On June 29, 2023, South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol replaced the Minister of Unification and other key members of his cabinet. The new minister, responsible for relations between the two Koreas is Kim Yung-ho, a professor of political science and diplomacy at Sungshin Women’s University. The new heads of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) are Kim Hong-il and Lee Dong-kwan, respectively. The former is a lawyer and the former head of the Busan High Prosecutor’s Office, and the latter was previously a presidential special adviser for international cooperation. Yoon has thus replaced the last remaining members of Moon Jae-in’s government.
As the new minister stated in a press conference, “I feel a heavy responsibility to take this position at a difficult time. While carrying through our principles, I will do my best to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue and improve inter-Korean relations.” Kim promised to develop a new policy of peaceful unification based on a free and democratic order, and, in doing so, to try to reach a public consensus.
According to Kim Dae-ki, Presidential Chief of Staff, the new Minister of Unification previously served as Secretary of the Presidential Administration for Unification and as ambassador-at-large at the Foreign Ministry, where he worked on human rights issues, to name just two of the positions which this very interesting politician has held.
Now a conservative-leaning professor, he is known both for his tough stance on North Korea and his uncompromising defense of human rights. He is 63 years old, and graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in diplomacy, after which he obtained a Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. His doctoral thesis was on the subject of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Surprisingly, until the end of the 1980s, former student activist Kim was considered a leftist scholar who had published translations of works by the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and Soviet books on communist theory. In 1987, he served 10 months in prison for publishing “illegal” books and violating the Law on National Security.
After his release from prison, Kim worked as a researcher at the Sejong Institute, and then in 1999 he started to teach political science and diplomacy at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul.
His political views gradually shifted to the right, possibly as a result of his studies abroad and his research into the Korean War, and in 2005 he became one of the key figures associated with the conservative New Right movement, and was appointed as an adviser in the Foreign Ministry and later the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs and the Unification Ministry.
In 2011, during Lee Myung-bak’s administration, he was appointed Presidential secretary for Unification Issues, and then, in 2012-13 he served as ambassador-at-large for Human Rights at the Foreign Ministry. He is the author of many articles on Kim Jong-un and his regime, and in 2018 he started a YouTube channel. He has also explicitly stated that “unification will only be possible after the Kim Jong-un regime has been toppled.”
In an interview in March this year with the daily newspaper Hankook Ilbo Kim said that human rights issues must be a key element in South Korea’s unification policy if it is to enjoy broad international support. He believes that without such support, South Korea’s unification policy is doomed to failure.
Kim is also the head of an advisory committee established in order to develop a new vision of unification under the Yoon administration, and he is considered the person the best able to understand and implement the president’s political position in relation to North Korea. In fact, the author of that “bold initiative” is believed to be Kim Tae-hyo, and not Kim Dae-ki, although both these foreign policy hawks have similar views.
Oleg Kirianov, Rossiyskaya Gazeta’s Seoul correspondent, has pointed out that Kim’s appointment is not the only one of its kind. The new Deputy Unification Minister is Moon Seoung-hyun, a career diplomat who until recently served as South Korea’s ambassador to Thailand, and, before that, as the head of the Foreign Ministry’s North American Affairs division. Moon Seoung-hyun was a Presidential Secretary for Foreign Policy in the Park Geun-hye administration. His later appointment as ambassador to a relatively unimportant country could be seen as a response to his good links with the US and his criticism of the attempts made by South Korea’s Democratic presidents to enter into dialogue with Pyongyang and conclude a peace treaty. It was the first time that a career diplomat has been appointed as Deputy Unification Minister.
The Presidential Secretary for Unification Issues has also been replaced. The new appointee is Professor Kim Soo-kyung of Hanshin University, one of the main advocates of the need to discuss the problem of human rights violations in the DPRK. Three major figures responsible for developing Seoul’s policy on North Korea have thus been replaced at the same time. And none of the three new appointees – the new minister, his deputy and the presidential secretary – have any practical experience of working with North Korea. Moreover, the Ministry of Unification is expected to work closely with the Presidential Administration’s Office of National Security.
