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Analysis: Inter-Korean Ties Hinge on Seoul Election

Council on Foreign Relations

December 17, 2007
Author: Jayshree Bajoria

The presidential front-runner in South Korea’s December 19 elections, Lee Myung-bak, has said he will be less tolerant (Reuters) of communist North Korea if it fails to give up its nuclear weapons. Lee’s conservative Grand National Party seeks greater economic openness from North Korea, as well as concrete evidence that it is disarming its nuclear weapons program. Lee says he wants to reinvigorate military cooperation (Economist) with the United States. U.S. President George W. Bush echoed many of the same points in a December 7 letter (CNN) to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. It goes without saying that the push makes the regime in Pyongyang uneasy. North Korea ranks as the world’s least free economy on the Heritage Foundation’s 2007 Index of Freedom, and its record with regard to nuclear issues needs no embellishment.

Conservatives have been leading in the opinion polls ahead of the liberal ruling party, United New Democratic Party. The party’s candidate, Chung Dong-young, has promised to carry on the “Sunshine Policy” of reconciliation and economic cooperation, which was introduced in the late 1990s under the presidency of Kim Dae-jung and continued by current President Roh Moo-jyun.

Chung has pledged to fulfill promises made by Roh to Pyongyang at October’s inter-Korean summit: an expansion of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and improvements in North Korea's roads and railways. But Roh’s critics claim Seoul has been too soft on the North. Writing in the New York Sun, longtime Korea watcher Donald Kirk calls the peace treaty a “gimmick” by the North to “receive enormous quantities of aid while giving very little in return.” According to Andy Jackson, a professor at Ansan College in South Korea, the state-run Korean Development Bank estimates the cost of Roh’s proposed economic package at over $50 billion.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.