For a decade, from 1998 to 2007, South Korea pursued a policy of engagement towards North Korea known as the “Sunshine Policy.” Initiated by the late South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and further developed by his successor the late President Roh Moo Hyun, the approach was an embrace of North Korea’s regime, with unconditional aid, direct talks, and rewards in hopes of promoting a softening of the North and political conciliation.

As part of this strategy, in practice effectively one of all carrots and no sticks, the South Korean government clamped down on any efforts that might cause offense to Pyongyang, particularly exp/osure of its abhorrent, unparalleled human rights violations.

From 2004 to 2008, when I served as co-founder and Executive Director of an organization called Liberty in North Korea, we worked to raise awareness of North Korea’s human rights violations and encourage other countries to help improve conditions inside. Throughout Asia, our team members ran underground shelters helping North Koreans escape, and some of the activists (including myself, in 2006) were imprisoned in China for their efforts.

During that time, many North Korean defectors complained regularly about how the South Korean government muzzled their efforts to shed light on their experiences in the North—stories of hunger, torture, public executions, criminal acts by the regime, and concentration camps. Prominent defectors were barred from leaving South Korea to testify in the United States or Europe, even on invitation of the United States Congress, and many spoke of being blocked by the South’s National Intelligence Service from organizing, managing newsletters and meeting with foreign media or diplomats stationed in Seoul.

South Korean press and the film industry began portraying North Korea more favorably. In our occasional run-ins with South Korean officials or thinly-masked intelligence agents, some made allusions to the risk we “might” face if we continued our work. Around the world, businessmen and community leaders of Korean heritage told us of heavy pressure from their local Korean consulates to not support the cause of human rights in North Korea, and certainly not contribute financially to the effort. At the time, with no small amount of irony, we faced more oppo/sition and impediment from the government of South Korea than we did from that of the North.

At the time, we faced more opp/osition and impediment from the government of South Korea than we did from that of the North.

It was a dark and bewildering time—when a democracy forged in blood defended and empowered the most despicable of oppressive regimes.

How did North Korea react to the South’s appeasement Sunshine Policy? During this same time, it clashed with the South Korean Navy (June 15, 1999) and sunk a patrol boat, killing 6 and wounding 18 South Korean Navy men (June 28, 2002). It conducted rocket tests (August 1998), a nuclear test (October 9, 2006), and a handful of missile tests (February 2003, March 2003, July 2006), and actively helped proliferate weapons systems, technology and materials to Yemen, Iran and Libya, among other countries.

President Kim Dae Jung won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to improve relations with the North, which culminated in a historic June 2000 meeting with the then-leader Kim Jong Il. The summit was later found to have been bought with an estimated $500 million dollars in illegal, secret transfers of cash, a greater amount than North Korea’s annual export earnings at the time. One can imagine what North Korea spent that cash on.

With the election of conservative President Lee Myung Bak in 2007, it seemed the days of such madness were finally behind us.

Letting North Korea win now will only strengthen it further. North Korea should not be allowed to continue bending the world to its whim with blackmail and extortion. It must learn that the civilized world does not work this way. 큐ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