Kim Dae Jung, as the president of capitalist South Korea, flew to Pyongyang in June 2000 for the first ever summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. Two years and four months later, all the hopes engendered by that historic meetingwere shattered as Kim Jong Il was revealed to have betrayed all the promises he ever made.
With his death on Tuesday, Kim Dae Jung leaves a legacy that epitomizes the dreams, disappointment and failure to reunite the Korean peninsula and get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. He won the Nobel Peace Prize six months after resolving, in a joint declaration with Kim Jong Il, to resolve “humanitarian” issues, reopen borders, and unite families. Like every other attempt at rapprochement, however, those promises were meaningless.
South Korea under Kim Dae Jung’s “Sunshine policy” of reconciliation pumped hundreds of thousands of tons of fertilizer and food into North Korea every year, asking nothing in return. North Korea repaid the favor by forging ahead with a program for developing nuclear weapons with highly enriched uranium in blatant violation of an agreement reached with the U.S. at Geneva in 1994. At that time, the North made a show of shutting down the nuclear complex where it was producing nuclear devices with plutonium at their core.
Kim Dae Jung never abandoned Sunshine even after North Korea in October 2002 acknowledged the existence of the uranium program when pressed by a visiting U.S. delegation led by James Kelly, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia. Instead he strove, successfully, to persuade George W. Bush throughout the Bush presidency to give up the supposedly “hard-line” policy in which Bush called for “verification” of any claim made by Kim Jong Il
Nor was the collapse of the Geneva agreement the only disillusionment. Kim Dae Jung was revealed to have sanctified the transfer of $500 million to North Korea to persuade Kim Jong Il to agree to the summit in the first place. The question in the aftermath of that revelation was the extent to which the funds not only propped up Kim Jong Il’s regime but helped to fund his 1.1-million-man military establishment – and pay for the nuclear program.
Nor was the collapse of the Geneva agreement the only disillusionment. Kim Dae Jung was revealed to have sanctified the transfer of $500 million to North Korea to persuade Kim Jong Il to agree to the summit in the first place. The question in the aftermath of that revelation was the extent to which the funds not only propped up Kim Jong Il’s regime but helped to fund his 1.1-million-man military establishment – and pay for the nuclear program.
The Sunshine policy endured in the presidency of Kim Dae Jung’s successor, Roh Moo Hyun, who took office in February 2003, but South Koreans soon became disillusioned. In December 2007, a conservative, Lee Myung Bak, defeated another leftist by a lopsided majority. South Koreans wanted something in return for the forgiveness their governments had shown for North Korea’s broken promises. Sunshine faded into a sunset in which North Korea called Lee a “traitor” and “lackey” of the United States.
There was an incredible paradox in Lee’s election. The Bush administration for by then had shifted course. Christopher Hill, succeeding Kelly as U.S. nuclear envoy, worked out deals in six-party talks at which North Korea agreed to specific plans for disabling and dismantling its nukes. Kim Dae Jung accused Bush of having delayed reconciliation by his previous policies.
North Korea has renounced all those deals. The North tested a second nuclear device in May after firing off another long-range missile in April. Sunshine was a mirage in a nightmare in which firmness, in the form of United Nations sanctions and stronger measures if needed, remains the only valid, viable response to a dictatorship that exists to perpetuate its own harsh rule over its own people – and, if given the chance, all the Korean peninsula, North and South.
Donald Kirk, long-time reporter and writer on Korean issues, is the author of Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine, to be published in December.
