Korean reunification (Korean: 남북통일) is the potential unification of North Korea and South Korea into a single Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification of the peninsula while still maintaining two opposing regimes was started by the June 15th North–South Joint Declaration in June 2000,was reaffirmed by the October 4th Declaration in October 2007 and the Panmunjom Declaration in April 2018,and the joint statement of United States President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un at the Singapore Summit in June 2018. In the Panmunjom Declaration,the two countries agreed to work to officially end the Korean conflict in the future.
Kim Dae-jung,often referred to by his initials DJ,was a South Korean politician and activist who served as the eighth president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003.
The Sunshine Policy (Korean: 햇볕정책) is the theoretical basis for South Korea's foreign policy towards North Korea. Its official title is The Reconciliation and Cooperation Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북화해협력정책),and it is also known as The Operational Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북운영정책) and The Embracing Policy (Korean: 포용정책).
Lim Dong-won is a retired South Korean politician who was a top aide during the administration of Kim Dae-jung and a key architect of the Sunshine Policy,holding the post of Unification Minister until losing a no-confidence vote on September 3,2001;he stepped down after being impeached on December 23,2001. His involvement in secret payments to North Korea to facilitate the 2000 summit meeting resulted in an 18-month suspended jail sentence in 2003. In 2004 he was named the head of the Sejong Institute. In his retirement he has been critical of United States policy on North Korea. He has also been indicted in connection with an extensive wiretapping scandal uncovered in 2005.
Jeong Se-hyun is a South Korean politician who served as an Unification Minister under two consecutive presidents from 2002 to 2004.
Kan Kimura is a Japanese scholar of political studies and area studies. He is now a professor at Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies,Kobe University,Japan.
Inter-Korean summits are meetings between the leaders of North and South Korea. To date,there have been five such meetings so far,three of them being in Pyongyang,with another two in Panmunjom. The importance of these summits lies in the lack of formal communication between North and South Korea,which makes discussing political and economic issues difficult. The summits' agendas have included topics such as the ending of the 1950-53 war,the massive deployment of troops at the DMZ,the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea,and human rights issues.
Events from the year 2009 in South Korea.
Donald Kirk is a veteran correspondent and author on conflict and crisis from Southeast Asia to the Middle East to Northeast Asia. Kirk has covered wars from Vietnam to Iraq,focusing on political,diplomatic,economic and social as well as military issues. He is also known for his reporting on North Korea,including the nuclear crisis,human rights and payoffs from South to North Korea preceding the June 2000 inter-Korean summit.[1]
Lee Hong-Koo is a former Korean academic,politician,and think tank leader who served as a former Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea,former South Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and United States,and founding Chairman of the East Asia Institute in Seoul.
Sejong Institute is a non-profit,independent organization for public interest and a think tank in South Korea,dedicated to developing strategies and policies in areas of foreign and security affairs and Korean unification,regional issues,and international political economy. The Sejong Institute was established as a foundation for policy studies and research with the support of national leaders in politics and business,in the aftermath of the Rangoon Incident in October 1983. The institute's current president,Haksoon Paik (백학순),Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania,is a Korean expert in North Korean politics,inter-Korean relations,North Korea-U.S. relations,and North Korean nuclear and missile issues. The Sejong Institute works in collaboration with international specialists and institutions holding various academic conferences and forums around the world. It provides policy ideas and strategies for peace and prosperity for Korea and the world,and plays a role to strengthen Korea's public diplomacy.
Yi Cheol-seung was a South Korean politician who served in the National Assembly for seven terms.
Park Jae-kyu is the president of Kyungnam University in Masan,South Korea,and the former Unification Minister and National Security Council Chairman of South Korea.
Lee Hee-ho,sometimes spelled as Lee Hui-ho,,was a South Korean women's rights activist,peace advocate and former First Lady of South Korea during the presidency of her husband Kim Dae-jung from 1998 to 2003.
Pak Jae-gyong is a North Korean politician and soldier. A general in the Korean People's Army (KPA),Pak is a Vice Minister in the Ministry of People's Armed Forces as well as a full member of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK). Pak is also a delegate of the 12th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA). He is one of the two survivors of 31 commandos sent to assassinate South Korean president Park Chung Hee in the Blue House raid in 1968.
Kim Han-jung is a South Korean politician serving as a member of the 20th and 21st National Assembly.
Han Sang-jin is a South Korean sociologist in the tradition of critical theory,known for his Joongmin theory. He is professor emeritus at the department of sociology,Seoul National University,Korea,and a distinguished visiting professor at Peking University,China. He has lectured as visiting professor at Columbia University in New York,United States,School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris,France,the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina,and Kyoto University in Japan. His major areas of interest are:social theory,political sociology,human rights and transitional justice,middle class politics,participatory risk governance,Confucianism and East Asian development.
Moon Chung-in is a Special Advisor to President Moon Jae-in of South Korea for Foreign Affairs and National Security. He is also a Distinguished University Professor of Yonsei University,Krause Distinguished Fellow,School of Policy and Global Strategy,University of California,San Diego,and co-Convener of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN). He is currently serving as the editor-in-chief of Global Asia. On 21 May 2017,Moon Chung-in was nominated by President Moon Jae-in as a special advisor on unification,diplomacy and national security affairs.
2000 inter-Korean summit was a meeting between South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong Il,which took place in Pyongyang from June 13 to June 15,2000. It was the first inter-Korean summit since the Korean War 1950-1953.
Regarding the first inter-Korean summit,the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kim Dae-Jung for his work for democracy and human rights in North and South Korea in East Asia in general. Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy for reconciliation with North Korea was recognized.
The April 2018 inter-Korean summit took place on 27 April 2018 on the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area,between Moon Jae-in,President of South Korea,and Kim Jong Un,Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea and Supreme Leader of North Korea. The summit was the third inter-Korean summit - the first in eleven years. It was also the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953 that a North Korean leader entered the South's territory;President Moon also briefly crossed into the North's territory.
