The Roles of South Korean Central and Local Governments in Inter-Korean Cooperation

IntroductionIn 1948, two different governments were formed on the Korean Peninsula. Since then, South and North Korea have gone through the Korean War (1950-1953) and have maintained hostile relations for more than 55 years. The two Koreas' fierce arms race has turned the Korean Peninsula into the most heavily populated area with a military capacity. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist countries in the early 1990s ended the Cold War order in most parts of the world. However, the Korean Peninsula is still locked in a Cold War of its own. The North's nuclear issues started in the early 1990s and surfaced again in 2002, thereby creating international tensions that have yet to be defused. Although there are realistic hopes for solving the North's nuclear issues through the denuclearization agreement of February 13, 2007, it is likely to take years for the United States and North Korea to resolve this standoff completely.Nevertheless, inter-Korean exchanges, especially those on some economic cooperative projects, such as the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement signed on April 30, 2007, continue unabated (Kim and Moussawi, 2007). A new trend of inter- Korean exchange has been initiated at the South Korean local government level since June 2000, when the South Korean government issued the so-called "Guidelines for Local Governments on Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation," a framework of inter-Korean exchange and cooperation for local government. To make it easier for local governments to engage in inter-Korean cooperation, South Korea abolished these guidelines in May 2003. Since then, only the Ministry of National Unification's approval is required for local governments' inter-Korean exchange and cooperation projects. These inter-Korean exchange and cooperation projects are being conducted by both high and low levels of local government.So, what has brought about these changes? First, a new globalization order caused by the end of the Cold War era called for fundamentally different national strategies from those that prevailed during the Cold War. In the early 1990s, South Korea established diplomatic relations with Russia and China, which used to be the major patrons of North Korea. In addition, the post-Cold War order prompted a reevaluation of the Korea-U.S. alliance.Second, in 1987, the amended constitution for a direct presidential election ended the military dictatorship in Korea and made it possible for the peaceful transition of power from the ruling party to the opposition party through elections (Snyder, 2004, pp. 23-24). Local governments obtained "autonomy" in 1995 for the first time, which enhanced their role not only with regard to their affairs, but also other areas such as inter-Korean relations. Finally, serious North Korean economic problems in the mid-1990s have created the kind of climate in which South Koreans should help their brotherly North Koreans through humanitarian aid and other inter-Korean projects.The last legacy of the Cold War still remains on the Korean Peninsula, despite the changes in domestic and international events. The coexistence of often conflicting trends has caused additional friction with regard to cooperation between the two Koreas. Some of this friction has to do with semantic problems such as "mutual cooperation within the same race" versus "international cooperation." Beneath these conflicts and confusions, however, a specialty in inter-Korean relations does exist. Officially, the South and the North are different countries, with separate seats at the UN, but inter-Korean relations (at least in Koreans' perception) are characteristic of exchange within the same race. For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade handles the Six-Party Talks, which are designed to resolve North Korea's nuclear issue. On the other hand, the Ministry of Unification takes care of inter-Korean exchange issues. Within the government organizations, separate departments deal with the South-North issues, but local governments and NGOs focus on inter-Korean exchange and cooperation. …