Learning diary 4/5: rapprochements policies
Since the end of the Korean war, the unification has been one of the central issues on the peninsula, although treated vastly differently by the successive administrations in the South.
As a staunch anti-communist, Syngman Rhee always refused to recognized the legitimacy of the North and advocated unification by force, with the “March to the North Unification” movement. This rhetoric of unification, which disappeared under the Park administration, is part of three possible scenarios evoked by Kihl, Young-Hwan in Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform and Culture – namely, reunification by war, reunification by mutual consent, and reunification by default.
Syngman Rhee's also believed
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For the Noh administration, the use of anti-communism as a tool of control over the masses was no longer viable, and the changing international situation (exchange with communist countries, rise of China, normalization of relationships between the US and SU…) implemented a need for a new politic that would both legitimize his administration, stabilize the situation in the South, and assure South Korea stance on the international scene. Thus the implementation of the Nordpolitik, whose main goal was “building the Korean National Community (…) as an intermediary state (…) toward an eventual reunification” (Kihl, Young-Wan; 244) by opening trade channels with the North and setting up third-party talks. It seems South Korea's diplomacy was quite successful on the international stage since it allowed entry in the UN for both Koreas and a rapprochement with China and Soviet Union. However, North Korea seemed quite passive and unresponsive, which tends to be one of the characteristic of DPRK-ROK relationships, where North Korea is on the receiving …show more content…
The death of Kim Il-Sung dampened the situation even more, and it wasn't until Kim Dae-Jung's Sunshine Policy that the relationships between North and South had a revival. Kim Dae-Jung was maybe a bit more proactive there, expecting changes to come from the inside of Korea where the Nordpolitk may have been relying more on outside pressures. Diplomacy was an essential tool here, since one of the main goal was to rid South Korea of the remnants of the cold war by normalizing the relationships between the DPRK and the main powers, and by replacing the armistice with an actual peace treaty between North and