North-South Korea Relations under the Lee Myung-bak Administration: The North's Provocations and the South's Principled Response

摘要

Since the Lee Myung-bak administration came to office, the deterioration of the North-South Korea relationship and heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula are the direct consequence and responsibility of North Korea and its provocations. North Korea has chosen confrontation with the South, dictated by its own internal interests, skewed perceptions and the desire to bully the South into concessions. The Lee administration's stance toward North Korea is no different from that of its predecessors in its basic principles and approach to unification as a progressive integration and not unification through absorption. The difference in the approach of the Lee administration to North Korea is a stronger emphasis on resolving the 20-year stalemate over the nuclear issue. Previous South Korean administrations showed themselves willing to resume talks with Pyongyang soon after North Korean pressure and chronic provocations. However, the Lee administration has held fast to its position of reciprocity, as it did after the killing of a South Korean tourist at the Mt. Kumgang resort, where it insisted on a promise that there would be no recurrence of such an incident, before the tour program could resume. The Lee administration has refused to reward the North's brinksmanship diplomacy, knowing that to do this will only encourage Pyongyang's chronic provocations.