The Stages Of Korea's History & Its Relations With Other Countries

Since the history of Korea goes back through hundreds of years before the division, the facts and description are chosen selectively and briefly. The history of Korea goes through several stages that have constructed what we now call Korea, before the division the nation’s foundation began with several competing kingdoms that have eventually unified into a single dominion on the Korean peninsula. Successive regimes maintained Korean political and cultural independence for a thousand years which eventually leads us to the 19th century when western powers like Britain, France and the United states made efforts to open trade and diplomatic relations with Korea.

At the outset of the 20th century, Japan, China and Russia vied for control of the peninsula where Japan emerged the victor occupying the peninsula in 1905 but annexing it five years later. At that time the Koreans suffered brutal repression at the hands of the Japanese who tried the wipe out its distinctive language and change their social identity while trying to make it strictly Japanese. This leads us to the Division that got us to what we call South Korea and North Korea, that division was due to the events of 1945 where the US and the USSR divided the peninsula into two zones of influence. Fast forward to 1950 where the North backed from china and the USSR wanted to invade the peninsula and take control, the UN and the US fought alongside South Koreans hence the Korean War that has cost the two sides to lose 2 million lives up until its end.

Till today we have what we call the armistice agreement that left the Korean Peninsula divided and the formation of the DMZ or the Demilitarized zone running in latitude 38 degrees north. The north Korans first got nuclear technology In the 1950’s when their ally, the soviet union helped them build nuclear reactors for energy. At the same time they were protected from their enemies, South Koreans and the US by the massive nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union. But in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, that protection went away so North Korean dictator King Jung Il took matters into his own hands and started using the nuclear reactors to make weapons.

The United states did not want an aggressive, rogue state to have nuclear weapons, hence why three consecutive US presidents all tried different tactics to get North Korea to stop. Clinton negotiated, Bush suspended negotiations and threatened them and Obama simply tried to wait North Korea out. But every single plan failed to stop the nuclear program and behind that was a reason; the Kim dynasty believes their only option of security is to have proven nuclear capabilities. They saw the US invade Iraq and put down Saddam Hussein because they thought he might have nukes. They also saw Libyan dictator Muammar Gaffafi negotiate with the US and give up his nuclear program, only to be killed by US-backed rebels. And the Kim Dynasty is determined not to be next. So they’ve gone on to build an arsenal of missiles for their nuclear bombs.

Arriving to the definition of the sunshine nation; The Sunshine Policy was the foreign policy of South Korea towards North Korea from 1998 until Lee Myung-bak's election to presidency in 2007. Since its articulation by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the policy resulted in greater political contact between the two States and some historic moments in Inter-Korean relations; the two Korean summit meetings in Pyongyang which broke ground, several high-profile business ventures, and brief meetings of family members separated by the Korean War. In 2000, Kim Dae Jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful implementation of the Sunshine Policy.

It started with the liberal presidents Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moon-hyun and behind this diplomatic agreement was a peaceful rapprochement where they eventually named it the “Sunshine policy”. This policy comes from an ancient Greek fable stating “where the wind and the sun competed to remove a man’s cloak. No matter how strongly the wind blew, the man only wrapped his cloak more tightly to keep warm. But when the sun shone, the warmth made him take his cloak off.” (The wind symbolized unsuccessful coercive policies toward North Korea and the sun stood for an approach able to persuade North Korea to take off its anachronistic and uncomfortable cloak, changing at last.). This policy has been strongly criticized as being called the “checkbook diplomacy, calling out the two presidents as fame hungry and extremely naive for even engaging in this kind of peace offering with North Korea’s regime.

The main aim of the policy was to soften North Korea’s attitudes towards by encouraging interaction and economic assistance. The national security policy had three basic principles: No armed provocation by the North will be tolerated, the South will not attempt to absorb the north in any way and the South actively seeks cooperation. These principles were meant to convey the message that the south w does not wish to absorb the North or to undermine its government; its goal was peaceful co-existence rather than regime change. Kim’s administration also outlined two other major policy components.

The first was the separation of politics and economics. In practice, this meant that the South loosened restrictions on its private sector to invest in North Korea, limiting its own involvement essentially to humanitarian aid. This was initially meant both to improve the North’s economy and to induce change in the North economic policy, though the latter goal was later de-emphasized. The second component was required of reciprocity from the North. Initially it was intended that the two States would treat each other as equals, each making concessions and compromises.

Perhaps most criticism of the policy stemmed from the significant backpedaling by the South on this principle in the face of unexpected rigidity from the North. It ran into trouble just two months into the Sunshine era, when South Korea requested the creation of a reunion center for the divided families in exchange for fertilizer assistance, North Korea denounced this as a horse trading and cut off talks. A year later the South announced its goal would be flexible reciprocity based on Confucian values, they also announced that it would provide humanitarian assistance without any expectation of concession in return. The logic of the policy was based on the even in light of its continuing shortages and economic failures, the North will nor disintegrate or reform itself even if the South were to apply strong pressure.

North-South cooperative business developments began, including a railroad and the Mount Kumgang Tourist Region where several thousand South Korean citizens traveled until 2008, when there was a shooting incident and their negotiations became difficult in fact there are several attempts similar to the shooting that has left the negotiations at stake and in hot water. The relationship with the two Korea’s worsen considerably by the years but considerably started to worsen since 2007 where President Lee introduced his “Vision 3000” plan which aimed to funnel money into the North in exchange for their denuclearization, their response was not only rejection but also increased their aggression by firing missiles off their west coast and holding their second nuclear test. The tension rose again in 2010 when the North allegedly fired a torpedo at a South Korean warship killing 50 people on board.