Free Republic

South Korea Formally Declares End to Sunshine Policy Steve Herman | Seoul 18 November 2010 South Korea Lee Pung-no, center, weeps as he hugs with his North Korean daughters during the Separated Family Reunion Meeting at Diamond Mountain in North Korea, 03 Nov 2010 The South Korean Unification Ministry's annual report calls the Sunshine Policy of peaceful engagement with North Korea a failure. The ministry's white paper, issued Thursday, contends a decade of cooperation, cross-border exchanges and billions of dollars in aid did not change Pyongyang's behavior or improve the lives of North Korean citizens. Lee Jong-joo, a ministry spokeswoman,...

So now it's official: North Korea did it. In the early morning hours of March 26 an explosion tore through the hull of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, which was sailing in waters not far from the disputed maritime boundary with the North. The 1,200-ton patrol boat split in two and sank, and 46 sailors lost their lives. The cause of the disaster wasn't immediately obvious. No one claimed responsibility for an attack, and some sort of accident was, of course, within the realm of possibility. So the South Korean government launched a probe to figure out what happened....

N.Korea Still Expects Payment for Summit North Korea is still demanding rice and fertilizer in return for an inter-Korean summit, even as it keeps sending increasingly urgent messages to Seoul to bring such a summit about. Since a secret meeting between South Korean Labor Minister Yim Tae-hee and Kim Yang-gon, the director of the North Korean Workers' Party's United Front Department, in Singapore in October, "North Korea has kept asking us for a huge amount of economic aid in return for arranging a meeting" between President Lee Myung-bak and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, a South Korean government source said...

Ain't No Sunshine Kim Dae-jung may have been a democrat, but the late South Korean president was no saint. His true legacy will be one of utter failure in dealing with his northern neighbor. BY SUNG-YOON LEE | AUGUST 24, 2009 Since his death on Aug. 18, Kim Dae-jung has been celebrated as a "great leader." Delivering his eulogy at Kim's state funeral on Aug. 23, South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo called the former president "a great leader of modern history," one whose "sacrifices, dedication, and devotion allowed freedom, human rights, and democracy to fully blossom in Korea." North...

The sunset of South Korea's 'sunshine policy' Two leaders reached out to the North and got nothing but disappointment and lies. By Donald Kirk August 20, 2009 No South Korean leader generated such dreams as did Kim Dae-jung, who died on Tuesday. His five-year presidency, and his "sunshine policy" of reconciliation with North Korea reached its spectacular height in June 2000, when he flew to Pyongyang for the first-ever inter-Korean summit. North Korean "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il hosted him in an atmosphere of confidence that the half-century of war and confrontation between the two Koreas was nearing an end....

Link to Japanese story. Breaking initially from South Korean news organization Yonhap about 30 minutes ago Said former President died in a "mountain climbing" accident. Also speculating suicide.This was the architect of the "Sunshine Policy" of appeasement toward North Korea. Good friend of Clintons. BREAKING

N.Korea Blames South for Train Test Cancellation North Korea's state-run media on Monday put the blame for the Stalinist country’s unilateral cancellation of a cross-border train test run squarely on South Korea. The Workers’ Party daily or Rodong Shinmun in an editorial warned unless the maritime border between the two Koreas “is clearly delineated” -- i.e. redrawn as the North Korean military demands -- “a third or fourth clash in the West Sea could happen any time." Alluding to the collapse of talks between top brass from the two Koreas earlier this month over their failure to agree safe passage...

Seoul and Washington closer to divorce By Lee Kyo-kwan SEOUL - South Korea and the US have drifted so far apart on North Korea policy there is now speculation the longtime partners are getting close to divorce. Kurt Campbell, former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific, reportedly likened the two to a king and queen who live separately but pretend to be happy before their subjects. The allies do not want to announce their divorce because it would have enormous consequences, he said at a seminar in Washington on February 27. It is believed US...

N. Korean Defector Calls on U.S. to Stand ToughNorth Korean defector and Chosun Ilbo journalist Kang Chol-hwan called on U.S. leaders to reject any South Korean requests for aid to the Stalinist country. In an article for the Wall Street Journal titled "Give Us an 'Eclipse Policy,'" Kang said there were many signs that North Korea is faced with imminent regime collapse just as it was in 1998. Kang said the food crisis was affecting even North Korea's ruling class, with reports that food rationing has been curtailed even in Pyongyang, and this was probably the reason the North asked...

  May 13, 2005 No sunshine yet over North Korea By Andrei Lankov For half a century, the worst fear of the South Korean government and people alike was that one day they would be conquered by their Northern brethren. In summer 1950 they saw how easily the North Korean tanks rolled into the streets of their cities, and the persistent fear of a new Korean War was the single most important factor in South Korean politics from the 1950s until the 1980s. But now a very different kind of fear reigns supreme in Seoul. The South Koreans are...

