[Opinion] Impact of Sunshine Policy

President Kim Dae-Jung said on Monday that ``if South-North reconciliation and cooperative efforts break up, it means we will fall into a dangerous situation.`` This was said at the luncheon with the board of city-county-district assembly chairpersons right before the National Assembly passed the dismissal bill of Unification Minister Lim Dong-Won. As the nation`s highest ruler asserted that the nation, which is a political organization, is on the verge of emergent situation, it is a tremendous shock.

It is bit comforting since it implies that we can avoid `dangerous situation` as long as reconciliatory cooperation continues. We do not know where President bases his judgment that warns the danger of war. However, if the situation is serious enough to warn a dangerous situation, President should provide the ground of such a warning and should call for unity to gather strength for reconciliation and cooperation.

However, the problem is whether the sunshine policy, that is, the policy of reconciliation and cooperation advocated by President, is a way to prevent war or to increase the danger of war. If we analyze President`s statement, it means that North Korea is considering war, and that the prevention of war is depending on South Korea. If this is what is going on, we should seriously consider what we can do to prevent war.

One of the most important thing we can do is to think about the attitude of the nation`s highest ruler who has plenary power regarding the national security. Although it was during the time when he belonged to the opposition party, President Kim once shocked people confusing ruling system with the political community, by announcing in the New York Times that the U.S. armed forces in South Korea should retreat because of its function to protect the dictatorship.

Moreover, although it is now called `lower stage of federation` in relation to South-North issue, he once took up the position of `republics`, which was the same as the last part of the `Union of Soviet Socialist Republics`. All these things were insisted before he became President. The fact that he pointed out the possibility of North`s provocation of war and declared that North is still in an antagonistic relationship with South is fortunate as he recognize the reality.

Nevertheless, the effects of the sunshine policy in South Korea are still confusing. How some people understood the sunshine policy was revealed at the `8.15` delegation`s incident in Pyongyang. That is, how `reversed sunshine` weakens the deterrent. Some of the delegation probably might have had illusion of becoming a national hero impressed by the professional agitprop (agitation and propaganda) by the North. Surprisingly, all the delegation said that they realized their visit was a civilian exchange, and the North is also a society where people, who speak the same language with same appearance, live. From a perspective that has perceived the North Korean people as the beast with horns through the experiences of wars, it must have been surprising for them to discover that the same people live in North.

However, as we have seen through the breakdown of communist societies in the past, they are the people who live with the `absence of civil society`. While forgetting this fact, to consider them as economic competitors or discussion partners and to speak of the visit as the neutral civilian exchange is a naïve pastoral understanding.

Even when President talks about the possibility of war, it is questionable how they can perceive their visit to North as a post-political activity whether it was religious visit or economic visit. They, who are at the center of South Korean society, showed that they had a humanistic, peaceful and proud ethical consciousness. From the perspective of relationship logic among political units, however, it was a typical image of desolation, which free thinkers, who dream of a world without politics, could easily have.

Objective result that this kind of subjective attitude will bring up will be eventually connected to the weakening of efforts to move against war. We have many heroes. But, it is as if we do not have a nation. Reconciliatory cooperation of sunshine has brought only crisis.

Noh Jae-Bong (Former Prime Minister)