This summer’s flurry of inter-Korean activity has revived but hardly transcended the kinds of interaction already achieved a decade ago during the “Sunshine” era. There was the return of inter-Korean sports competition and several joint Korean teams competed at the 18^th Asian Games in Indonesia. Family reunions in Kumgangsan also returned, which are ultimately a sad commentary on the restrictions placed on personal interactions. Transportation corridors were surveyed and there was talk about future modernization, although hopes of more robust utilization for commerce is hampered by existing sanctions imposed on the DPRK. Military exchanges showed promise with several rounds of talks, but not much action to show for it. With the third inter-Korean summit scheduled, both sides will likely try to find ways to further reduce border tensions while President Moon struggles with his role as mediator between the US and the DPRK.

To begin, if I may, with a small toot on our collective trumpet. A year like this one, especially the action-packed recent months covered in this article, brings home the value of Comparative Connections. The global public will be broadly aware of changes in and around Korea, yet the full picture can be hard to grasp – depending, in part, who and where you are. For 80 million Koreans, April’s North-South summit, at – of all places – Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which we covered in detail in our last issue, was probably the year’s defining event. Its cleverly made-for-TV pageantry impressed many outside the peninsula too. But to most people on the planet, including all Americans, the really big deal was the extraordinary spectacle in Singapore in June – the first ever encounter between a North Korean supreme leader and an incumbent US president. That is covered elsewhere in this journal.

In the months since Donald Trump met Kim Jong Un, most mass media coverage has focused on US-DPRK relations, and on the nuclear issue central to that fragile new relationship. While such an emphasis is understandable, this is far from the whole story. The indispensable value (toot toot) of Comparative Connections is to remind us – this merits capitals – that There Is More Than One Thing Going On. This journal’s bilateral focus makes it impossible to ignore other key relationships. Effective analysis begins with seeing and grasping the whole picture; the challenge then is to work out how it all fits together, in a rapidly developing situation.

So, I may briefly step beyond my own inter-Korean brief here. Kim Jong Un’s unexpected diplomatic outreach this year has transformed not one but three of the Asia-Pacific’s key bilateral relationships which this journal tracks. Mending fences with China after a long icy stretch was important in its own right; that too, of course, is covered elsewhere in this issue. And zeroing in on our own patch, the third – chronologically first as this was where it all started – much-changed relationship is the one between the two Koreas, our subject in this article.

Of course, all three bilaterals (and others) interact, adding further layers of complexity to ongoing processes whose ultimate outcome is far from clear. Unlike the almost content-free statement signed by Kim and Trump, which unsurprisingly has delivered very little solid since, the two Koreas have accomplished much in the past four months toward implementing the many specific pledges stipulated in the Panmunjom Declaration. Commendable as that is, two big questions persist. First, Kim Jong Un’s true intentions remain ambiguous. This summer’s flurry of inter-Korean activity, described below, has essentially revived but hardly transcended the kinds of interaction already achieved a decade ago during the “Sunshine” era (1998-2007).  On the granular detail of that earlier episode, Comparative Connections’ archives and chronology may be the most comprehensive resource available in English. Toot toot.

Then there is Trump. The second question, posed in this article’s title, is whether the ROK’s new Sunshine 2.0 – the term is ours, not Seoul’s – can survive, let alone thrive and progress, should Washington and Pyongyang stop smiling and start snarling again, as they well might. President Moon Jae-in’s declared aim is to put South Korea back in the driver’s seat; that is his metaphor, though North Korea sneers at it. Moon has achieved much, yet he might begin to feel more like a chauffeur with two tiresome passengers. He persuaded them to get into the limo, but now they are bickering – about the destination, how to get there, everything. Where this road-trip will end grows ever harder to figure; some scenarios are beyond apocalyptic.

So let us look back and enjoy while we can. The real summer in Korea broke heat records. Inter-Korean weather, by contrast, was nicely warm. As we noted last time, implementation of the Panmunjom Declaration began when the ink was barely dry. That pattern continued.

