Trustpolitik on the Korean Peninsula: Dead or Dormant?

Before President Park Geun-hye of South Korea (the Republic of Korea or ROK) won the country’s top political office in December 2012, she campaigned on a commitment to improve inter-Korean relations in a gradual and principled way through “trustpolitik.” She opposed paying off North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) for any positive or constructive behavior. Park was clear that any type of engagement would be grounded in a firm military deterrence posture and the will to use force if pushed by the North. But at the same time she advocated a diverse array of substantive engagement tools, like family reunions, regular people-to-people exchanges (including tourism), targeted educational and humanitarian assistance for North Koreans, and the development of economic and technology training to improve human capital and societal development in the DPRK. Some of these were spelled out in her Dresden speech about a year after her inauguration.

Early in Park’s term, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se boldly claimed that trustpolitik “is the policy that will be in place for the remainder of Park’s presidency.” He spoke too soon, since trust between the two Koreas has plummeted even lower than imagined at the outset of the presidency, and the policy itself has been jettisoned in response to the DPRK’s nuclear test and missile launches in 2016. But trustpolitik was doomed from the start because of major flaws in its conceptualization and implementation. The major shortcoming is that the policy married improving inter-Korea relations with unification by absorption. Whoever wins the presidential election in 2017 should beware of making the same error.

Park’s approach to North Korea had several constructive elements that focused on people-to-people exchange and educational or technological training of North Koreans. Starting in summer 2013, Park tried to get the DPRK to agree to regular reunions of divided families, both as a way of thawing the frigid bilateral relationship and as a humanitarian action to help heal decades-old wounds on both sides of the 38th parallel. But Pyongyang was recalcitrant and withheld cooperation for two years, permitting only one set of meetings in October 2015 after numerous threats to cancel. North Korea links reunions to inter-Korean dynamics, making regularized meetings impossible. One thing all ROK governments can try to do in the future is refrain from any mention of politics when it comes to family reunions and induce the institutionalization of such gatherings. Otherwise, Pyongyang will find a reason to withhold family reunions, as it did after ROK Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo expressed concern that in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test in February 2016, family reunions might be even more difficult to arrange.

Most of the flaws in the policy of trustpolitik stem from over-ambition and under-preparation. Educational programs and exchanges are a good idea, but South Koreans themselves are prohibited by law from going to the North for educational or any other people-to-people exchanges (unless selectively sanctioned by the government). And of course, North Koreans can only enter the ROK as defectors. The government’s hold over inter-Korean relations makes trust-building nearly impossible since Pyongyang always reads political motives into any gesture from the South, and South Korean citizens too are skeptical of the government’s intentions. Since they live in a democracy, they seek alternatives to government initiatives. When there is no or little trust in or with the DPRK and within ROK society, the policy ideas and goals laid out in the Dresden speech become too high to reach.

Park’s constructive ideas belong to what are called non-military confidence-building measures (CBMs), which include political, economic, environmental, societal, and cultural CBMs. They can be used on their own or in tandem with military CBMs. In the case of the Koreas, political CBMs are not realistic at this point, but the other four types are applicable. The key is to set low expectations and take small steps forward to find common ground and common goals rather than unilaterally installing an aspirational goalpost.

By contrast, unification, a monumental process, has been the goalpost of trustpolitik. North Koreans never trusted any component CBM within trustpolitik and interpreted the policy simply as unification by absorption. They had no long-term incentive to participate even if short-term gains, like economic and technology assistance, were in their interest. With absorption as an end goal of engagement, trustpolitik left no room for common interests and mutual goals to be developed. Additionally, the Park administration has exacerbated the bitter divisiveness and distrust within the South Korean polity and simultaneously made unification synonymous with Park’s political legacy. The national treasury and political energy were poured into “unification bonanza” studies, programs, and projects within the ROK and with international partners. The desire to make the younger generations take unification to heart had the opposite effect--“unification burnout”--as people tired of hearing the mantra repeatedly. Of course, passionate talk about trustpolitik and bonanza got swallowed as Pyongyang launched missile after missile, boasted of testing a hydrogen bomb, and continued to snub not only the ROK and the United States but also China and the United Nations.

Whoever heads to the Blue House in 2018 will pursue some sort of engagement, even if disparate and halting. Doors to the DPRK will not be closed as they were during the Lee Myung-bak period. If the liberals win, an overt policy of engagement is likely, but not as generous and open-ended as during the presidencies of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun since North Korea itself is a different political entity under Kim Jong-un. Since Pyongyang’s nuclear test, repeated missile launches, and threats to destroy the ROK in the first half of 2016, both of the liberal parties have shifted to the right in their North Korea policy. The Minjoo Party, whose roots go back to the founding of the Sunshine Policy, is divided on how to deal with North Korea. The rise of conservative-leaning Kim Jong-in as interim head of the party in early 2016, who made hawkish statements about the DPRK, generated bitter infighting within the party.

Both the Minjoo Party and its coalition partner in the National Assembly, the People’s Party, advocate the lifting of the May 24 sanctions (which ban, among other things, all North-South trade and all aid projects), dialogue and people-to-people exchange with North Korea (including Mount Geumgangsan and Mount Baekdusan tours), the resumption of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (which Park’s government closed in February 2016 in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear test), the revitalization of stalled inter-Korean business relations, and a call for multilateral diplomatic negotiations (the six-party talks and four-party talks among the two Koreas, the United States, and China).

If Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party were to become president, it is likely that a revamped version of the Sunshine Policy will become the approach, but he would have to contend with Kim Jong-in and his supporters, who publicly stated that the Sunshine Policy is no longer valid. The liberals would face difficulty developing a coherent North Korea policy and strategy, given the daily tasks of internally conducting constant negotiations with several other parties, including the Justice Party, and externally holding difficult negotiations with a new U.S. president and administration, along with a disgruntled China over THAAD. But at the end of the day, regardless of who occupies the Blue House, North Korea’s actions and inactions will significantly shape the course of any policy on inter-Korean relations. Avoiding over-ambitious policies for which both Korean societies are not prepared and focusing on small steps toward de-escalation of tensions will prove practical. Paving a path toward inter-state and people-to-people dialogue without the monumental goalpost of unification as the sole endpoint will prove more constructive.