Lee stated ‘The most important thing … is to remove threats to peace on the Korean Peninsula through denuclearisation and to build mutual trust between the South and the North … A unified Korea will pose no threat to any countries [but will] contribute greatly to world peace. I think my role during the remainder of my term is to lay the groundwork for that day to come’.
In another sign on 30 August Lee Myung-bak replaced his long-serving hard-line unification minister Hyun In-taek.
Throughout his term Lee has had the bad habit of choosing cronies for plum jobs, and his new unification minister, Yu Woo-ik, is no exception. A geography professor, originally famous as the originator of Lee’s bizarre campaign pledge to build a nationwide canal network, Yu served as Lee’s chief of staff, and more recently as ROK ambassador in China. In that capacity he had contacts with North Korea, which he reportedly kept up even after leaving his post in May. One wonders in what capacity he did so, as this is illegal under the National Security Law. The Lee administration has come down hard on other private citizens who have put out feelers to Pyongyang.
No sooner nominated, Yu uttered the F word which is emerging as code for the policy volte-face now under way: promising to ‘ponder whether there is the need for flexibility in areas necessary for the practical development of inter-Korean relations’. Another new appointee, Kim Tae-woo, also used the F word after taking the helm in August at the Korean Institute for National Unification (KINU), the main government think-tank on the North. On 30 August Kim told the semi-official newsagency Yonhap that ‘it is important for the government to show more flexibility without undermining its principles’.
Such flexibility was soon apparent in deed as well as word, though in a small way so far. Hong Joon-pyo, the chairman of the conservative ruling Grand National Party (GNP), visited the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), just north of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), on 30 September. With about 123 Southern (mostly small) firms employing some 47,000 Northern workers, this is the only inter-Korean joint venture still operating.
Hong — a maverick backbencher, whose election in July was a rebuff to Lee Myung-bak — is among those pushing for a change of line on the North. It was he who on August 28 bluntly told the President, over breakfast, that Hyun In-taek had to go.
Hong’s trip across the border contrasts with the situation just a month ago. On August 26 the Ministry of Unification (MOU) refused a request by a National Assembly special committee on inter-Korean affairs to visit the KIC; even though Southern SMEs operating there had requested the visit, to plead their case for financial leniency given the problems they face. 40 such firms wrote to MOU on 31 August requesting deferral of debt repayments because chilly inter-Korean relations have adversely impacted their businesses. They might get short shrift now, but conversely may hope to thrive in the emerging thaw.
Even before Hong’s trip was announced, there were indications of a new approach in Seoul towards the KIC. That it has survived at all is a small miracle. In the past the North has from time to time harassed it with border and other restrictions. As for the South, some wanted to close it after last year’s two Northern attacks; fearing Pyongyang might use the hundreds of South Koreans working there as hostages (this has not in fact happened). Lee Myung-bak has kept it open but restricted its expansion; the original plan was for it to grow much larger.
On 20 September MOU said the South government will revive plans, on hold since last year, to spend US$21 million to build a fire station and emergency medical centre in the KIC. To have delayed this of all things was crass and self-defeating. As the JoongAng Ilbo reported, currently there is only a makeshift fire-fighting room in a dormitory for Southern managers. Yet two-thirds of the ROK firms in the zone work in sectors like chemicals or textiles which are vulnerable to fire. The new fire station, and a medical centre with ten beds and as many doctors and nurses — generous staffing indeed — are both due for completion and opening in 2012.
In addition, on 25 September Yonhap reported that the ROK is considering repairing recent flood damage affecting roads to the KIC from the adjacent eponymous Kaesong city along which the 47,000 Northern workers commute.
With regard to multilateral cooperation too, South Korea is showing its change of tack toward the North.
Rhetoric regarding the trilateral pipeline from Russia remains positive. Widespread power cuts across the South on 15 September caused a surge of alarm and anger, prompting the minister responsible to resign a fortnight later. Such concerns help explain the enthusiasm in Seoul for the idea of a gas pipeline from Russia, even though the fact that it would cross North Korea creates other vulnerabilities.
In New York on 23 September President Lee was asked about the pipeline project. He called it ‘win-win for everyone involved … I do not consider this a far-fetched dream’; adding that ‘good progress’ is being made in talks between Russia and North Korea. It remains to be seen at what point such talks become three-way.
Various North–South meetings — including two meetings between the two Koreas’ nuclear envoys in July (on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Bali) and in September (at Beijing’s Chang An Club) — also point to the possibility that the long-stalled nuclear Six Party Talks — they last met in 2008 — may yet rise from the dead in the coming months.
Overall, Lee Myung-bak’s volte-face prompts two thoughts. If the Northern pipeline is such a good idea, then why on taking office in 2008 did he decide not to proceed with several equally win-win planned North-South projects — joint mining, shipbuilding, fisheries and more — which his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun had signed up to just months before in October 2007?
Second, there is no guarantee that the North will reciprocate, or soon. Mistrust of Lee runs deep in Pyongyang. Rather than prop up a leader seen as hostile, who even on his home turf is becoming a lame duck, Kim Jong-il may elect to wait for South Korea’s next president — Lee is not allowed a second term — who will be elected in December 2012. For Lee this may be a case of too little, too late.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance consultant, writer and broadcaster on Korean affairs.
A longer version of this article first appeared at, and is used with the kind permission of, NewNations.com.