Kim Dae-jong met Kim Jon-il in June of 2000 in what became the first and only meeting between the leaders of that divided country. Whilst Kim Jong-il promised a reciprocal visit to the South that meeting never took place. Kim's successor Roh Moo-hyun is on the threshold of a second summit a little more than 5 months before he will leave office in February of 2008 by walking across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea. Becoming the first President of South Korea to do so.
That first meeting came about because of Kim Dae-jong's willingness to view North Korea and its leaders as something more than a pariah state. President Kim sought a new approach one he called the
Sunshine Policy. He believed that it was better to engage the North Koreans in ways that would ease tensions between the two Korea's rather than continuing with Cold War policies in place since the end of the Second World War which had resulted in overt and covert confrontations, but in terms of policy lead nowhere. Kim's Sunshine Policy had three tenants
# No armed provocation by the North will be tolerated.
# The South will not attempt to absorb the North in any way.
# The South actively seeks cooperation.
Dealings with North Korea are never straight forward and always difficult especially when armed engagements take place as happened in 2002 when elements from both navies became involved in a shooting incident which left 5 South Korean sailors dead. Or when the Bush administration accused the North of being part of an
Axis of Evil which lead the North Koreans to break-off all contact with the South. North Korea's withdrawal
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty resulted in the emergence of the
Six Party Talks consisting of North and South Korea, Russia, China, Japan and the United States. The Six Party Talks resulted in little being accomplished until the North Koreans test fired an underground nuclear device
October 9, 2006. Talks resumed in December of 2006 with an agreement being reached on February 13, 2007 which on its face brought back the basic tenants of the
Agreed Framework which was negotiated by the Clinton administration.
Will this summit result in any tangible agreements between the Korea's? Interactions between the two countries have really been a one way street. Every step forward has resulted from the South's willingness to provide North Korea with huge amounts of economic and humanitarian aide which in actual policy terms has resulted in very little being given back. So is the summit a waste of time?
If one were to look at it from the perspective of a Westerner you would logically conclude that this summit will only result in the South Koreans providing further aide to the North getting nothing in return. Yet a Korean would tell you just the opposite stating that they are one people and one nation and that it is their obligation to help their fellow countrymen as well as to further ease tensions between the two adversaries.
