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This chapter assesses the usefulness of both traditional and critical approaches to the study of inter-Korean relations. After outlining the approaches that have informed analysis of inter-Korean relations to date, it develops a conceptual framework that incorporates the normative role played by political activists as they promote their own ideas regarding the pursuit of justice in inter-Korean relations. It argues that that the parameters of contemporary debates over inter-Korean relations were formed over years of contentious advocacy by South Korean political activists with regard to three core beliefs: unification, democracy, and human rights. A conceptual framework that focuses on the role of ethical argument and the negotiated nature of discourse helps elucidate this hypothesis in two ways. First, recognition of the important normative role played by political activists, as discursive agents, reveals the centrality of justice-related questions to the current debate over inter-Korean relations. Second, the conceptual framework deals with the question of power and provides a contextual dimension to the debate over inter-Korean relations.

This chapter discusses the evolution of political activism during the administrations of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun (1997–2000). During this period, the trends of fragmentation and remobilization identified in Chapter 4 converged, resulting in a new propensity toward political reorientation. Concomitant to this is the tendency toward transnationalization. In addition to these two political trends, a third and entirely new development also started to emerge: an attempt to depoliticize discourse over North Korean human rights. A group of actors sought to build bridges between ideologically opposed political adversaries, concerned that the legacy of decades of political activism had stultified discourse over inter-Korean relations. Appealing to universal, depoliticized values of human rights and democracy, in an attempt to overcome deeply entrenched divides in South Korean society, these actors strove to untangle the issue of North Korean human rights from the ideological web of norms, beliefs, and arguments in which it had become caught.

This concluding chapter first summarizes the book’s main findings. Among these is that the norms underpinning domestic political debate over unification and inter-Korean relations were developed through a negotiated argumentative process that took place between dominant and dissident discourses. Put differently, the norms embedded in the discourses that inform domestic political debate over inter-Korean relations today are the legacy of South Korea’s turbulent political activist history and can thus only be partially understood through the more static concept of framing. Three central beliefs have largely determined the shape of this debate: unification, human rights, and democracy. The chapter then considers the dramatic changes in inter-Korean relations under Lee Myung Bak, 2008–2012, and concludes by discussing the future prospects for inter-Korean relations.

This introductory chapter begins with a general discussion of inter-Korean relations, which continue to be characterized by antagonism, suspicion, and a distinct lack of mutual trust. It then sets out the book’s primary aims: to provide a more nuanced account of policy making over security-related issues, such as inter-Korean relations, by uncovering the normative concerns motivating South Korea’s approach to the issue; to emphasize the role that political activists have played in the evolution of the norms surrounding debate over inter-Korean relations; and to examine domestic political debates in terms of the arguments put forward by both state and nonstate actors, thus highlighting the centrality of discursive power relations to the evolution of norms over an extended period of time.

This chapter discusses South Korean political activism in the years leading up to the North Korean famine. It considers the process through which the radical ideas held by dissident activists leading up to the 1987 uprising were marginalized. Most former activists who sought to continue their nongovernmental, political careers through the 1990s and into the 2000s transitioned into a set of civil society organizations that focused on a new series of concerns more relevant to a democratizing South Korea. A breakaway group of activists also turned their backs on their radical left-wing agendas and championed a North Korean human rights agenda that has remained largely on the fringes of mainstream discourse in South Korea to this day. The chapter first outlines the dominant discourses against which political activists aligned themselves. The state’s attitude toward North Korea and issues of unification, human rights, and democracy is extrapolated here, drawing on key speeches made by Presidents Roh Tae Woo (1998–1992) and Kim Young Sam (1992–1997).