The Damning of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-hyun
Video presentations from May’s Oslo Freedom Forum are now online with North Korea represented by Park San-Hak, a North Korean defector who currently works as a democracy activist.
It takes a while for Park’s presentation to gain momentum, but it’s well worth watching in its entirety if you can get through the introduction because his talk eventually heats up. About midway through his presentation, Park embarks on a crusade of stinging criticism directed toward former South Korea presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun for their promotion of the Sunshine Policy which has fed the DPRK regime and its atrocities throughout the years. Park went as far as to say that both former presidents “defrauded the international community” through their policies of appeasement. And from the podium, in the very city that Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Park publicly called for the revocation of the distinguished honor paid for by given to the former South Korea president.
Sadly, even after all these years, Kim Dae-jung continues to defend the Sunshine Policy. Just this summer he told NPR in an interview:
“The Sunshine Policy has been and still is supported by the majority of South Koreans and the whole world. […] It’s the reason I won the Nobel Peace Prize. People are telling President Lee Myung-bak to return to the Sunshine Policy, but it isn’t clear whether he will or not.”
How unfortunate.
OP:
I was unaware that the DPRK regime was weak and there were not wholesale atrocities up there prior to KDJ.
Or are we to believe that right before KDJ was set up in the Blue House, Pyongyang was just about to crack apart?
Blaming KDJ (and even RMH) for the situation up north is like blaming Bush’s “axis of evil” comments for pushing North Korea to develop nukes.
I should add that under RMH the biggest problem with Sunshine Policy was that it should be a carrot-and-stick policy and he used virtually no stick. It’s not effective if we have to wait for an entirely different administration in order to get some stick. At best it’s a laughable “wait till your father gets home” scenario.
When you consider who else won the Nobel Peace Prize, like the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, and appeaser/anti-Israel activist Jimmy Carter, it’s only fair that they give one to Kim Dae-Jung.
Kushibo,
it’s nice to hear that some people still have the energy to raise a reasoned voice on this blog where the contributors discredit their obvious intellect with ideologically ravaged commentary – pot? kettle?
i used to come here all the time for commentary. but now, it is just an ideological tool of the right. i think that joshua’s piece on stockholm syndrome (August 4) is a prime example. written BEFORE the women had even spoken!
unbelievable. and such a shame.
Joshua leans heavily to the right, but he’s no tool. He is a reasoned person who articulates his views clearly. Ideologically ravaged commentary indeed.
Josh is no right-wing zealot, from what I’ve seen. He gives credit to Obama when he thinks Obama has earned it, abuse to Bush when he thinks Bush has earned it. His commentators, however, are almost certainly going to trend right, given the hawkish stance usually pushed here.
Odds are very, very heavy we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of subjects, but he isn’t some frenzied mouth-breathing ideologue who starts shrieking about false birth certificates and godless socialism upon hearing the word ‘Obama’. That’s one of the reasons I still check up on this blog.
Park San-hak is a ‘nobody, a never was and a never will be.’
Kim Dae-jung was a genuine national hero for all Koreans.
As a resident of Korea for more than 40 years and former bureau manager/correspondent for ABC News, I mourn his passing.
God rest his soul.
Michael Wengert