Korea And The World

The Sunshine Policy – the idea that South Korea should approach North Korea through dialogue, cooperation and reconciliation – has been highly contentious ever since its inception in the late 1990s. Its initiator, former President Kim Dae Jung, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching out to Pyongyang; at the same time, however, critics have branded the Sunshine Policy as [a naive attempt to appease a dangerous dictatorship] naive appeasement with a dangerous dictatorship. Even today the dispute about the right foreign policy approach towards North Korea splits the South Korean political discourse. One of the leading experts on the Sunshine Policy is Chung-In Moon. For this episode we spoke to him about the history of this policy, whether or not it failed, the philosophical underpinnings of the Sunshine Policy’s supporters and opponents, and his opinions about how South Korea and the international community should approach North Korea. Chung-In Moon is Professor of Political Science at Yonsei University