All of this was now part of what the Kim-Roh factions in South Korean politics have called “the Sunshine policy”. Perhaps nowhere in the wide world of attempts by the Western democracies to seek a peaceful compromise with primitive and tyrannical regimes has the effort come to so little as between South and North Korea. [The North Koreans are yet to make a return state visit to the South promised in negotiations almost a decade ago which opened bilateral relations for the first time since the Korean War ended in armistice in 1953.]

True, in early October optimists were trumpeting the latest supposed successes in the excruciatingly torturous negotiations between among the Party of the Six to reach an agreement on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and proliferation of missiles [and perhaps nuclear technology] to pariah regimes around the world. But this had taken place largely in spite of Seoul’s repeated sabotage of the negotiations through its attempts at placating the North with sweet talk and economic assistance.

To the extent that Pyongyang has come to heel on the nuclear issue – and the devil is certainly in the details of this proposed agreement – it has been the result of severe economic sanctions by the U.S. and Japan which threatened the thin strands of blackmarket racketeering including counterfeiting that have provided the regime’s elite with luxuries and kept one of the world’s largest armies afloat while its people literally starved. [The combination of weather, the implosion of the Soviet Union and its cutoff of aid to Pyongyang, and government policy may have cost as many as three million lives through the mid-1990s only ending in continued malnutrition for most North Koreans in 2001.] Roh even has gone so far as to agree to attend the annual Arirang festival during his visit in Pyongyang. One of those events typical of totalitarian regimes, Arirang is an artistic and gymnastic performance in a massive public stadium that pays homage to the North Korean version of history including the claim that the Korean War was American aggression. Young athletes, recruited, drilled to the breaking point, from a near starving population, are paraded for the benefit of a corrupt and coddled leadership clique.

The continued contempt with which the North Koreans regard the South Korean overtures was displayed when Roh arrived in Pyongyang, not to be met by his host, and virtually ignored by him for his first day of the three-day meeting. The North Korean dictator when he finally appeared was unsmiling. And his invitation for Roh to spend another day in the North was accompanied by a snide comment about the South Korean president’s inability to decide such an issue without consultation with his advisers.

None of these Oriental protocols – however meaningful they are in a society steeped in centuries of Korean Confucianism – are as important as the absolute lack of results of the Sunshine policy. At a time when the Administration’s chauvinism, the country’s labor unrest, and the increasingly fierce international competition for foreign direct investment and its allied technology, has trimmed South Korea’s sails, the South has invested hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, in what are still cloudy under-the-table bribes for the state visit of Kim Dae Jung in 2000 and the present charade.

But the fact that the Seoul rumor mills say Roh is carrying proposals for grants in aid and investments of some $23 billion didn’t seem to turn on the enthusiasm of the first sumit seven years ago. According to Chosun Ilbo national daily, Seoul's economic assistance to Pyongyang amounted to about 2.39 trillion won [$26 billion] over the four years from 2003 to 2006. Roh was reported to be willing to offer to build the North Koreans a new international port to be surrounded by an economic development zone in the Chinese model.

Kim’s sour demeanor, however, could be, according to the endless speculation about what is probably the least transparent regime in the world, because the 65-year-old is seriously ill and has been treated by German doctors. During televised portions of ceremonies with Roh, Kim in the jump-suit he usually wears on visits to the military, was favoring his left arm and his obesity was evident.

As has been all too frequent during Roh’s administration regarding other domestic as well as foreign policy stratagems, Roh publicly gave no specifics about what he would propose or seek during this meeting he had sought unsuccessfully for several years. That has prompted criticism from Korean conservative opponents that the summit is simply an ego trip for the South Korean leader, one last attempt at clothing his unpopular administration which ends in February with some final sheen. Polls are predicting a whopping conservative victory for next year.

The South Korean leader sought to play down expectations before departing from Seoul. But, typically, he mused, “Even if we do not reach an agreement in many areas, it would still be a meaningful achievement to narrow the gap in understanding and to enhance confidence in each other.”

There was concern in Washington and Tokyo that Roh’s offers of economic assistance could undermine the delicate negotiations among the Party of Six – the U.S., China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea and North Korea – for a lasting agreement on weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, the record of the Sunshine policy is abysmal.

Some economic links have been developed between the South and the specially designated economic zone at Kaesong in the North has had South Korean private investment [some of it reportedly under duress from the government in Seoul]. But trade is less than a billion dollars a year, and North Korea’s few primitive exports don’t get much further than the area immediately south of the DMZ.

Roh has refused to even consider taking up the issue of human rights with the North, his advisers saying he will be “realistic” and "concentrate on making substantive and concrete progress." According to all the international monitors and the few refugees who do escape both North Korean and Chinese police on the Chinese Manchurian border, the huge network of political internment camps in the North exceeds in repression anything known in Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany with whole families incarcerated. It is one of the shameful aspects of the Sunshine policy that the Roh government has not only discouraged any attempt at international pressure for amelioration of one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, but that it also discourages the flight and repatriation of refugees to the South. Seoul has even denied extended access by U.S. intelligence to the few and far between VIP defectors who have survived to tell their stories in Seoul. Pyongyang still holds 480 South Koreans still listed by Seoul as having been abducted by the North, and thousands of South Korean prisoners of war still held by Pyongyang or unaccounted. The highly touted reunion of families separated by the Korean War has faded as demography inevitably has taken its toll of survivors along with the repression of the regime.

One of the worst hidden aspects of the whole policy is that it appeals to the most crass instincts in the South itself. For like any other society, South Korea has large elements who take the most selfish route. Some of Roh’s closest advisers have said semi-publicly that they do not want to jeopardize the enormous prosperity of the South – created through the hard work and the aid of its allies, not the least the U.S. – which has within a generation lifted its population from poverty to one of the wealthiest nations in the world. With half of the South’s population – Seoul has more than 10 million people, one of the largest cities in the world – concentrated almost under the artillery of the North on the DMZ, many South Koreans want to ignore their countrymen in the North in so far as that is possible. It has therefore been relatively easy to fall for the siren song of the Kim-Roh appeasers and opportunists who believe they can turn on enough artificial sunlight to make the regime in the North palatable or, even more wishfully, it would agree to change under the pressure of joining globalization.