Korean Peninsula Trust-Building Process 2.0: A Complex Pursuit of Deterrence, Engagement, and Trust

“Evolving the Trust-Building Process for a Unified Korea”

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The long-standing vicious cycle of inter-Korean relations has historically struggled to find a breakthrough. The July 4th South-North Joint Communiqué in the early 1970s shattered like a dream on a summer night, and the Basic Agreement and the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in the early 1990s became faded documents, forgotten. The two inter-Korean summits held in the 21st century also failed to find a new path to overcome the adversarial relationship between South and North Korea. Although new political leaders emerged in both South and North Korea in the 2010s, the window of opportunity remains closed. President Park Geun-hye’s Dresden Initiative for Peace and Unification and North Korea’s National Defense Commission spokesperson’s statement in response, both in late March, accurately reflect the current reality on the Korean Peninsula.

In response, the East Asia Institute proposes a new direction for North Korea policy, and indeed for unification diplomacy, from a new perspective of “Co-advancement for Complexity” over the past decade in search of a new breakthrough in the vicious cycle of inter-Korean relations. This requires efforts to evolve and develop existing unification discussions to fit the era of complex transformation in the 21st century. Therefore, the East Asia Institute has launched a new joint research project that complexly combines Korea's Trust-Building Process 2.0, which pursues deterrence, engagement, and trust in a complex manner; North Korea's parallel development (Byungjin) policy 2.0, which simultaneously builds denuclearization and security with the economy; and the neighboring countries' East Asia New Order Architecture Plan 2.0. As the first fruit of this, at the October meeting last year, we prepared a draft titled “Proposal for a New North Korea Policy: Towards the Evolution of the Trust-Building Process” and presented it to government officials and leading conservative and progressive Korean Peninsula experts in the country.

A Proposal for a New North Korea Policy Paving the Path to Peace

What measures are necessary to ensure that inter-Korean relations, which have repeatedly gone through cycles of crisis and negotiation, advance to an irreversible path of peace through substantive negotiations? The new North Korea policy aims to induce a change from the deterrence phase in the third quadrant to the trust phase in the first quadrant of the diagram “Korean Peninsula: War and Peace,” and contributes to building a peace order on the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia. To this end, a complex inter-Korean strategy must be developed that includes the deterrence, engagement, and trust phases. This is by no means a phased approach of deterrence-engagement-trust. A phased approach, in light of past unsuccessful experiences, may lead to another vicious cycle of regression. Therefore, a complex strategy is needed that simultaneously pursues diplomatic efforts in the three phases and approaches inter-Korean relations from both internal and external perspectives, allowing them to gradually settle from a state of war and conflict to a state of peace and trust.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Chapter 1: General Discussion

Chapter 2: Diplomacy

Chapter 3: Security and Military Affairs

Chapter 4: Economy

Appendix

1. [EAI Commentary No. 32] Ha Young-sun, “North Korea 2014: Navigating the Maze – An Hermeneutics of the New Year’s Address”

2. Kim Jong-un, First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, New Year’s Address (January 1, 2014)

3. Kim Jong-un, First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Report to the 3rd Plenary Meeting of the 3rd Central Committee (March 31, 2013)

4. Park Geun-hye, “A Journey Towards a New Inter-Korean Relationship” (December 30, 2013)

5. Park Geun-hye, Address to a Joint Session of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives (May 9, 2013)

6. Park Geun-hye, Address at the Ceremony Conferring an Honorary Doctorate from the Dresden University of Technology, “A Blueprint for Peace and Unification on the Korean Peninsula” (March 28, 2014)

For the convenience of our readers, we are releasing a portion of the manuscript of this book.