Abstract
The Republic of Korea’s (ROK or South Korea) relationship to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has long been, and continues to be, hotly debated in both political and academic discourse in South Korea and beyond. However, most studies dealing with the subject primarily focus on the general alignment of the North Korea policies of the various South Korean administrations, assess the relative success of these policies in view of the underlying strategy (engagement vs. containment), or analyze particular issues within the ROK’s relationship to North Korea. While these issues are without doubt important, several aspects of South Korea’s relations with the North have thus far been largely excluded from analysis. This chapter addresses one of those aspects, namely the continuities and changes in South Korea’s policy-making structure vis-à-vis the DPRK. Specifically, the study addresses the question of how democratic these policy-making processes have been since South Korea’s formal democratization in 1987. To answer this, the chapter first touches upon the nexus between national division and democratization. The following section then provides a snapshot of the continuities and changes in South Korea’s (North Korea) policy-making structure during the Sixth Republic. Building on these elaborations, the subsequent section then identifies the main actors and institutions involved in this policy-making process, discussing the role of the president and his personal aides, the advisory organs such as the National Security Council, the Ministry of Unification, and the National Intelligence Service. This debate provides a prerequisite for a more comprehensive discussion of the main shortcomings that are to be observed in the ROK’s decision-making process on North Korea. The main argument of the chapter is fairly simple: while South Korea has certainly entered the stage of mature democracy, the ROK’s policy-making on North Korea still does not abide by a democratic process. While different actors and institutions have been centrally involved in this process, the policy-making structure has remained highly closed, personalized, and informal, thus constituting a serious deficit in democratic quality.
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Notes
- 1.
This (modified) listing is taken from: European Commission (2003): Policy Formulation and Implementation, available at: http://www.eltis.org/sites/eltis/files/kt9b_wm_en_6.pdf
- 2.
- 3.
The National Unification Board (NUB) was the precursor to the Ministry of Unification. Established in 1969 by Park Chung-hee, the NUB was enhanced to the current Ministry of Unification in February 1998.
- 4.
The first round of inter-Korean dialogue broke down in 1973, and it took another 15 years before inter-Korean relations were resumed on a high political level.
- 5.
In 1994, the Republic of Korea (ROK) implemented a significant revision of the intelligence agency’s charter, which effectively limited its activities. As a result, an “Information Committee” in the National Assembly was established to lay the foundation for the agency’s removal from the political scene and an assumption of political neutrality.
- 6.
In December 1993, Han Wan-Sang, without doubt the most progressive voice among the Gang of Four, was replaced as Unification Minister by the more conservative Lee Yung-duk.
- 7.
After receiving his Ph.D., Lee Jong-seok lectured at several Korean universities and in 1994 became a researcher at the Sejong Institute, a private institution studying national security and inter-Korean relations. In 2002, he joined Mr. Roh’s presidential campaign team, He had worked as an advisor to the Unification Ministry and traveled with Kim Dae-jung to Pyongyang in 2000 during the first meeting of the North and South Korean leaders. He caught the eye of Lim Dong-won, Kim Dae-jung’s unification minister and the architect of Mr. Kim’s “sunshine policy,” who mentored him and introduced him to the liberal political thinkers who began gaining the upper hand during the Kim and especially in the Roh administrations.
- 8.
Art. 92 of the constitution also invokes the Advisory Council on Democratic and Peaceful Unification (minjup’y ŏnghwat’ongiljamunhoeŭi), which “may be established to advise the President on the formulation of peaceful unification policy.”
- 9.
To argue as such is of course not to suggest that the MoFA is not involved at all in the process of policy formulation. There is a regular exchange between the two ministries in order to coordinate their respective approaches. This is because the formulation of North Korea policy is naturally closely linked to other foreign relations of the ROK, especially its relations to the USA, China, or Russia.
- 10.
The National Intelligence Services (NIS) was founded as the Korea Central Intelligence Agency in 1961 following the coup d’état by Park Chung Hee. In 1981, the institution was renamed as “Agency for National Security Planning” as part of a series of reforms initiated by Chun Doo-hwan and in 1999 ultimately assumed its current name.
- 11.
See: Homepage of the National Intelligence Service, Republic of Korea, http://eng.nis.go.kr/svc/major.do?method=content&cmid=11927
- 12.
Certainly, the most prominent example in this regard is the so-called “Cash-for-Summit” scandal, which revolved around the secret payment of several hundreds of millions of US dollars allegedly made by the Kim Dae-jung administration to North Korea via Hyundai to secure the landmark June 2000 inter-Korean summit.
- 13.
One qualitative reservation must be made, however, which is the mobility of individuals to move between the spaces of policy and academia, and/or economy. In the course of moving from outside the political realm to the inside, political ideas regarding the ROK’s North Korea policy are brought into the political realm. However, while this may influence the strategic alignment of the policy itself, this does not directly influence the policy-making process itself.
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Ballbach, E.J. (2018). Authoritarian Continuity or Democratic Change? Assessing the Democratic Quality of South Korea’s North Korea Policy-Making Process. In: Mosler, H., Lee, EJ., Kim, HJ. (eds) The Quality of Democracy in Korea. Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63919-2_11
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