What is the reason for the change of minster? The first Minister of Unification under Yoon Seok-yeol was Kwon Yeong-se, a former public prosecutor and four-term National Assembly member, and the person who persuaded Yoon to join the People’s Power Party. In 2010, Kwon was chair of the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee, and in 2013-2015, during the reign of President Park Geun-hye, he served as Korea’s ambassador to China. He was seen as a member of Yoon Suk-yeol’s inner circle.
Although Kwon was known for standing up to North Korea, he could not be described as a hawk, even though he opposed the law prohibiting the sending of propaganda leaflets to North Korea, seeing it as contradicting the democratic principles of South Korea’s constitution.
But Kwon Yeong-se was a close associate of the president, and it is hard to identify any areas in which his views are inconsistent with the latter’s policies. Moreover, it would be wrong to describe the policies of the Unification Ministry under Yoon – which is a topic for a different discussion – as a failure. The present author has more than once expressed the view that Yoon Suk Yeol’s “bold initiative” is actually just a restatement of Lee Myung-bak’s ideas, which were morally obsolete even then, and that it is deliberately calculated to appeal to the international community while being unacceptable to Pyongyang, thus allowing North Korea to refuse to cooperate and provoking an escalation in hostilities.
As the author sees it, armed conflict represents a bottom line for both North and South Korea, but despite the hostile rhetoric and exercises, the two countries are currently further from war than they have been in previous years. After all, the situation is not as bad as it was in 2015, when troops were put on alert after strange incidents in the DMZ; or in 2010, when the DPRK shelled Yeonpyeong Island, or even in 2002, when the North and South Korean navies exchanged fire in the waters around that island – an incident that is still remembered in South Korea, as the solemn ceremony marking its anniversary made clear. Seoul has not even renewed its propaganda attacks on the North, and as for the leaflet bombing campaign, that is a private initiative of Park Sang-hak, not a state policy.
As far as the “bottom line” is concerned, the threshold was made clear in 2018-19, when Moon Jae-in’s government made a lot of bold statements, but did not actually do anything – not because of objections from Washington, but because the Korean government lacked the will to go further.
With his pro-Western respect for universal human rights, Yoon Suk-yeol has little liking for the DPRK regime, and has therefore chosen to let relations between the two Koreas slide while he focuses on Russia and China. Relations with North Korea might suffer, but they were pretty poor to begin with. Despite the belligerent rhetoric on both sides, neither Seoul nor Pyongyang are prepared to take more serious action, and Yoon is largely indifferent to the insults hurled at him by the North Korean media and unconcerned about being burnt in effigies. The ministerial reshuffle has more to do with the upcoming parliamentary elections in 2024, and the accepted practice of rotating ministers and other appointees, which means that they rarely remain in a single position for more than a year and a half or two years. If Kwon Yeong-se wants to return to party politics and serve as a lawmaker in the new parliament, now is just the right time for him to step down as minister.
The decision to replace Kwon with Kim coincided with another event which the present author sees as highly significant. Speaking at a conservative forum, Yoon directly accused the proponents of rapprochement with the North of anti-state activities. His speech was, presumably, primarily aimed at a domestic audience, and may be connected to the new package of charges against his predecessor Moon Jae-in and his associates – a subject that will be looked at in a separate article. But from a foreign policy perspective, his words suggest that the “North Korea doves” will be sidelined from national politics, thus placing South Korea firmly on the American side in an era of global turbulence in which a unified space is giving way to a division of the geopolitical space into blocs.
In view of the above context, many experts consider that the functions of the Unification Ministry are likely to be redefined. While, under the Moon administration, that ministry was involved – at least on paper – in dialogue between North and South Korea, its role has shifted to that of putting pressure on the DPRK, including by regularly criticizing its human rights record. There is even the possibility that in future it may be abolished entirely or absorbed into the Foreign Ministry.
As for the impact that the developments outlined above will have on relations between North and South Korea, we will have to wait and see. Naturally, the ministerial reshuffle will be subject to a vote in Parliament, and the Democrats are unlikely to agree without a protest, but these objections will not change anything as in the end, the President has the right to appoint ministers without parliamentary approval.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.