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Was the Sunshine Policy a failure?
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catman



Joined: 18 Jul 2004

PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 8:21 pm    Post subject: Was the Sunshine Policy a failure? Reply with quote

I see that the Norks have nullified all contracts with the South for the joint Gaeseong Industrial Complex. Does this mark the death of the Sunshine Policy? No more unconditional love?

http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/05/116_45024.html
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RACETRAITOR



Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea

PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 9:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought the Sunshine Policy died when Lee Myungbag took office, in which case it was cancelled before it could fail. This was a failure of whatever Lee Myungbag's strategy is, which I think is being dismissive and praying to Jesus.
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bassexpander



Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Always remember (so I read somewhere)... Bill Clinton was on the edge of attacking North Korea over the nuclear reactor thing, but Jimmy Carter snuck in and brokered a "peace" deal without consulting him.

Clinton never has forgiven him for that, and that issue comes up when all of the former presidents are lined-up for a group photo shoot.

The current situation would be very different had Clinton done what he wanted to do. The South wanted to attack at the time... everyone was on board and ready to go for it, but Jimmy Carter "saved the day."

Now NK has nukes.

Anyone know more about this, or can add more? Maybe someone who lived here back then?
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bluelake



Joined: 01 Dec 2005

PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 12:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

bassexpander wrote:
Always remember (so I read somewhere)... Bill Clinton was on the edge of attacking North Korea over the nuclear reactor thing, but Jimmy Carter snuck in and brokered a "peace" deal without consulting him.

Clinton never has forgiven him for that, and that issue comes up when all of the former presidents are lined-up for a group photo shoot.

The current situation would be very different had Clinton done what he wanted to do. The South wanted to attack at the time... everyone was on board and ready to go for it, but Jimmy Carter "saved the day."

Now NK has nukes.

Anyone know more about this, or can add more? Maybe someone who lived here back then?


I remember it. It was during Kim Young-sam's time as prez. Yeah, we probably all came a hair's breadth from all-out war. JC took a lot of flack for it from the BC administration, primarily for upstaging them. Don Oberdorfer wrote in great detail about all of it in his book, The Two Koreas in chapters 12 & 13.
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Capo



Joined: 09 Sep 2007

PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Slate Magazine
war stories
The Slime Talk Express
McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, at 4:32 PM ET

Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

Here, according to the Washington Post, is what McCain said in a campaign speech near Detroit:

I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something�not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor�they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.

McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened. Let's take a look at the plain facts.

In the spring of 1994, barely a year into Bill Clinton's presidency, the North Koreans announced that they were about to remove the fuel rods from their nuclear reactor (as a first step to reprocessing them into plutonium), cancel their commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which they had signed in 1985), and expel the international weapons inspectors (who had been guarding the rods under the treaty's authority).

Did Clinton "reward" them for doing these things, as McCain claims? Far from it. Not only did he push the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions, he also ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to send 50,000 additional troops to South Korea�bolstering the 37,000 already there�along with more than 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and several battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. He also sent in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters for the influx of troops and gear.

He sent an explicit signal that removing the fuel rods would cross a "red line." Several of his former aides insist that if North Korea had crossed that line, he would have launched an airstrike on the Yongbyon reactor, even knowing that it might lead to war.

At the same time, Clinton set up a diplomatic backchannel, sending former President Jimmy Carter to Pyongyang for direct talks with Kim Il-Sung, then North Korea's dictator and the father of its present "dear leader," Kim Jong-il. (The official Washington line held that Carter made the trip on his own, but a recent memoir by three former U.S. officials, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, acknowledges that Clinton asked him to go.)

This combination of sticks and carrots led Kim Il-Sung to call off his threats�the fuel rods weren't removed, the inspectors weren't kicked out�and, a few months later, to the signing of the Agreed Framework.

McCain called the accord a "failure." This appraisal isn't quite as dead wrong as his claim that Clinton did nothing but toss Kim flowers. But it's highly misleading, to say the least.

The Agreed Framework of Oct. 21, 1994�a document that many cite but almost nobody seems to read�actually bottled up North Korea's nuclear program for eight years. Under its terms, Pyongyang kept the fuel rods locked up and kept the international inspectors on-site. In exchange, a multinational consortium, led by the United States and South Korea, was to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors to generate electricity. Gradually, Washington and Pyongyang were to establish diplomatic and trade relations. In an annex to the accord, drafted by the consortium and signed by all parties in June 1995, it was agreed that the nuclear fuel from the light-water reactors would be exported to a third country for recycling. (This, by the way, is what President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed that Iran do with its nuclear fuel.)

