탈냉전기 노태우 정부의 대북정책 정책연합의 불협화음과 전환기 리더십의 한계

Abstract

President Roh, Tae-woo was effective at playing the diplomatic game with the former socialist countries: the so called NordPolitik. In addition, between 1990 and 1991 his North Korea policies were so effective, especially South Korea’s successful 1991 UN membership drive, that North Korea gave up its decades-long One-Korea policy and was forced to also join the UN as an independent member state. However, the Roh Adminstration failed to consolidate the progress it had made with North Korea during this period into concrete policy options, in particular as regards inter-korean military confrontation. The failure was mainly due to splits among conservative bureaucrats. During Roh's lame duck session the shocking ‘mendacious report incident’ exposed the conservative bureaucrats’ defiance against Roh’s North Korea engagement policy. In this incident, a high-ranking member of the Prime-Ministerial talks with North Korea in Pyongyang replaced a presidential message that would have allowed concessions with a fabricated one that called for a halt to the talks. This revealed how Roh’s North Korea engagement policy had not been institutionalized but rather had been dependent on his individual leadership. In addition, Roh’s approach was not ideologically consistent. While his engagement policy should have been based on liberalism, in many cases they were based on realism and overemphasized the role of the government while excluding all other potential actors. He, especially overemphasized South Korea’s role as the go between for all communication with North Korea and thus excluded the role of multilateral dialogue or bilateral North Korea-Japan and North Korea-US dialogue. North Korea viewed this approach as an attempt at isolating it and thus opposed South Korea’s leadership role in the Peninsula. As a result while the Roh Administration’s NordPolitik was successful, its North Korea policy, which should have been a part of Nordpolitik, was not successful and failed to continue after his administration.