Korean Opposition Party Wants Return to Sunshine Era Policies with North Korea

The Sunshiners are back and they just cannot bring themselves to admit that they wrong.  All the Sunshine Policy did was keep one of the world’s worst governments in power with money and food aid that in turn was used to develop ballistic missiles and a nuclear program that are now a threat to the rest of the world:

At symposium, participants argue that if conciliatory policies had been continued, inter-Korean relations wouldn’t have deteriorated

At an academic conference to mark the eighth anniversary of the October 4 North-South Declaration, several voices called for a restoration of the Sunshine Policy and other initiatives to improve inter-Korean relations. On Oct. 2, the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, Korea Peace Forum and Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) co-hosted an international symposium for the eighth anniversary of the October 4 declaration at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in central Seoul.

At the symposium, James Hoare, a Chatham House fellow who was charge d’affaires and HM Consul-General at the British Embassy in Pyongyang, said that what South and North need right now is a return to the Sunshine Policy initiatives enacted by Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun from 1997 to 2007. He added that if Lee Myung-bak had continued such initiatives instead of abandoning the October 4 Declaration, it would have helped inter-Korean relations immensely.　Moon Jae-in, leader of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, claimed that if the initiatives of the October 4 declaration had continued, the lives of 70 million people would now be “brimming with hope and prosperity,” while the Korean Peninsula “reached out to the international community as a whole.” “The past eight years of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, however, have thrown inter-Korean relations back to the dark ages,” he added, adding that if measures such as the special zone of peace and cooperation in the West (Yellow) Sea and economic reunification had been properly implemented, the nation could have focused its efforts on conquering problems like stagnant growth, the decline of the middle class, and youth unemployment. The October 4 declaration included agreements to establish a “special zone of peace and cooperation” in the West Sea, including the city of Haeju and the surrounding maritime region, as well as the launch of joint fishing areas and peace districts.  [Hankyoreh]

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