The shine is starting to come off South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s engagement strategy with North Korea.
The liberal politician, who reversed nearly a decade of conservative hardline policy toward North Korea after his election last year, is preparing for a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un amid growing public skepticism about his approach.
Moon, who is to visit Pyongyang tomorrow, has seen his approval rating fall to 49 percent in a recent Gallup Korea survey, the first time it dipped below 50 percent since he took office in May last year on a platform of better ties with North Korea and political reform.
Moon’s approval rating stood at 83 percent after his first summit with Kim in April.
South Koreans are divided over whether this week’s summit in Pyongyang will help break a stalemate over nuclear diplomacy between the US and North Korea, another survey released early this month said.
By comparison, surveys after the April summit found overwhelming support for Moon from a public fascinated with the historic handshakes, border crossings and other dramatic scenes that the two leaders produced after years of rising tensions.
“Our people are beginning to learn that North Korea will not easily give up its nukes, something that many experts had already repeatedly predicted,” said Kim Taewoo, a former president of the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
Moon might face increasing difficulties if his summit with Kim in Pyongyang fails to achieve tangible progress on efforts to get North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
Economic woes, including a lackluster job-market growth and soaring real estate prices, are compounding Moon’s problems, adding to opposition to his North Korea policy, many experts said.
“If Moon fails to address economic problems, he can’t maintain public contentment with his government only with his North Korea policy,” Korea University professor Nam Sung-wook said. “If the economy gets worse, many people will demand that Moon stop looking to North Korea and start resolving our own economic problems.”
Moon knows how important public support is for his North Korea policy. Most major detente projects with North Korea started by his liberal predecessors during a 1998-to-2008 “sunshine era” were suspended after conservatives took power. Moon has not been able to revive them because of US-led economic sanctions against North Korea.
Liberal presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun endured withering conservative criticism that their little-strings-attached shipments of aid and cooperation projects with North Korea helped finance the North’s weapons program.
Moon served as Roh’s chief of staff and was in charge of preparing Roh’s 2007 summit with then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
South Korean politics is characterized by a fundamental conservative-liberal divide over how to view North Korea. Liberals consider the North a force to reconcile with, while conservatives see it more as an enemy state that poses a significant security threat.
Moon’s conservative predecessors, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, faced harsh criticism from liberals that their hardline stances only pushed North Korea to carry out more weapons tests and attacks, such as two in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans.
Opposition to Moon’s North Korea policy was initially weak, partly because the conservatives were in disarray following a corruption scandal that led to Park’s ouster.
A conservative backlash erupted when Kim Jong-un sent North Korean athletes and top officials to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February, including a former spy chief blamed for the 2010 attacks.
However, any criticism was soon overshadowed by the April summit, which also improved Kim Jong-un’s image in South Korea — in one survey at the time, 78 percent of respondents said that they had faith in the North Korean leader.
Now, as nuclear talks between the US and North Korea appear to have stalled, conservatives feel vindicated and emboldened.
During a Cabinet meeting last week, Moon said that he would need not only strong international support, but also “nonpartisan backing at home” to help the summit produce a major step toward denuclearization.
Moon even asked conservative opposition leaders to travel with him to Pyongyang for the summit, but they rejected the offer immediately.
“We can’t help asking whether the invitation ... is aimed at giving Kim Jong-un a gift,” said Yoon Young-seok, a spokesman for the main opposition Liberty Korea Party.
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