President Yoon Suk-yeol has called for ‘proactive’ steps in bringing about changes in the North through ideas of freedom
By Park Chan-kyong
August 23, 2024
Credits @FFHR.CZ
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s new plan seeking reunification with the North has been hailed by his government as a “practical” policy but analysts warn its promotion of human rights and perceived goal of regime change could heighten tensions with Pyongyang.
Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho told a press briefing on Thursday that the unification doctrine articulated by Yoon last week took into account factors such as the North’s ongoing development of nuclear weapons.
“Reflecting the realities … with North Korea’s advancement of nuclear and missile capabilities, it’s a deteriorating human rights situation and it’s an abandonment of the idea of unification and the Korean nation, the government presents practical strategies that we can carry out,” Kim told journalists.
In his speech on Liberation Day on August 15 marking the end of Japan’s 1910-1945 rule over Korea, Yoon emphasised the need to expose North Koreans to ideas of freedom by providing them with access to outside information.
“We must be more proactive in expanding the value of freedom to the North and inducing substantive changes. Above all, we will take a multifaceted approach to significantly improve human rights in North Korea,” Yoon said.
Yoon also proposed the creation of an inter-Korean working group to address a range of issues including tension reduction, economic cooperation and climate change.
Kim told the media despite Pyongyang’s efforts to suppress foreign influence, North Koreans have been secretly watching and sharing South Korean dramas. He also referred to a law passed by the North last year prohibiting using South Korean-style language.
In 2020, Pyongyang passed a law banning foreign cultures and ideas, imposing harsh punishments on those caught consuming or distributing them.
Kim also emphasised the Yoon administration’s doctrine reflected South Korea’s constitution on the indivisibility of the Korean peninsula and the pursuit of peaceful reunification under a free democracy.
However, analysts say Yoon’s doctrine represented a shift from the South’s traditional reunification strategy, which has been based on mutual respect and exchanges.
“Yoon’s reunification formula marks a departure from the existing approach as it seeks changes in the North despite the lack of reconciliation,” Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told This Week in Asia.
“Regardless of the South’s intentions, the North is likely to perceive this as a hostile move, viewing it as an attempt by the South to instigate regime change by exposing North Koreans to outside information.”
In 1989, Seoul mooted the “Korean National Community Reunification Formula”, calling for a two-stage reunification process. Under this policy, the first stage entailed a confederation by building inter-Korean economic and social communities followed by a final stage of a unified Korea under one government.
Despite his initial scepticism, the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il found some similarities between Seoul’s proposal and Pyongyang’s concept of reunification through a Koryo (Korea) confederation.
This understanding led to a historic inter-Korean summit between him and the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in 2000, ushering in a reconciliation phase and bilateral exchanges.
However, the detente did not survive the conservative shift in South Korea’s politics in 2008.
Reconciliation resumed under former liberal President Moon Jae-in but the failure of the 2019 summit in Hanoi between former US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-il’s successor and son, Kim Jong-un, halted progress on exchanges between the two Koreas.
Koh Yu-hwan, an emeritus political science professor from Dongguk University, said Seoul’s new unification policy was openly aiming to create divisions between North Koreans and their regime through campaigns promoting freedom and human rights. “This contradicts the South’s offer for dialogue,” he added.
The policy is likely aimed at rallying conservative support behind Yoon, who has faced low approval ratings and mounting calls for investigations into several scandals including one involving his wife Kim Keon-hee, according to Koh.
Lim Eul-chul, a senior analyst at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said South Korean authorities likely thought that Pyongyang could be losing its grip on the population, making it an opportune moment to push for reunification through absorption.
“But it’s another matter whether the South can achieve this,” he cautioned.
Earlier this year, Kim Jong-un declared that inter-Korean ties had become permanently fixed as relations between two hostile states, effectively repudiating the reunification goal governing inter-Korean ties since 1991.
In recent months, tensions have flared with the North launching trash-filled balloons across the border in retaliation for anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent by South Korean activists, many of whom were former defectors.
In response, South Korea resumed propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers along the border.
Source: scmp.com
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