The debate in South Korea over the government's engagement policy toward North Korea (the "sunshine" policy) did not start with Pyongyang's recent admission that it has been secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program in violation of multiple international commitments. However, the evolution of the debate will be an important determinant of how the South Korean and broader international response to this latest North Korean challenge ultimately ends. This book provides a framework for viewing South Korean responses to this challenge, examining the South Korean debate over policies toward the North, analyzing the sources of controversy, and assessing their implications.

A fresh historical and theoretical exploration of the much-debated, but still elusive, question of the Korean divide. In contrast to much of the literature on the divide, which deals with state-building on the two sides of the Demilitarized Zone, this book sheds light on the slow, but steady process of homogenization between the two estranged peoples, as accelerated after the end of the Cold War and especially after the inauguration of President Kim Dae-jung in 1998. Providing immense empirical detail as well as theoretical debate on the ideas in policy shaping in South Korea, the book presents a rich ‘history of enemies’ and covers issues including: an overview of the structural shift and the rise and fall of identity groups in South Korea history of 'enemy-making' and 'peace-building' North Korea's external relations with the US, Japan and Europe Hyundai's groundbreaking, cross-border tourism and other economic cooperation projects the lingering nuclear weapons crises. By focusing on the question of identities, the book presents a new approach on one of the most important legacies of the Cold War and threat to peace in the contemporary world: the divided Korean peninsula. As such it fills a major gap in the literature, utilizing new theoretical and empirical frameworks to deal with the Korean division and its future implications in East Asia.

Persusasion is better than force. This central belief behind late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung s unprecedented policy of engagement with North Korea became a key that promised to unlock half a century of conflict and provocation between North and South Korea. Kim s Sunshine Policy argued that encouraging North Korea to come out of isolation and end confrontation was better than trying to force it to change and it came to define a generation in South Korean politics, allowing millions to dare to believe that half a century of war could be brought to an end. Now this new book by Chung-in Moon, a Yonsei University professor and former South Korean government adviser, presents a definitive analysis of how Kim developed and implemented his revolutionary policy, the challenges it faced and the mistake that Lee Myung-bak s government has made in abandoning it. Moon was a first-hand witness to the events of the Kim years, assisting in drafting the Sunshine Policy, attending the historic inter- Korean Summits in 2000 and 2007 that were fruits of its labors, and chronicling the public, political and global support for the policy. -- from http://www.amazon.com (May 5, 2014).

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Region: Far East, grade: 3,0, University of Vienna, language: English, abstract: This paper shows the achievements of the Sunshine Policy with the help of the official statistics from the website of the Ministry of Unification, South Korea. Therefore the paper presents major statistics of inter-Korean relations, like inter-Korean talks, tourism, humanitarian aid and private exchange. The paper will compare the numbers of the Sunshine Policy (therefore between 1998 and 2008) and the numbers before (was not always possible) and the numbers after the Sunshine Policy.

South Korean President Kim Dae Jung created the Sunshine Policy to "warm up" North Korea and set the stage for it to choose to make meaningful changes. The goal of the thesis is to re-approach the Sunshine Policy and address the changes needed in order for it to have a different outcome. As relations between the U.S. and North Korea continue to deteriorate, other options must be available to use as tools for engagement with North Korea. In order to ensure that Sunshine Policy 2.0 takes a different path, at least three changes must occur. It must be long-term, divorced from political and security issues, and must be reciprocal. Furthermore, there must be a contingency plan in place that mandates a "pause" in the policy if political and security issues hinder it from moving forward. It must also give the committees an opening to re-convene after an extended period without making concessions or "losing face." In addition to that, the U.S. and South Korea should cooperate together to implement this type of policy, as they were competing against each other during the original Sunshine Policy days. Lastly, the thesis discusses the influence that sports, business, and tourism have on the North Korean government, as well as the Olympic Games' ability to create change within host-countries.

"This is an English version of a book originally published in Korean, about the much-acclaimed "engagement policy" towards North Korea, often dubbed the "sunshine policy", as the official Northern policy of the Kim Dae-jung's "government of the people" in South Korea...The book is the product of collective discussions at the Society for Northeast Asian Peace Studies (SNAPS), a Seoul-based non-governmental institution for both scholars and officials specialising in the subject of Northeast Asian affairs and the issue of Korean unification"--P. 5.