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South Korea Basic Goals and Accomplishments
The external posture of South Korea in general, and toward
North Korea in particular, began a new chapter in the 1980s.
While retaining its previous goal--enhancing political
legitimacy, military security, and economic development by
maintaining close ties with the West--South Korea greatly
expanded its diplomatic horizons by launching its ambitious
pukpang chongch'aek (see Glossary),
northern policy, or
Nordpolitik. Nordpolitik was Seoul's version of the Federal
Republic of Germany's (West Germany) Ostpolitik of the early
1970s. Although the policy's origins can be traced back to 1973
under Park, it was greatly invigorated by Roh.
Seoul's Nordpolitik was designed for a number of rather
ambitious but initially ill-defined objectives. Seoul's basic
dilemma in its Nordpolitik appeared to be how to reconcile its
traditional ties with the West with its new opportunities in the
East. First, policymakers felt that their economic and military
reliance on the West was excessive, mendicant, and too lengthy.
Seoul sought to correct this situation by establishing its own
self-reliant global posture. This desire to be less dependent
became particularly acute as Seoul's Western allies greatly
improved relations with Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and
China.
Second, Nordpolitik was designed to expand and diversify
trade relations on a global scale to cope with increasing trade
protectionism from the United States. Intentionally or not, the
policy aroused anti-Americanism. Ironically enough, the rising
anti-United States feeling was accompanied by increasing demands
for economic and political democracy, culminating in the Kwangju
incident in May 1980.
Finally, Nordpolitik involved the pursuit of wide-ranging
relations with socialist countries and contacts and dialogue with
North Korea. It had often been observed that political leaders in
P'yongyang and Seoul utilized their confrontational postures to
sustain their political legitimacy. Claiming that P'yongyang's
response had been far from satisfactory, Seoul's policymakers
solicited assistance and cooperation from P'yongyang's socialist
allies to induce and persuade P'yongyang to become more
accommodating. Yet Seoul's success in improved relations with
P'yongyang's socialist allies had not resulted in substantially
improved relations with P'yongyang by 1990. In fact, for the
short term, Seoul might have even aggravated its chances for
improved relations with P'yongyang by having improved its
relations with North Korea's socialist allies--and raised the
question of whether Nordpolitik was primarily designed to
confront and compete with P'yongyang. Thus far, Nordpolitik
clearly demonstrated the limited power of P'yongyang's socialist
allies, particularly Moscow and Beijing, vis-à-vis the extremely
self-reliant North Korea. In reality, Seoul may have grossly
underestimated P'yongyang's firmly established independence.
On the whole, however, Nordpolitik was successful, and
Seoul's accomplishments could be readily observed in sports,
trade, and diplomacy. The 1988 Seoul Olympics was a major
catalyst for Nordpolitik. It was the first Olympic Games in
twelve years not marred by a bloc-level boycott and had the
highest participation ever--159 nations and more than 9,000
athletes. Seoul gained new global recognition and visibility as
more than 3 billion people around the world watched the Games
being televised live.
Had it not been for the North Korean bombing of KAL 858 over
the Andaman Sea in November 1987, Seoul might have been more
willing to reach out to P'yongyang. While the much-feared and
predicted North Korean misbehavior over South Korea's staging of
the Olympics did not materialize, Seoul probably was relieved by
P'yongyang's absence from the games.
Seoul's international trade record has been impressive
(see Foreign Economic Relations
, ch. 3). While encountering, along
with other newly industrialized nations, mounting trade friction
with the United States and other major markets, Seoul emerged in
the late 1980s as the world's tenth-largest trading nation.
Economic reforms and the open-door policies of socialist
countries, coupled with their recognition of Seoul's economic
growth, pushed economic trade and cooperation between South Korea
and socialist countries into full swing.
Perhaps Seoul's most impressive success was in diplomacy.
Literally implementing the 1988 Olympics slogan, "From Seoul to
the World, and from the World to Seoul," by the beginning of 1990
South Korea had established diplomatic relations with 133
countries, and had 138 diplomatic missions, including
representative offices and a consulate department in Moscow.
Conversely, North Korea had diplomatic relations with 102
countries and 85 overseas missions. An impressive number of young
South Korean diplomats were trained in the West and actively
implemented Nordpolitik. These diplomats were also supported by
the aggressive worldwide market diversification programs of South
Korea's big business establishments, the chaebol, and by
an increasingly large number of overseas South Koreans, many of
whom become salespersons of South Korean products
(see
The Origins and Development of Chaebol, ch. 3).
After Roh's inauguration in February 1988, Nordpolitik was
particularly invigorated. In a July 7, 1988, statement primarily
aimed at insuring the success of the Olympics, Roh unveiled a
six-point plan to ease forty years of bitter confrontation
between Seoul and P'yongyang and to clear the way for peaceful
unification of the divided peninsula. In the afterglow of the
Olympics, Roh made his diplomatic debut as the first South Korean
president to address the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, on
October 18, 1988. Roh's speech called for a six-nation
consultative conference to discuss a broad range of issues
concerning peace, stability, progress, and prosperity in
Northeast Asia. Pledging unilaterally never to use force first
against North Korea, Roh proposed to replace the existing 1953
armistice agreement with a peace treaty.
Data as of June 1990
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