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President Yoon Suk-yeol delivers an address to mark Liberation Day, the 79th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, at an event held at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts on Aug. 15, 2024. (pool photo)

President Yoon Suk-yeol’s vision and plan for unification, as revealed Thursday in his address celebrating South Korea’s Liberation Day, veer far from familiar policies on unification, North Korean policies, and inter-Korea agreements that have been pursued since Park Chung-hee was in power. 

The heart of the July 4 South-North Joint Communiqué of 1972, the first joint statement signed by the two Koreas after the division of the Korean Peninsula, the National Community Unification Formula, the official unification policy adopted by the South Korean government since 1994, and the 1991 Inter-Korean Basic Agreement, is mutual respect, reconciliation and cooperation, and unification by agreement.

However, Yoon is advocating for South Korea to lead the road to unification, saying, “The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and starvation.” 

Yoon’s definition of “freedom” calls for unification through absorption, directly clashing with the government’s official stance of denouncing any possibility of unification obtained through force.

Declaration of a “northward march of freedom”

Yoon stressed that in order to “change the minds of the North Korean people to make them ardently desire a freedom-based unification,” we must expand “the value of freedom to the North.” He declared that we will “expand the ‘right of access to information’ so that North Koreans will be able to use various channels to secure a variety of outside information,” as well as establishing a “North Korea Freedom and Human Rights Fund” to “actively support nongovernmental activities that promote freedom and human rights there.”

As such, we can see that he is using the beleaguered North Korean people as a pretense to disseminate outside information into North Korea. This clashes with the first four articles of the 1991 Basic Agreement between the two Koreas, which state that the Koreas shall “recognize and respect each other’s system,” “not interfere in each other’s internal affairs,” “not slander or vilify each other,” and “not attempt any actions of sabotage or subversion against each other.”

Much like how North Korea sent trash-filled balloons to South Korea in retaliation to propaganda leaflets floated north by South Korea-based North Korea defector groups, it is certain that such actions will instigate a hostile response.

The president’s “Inter-Korean Working Group” proposal

Yoon also put forward the idea of establishing a working-level consultative body between the two Koreas. It is the first time since taking office that Yoon has personally defined the format, level and topics to be addressed during inter-Korean dialogue. 

In response to this unbecoming suggestion from a head of state for a working-level consultative group, a senior presidential office official explained that “spontaneous events which involve the two Korean leaders shaking hands at the camera will not create sufficient change.” This is a direct rejection of the Moon Jae-in administration’s top-down approaches to advance inter-Korean relations by holding three summits in 2018.

The problem lies in the fact that North Korea will almost certainly ignore all attempts at dialogue after the South Korean president trumpeted the importance of expanding freedom to the North and for South Korea to lead the way to unification.

As if to make matters worse, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has recently sworn to cut all ties with South Korea by pronouncing the country as “dirty, rubbish unchangeable enemy.”

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, criticized Yoon’s dialogue offer as a “flimsy, easily exposed attempt to camouflage South Korea’s argument for unification through absorption.” A senior presidential office official also opined that “we cannot expect North Korea to respond positively.”

A unification “doctrine,” instead of a “policy”

Yoon’s vision for a unified Republic of Korea advocating freedom, peace and prosperity shares almost nothing in common with the National Community Unification Formula’s step-by-step approach and its three principles (independence, peace and democracy).

Kim Tae-hyo, the first deputy director of the National Security Office, clarified that the “Aug. 15 Unification Doctrine” is an action plan that “provides a clear direction toward unification, which is not apparent in the National Community Unification Formula” while also considering the reality in which “reconciliation and cooperation is impossible.”

While claiming that this “doctrine” is the Yoon administration’s unification policy, the presidential office was careful to avoid using that exact phrasing, demonstrating that the administration has diverged far from its initial aspirations to prepare a new unification plan after criticizing the National Community Unification Formula as one “missing liberal philosophy and vision.”

A former senior official who worked for the current administration pointed out that the government is moving ahead with a tactic that benefits from “political propaganda while also being conscious of the current trend of opposing a new reunification plan, which can be seen even among conservatives.”

A well-seasoned expert in inter-Korean relations commented, “Yoon’s new plans for unification will, much like the former President Park Geun-hye’s so-called ‘unification bonanza’ theory, disappear into oblivion with the advent of an administration change.”

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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