Sport: joint teams at the Asian Games

Let us begin with the easier stuff, as the two Koreas themselves did, namely sport. Without downplaying the significance of North Korea’s last-minute decision to join the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, fully analyzed in our last issue, inter-Korean sports cooperation in various forms and forums is not new. Indeed, it has a long (if sporadic) history, as veteran readers of this journal will recall. Moreover, it poses no great logistical or security issues. In this regard, the past four months resembled the “Sunshine” decade, albeit more concentrated, with several teams crossing the DMZ in each direction. In July, ROK basketball players flew to Pyongyang in two military planes – some 100 people made the trip, including officials and press – to play together for the fourth time, although the last occasion was as long ago as 2003. “Together” is le mot juste. Besides and before the North faced off against the South (no national flags were on display), they also fielded mixed teams named “Peace” and “Prosperity.” Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon led the Seoul delegation, perhaps in hopes that Kim Jong Un, a known basketball fan – remember Dennis Rodman – would show up, but he did not.

In mid-August, a 64-strong team of DPRK trade unionists came south to play soccer friendlies with their ROK counterparts. Historically this too was the fourth event of its kind, after earlier encounters in 1999 (Pyongyang), 2007 (Changwon, ROK) and 2015 (Pyongyang again – a rare such event under Park Geun-hye, before inter-Korean ties froze totally in 2016). Changwon – South Korea’s ninth city, west of Busan – also hosted the world shooting championships this September. A 22-strong DPRK squad participated, bagging two silver and two bronze medals.

The Northern shooters flew to Changwon direct from Indonesia, where they competed in the Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang Aug. 18-Sept. 2. Building on the pan-Korean women’s ice hockey squad hastily formed for Pyeongchang, this 18th Asiad saw joint Korean teams in three sports and six events: women’s basketball, men’s and women’s dragon boat racing, and three lightweight rowing events (men’s four, men’s eight and women’s double sculls). Lightweight here is a technical term, but metaphorically too it is apt – in the sense of rather marginal. Although they marched together in the opening and closing ceremonies, as at Pyeongchang the two Koreas mostly competed as separate states. Both performed creditably – South Korea finished third in the medals table behind China and Japan, while North Korea placed tenth. And ‘Korea’ came in at 28^th – unified teams took gold in the women’s dragon boat, silver in women’s basketball, and a couple of bronzes in rowing. All this is laudable, but hardly lifts the spirits or takes the peninsula forward as happened back in 1991 when ‘Korea’ won the women’s doubles at the world table tennis championships in Chiba, Japan – a one-off which sadly did not lead to sustained collaboration. Many athletes in this year’s joint teams were not even born in 1991. In this as in other areas of inter-Korean endeavor, the $64,000 question is whether we see cumulative progress or not. Often, alas, the answer is negative.

Family reunions: same old sad show

That also applies to another event revived this summer – reunions of separated families. Here again the two sides have long experience of organizing such events. The first was held in 1985, though regular yet still all too infrequent reunions began only in this century. The pattern was set long ago, and persists despite blatant inadequacies and asymmetries. The venue nowadays is always North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort, rather than alternating between North and South – let alone the ancestral villages that mean so much in Korean culture. Kumgangsan has its own issues. In happier times Hyundai and other Southern companies poured in money to develop the area as a venue for Southern tourists. No fewer than 1.8 million visited – at first by boat, later overland – during the decade from 1998 until July 2008, when one such visitor was shot dead after straying and then-ROK President Lee Myung-bak suspended the program.

A decade later, suspended it remains and the facilities are decaying badly. South Korea had to send in repair squads weeks before the latest reunions were held in late August; no doubt at its own expense, even though in 2010 the North retaliated for the ending of Southern tourism by formally confiscating Hyundai’s and other ROK assets in the zone, worth almost half a billion dollars ($443 million). Whether the new inter-Korean thaw allows such issues to be raised is unclear; but if they are not, then how is this progress? And yet malgré tout Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of the rump Hyundai Group, now a shadow of its former might – crown jewels Hyundai Auto and the world’s largest shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries were spun off long ago – is upbeat. Although Hyundai Asan – the division dealing with North Korea – has bled red ink for a decade, Hyun said after a visit to Kumgangsan to mark the 15^th anniversary of her husband’s suicide that she expects tourism to resume this year. That sounds optimistic, despite a fulsome – not to say bizarre –  tribute on the DPRK website Uriminzokkiri on Aug. 2 (coinciding with Hyun’s visit), which quoted the late Kim Jong Il as having called Hyundai his “first love.” (If this is how they treat a lover, what do they do to enemies?)

