De-bordering Korea: Tangible and Intangible Legacies of the Sunshine Policy ed. by Valérie Gelézeau, Koen De Ceuster and Alain Delissen (review)

With North Korea's recall of all workers from the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex in April 2013, the last concrete remnant of the Sunshine Policy seems to have come to an end. This book, which takes stock of the legacy of Kim Dae-jung's North Korea policy, therefore could not have come at a better time. The Sunshine Policy started soon after Kim Dae-jung was inaugurated as president of South Korea in 1998, and was continued by his successor Roh Moo-hyun, but it was basically abandoned after the conservative Lee Myung-bak was inaugurated in 2008; during Lee's presidency, all exchanges with the North gradually ground to a halt.

Following the momentous summit between Kim Dae-jung and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2000, hopes were high that the warm and unconditional sunrays from the South would melt the North's belligerent attitude and pave the way for a genuine thaw in relations. However, when it transpired that South Korea had transferred millions of dollars to make the summit possible, assessments of the Sunshine Policy changed, and it has now become almost commonplace to deride it as an expensive and humiliating kowtow to the North.

Rather than looking at the problem from a political or sociological angle, however, the authors of this edited volume chose to look at how the Sunshine Policy affected the border. They argue that the policy effectuated a "de-bordering" of Korea: while the DMZ is still rightly called one of the most impenetrable borders on earth, during the decade after 1998 zones of contact emerged—the authors refer to these as "interfaces"—that effectively rendered that border more porous. Although the concept is derived from geography, the articles are not limited to a treatment of the physical border: the concept is extended into every area of human activity where contact between North and South can be made, even virtual contact—in the case of South Korean films about North Korea, for example. On the basis of an assessment of all these different interfaces, the authors contend that the Sunshine Policy did have a positive and lasting impact; even though a "re-bordering" has taken place after 2008, this retreat to earlier, Cold War positions shows how dangerous and destabilizing the de-bordering was perceived among both North and South Korean leaders (p. 9).

Part 1 focuses on the physical borders; here Valérie Gelézeau's chapter in particular serves as a very good overview of the intricate layout of the various border lines and how they affect the border regions; it was here that some of the most significant de-borderings in the literal sense (opening of the border) took place. The next two chapters, by Christian Park and Élisabeth Chabanol respectively, look at the two flagship programs of the Sunshine era: the development of Mount Kŭmgang as a special tourist zone and the opening of Kaesŏng to both economic investment and heritage tourism. Chabanol is interested especially in how North and South came together in their joint excavation of the site of the former Koryŏ palace in Kaesŏng. The final chapter in this part, by Sébastien Colin, shifts the focus to the Sino-Korean border, which became increasingly porous in the 1990s, and still functions as the main venue of informal contact between North and South Koreans.

Part 2 is dedicated precisely to such human contacts. The first two chapters, by Danielle Chubb and Eric Bidet respectively, look at the discomfiting presence of North Korean defectors/migrants within South Korean society. They show the problems of integration they face, and the ironic fact that their activism has alienated them from both progressive and conservative forces in South Korea; arguably these chapters form a counterpoint, showing the failure of...