The accord fell apart, but not for the reasons that McCain and others have suggested. First, the U.S.-led consortium never provided the light-water reactors. (So much for the wild claims I've heard lately that North Korea got the bomb through Clinton-supplied technology.) Congress never authorized the money; the South Koreans, who were led by a harder-line government than the one in power now, scuttled the deal after a North Korean spy submarine washed up on their shores.

Second, when President George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he made it clear, right off, that the Agreed Framework was dead and that he had no interest in further talks with the North Korean regime; his view was that you don't negotiate with evil, you defeat it or wait for it to crumble.

Third, a few months into Bush's term, evidence mounted that the North Koreans had been � not quite violating the Agreed Framework but certainly maneuvering around it. Confronted by U.S. intelligence data in October 2002, Pyongyang officials admitted that they'd been enriching uranium�an alternative route (though much slower than plutonium) to getting a bomb.

It should be noted that the bomb that the North Koreans set off on Sunday was apparently a plutonium bomb, not a uranium bomb. In other words, it was a bomb made entirely in Bush's time, not at all in Clinton's.

After the disclosure about the uranium, Bush hardened his stance against negotiations. The North Koreans tried to replay the events of 1994. They threatened to unlock the fuel rods, expel the inspectors, and quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, through back channels (former ambassadors Bill Richardson and Donald Gregg), they signaled a willingness to back off if the Agreed Framework was resuscitated. Bush wasn't interested in playing the game. Everything fell apart.

At the end of 2002, when the North Koreans really did unlock the rods and kick out the inspectors�when they crossed what Clinton had called the "red line"�Bush didn't take military action, he didn't call for sanctions, nor did he try diplomacy. It's Bush, not Clinton, who did nothing.

And while we're on the subject of Bushes doing nothing, George H.W. Bush, the president's father, had just moved into the White House in 1989 when the CIA discovered that the North Koreans were building a reprocessing facility near their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon�the facility that could manufacture plutonium from the fuel rods. Five years later, Bill Clinton stopped them from moving the rods into this facility. Eight years after that, George W. Bush let them go ahead.

The rest is history. John McCain would do well to read up on it sometime.
sidebar

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This account is based mainly on Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, by Joel Wit, Daniel Poneman, and Robert Gallucci; Negotiating on the Edge, by Scott Snyder; newspaper and magazine accounts from the time; and my own interviews of former and current officials for an article, "Rolling Blunder," in the May 2004 issue of the Washington Monthly as well as a number of columns for Slate.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. His book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, is now out in paperback. He can be reached at [email protected].

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2151354/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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pkang0202



Joined: 09 Mar 2007

PostPosted: Mon May 25, 2009 9:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sunshine policy was a stupid idea from the get go.

Typical liberal thinking. "Lets give our enemies what they want and they will embrace us with open arms!"

That's like punishing a child by giving them a piece of chocolate and saying "now promise me you won't do it again!"
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Panda



Joined: 25 Oct 2008

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 1:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the long run, this policy is absolutely beneficial to North Koreans. From a humanitarian aspect, this is a huge progress.

Kaesung at last opened a small window to the closed scociety, North Korean people started to get to know something happened outside their country.

It's sad now, the North is going to shut down the complex and the South Korea government doesnt really care.

To pkang0202, giving chocolate to a spoiled kid actually is a lot different than giving it to a starving kid.
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Adventurer



Joined: 28 Jan 2006

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 1:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think they should have continued the Sunshine Policy. It was better than the current status quo. Lee Myung Bak should have known that.
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3MB



Joined: 26 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 5:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Panda wrote:
In the long run, this policy is absolutely beneficial to North Koreans. From a humanitarian aspect, this is a huge progress.

Kaesung at last opened a small window to the closed scociety, North Korean people started to get to know something happened outside their country.

It's sad now, the North is going to shut down the complex and the South Korea government doesnt really care.

To pkang0202, giving chocolate to a spoiled kid actually is a lot different than giving it to a starving kid.


The starving kids are getting NOTHING in NK. Same with the starving men and women. The only ones getting anything are KJI, his cronies, and ofcourse the soldiers who will do the shooting should anything go wrong. Tell us why feeding your enemy is a good idea. Please.
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pkang0202



Joined: 09 Mar 2007

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 7:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

3MB wrote:


The starving kids are getting NOTHING in NK. Same with the starving men and women. The only ones getting anything are KJI, his cronies, and ofcourse the soldiers who will do the shooting should anything go wrong. Tell us why feeding your enemy is a good idea. Please.