But back to the reunions. Held on Aug. 20-26, these were the first in three years; the hiatus being mainly due to inter-Korean bad blood in the Park Geun-hye era. They were the 20^th of their kind, so by now the routine is familiar; everyone knows the rules. There are two rounds, each lasting three days. First, 100 South Koreans (or slightly fewer as some usually drop out due to ill-health), chosen by lottery, meet such relatives as Pyongyang has managed to trace after lists of names have been exchanged. Then in turn 100 North Koreans – how these are chosen is not known – meet their Southern relatives. These one-off encounters for now very elderly persons who have not met for at least 65 years are televised live, with heart-rending scenes before the families get the privacy they should surely be afforded throughout. All too soon they must say tearful goodbyes, never to meet again or even be allowed any further contact by letter, telephone or email. President Moon Jae-in, himself the son of wartime refugees from the North, said on Aug. 20 that such reunions should be far more frequent – over half of the original Southern applicants have now died, having never met their long-lost relatives even once – with visits and letters permitted. How far his government is actively pushing for this is unclear. Indeed, at this writing no further reunions appear to be scheduled, even though this would be a relatively easy concession for the North to make.

‘Ningbo 12’: delinkage, drama

One tangential matter, however, saw progress. A further reason for the almost three-year gap between reunions was that North Korea was linking their resumption to a separate issue – the return of 12 female employees of a DPRK restaurant in Ningbo, China, who came to the ROK in 2016 and whom the North insists were kidnapped in a plot by South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Pyongyang has evidently dropped that conditionality, while continuing to demand the women’s return. Recent months saw dramatic developments apparently supporting the North’s version of events, hitherto widely scorned. In interviews in May, the restaurant’s former manager, Heo Kang-il, confirmed his NIS ties (though he claims the agency deceived him) and insisted the women did not know their destination was Seoul.

In July the UN special rapporteur, Tomas Ojea Quintana, having interviewed Heo and four of the women, called them “victims” of, at least, “deceit” and said that Seoul must investigate. Some human rights activists criticized Quintana’s intervention. Other sources added a twist to Heo’s story, claiming it was not the NIS but South Korean defense intelligence whodunitt. All this creates a quandary for Moon Jae-in, who inherited the issue – the group arrived during Park Geun-hye’s presidency – and fears it could jeopardize his wider overtures to the North. On Sept. 12, it was reported that all the women now have ROK passports; lawyers argued that denying them this violated their rights. With most of the women understandably media-shy for fear of harming relatives in the North, how this murky affair will end is far from clear.

Transports of delight?

To sum up so far. Revived sporting ties and family reunions are both good to see, yet neither is new as such nor takes inter-Korean relations very far forward. Transport links, a third major topic of recent North-South discussion, are altogether more substantial, at least potentially. This too is not strictly new. As we detailed at the time, the “Sunshine” era saw both road and rail links across the DMZ reconnected and rebuilt (guess who paid). Usage was a different matter. The two roads – a western corridor to Kaesong, and an eastern one to Kumgang – both had a fair amount of crossborder traffic, albeit one-way (i.e. South Koreans came and went; North Koreans didn’t go anywhere), until Lee Myung-bak halted Kumgang tourism in July 2008 and Park Geun-hye closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) in February 2016. The railway lines, by contrast, languished. The DPRK only permitted trains to travel as far as the KIC, but most Southern SMEs invested there found road transport more convenient and economical.

