic nationalism and a peculiar form of socialism known as juche (self-reliance). In South Korea, nationalism was more problematic, given the high percentage of the ruling class that had collaborated with Japanese colonial rule and the country's dependence on its military alliance with the United States. Thus, military dictators -- Park Chung-hee (1961-1979) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987) -- used economic growth and anti-communism as the pillars to justify their rule. Left-wing nationalism, advocating reunification on North Korean terms, or questioning the U.S. military presence, were strictly forbidden under the National Security Law of this period. The transition to a democratic form of government in 1987 ushered in an era of greater freedom of speech and assembly, allowing new civil movements to blossom. One result was questioning about whether the life-or-death confrontation with North Korea should be abandoned in favour of a more cooperative relationship.
This re-evaluation was prompted by the thawing of the Cold War. When all the world's communist countries except Cuba refused to honour North Korea's call to boycott the Seoul Olympics in 1988, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo -- the first democratically elected leader since Park's 1961 military coup -- seized on the opening to pursue détente with the Communist Bloc. Roh launched a series of moves collectively known as "Nordpolitik". By the end of his term, he had established diplomatic relations with both the Soviet Union and China, achieved joint admission for both Koreas into the United Nations, and signed the first-ever direct agreement between North and South Korea in 1992, although its terms have never been implemented. The cumulative effect was to make "peaceful coexistence" with the North politically acceptable within South Korea for the first time.
Roh's successor, Kim Young-sam, assumed the presidency in 1993 as revelations of North Korea's nuclear ambitions were coming to the fore. An unprecedented flurry of negotiations between North Korea and the U.S. ensued, in which South Korea pushed hard to be included. Kim agreed to hold a summit with North Korean President Kim Il-sung, but it was cancelled due to the latter's sudden death. He did succeed in bringing about the four-party talks between North Korea, South Korea, the U.S. and China. While they achieved little of substance, they did establish the process of regular dialogue between the two Koreas. In 1995, North Korea revealed that it was suffering from severe food shortages, and the government of South Korea responded with food aid. Non-governmental contacts, however, remained largely restricted.
By the 1997 presidential election, the foundation had been laid for a restructuring of Seoul's approach to its long-time enemy in Pyongyang. The election gave a narrow victory to Kim Dae-jung, the septuagenarian opposition leader who was running for the fourth time. Throughout his years as a democracy campaigner, Kim had consistently advocated a more open policy toward the North, a stance that during the 1970s and 1980s had him labelled as a communist and made him the target for arrest and assassination attempts by South Korean governments. In power, he set about implementing his long-held dream in hopes of securing a legacy as the man who put Korea on the road to reconciliation and reunification. In doing so, he fundamentally transformed the way South Koreans view their northern counterparts...(Continued)