Era IV: People’s War or Maoist Insurgency (1996–2009)
16 Does Tourism have a Role in Promoting Peace on the
Korean Peninsula?
Bruce Prideaux, Jillian Prideaux and Seongseop Kim
Introduction
In recent decades the potential for global war has eased as Cold War rivalries have evaporated and been replaced by commercial and political competition. As political tensions have eased, domestic freedoms have increased to the point where citizens of the Russian Federation are free to travel abroad and in China an increasing number of citizens have access to independent overseas travel. A number of tourism researchers contend that tourism has been a major contributor to the development of peace, how-ever, in the international relations literature the accepted view is that tourism has been one of the beneficiaries of peace, with development of bilateral tourism flows following, rather than preceding, the warming of relations between former protagonists (Bell and Kurtzer 2009; Calder 2006).
This chapter focuses on the Korean peninsula. After reviewing the arguments made for and against the view that tourism has contributed to the development of peaceful relations, the chapter examines the situation with particular emphasis on the regional geopolitical situation in the first decade of the 21st century. The chapter argues that in the political manoeuvrings between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) tourism has been used as a policy instrument in a wider political context that both states view as critical to the their future survival. In the South, tourism has been used as a component of policy objectives aimed at winning support amongst domestic constituents, while in the North it has been used to collect foreign currency and achieve specific international policy goals. The chapter concludes that when peace does eventually occur, tourism has the potential to become an important instrument for nation building in a future united Korea.
A review of the literature on the role of tourism as a vehicle to promote peace between divided and warring nations reveals considerable agreement that tourism does promote peace while acknowledging that there are some circumstances where there are difficulties in this process. Authors including Butler and Mao (1995), Kim and Crompton (1990), Waterman (1987), Yu (1997) and Zhang (1993) have supported the view that tourism has some ability to reduce tensions between partitioned nations. Kim and Crompton (1990) for example introduced the concept of two-track diplomacy (discussed later in this chapter) while Yu (1997) built on previous contributions in the political science
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literature (Spero 1981; Zhan 1993) and suggested the concept of high politics activ-ity (government-to-government) and low politics activactiv-ity (person-to-person). A large number of researchers have promoted the view that tourism is able to exert a positive influence by reducing suspicion and tension (Hall 1984; Hobson and Ko 1994; D’Amore 1988, 1989; Jafari 1989; Matthews and Richter 1991; Richter 1989, 1994; Var, Brayley and Korsay 1989; Matthews 1978; Var, Schluter, Ankomah and Lee 1989; Kim, Prideaux and Prideaux 2007). A smaller number of researchers have raised concerns that the connection between tourism and peace is not supported by research (Anastasopoulous 1992; Litvin 1998; Milman et al.1990; Pizam et al. 1991). Few tourism researchers have taken the view suggested by Litvin (1998) that tourism is not a generator of peace but is instead the beneficiary of peace.
The international relations literature paints a different picture of the role of tourism as an agent for promoting peace. In general, tourism is not seen to play a major role in relations between the two Koreas, and where mentioned is generally examined as a product of the Sunshine policy (see below), rather than a factor for peace in its own right. A major factor in the relative silence about the role of tourism in the international relations literature stems from the perception that relations between the two Koreas are subordinate to global and regional security issues (although this has changed somewhat since the end of the Cold War). The following discussion examines the current situation on the Korean Peninsula from a broad national and geopolitical perspective and then seeks to identify where tourism is able to participate as a positive change agent to create peaceful relations between the North and South.
Background to current state of tension
The Korean War and the ensuing political divide between the North and South have been outlined in previous publications on this topic and need not be retold in depth in this chapter (Kim and Prideaux 2003). However it is important to understand the cur-rent political situation on the Korean peninsula for it is this situation that has created the current level of tension between the North and South and defines the opportunities that tourism has for promoting reconciliation and assisting in future moves to unification.
Since its unsuccessful attempt to forcibly reunite the Korean nation during the Korean War (1950–53) the North has continued to press for reunification on its own terms, and both the North and South have remained bitter enemies separated by the heavily forti-fied Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Both states spend considerable resources on military preparedness and following a period of relative calm, tensions have again escalated following the North’s announcement that it has nuclear weapons capability. Formal diplomatic relations between the North and South have not been established although the United Nations has mediated talks at the Panmunjeom Joint Security Area in the DMZ. Informal bilateral discussions did take place at Mt Gumgang, a South Korean-operated tourism resort in North Korea and in the Kaesong industrial zone.