Hopes were thus raised when the Koreas scheduled back-to-back talks about railway and road cooperation, on June 26 and 28 respectively. The results of both meetings further heightened expectations. Agreements to conduct joint surveys of existing infrastructure went way beyond crossborder links alone, literally and metaphorically. The western (Gyeonggui) railway line was to be inspected along its entire length, from Kaesong to Pyongyang, then all the way up to the northwestern border city of Sinuiju, facing Dandong in China across the Yalu River. The less important east coast (Donghae) line too would be examined in toto, from Kumgangsan all the way up to Tumen on the Russian border. The joint press statement explicitly says that the remit is not only reconnection but modernization, “at a high level.” Given the known decrepit condition of most DPRK infrastructure, this would be a major and costly commitment. With roads it was the same story, if less ambitious at first – surveying the western corridor as far as Pyongyang, and in the east up to Wonsan. (In a separate earlier development, on June 7 South Korea finally succeeded in becoming a full member of the Warsaw-based Organization for Cooperation between Railways (abbreviated OSJD), originally a communist-era coordination body. Pyongyang had long vetoed Seoul’s membership, but significantly did not this time.)

All this would be a definite advance on the “Sunshine” era, and a major step forward. However, although the ROK government has already budgeted for such works next year, as of now it is uncertain how far or fast this can go. Here as in almost any potential new or revived economic cooperation, sanctions imposed on the DPRK – mostly by the UN Security Council (UNSC), but also bilateral measures by the US and in some cases the ROK itself – are a major obstacle, which did not exist during the original “Sunshine” period. Such problems have already, dare one say, caused at least one temporary derailment – though not the UNSC but another notional UN agency was responsible. On Aug. 30, Seoul media reported that plans to send a train into the North – for how better to inspect the whole length of the DPRK’s western railway line? – on Aug. 23, had been blocked by the UN Command (UNC), which under the 1953 Armistice controls passage across the DMZ. In practice that means Washington, so this was interpreted as a warning to Seoul not to go so fast. Strictly the UNC only asked for more information and notice, so the ROK could have reapplied; but it seems not to have done so. Although at least some other survey work (not requiring transgressive trains) has proceeded, clearly such problems will have to be fully ironed out if transport modernization plans are to go forward in any substantial way.

Officials of South and North Korea check the condition of tracks at Kamho Station in the North. Photo: Unification Ministry

The same applies a fortiori to wider economic cooperation, most forms of which are illegal now under UNSC sanctions, which would therefore need revision or (more likely) granting of exemptions. For this reason, transport aside, the only other such topic discussed was forestry, seen as innocuous and indeed ‘green’ (here too there had been cooperation before during the “Sunshine” period). By contrast, even when as discussed below the two Koreas opened a joint liaison office located in the former Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) on Sept. 14, the ROK government made it very clear – including to disgruntled businesses formerly invested there – that there was at this time no question of the KIC itself reopening. Nonetheless, throughout the summer local media reported chaebols, banks and other companies setting up task forces to examine and be ready for any prospective new business opportunities in North Korea. This preparation indicates skepticism in ROK business circles – not known for their idealism – that the sanctions which categorically forbid almost all such activities will endure indefinitely.

Military talks: hotlines, and more?

One undeniable shortcoming of the original “Sunshine” policy was that security concerns were hardly addressed, much less tackled. Indeed, it was during this period that North Korea tested its first nuclear device, in 2006. Against that backcloth and all that has happened since, it was good that the Panmunjom Declaration devoted one of its three main sections to such issues. Inter alia this called for regular military talks, which were duly held several times. What they have achieved is less clear, other than reconnecting military hotlines – two terrestrial, across the western and eastern sectors of the DMZ, and one in the West (Yellow) Sea, the scene of  several fatal skirmishes over the years. Repairing the eastern hotline, damaged on the DPRK side by flooding some years ago, required obtaining an exemption from UNSC sanctions so the South could send in fuel, vehicles and other necessary items.

