September 03, 2008

President Lee Myung-bak, third from right in the front row, talks to participants at the J-Global Forum yesterday morning at the Shilla Hotel before the main event. By Kim Sang-seon

At a meeting of scholars and journalists from around the world yesterday, President Lee Myung-bak expressed skepticism over the effectiveness of the past liberal administrations’ engagement policy toward North Korea.

Lee spoke briefly with participants at the J-Global Forum yesterday morning before the main panel discussion.

Asked what he thought about the Sunshine Policy of engagement with the North pushed forward by the Kim Dae-jung administration, Lee said, “It is a good policy, in principle. The intention to reconcile with and open up North Korea is good. The problem, however, is that the outcome was not what we had anticipated.”

The engagement policy, first adopted by President Kim Dae-jung a decade ago and taken on by the Roh Moo-hyun government, gets the name “Sunshine” from the Aesop fable in which the sun and the wind compete to remove a man’s coat. The policy is designed to warm the reclusive communist country with economic assistance and dialogue.

Referring to the origin of the Sunshine Policy, Lee said, “When it was warm, [the North] should have taken its coat off, but it didn’t. [The South], which was trying to undress [the North], removed its coat instead.”

The forum, hosted by the Joong-Ang Ilbo and the Yumin Cultural Foundation at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, brought some 30 international affairs scholars and journalists from seven countries to explore the theme, “New Asia: America’s Role.” It was the 11th meeting of its kind.

At the forum, South Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator urged the North to resume the disablement of its main nuclear reactor and to agree on a verification regime.

“The North Korean announcement appears to be a typical tactic,” said Kim Sook, referring to Pyongyang’s announcement last week that it had decided to halt its extraction of spent fuel rods from its weapons-grade plutonium-producing reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear facility.

“I don’t believe the U.S. has moved the goal posts” by demanding a rigorous verification protocol, subsequently prompting Pyongyang’s move, said Kim. He said that the importance of verification has been consistently stressed at the six-party talks since October 2007.

Kim also urged Japan to participate in economic and energy assistance to the North that was promised in return for the completion of the disablement process.

In their keynote speeches delivered in the morning, Representative Eni Faleomavaega, chairman of the U.S. House Asia-Pacific subcommittee; National Assembly Representative Chung Mong-joon of Korea’s Grand National Party; Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a lawmaker from Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party; and Yoichi Fu-nabashi, editor-in-chief and columnist of Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, said the next U.S. administration should pay more attention to Asia, as the Bush government’s foreign policy had been focused on the Middle East.

In his welcome address to the forum, Chairman Hong Seok-hyun of the JoongAng Ilbo noted the U.S. role in the Asian region used to be symbolized by its “hard power,” but “the new role crystallized into soft power.”

“We need to have policies that advocate such values as democracy and human rights. To meet this end, we also need the political flexibility that could see former enemies join hands,” he said.

“There is a chance of replacing the narrow nationalism and obsessive competition of the past with new regional relationships,” Hong said.

By Ser Myo-ja Staff Reporter [myoja@joongang.co.kr]