The current state of North–South relations is a direct result of the ideological views that each of the divided states has of its role in the world, how it views the other and how it has chosen to organise domestic politics and its economy. The South has adopted the capitalist approach to economic organisation, has embraced democracy as the preferred method for political organisation. The nation can now be classed as a first world nation
with an annual GDP of US$27,649 (the North’s GDP is estimated to be US$1700 per person) (CIA World fact Book, accessed 20 June 2009). Citizens are not restricted in their ability to travel domestically or internationally and through the tightly controlled Mt Gumgang enclave have been able to travel into North Korea, although without the opportunity to mingle with Northerners. South Korea continues to maintain a strong military force specifically organised to repulse an attack from the North, while across the DMZ the North maintains an equally large military presence to protect it from a Southern invasion and to supposedly allow it to mount an invasion of the South if necessary.
The North has adopted a different approach to political and economic organisation than the South and can be described as a single-party state lead by the Korean Workers’
Party. While nominally described as a socialist republic the country is widely regarded as a totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship where leadership has passed from father (Kim Il-sung) to son Kim Jong-il and possibly to grandson (Kim Jong-un) in the near future in what may be described as an emerging communist royalty. There is no ability for citizens to travel abroad and domestic travel is tightly controlled. From childhood citizens in the North are exposed only to the views of their government and are constantly fed the message that South Koreans are poor and have been enslaved by western capitalist nations (Yang 1999). In this way the government has been able to completely control and mould the views of its citizens, telling them that their national duty is to reunify the divided Korean nation (Hong 2002), through armed invasion if necessary.
In summary, each of the divided states wishes reunification but on its own terms. As Breen (2004) observed, unification in these circumstances can only be seen as a win–lose situation where the achievement of unification would mean victory for one and defeat of the other. Recent tensions (discussed below) indicate that the North has no desire to be the losing party in a possible future reunification of the divided states. It can be further argued that while the South maintains a policy of reunification on its own terms the North will continue to feel threatened, fearing that reunification on Southern terms would fatally undermine what the North Koreans see as the achievements of its 60-year struggle against the West.
Reunification from a Southern perspective would involve enormous costs, possibly greater then those encountered by the re-unified German nation as it continues to upgrade services and infrastructure in the former East Germany (Chul 2002). It is apparent that any unification lead by the South will entail travel freedoms of the type that are totally alien to citizens of the North. How these would be implemented will be important and it is in this area that tourism can be envisioned to play an important part in the reunification process.
There are a growing number of South Koreans who have visited the North but only under very restricted conditions that have precluded the development of unofficial person-to-person contacts of the nature theorised by Kim and Crompton (1990). In their view, tourism could assist reunification via Track Two diplomacy, described as unofficial people-to-people relations made possible by tourism. Such contact could then be built upon by Track One diplomacy, which is undertaken at the official government-to-government level. In a later paper, Butler and Mao (1996) suggested an evolutionary process based on the premise that as tourism increases between countries in dispute, tensions are reduced leading to peace and even unification. This seems unlikely for the Korean Peninsula in the foreseeable future.
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Achieving reunification did not appear to be a possibility when this chapter was written in June 2009 but as the rapid collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the realignment of many of its former satellite states to full membership of the European Union and NATO in a little over a decade illustrates, the previously unimaginable is never impossible. Both Minghi (1991), and Nijkamp (1994) observed that political boundaries have moved from being lines of separation to being lines of integration, with the European Union being an example of this trend. While the actual path that will be taken to reunification is difficult to predict, it is apparent that tourism will have a place prior to unification if the North allows its citizens greater freedom to travel, and certainly after reunification once the restrictions on cross-border travel are removed. This chapter considers that the weight of history is on the side of a Southern-led reunification and it is from this perspective that the later discussion on tourism as a force for peaceful reunification is considered.
Recent developments
During the Presidency of Kim Dae-jung (1998–2003) in South Korea the so-called
‘Sunshine Policy’ was adopted as a method to increase engagement with the North with the ultimate aim of reunification. A significant development in this process was a his-toric summit between North and South Korea in 2000, where the two states committed themselves to reconciliation through signing the inter-Korean Joint Declaration (Snyder 2005; Sigal 2002). A number of economic and diplomatic exchanges and the reunion of divided families were agreed upon as measures to build trust between the two Koreas (Ha 2001). As part of this process a number of North–South commercial agreements were undertaken and the large Mt Gumgang tourist venture in the North was allowed to proceed with heavy financial support from the government of the South.