I concur. Much like the Oil for Food program in Iraq. The people that NEED the aid seldom received it.
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Panda



Joined: 25 Oct 2008

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

3MB wrote:


The starving kids are getting NOTHING in NK. Same with the starving men and women. The only ones getting anything are KJI, his cronies, and ofcourse the soldiers who will do the shooting should anything go wrong. Tell us why feeding your enemy is a good idea. Please.


It is easy to make sense. The policy is titled Sunshine, which means being kind, warm and generous.

1. Food aid fed N Korean's soldiers and officials is truth, but dont forget if there was no aid at all, those priviledged groups would still get food from civilians. No matter where the food aid went in the first place, it actually saved more starving N Koreans in general is also truth.

2. Kaesung was shut down partly because it turned out to be a successful pro-capitalism education, which panicked N Korean government. When S Korea made the Sunshine policy, their aim was not going to take over N Korean regime overnight, neither was changing their system promptly, it was more of an osmosis, which they expected would take long time to see the effect.

S Korean people's narrow nationalism to a great extent pushed themselves to help N Koreans with sincerity, in the name of Han nationality. If S Korea only wants to get money from N korea as milking a cow you could say the sunshine policy is totally a fail.........


pkang0202, Oil for food was terminated by Iraq war and it turned out to be a nasty fake "Sunshine" policy, which wasnt really aimed to help Iraqi people but more likely to print cash for someone else, when the oil money didnt satisfy all greediness, a war became the final answer.
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3MB



Joined: 26 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Sunshine policy was practiced by two pro-DPRK traitors, Kim and Roh. It had nothing to do with changing NK, and all to do with channeling billions of dollars to the DPRK. It was a crime and it is now evident that it did nothing to change the DPRK, it did nothing to ease tensions. The only thing we saw was an illusion, where the Norks pretended to get along with ROK, stringing those two stupid lackeys Kim and Roh along and milking them for billions of dollars, all the while developing nukes, missiles and other weaponry. Please wake up.
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jotgarden



Joined: 12 Nov 2008
Location: Suwon, South Korea.

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

3MB wrote:
The Sunshine policy was practiced by two pro-DPRK traitors, Kim and Roh. It had nothing to do with changing NK, and all to do with channeling billions of dollars to the DPRK. It was a crime and it is now evident that it did nothing to change the DPRK, it did nothing to ease tensions. The only thing we saw was an illusion, where the Norks pretended to get along with ROK, stringing those two stupid lackeys Kim and Roh along and milking them for billions of dollars, all the while developing nukes, missiles and other weaponry. Please wake up.


Good username. That earns you an extra troll star, for a total of three: ***
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gangwonbound



Joined: 27 Apr 2009

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jotgarden wrote:
3MB wrote:
The Sunshine policy was practiced by two pro-DPRK traitors, Kim and Roh. It had nothing to do with changing NK, and all to do with channeling billions of dollars to the DPRK. It was a crime and it is now evident that it did nothing to change the DPRK, it did nothing to ease tensions. The only thing we saw was an illusion, where the Norks pretended to get along with ROK, stringing those two stupid lackeys Kim and Roh along and milking them for billions of dollars, all the while developing nukes, missiles and other weaponry. Please wake up.


Good username. That earns you an extra troll star, for a total of three: ***


Someone has an opinion and you call them a troll???

Grow up dude...He just stated his opinion
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RACETRAITOR



Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

gangwonbound wrote:
jotgarden wrote:
3MB wrote:
The Sunshine policy was practiced by two pro-DPRK traitors, Kim and Roh. It had nothing to do with changing NK, and all to do with channeling billions of dollars to the DPRK. It was a crime and it is now evident that it did nothing to change the DPRK, it did nothing to ease tensions. The only thing we saw was an illusion, where the Norks pretended to get along with ROK, stringing those two stupid lackeys Kim and Roh along and milking them for billions of dollars, all the while developing nukes, missiles and other weaponry. Please wake up.


Good username. That earns you an extra troll star, for a total of three: ***


Someone has an opinion and you call them a troll???

Grow up dude...He just stated his opinion


Nope, looks like a troll to me. I give only two stars for being a bit too obvious.
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