Beyond this, all is vague. Unlike in other areas like transport or high-level talks, MOU seems not to issue press releases, which suggests a lack of accord. Several kites have been flown regarding the agenda. In July, military talks were said to have reached “broad agreement” in three areas: disarming the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, reducing the number of guard posts in the DMZ, and excavating MIA remains there. But there was no joint statement. The latest military talks, on Sept. 13, reportedly discussed “operational arms control” to reduce the risk of accidental skirmishes, and a peace zone for joint fishing in the West Sea – an idea first floated at the inter-Korean summit in 2007, but like most of its provisions never implemented after Lee Myung-bak took over in 2008. The most radical rumor, mentioned by South Korea’s prime minister yet denied by the ROK Defense Ministry (MND), was a suggestion that KPA heavy artillery be pulled back 30-40 km from the front line, so Seoul would no longer be within range. That would certainly signal a genuine will for peace in Pyongyang, but on past form nothing so drastic would ever be done without a quid pro quo. To be sure, military issues are sensitive and take time. Or maybe something big has been agreed, but is under wraps so that Kim and Moon can produce it with a dramatic flourish at their third summit in Pyongyang on Sept. 18-20.

Permanent liaison

On the eve of that third summit, and as agreed at the first one, the two Koreas took a big step forward by opening a permanent liaison office at Kaesong on Sept. 14. Headed by the ROK vice-minister of unification and a DPRK official of comparable rank, this has 15-20 resident staff from each side. The South Koreans are billeted there, though Kaesong is a relatively short commute from Seoul. The new office will be operational around the clock, enabling instant communication between the two sides. It will be interesting to see how this works out in practice. The opening had been expected earlier, in August; but it was delayed, seemingly again because Washington did not want Seoul to press ahead at a time when its own peace process with Pyongyang was experiencing turbulence. In another indication of the need to tread carefully, South Korea at first said it would apply to the UNSC for exemptions to send supplies (such as fuel) for the liaison office, but in the event decided it was not obliged to do so.

What next?

Comparative Connections is above all a journal of record which looks back. Yet it would be perverse not to speculate at least briefly what the third Moon-Kim summit may bring. Their first meeting set a detailed agenda, much of it since implemented as discussed above. 2018’s second summit, a surprise one at Panmunjom again on May 26, seems to have been an ad hoc meeting requested by Kim at a wobbly moment in the US-DPRK process after Trump briefly cancelled their Singapore confab – only to reinstate it almost immediately.

No doubt Kim and Moon will reaffirm the Pyongyang Declaration. They are also expected to announce a formal end to the Korean War in some form, though to have legal force this would need to involve all signatories to the Armistice, including the UN (or the US on its behalf) and China. As mentioned above, the two Koreas may also take concrete bilateral military steps to reduce border tensions. Beyond that lie hurdles, not least the sanctions regime which currently thwarts the sort of economic co-operation Moon Jae-in has long dreamed of. What leeway he can get from the UN, or the US, on this front is yet to be tested.

All diplomacy includes unpublicized elements. Smiling in public, Moon Jae-in should also be robust in private. Given doubts as to North Korea’s sincerity, based on both its past record of deceit and Kim Jong Un’s refusal to get specific on denuclearization, Moon is entitled to press for more meaningful steps – some very close to home. On July 5, Yonhap carried a telling if paradoxical (and oddly little noticed) headline: “N. Korean hackers suspected of continuing attacks amid friendly inter-Korean relations.” The article quoted local cybersecurity experts as stating that DPRK hacking of ROK entities is continuing unabated, despite the Panmunjom Declaration’s pledge to cease all hostile acts. However, in the new climate of peace they are reluctant to publicize it for fear of rocking the boat. That is both disgraceful and perverse – it

risks rendering détente a sham. While not all problems can be solved at once, there is no conceivable reason to go easy here. Ceasing all hostile acts must mean what it says. Far from covering up behavior that is criminal as well as hostile, Seoul should call Kim out to show it means business and will not be taken advantage of as happened in the past. If that seems a negative note to end on, this kind of sharp detail is the touchstone whereby we shall see if North Korea has really changed, or not; and whether Kim Jong Un is truly sincere, or not.