On the North Korean side, enthusiasm generated by the initial engagement soon cooled.
Despite the delivery of food aid and fertilizer, and other forms of economic cooperation, North Korea began to disengage itself from the agreement (Oh 2002; 2003). As Martin (2002) notes, there remained scepticism on the part of the North over South Korean and US talk of reconciliation, which they viewed as a way of hiding their true, anti-North Korean intentions. A major part of the rationale behind this was that for the North to see the South as keeping its end of the agreements, it should stop collaborating with the US and Japan in its policy towards North Korea (Oh 2002).
The North’s expulsion of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 sparked a crisis on the Peninsula (Park 2005). The position of South Korea in negotiating with the North was further jeopardized by the United States’ ‘War on Terror’ and specifically its linkage of North Korea with this war through President George W. Bush’s reference to North Korea being part of an international ‘Axis of Evil’ (Editors’ note, see Baum and O’Gorman, Chapter 15, this volume) during his 2002 State of the Union Address (Oh 2002).
In response to the worsening crisis, China took a key role in attempting to stabilise the situation, first through trilateral talks and later through six-party talks among the two Koreas, Japan, the USA, Russia and China itself (Park 2005). Despite a number of rounds of talks, little success was made as the North Koreans withdrew and continued the development of their nuclear weapons programme. Despite the continuance of the Sunshine Policy by Kim’s successor Roh Moo-hyun (2003–08), US foreign policy contin-ued to frustrate attempts by the South to engage the North (Park 2005).
The election of Lee Myung-bak in the South in 2008 and the subsequent reversal of many aspects of the Sunshine Policy has lead to increased North-South tensions, with almost constant calls by the North for its citizens to prepare for imminent invasion by the USA and South Korea. The Mt Gumgang project was amongst the causalities of the recent increase in tensions following the shooting of a South Korean tourist by a North Korean security guard.
The current geopolitical situation
It is not possible to understand fully the role that tourism may or may not play in the shaping of North–South relationships without considering the geopolitical context within which tourism operates. The relationship between North Korea and South Korea must be viewed within the broader geopolitical impacts of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, the stability of the Northeast Asian region and the threat of reuni-fication on Southern rather than Northern terms. Most vital to current understandings of the North–South relationship is the issue of the North’s development of nuclear weapons technology. Also crucial from a broader geopolitical perspective is the impact a nuclear-armed North Korea is likely to have on the stability of the broader Northeast Asian region (Cha and Kang 2004: 97). Although South Korea has generally pursued an independent approach to North Korea, it still has to consider both the US and Japanese positions on this issue (Ha 2001). The situation is also further complicated by the future role China wishes to play, both in Asia and the world. Continuing Chinese support for North Korea may be viewed as a method of achieving its foreign policy objectives in the North Asia region and its goal of gaining global superpower status. In this sense, peace has become hostage to geopolitical issues that are unfolding in a manner beyond the control of either North or South Korea.
Given the seriousness of the situation, and the refusal of the USA to conduct bilateral talks with North Korea, the Chinese government sponsored the multilateral ‘six-party talks’ in a bid to bring stability to the region (Park 2005). The talks made some progress in the fifth and sixth rounds, where North Korea showed willingness to give up its nuclear programme in return for food aid and normalization of relations with the USA and Japan (Park, 2009). However, as a consequence of a UN resolution condemning a failed ‘satellite’ (possibly ballistic missile) test launch, North Korea has since withdrawn from the talks, tested a second nuclear weapon in May 2009 and suspended the 1953 Armistice Agreement.
Another important point, vital from both a regional and a South Korean perspective, is fear of economic and political collapse in the North. Unification of the two Koreas through the collapse of the North would be economically devastating for the South, and so the South has an interest in preventing the collapse of Kim Jong-il’s regime (Park 2005). As a result, North Korea has been in a strong position to win concessions from both the international community, and particularly from South Korea. There is a general consensus emerging that the North Korean nuclear programme is a means by which the regime is able to exploit its one advantage to ensure its survival (Cha 2002) and in more recent years to ensure a smooth handover of power from Kim Jong-il to his son Kim Jong-un. Even in the period of thawing relations between North and South in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Soon-young (1999) commented that North Korean foreign policy consisted of ‘threat and blackmail’.
