[Opinion] `Spies Still Exist?`

The aftermath of the `August 15 People`s Unification Grand Festival` is shaking the foundations of the administration that has been called DJP mutual aid. Whatever the situation has been recently, this makes one suspect that we have fallen in a trap set by North Korea. North Korea has been crying out `conservative right wing` and `opposition to unification`, intentionally aggravating the internal discord in the South, and appears to have used the `8.15 Festival` as an ignition. How is the North looking at the strife between the Democratic Party and the United Liberal Democrats Party after the firing of the Secretary of the Ministry of Unification, Im Dong-won? Are they toasting each other for the success of their plans?

After last year`s 6.15 South-North Joint Declaration, the place that should be experiencing all the discord and headaches should be the North – not us. According to the Sunshine policy, the North should be continuing to take off their `closed society mantle` and experiencing all the problems that follow from it just about now. Yet, the actual place where all the trouble is here, not the North. Why? Citing the difference between an open society and a closed one, a democratic structure and a autocratic one is the easy explanation. That`s like saying that we are making all the noise since we can say whatever we want in this society while over there they have to keep their mouth shut.

But the confusion we are currently experiencing does not seem to be the subject of such easy analysis. We are at a point where the very foundations of our democratic society is shaking. Even when planes fly by in the daylight and factions publicly supporting the North`s unification propaganda appear, the government hesitates to take any action. Recently, there is not even any talk of spies. If anyone should mention it, there would be a lot of people asking, `spies still exist?` In some cases, there may be persons who may yell that such talk belongs to the cold war era. Everyone seems to have lost all thought or awareness of spies as the society increasingly gets swept up in inconsequential squabbles. Did the North Korean spy really disappear into legend?

During the 1970s when West Germany was actively pursuing their East German policy, East Germany used the conciliatory atmosphere to deploy around 10, 000 spies in the South. Our situation probably is not that different. From every angle, the space for North Korean spies to maneuver has greatly expanded. Do we really think the North is just sitting around?

Yet, there has been no news of arrests recently from the public authorities. It is probably not that they don`t have the capacity to arrest them. More probably, they are being careful about being sensitive to the North`s reaction. It seems that the authorities probably think that announcing arrest of North Korean spies will only create unnecessary trouble in the South-North relations and that would be to no one`s advantage.

There is also the possibility that announcing arrests would contribute to a negative perception of the Sunshine policy. People would fee betrayed by the North to whom we have given all kinds of support, and that would naturally lead to questioning the effectiveness of the Sunshine policy.

Whatever the reasons may be, what kind of `Sunshine effect` is possible if the administration is putting all its energies into placating the North, even to the extent of hiding arrest of spies. It will only end up falling deeper into the North`s schemes. A clear example is the government believing a one page fax from the North and actually sending South Korean delegates to the `8.15 Festival`.

It is time for the administration to calmly assess the South-North relation. It may cause further problems if the administration overexerts itself in trying to achieve something with only one year remaining, actually ruining the achievements made so far. The South-North dialogue actually doesn`t seem all that urgent anymore. When one looks at the political situation around the Korean peninsula, it is not as if a dark cloud will immediately descend on us the minute the dialogue breaks off. Also, it is not as if the North will agree to the dialogue just because we hang on to them. We only end up looking desperate.

Any more instability may make both the administration and society collapse. It is more urgent to look inward and unify the country, instead of only looking at the North. The present administration`s priority should be to establish the basis for the next administration to carry on an effective North Korean policy.

Nam Chan-soon (Editorial Committee member)

Nam Chan-Soon chansoon@donga.com