Kim rains on 'Sunshine Policy' By Jaewoo Choo SEOUL - North Korea's announcement last week that it possesses nuclear weapons has dealt a devastating blow to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's government. Ever since entering the Blue House in 2003, Roh has vigorously pursued a lenient, and to an extent benign, policy toward the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, even to the detriment of his own nation's half-century-old alliance with the United States. The South Korean president has on numerous occasions emphasized that his North Korea policy remains in line with that of his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, known...

N. Korean Missile Engineer in South Applies for Asylum in U.S. It was learned Saturday that a couple that came to South Korea as defectors from North Korea has applied for exile in the United States. A diplomatic source in Washington said 58-year-old Lee Bok-gu and his wife Lee Sun-hui (not their real names), who fled North Korea in 1997 and came to the South in 1999, have applied with U.S. authorities for exile. There have been cases in which defectors who have escaped from the North have applied for asylum in the U.S. through a third country, but this...

Armies of the North Philip Gourevitch talks about North Korea, and its President, Kim Jong Il. Posted 2003-09-01 This week in the magazine, Philip Gourevitch writes about the North Korean dictatorship and its role in the world’s political order. Here he discusses with The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson the unparalleled cult of personality around North Korea’s President, Kim Jong Il, and the threat that the country poses to international peace. AMY DAVIDSON: How brutal is the North Korean government? PHILIP GOUREVITCH: It’s one of the most brutal governments on earth. One of the difficulties in assessing the nature of existence...

Vollertsen Makes Scene at Assembly Hearing by Kwon Dae-yeol (dykwon@chosun.com) The German human rights activist Norbert Vollertsen walked out of a National Assembly hearing Tuesday after a lawmaker from the new party started shouting at one of Vollertsen's fellow witnesses. The hearing was part of an audit of the National Police Agency, and focused on the violence inflicted by North Korean reporters against Vollertsen and rightist activists at the Daegu Universiade games, as well as an Aug. 30 attack by about 50 leftist activists against a retired military official, Seo Jeong-kap, outside the Chosun Ilbo headquarters. Vollertsen and Seo were...

More Sunshine Needed Tuesday, August 5, 2003; Page A14 YESTERDAY Chung Mong Hun, a top executive of the South Korean Hyundai conglomerate, threw himself from the 12th floor of his company's headquarters. He left behind several notes, including one requesting that his ashes be scattered over Diamond Mountain, a loss-making North Korean holiday resort set up by Hyundai. It was a fitting request. For the past several years, Mr. Chung and his father had spent hundreds of millions of dollars in North Korea, some on ludicrous "investments" such as Diamond Mountain, some directly on payments to the North Korean government....

No more sunshine Published: August 5 2003 5:00 | Last Updated: August 5 2003 5:00 For over a decade, the world's dealings with North Korea have been marked by tactical retreat in the face of blackmail. Today, as in 1994, the blackmail is nuclear: the US and its Asian allies are supposed to support the regime financially and politically in exchange for its promise to abandon a nuclear weapons programme it was never supposed to have had in the first place. The latest victim (and former practitioner) of this kind of unsavoury bargaining with North Korea is Chung Mong-hun, the...

/begin my Freepranslation N. Korea: a new "mobile gulag" was created Deep inside the valley of the Nang-rim Mountains... impossible to be detected by satellites N. Korean defectors advanced the claim that N. Korea created a mobile gulag for political prisoners deep inside the valley of the Nang-rim Mountains, which is located along Young-wol, Dae-hung, and Maeng-san in south Ham-kyung province. This place cannot be picked up from satellite surveillance, according to them. This was disclosed to S. Korean reporters by three N. Korean defectors, Kang Chol-hwan, Ahn Hyuk, Lee soon-ok and Yun Hyun, the director of the Citizen's Alliance...

Feburary 10, 2003 / Vol. 161 No. 5 The Cost of Sunshine Allegations of paying for rapprochement between North and South Korea taint President Kim's greatest achievement BY BRYAN WALSH South Korea's leaders insist that the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula can be defused by maintaining peaceful dialogue with North Korea's erratic dictator Kim Jong Il. But black clouds fell across the South's "Sunshine Policy" last week. First, a special envoy sent by Seoul to Pyongyang was rebuffed—the Dear Leader, it seems, was too busy touring the nation's fallow farms. Then North Korea, responding to U.S. President George W....

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea (news - web sites)'s main opposition party asked President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites) on Thursday to clear up suspicions that his government spent nearly $200 million to "buy" its crowning achievement: a historic summit with North Korea (news - web sites) that helped Kim win the Nobel Peace Prize. Allegations of payoffs to the North first arose last year but grew more substantial with media reports that a subsidiary of the Hyundai business group sent funds to North Korea about a week before the summit. On Thursday, government auditors confirmed that Hyundai...