How to Connect Korea’s Rise with South-North Reconciliation?: Implications on South Korea’s Public Diplomacy

Abstract

South-North relation has not shown any fundamental changes and meaningful progress since Korea became a divided country. Some may say that North Korea’s instability and collapse would be a breakthrough. It seems, however, not be so rational choice, given the regime/system durability of North Korea. So, we should find out an optimal answer for ‘real’ South-North reconciliation, considering both of dynamics and potential instability of Pyongyang. North Korea has continuously transformed its strategy toward South Korea: (1) communization by armed forces (1950s~1960s), (2) sophistication of the strategy (1970s~early 1980s), (3) transformation into defensive strategy (mid 1980s~1990s), (4) flexible combination of offense and defense (since late 1990s). During this process, political ideology based on the ‘Juche Idea’ and the ‘Theory of Revolutionary Family’ has strongly contributed to regime survival of North Korea. Other factors, such as lack of experience of North Korean in political democracy and market economy, accumulated ‘know-how’ of people to endure long-standing economic difficulties, reassessment of Russia and China about Pyongyang’s strategic value since mid1990s, also have been dynamics of Pyongyang’s survival. We should, however, also take account of various factors including structural failure of North Korea’s economy, distorted party-military relation, socio-economic changes, the possibility of neighboring countries’ policy change, etc. that could induce regime/system instability in the future. There exist various scenarios on North Korea’s future including comprehensive reform and regime/system collapse. North Korean leadership may well know about the latent scenarios of instability. For this reason, Pyongyang has tried to realize the improvement and the diplomatic normalization with the U.S., struggling to block penetrative effects of engagement policy of Seoul. The North Korean leadership may well know about the latent scenarios of instability. For this reason, Pyongyang has tried to realize the improvement and the diplomatic normalization with the U.S., struggling to block penetrative effects of engagement policy of Seoul. Since late 1990s, Pyongyang began to skillfully adjust its own strategy, aiming at short-/mid-term regime stability and optimization of its policy toward Seoul as well as neighboring countries. For realizing ‘real’ reconciliation between two Koreas, we should accept that there are still deep distrust and hostility in Korean peninsula. We have to understand the fact that Pyongyang still worries about the possibility of extreme regime instability. Given these facts Seoul need to take a more flexible approach through various public diplomacy measures. For example, Park administration can utilize brand-images of South Korea for inducing regional/international support to its reconciliation/unification policy. In this context, North Korea may also be a target of public diplomacy. Park administration needs to alleviate and relax North Korean leadership’s worry about regime security. Seoul should take incremental approaches with patience, transforming anti-South Korea sentiments of North Koreans. For this, the new government must try to aggregate and integrate opinions of the people.