The Damning of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-hyun

Video presentations from May’s Oslo Freedom Forum are now online with North Korea represented by Park San-Hak, a North Korean defector who currently works as a democracy activist.

It takes a while for Park’s presentation to gain momentum, but it’s well worth watching in its entirety if you can get through the introduction because his talk eventually heats up. About midway through his presentation, Park embarks on a crusade of stinging criticism directed toward former South Korea presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun for their promotion of the Sunshine Policy which has fed the DPRK regime and its atrocities throughout the years. Park went as far as to say that both former presidents “defrauded the international community” through their policies of appeasement. And from the podium, in the very city that Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Park publicly called for the revocation of the distinguished honor paid for by given to the former South Korea president.

Sadly, even after all these years, Kim Dae-jung continues to defend the Sunshine Policy. Just this summer he told NPR in an interview:

“The Sunshine Policy has been and still is supported by the majority of South Koreans and the whole world. […] It’s the reason I won the Nobel Peace Prize. People are telling President Lee Myung-bak to return to the Sunshine Policy, but it isn’t clear whether he will or not.”

How unfortunate.