연구보고서

The Trust-building Process has greatly shaped the direction of the Park Geun-hye administration’s policy towards North Korea. Trust is a new concept in South Korea’s North Korea policy, and the Trustbuilding Process emerged as a new paradigm for policies on North Korea. The current government has diverged from the pathways of the previous governments. Since the end of the Cold War, South Korea’s economic superiority has been utilized as a major policy leverage against the North by means such as deciding the volume of humanitarian aid towards North Korea or economically pressuring the North. However, the Trust-building Process does not confine policy means to either a hard-line or soft-line stance on South Korea´s North Korea policy. As a social capital, trust is an intangible infrastructure between North and South Korea.

Since the inauguration of the Park Geun-hye administration, the Trust-building Process has enjoyed relatively strong support at home and abroad. However, North Korea’s responses have not been positive and inter-Korean relations have not made much progress. In fact, the Trust-building Process faces challenges arising from North Korea’s increasing uncertainties, nuclear weapons, security threat, etc. In addition, a growing number of voices have been demanding a more realistic and applicable approach to achieve a breakthrough in inter-Korean relations.

The Trust-building Process needs to evolve to bring inter-Korean relations closer and to invoke changes in North Korea. Therefore, something must be done with regard to sensitive issues such as the May 24 Measures, Six-Party Talks, humanitarian aid, and inter-Korean exchange. This paper explains the Park Geun-hye government’s Trustbuilding Process and evaluates how it has been implemented in the first year. Then it suggests how its terms should be improved to become a more realistic policy.