Has Moon Jae-in’s North Korean Policy Lost Its Momentum?
North Korea’s recent moves are far from what South Korean President Moon Jae-in led his people to expect.
Missile launches, harsh words toward South Korea, and the failure of planned inter-Korean cooperative projects – North Korea’s recent moves are far from what South Korean President Moon Jae-in led his people to expect. As stalled inter-Korean relations continue, there is growing concern in South Korea over whether Moon’s North Korea policy is heading in the right direction.
The latest poll conducted by Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies showed that the approval rate for the South Korean government’s North Korea policy decreased by about 10 percent within a year, from 65.58 percent in 2018 to 55.92 percent in late 2019.
Support among conservative respondents particularly plummeted from 46.89 percent to 35.48 percent, while approval among centrist respondents dropped from 65.98 percent to 51.53 percent during the same period.
Even respondents who share Moon’s liberal political views showed less support for his North Korea approach in the poll. Approval rates for Moon’s North Korean policy among liberal respondents decreased from 74.63 percent in 2018 to 73.67 percent in 2019.
The Institute for Peace and Unification cited the failure of the Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February as one of the main turning points leading to such a change in public view.
Bringing peace to the peninsula is a clear goal for Moon and his administration, but North Korea’s continued military provocations, including recent missile launches, might have disappointed the public, the institute noted.
The government appears to be losing support from industry observers as well. A conference held at the Korea Press Center in September showed it well. At the conference, where scholars and researchers gathered to discuss how to facilitate inter-Korean cooperation amid UN sanctions on Pyongyang, participants were not reluctant to criticize Moon’s North Korea policy.
Among those critical voices was Kim Jin-hyang, chairman of the board at the Kaesong Industrial District Foundation, which represents South Korean businesses with a stake in the now-defunct Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North. Kim said the South Korean government was too obsessed with “denuclearization” in the North and as a result failed to understand the current status of inter-Korean relations, which worsened the situation in the Korean Peninsula.
Kim also pointed out that South Korea should proactively lead inter-Korean relations instead of following “orders” from the United States as it currently does.
Interestingly, a similar argument was made by the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies as well. Commenting on the results of the poll mentioned above, the institution noted that both conservative and liberal respondents wanted South Korea to engage more proactively in inter-Korean relations.
The current freeze in inter-Korean relations is also haunting Moon’s personal approval rating. His numbers are still below 50 percent, a disappointment for a president who once enjoyed astonishing approval rates of over 80 percent soon after his election in May 2017.
The issue is that time is running out for Moon. In April, Kim Jong Un made it clear that he was only willing to engage in denuclearization talks with the South until the end of this year. It is already mid-December, but no tangible progress has been made so far. Instead, the Moon government is having to devote attention to a dispute with the United States over cost-sharing for their alliance.
Moon’s political opponents are showing no mercy. The main opposition conservative Liberty Korea Party has beefed up its criticism over the government’s North Korea policy.
In the latest speech, Na Kyung-won, a senior member of the Liberty Korean Party, hit the government hard, positing that Moon and the government had failed the South Korean people by destroying the base of South Korea’s national security.
“The government celebrated with flamboyant events as if the peace already came to the Korean peninsula. It told people that the North would remove nuclear weapons immediately,” said Na.
After three different inter-Korean summits, however, the denuclearization process has not progressed at all, Na added. He said that was a clear sign to show there is a serious issue with the government’s North Korean policies.
That rhetoric is to be expected from a political opponent. Moon’s trouble is that more and more ordinary South Koreans seem to be adopting the same view.