But then, would someone please show me a coherent definition of “neocon” that (a) manages to exclude all these Democrats, and (b) bears any resemblance to the usage of that epithet by the crypto-Marxist left and the crypto-fascist Buchananite right?

OP:

which he used to buy himself his Nobel Peace Prize and to accelerate a North Korea policy that not only failed completely to realize its stated objectives, but which probably extended Kim Jong Il’s misrule for a decade and, by extension, probably resulted in tens of thousands of North Korean deaths at the very least.

So without Sunshine Policy, the KJI regime would have collapsed? Particularly with China seeking to ensure “stability” in Pyongyang, I find that extremely difficult to believe.

In any event, you would think that a man whose life was saved by the Americans no less than three times might have come to recognize the United States as more of a positive influence, but in his later years, Kim turned positively anti-American. Or maybe you forgot that back in 2006, he constructed this elaborate theory for blaming “neocons” and the military-industrial complex for the North Korean nuclear crisis:

I think you’re too easily conflating “neo-cons” with all Americans. Americans are not expected to accept and like everything that comes from an administration they didn’t vote for and/or whose policies they do not support, so why should Koreans or anyone else? Calling neocons on what he perceives as something they are doing wrong is not the same thing as being “positively anti-American” and it certainly doesn’t make Kim Daejung ungrateful for what different US administrations or the military did to save his life.

And the purchase of the 15 June 2000 meeting with the ‘Only Fat Man in North Korea’ ™ and the Nobel Peace Prize (for a mere $850 million at then current prices) … got the ROK just … what?

Apparently I was out of town and never got the memo as to exactly how many South Korean POWs, along with the fishermen who were never kidnapped, were repatriated during those heady days of ‘Sunshine Policy’ and ‘Sunshine Redux’.

TEN YEARS of this mental masturbation … and those poor bastards in the Gulag STILL haven’t caught on that the joke is on them.

But wait … good news! …they’re talking about trotting out a re-run of ‘Mount Kumgang Re-union of Separated Families’ … just one more time. Yeah, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

How incredibly sad.

Cheers

Two hurried responses:

1. I would be the last person to reduce politics to economics, as I hate any simplistic, mono-causal analysis.

Nonetheless, I agree in principle with Lipset, Fukuyama, and other advocates of the “modernization” thesis who argue that it is extremely difficult to resist the democratic impulse once a country hits a certain level of economic advancement. (Singapore is the only country that refutes this thesis, but Singapore is a sui generis case in so many ways.)

And, by the time time DJ became president, South Korea’s GDP growth and other indices of maturation was such that a re-lapse into dictatorship was just not conceivable. So I simply find it very difficult to credit DJ for helping to prevent a non-existent, impossible scenario. Moreover, if such credit must be given, it has to go to Roh Tae-woo.

2. You make it almost sound as if DJ was “liberal democrat” in the Western sense. On the contrary, no such creature existed among the major Korean politicians of his generation, except perhaps John Chang (whose pathetic failure indeed demonstrated why liberal democracy was not possible in Korea for a long time).

Likewise, DJ’s presidency was not without its authoritarian remnants. Among other controversies during his administration, his national security apparatus was caught spying on opposition politicians, and he attempted to silence opposition by questionable methods–including the controversial media tax probes, as well as employing Lee Kuan Yew style libel suits to attack individual critics. Nor did he–or at least his family–in the end escape corruption conviction.

I thought of the Philippines and South Africa but don’t know enough about the people and situations to say how close or far they are from the SK example.

I think Poland would be worth some exploration as a comparison.

On your other points, I agree based on what I’ve read, but I also was not suggesting that Kim Dae-Jung or Kim Young-Sam were unique in their environment. That they were the key reason South Korea managed to maintain real democracy once it got started.

I am just looking around to see if other post-colonial nations can be included beside what South Korean society accomplished…including how the leading dissidents behaved once the reform movement gained the upper hand. Whatever level of importance you can assign to Kim Dae Jung and Yong Sam, you’d have to say that they were for real democracy, and I think that has proven somewhat rare in social history around the world in the post-colonial areas.

2 years after the summit in Pyongyang, the North Korean navy attacked South Korean navy boats on South Korean territorial waters. It has never relinquished war as a means to unify the peninsula. It has murdered a visiting South Korean tourist. And it used billions sent by Seoul to pay for nukes and missiles – which could be used on the South. And it has yet to account for hundreds of abducted South Korean citizens.

The family reunions are valuable and important to those elderly Koreans separated by the war. But overall, the DPRK has given way too little to the ROK in light of what it received.

Most importantly, Kim Dae Jung became a champion of human rights as his political career developed. How ironic that he remained silent in the face of human rights abuses suffered by fellow Koreans on a scale far harsher than anything seen in South Korea during military rule (and those were significant human rights abuses).

“Nor did Kim ever come to terms with the failure of the Sunshine Policy”

Based on recent news from North Korea, the Sunshine Policy has not failed. North Korea announced that it will resume all previous joint activities with South Korea, such as Kaesong, Mt. Kumgang tours, family reunions, and an open border between the two countries.

In addition, Kim Jong Il recently met with Hyundai’s Chairwoman and granted her company the tour rights to Mt. Paektu, for the first time in ROK history. North Korea also freed the Hyundai manager held captive.
In light of all these developments, President Lee Myung Bak has proposed a high-level meeting with North Korea to discuss economic cooperation.

Just when Kim Dae Jung has passed away, the legacy of his Sunshine Policy is continuing with renewed vigor.

“Less will be said of all he did to forestall democratization in the North”
“a North Korea policy … which probably extended Kim Jong Il’s misrule for a decade”

This argument has a big flaw. China’s support for Kim Jong Il far outweighs any impact produced by the Sunshine Policy. China is the main source of economic aid and trade for North Korea.

I didn’t think too hard about this but at least four names immediately came to mind in about four seconds: Havel, Walesa, Mandela, and Mrs. Aquino. Of course, it depends on what you mean by “long-time.”

I am not sure if you are making the same error, but I’d like to emphasize that the first “democratic” president was not Kim Young-sam nor Kim Dae-jung, but Roh Tae-woo. And he was more of a proximate cause in the emergence of Korean democracy than either of the two Kims.

Finally, given South Korea’s economic and political maturity by 1993 (which was when Kim Young-Sam took over), there really was a very little chance that Korea would go back to a dictatorship, Left or Right. Korea in 1993 was hardly the Korea of 1961 or 1979. For instance, when Kim Young-sam purged the top military officers connected with Chun, there was nary a whimper from the military, because it knew that another coup was not an option. In contrast, we all know what happened when Chung Seung-hwa tried the same in 1979.