Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation

4. Toward an Ethics of Dialogue

63 4 Toward an Ethics of Dialogue The฀challenge฀is฀to฀bring฀conflicts฀to฀the฀level฀of฀discourse฀and฀not฀let฀them฀ degenerate฀into฀violence. —paul฀ricoeur,฀“imagination,฀testimony,฀a nd฀trust” Few would question that dialogue is an essential aspect of dealing with security dilemmas. Michel Wieviorka is one of many commentators who draw attention to the linkages between conflict and the breakdown or absence of dialogue. Violence, he argues, emerges in a context in which relationships between different societal groups are either strongly reduced or altogether absent.1 Although the DMZ remains the world’s most tightly sealed border , all parties entangled in the Korean conflict largely acknowledge the desirability of dialogue. Look at the most recent crisis, the nuclear confrontation that started in the autumn of 2002. There were differences about who was to participate in negotiations to solve the dispute—North Korea preferred bilateral talks with the United States and the latter insisted on a multilateral forum. But all countries involved, including China, Japan, and Russia, advocated the need for dialogue. South Korea’s then newly elected president, Roh Moo-hyun, stressed that “first, I will try to resolve all pending issues through dialogue.”2 Most previous presidents did, in fact, make similar statements during their inauguration. In 1988, for instance, 64฀ ฀ ·฀ ฀ toward฀an฀ethics฀of฀dialogue Roh Tae Woo announced an “era of dialogue and cooperation between South and North Korea.”3 Some form of dialogue has always taken place in Korea, from unofficial Red Cross talks, ministerial meetings, and diplomatic gatherings to the spectacular summit between the North and South Korean heads of state in June 2000.4 But none of the joint declarations and agreements that emerged from these numerous encounters ever managed to solve the issues at stake and establish a lasting atmosphere of peace. Sooner or later each agreement broke down. Statebased dialogues may be able to deal with some of the immediate and overt challenges, such as finding ways to limit nuclear proliferation on the peninsula. But diplomatic encounters rarely, if ever, remove the underlying causes and patterns of conflict. None of the various state negotiations and summits have been able to engage the fundamental problem of Korea’s culture of insecurity: the antagonistic identity constructs that continuously fuel conflict and undermine agreements, no matter how promising they seem at first sight. The Pyongyang summit of June 2000 is the most graphic case. Although spectacular and symbolically important, it hardly constituted a dialogical breakthrough. Each party came to it driven by interests that were specific to its own state apparatus: the North hoped to get some international recognition and badly needed funds. The South was willing to provide the latter, as it turned out later, through a secret payment of $100 million in return for securing the summit and, as some critics of the South Korean president’s engagement policy suggest , helping him to win a Nobel Prize.5 Promoting a culture of reconciliation in Korea requires more than state-based dialogue. The recently proliferating literature on human security offers some important help here, for its proponents urge policy makers to view security beyond the conventional defense of the state and its territory. Advocates of human security stress the need to take into account the welfare of average people. Thus I begin this chapter by examining the usefulness of human security for the Korean peninsula. Doing so is central because human security has found little resonance in Korea. And yet Korea offers one of the rare opportunities to open up alternative security arrangements . Just as important, human security perspectives allow us to appreciate new insights into the political, for they recognize how actors other than states can shape the security environment. Indeed, toward฀an฀ethics฀of฀dialogue฀ ฀ ·฀ ฀ 65 far more important than academic debates about human security, which rarely reach beyond a small circle of intellectual elites, are a variety of largely inaudible grassroots activities that are transforming Korean politics. Among these phenomena are those engendered through the introduction of the so-called Sunshine Policy by South Korea’s president Kim Dae-jung, who started to loosen state control of security by promoting more interaction between the two divided parts of the peninsula. Add to this numerous important changes that have occurred in North Korea in the last few years, ranging from increased trade, investment, and tourism to an opening up of the country (albeit very minimal) as...