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In examining this history, it is clear that the nature of this problem is not merely a problem of interstate relations between the two Koreas but hinges on the failure of the Northern state to be able to sustain itself without international support, its quest to gain security vis-à-vis the United States and Japan, and its fear of a Southern-lead reunification. The Sunshine Policy, although having had for South Korea the favorable impact of helping prevent the implosion of the North Korea state, could not, by itself, resolve these underlying issues. To a large extent, relations between the two states are subject to broader political forces beyond the influence of person-to-person contacts or leader-to-leader contacts. For these reasons, the prospect of tourism in itself being a factor for peace between the two Koreas is unlikely, at least from the international relations perspective.
Tourism promoting peace on the peninsula
A growing body of research (Kim et al. 2003: Kim and Prideaux, 2006; Kim, 2002;
Lee 2001)), mostly emanating from South Korea, has commented on the prospects of tourism promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Much of this research has focused on the development of the Mt Gumgang tourism resort by the Hyundai Corporation.
According to Kim and Prideaux (2003) the symbolic value of the Mt Gumgang project is enormous, far outweighing the venture’s commercial benefits. The project was a major issue in the 2003 South Korean Presidential elections and continues to be a significant political issue in the South. As Kim et al. (2007: 305) state the
‘use of tourism for political purposes rather than for commercial reasons raises a number of important issues including the impact of non-tourism motives on visitor flows and the wisdom of using tourism as a foreign policy tool to achieve specific national political goals such as the peaceful reunification of South and North Korea.’
The Mt Gumgang tourist resort in North Korea had its origins in the 1998 Sunshine Policy and was the first tangible success of the policy. The project was significant from a diplomatic perspective but failed to meet its financial objectives and incurred substantial losses that were later underwritten by the South Korean government. For the North, the resort offered the opportunity to generate foreign currency and as a place where further discussions could take place outside the orbit of the other parties involved in the ongoing conflict on the peninsula.
The July 2008 shooting of a South Korean tourist at Mt Gumgang by a North Korean security guard lead to the suspension of travel to the area by South Koreans. As of July 2009 the suspension has not been lifted. The ambitious Gaeseong Industrial Park, built in North Korea by South Korean investors as an example of inter-Korean business cooperation, is also in jeopardy because of North Korean demands for higher land lease payments and higher wages for North Korean workers at the site. Further, the detention of a South Korean worker for allegedly voicing derogatory remarks about the North Korean Government has also reduced prospects for achieving improved North–South cooperation via this mechanism.
In one of the most recent commentaries on the role of tourism in North-South relations Kim et al. (2007, 306) observed that
‘…the Mt Gumgang project has reduced feelings of mistrust towards the North by Southerners and assisted in the peace process in several ways. It is also apparent that the North does not regard tourism as threatening and has increased the opportunities for South Koreans to visit the North in areas outside of the Mt Gumgang precinct.’
More recent events indicate that from the perspective of the North, a Northern-led reunification is more important than almost any other issue on its political horizon (Weekly Chosun 2002). The belligerent attitude of the North, expressed by its develop-ment of nuclear weapons and continual calls for an invasion of the South, indicate that the observations made by Kim et al. (2007) were overly optimistic. From the Southern perspective South Korean tourists visit Mt Gumgung for reasons that have little to do with a genuine interest by the North in developing tourism and more to do with internal political dimensions not fully apparent to external observers.
The weight of recent research (Go 2002; Kim and Prideaux 2006; Kim et al. 2007; Lee 2001; Kim et al. 2003) indicates that from the perspectives of South Korean tourists visiting Mt Gumgang, the experience has softened their views towards the North.
A role for tourism in post unification Korea:
several scenarios
While there has been considerable discussion of the role that tourism projects such as Mt Gumgang are able to play in Korean reunification, less has been written about a possible role for tourism in a future post-reunification economy. Given the current level of tension and the attitudes both nations have towards reunification it is unlikely that reunification will follow a path similar to that which led to German reunification in 1990 (see Chapter 3 of this volume by Suntikul) or to the peaceful handover of colonies by the UK and Portugal to China in the 1990s (see Chapter 5 of this volume by McCartney).
It is more likely that given the course of political developments over the last 60 years a different path to reunification will be taken. At least three plausible scenarios appear possible but their probability is not able to be predicted.
1 A dramatic economic and political collapse of the North as a result of famine and a